The Termite the Aardvark and the Warthog

Friday and Saturday were spent pulling everything we’ve done together and developing a series of reports, proposals and budgets. I say that as if I’ve done loads of work… Unfortunately, I acquired a reason to still focus on latrines and spent most of Saturday in bed.  Tom, Moses & Penlope produced an incredible amount of detailed work, and we have a pretty good plan for what it would take, and cost, for our 19 children to go to school.  

On Sunday we travelled to Lake Mburo Game Park for a couple of days rest before moving on to Soroti and a new set of interesting challenges. We left Rukungiri in pouring rain and still feeling cold. As we drove out of town and watched people sheltering from the rain or running for cover, it was another stark reminder of our own good fortune and privilege.  It was pure stupidity that left me cold – I should have taken more care with that dratted fleece. The people I watched from the comfort of the car were dressed in thin clothes. Many poor people have leaky houses, few have coats or waterproof shoes.  It’s not something people sing about – what its like for the most vulnerable when it’s cold and stormy ‘in Africa’.  As the paths turned to muddy rivers, we thought again about the children living at the top of hills only accessible by steep stony, rocky footpaths. No mobility aids, no money for a boda-boda. It was a sobering thought.

As I’ve got older, I seem more susceptible to stomach bugs – but I always have a comfy bed in a dry room. In Rukungiri, I had visits from staff to make sure I was OK when Tom was out, they brought me cold bottled water, and asked if I wanted medicine or food. Here in Mburo, they made me ginger tea –  just what I needed.  Ugandans are generally incredibly kind and thoughtful, they are respectful (apart from the ones who are my friends who deny me cake or tease me about my age).  The people we met in the villages and remote houses were all welcoming and pleasant. They were delighted that we visited and wanted to try and find a way to help their children (I suppose apart from the child who screamed the whole time because he was afraid of our white skins!). Most of the children laughed and tried to play or talk with us. The families seemed to genuinely love their disabled children – they desperately wanted to help them.

Its easy to focus on the struggles, to become slightly patronising and think we can help when other’s lives become hard. Our motivation to help should be compassion and care for these children.  We have to recognise the children and families in the project are people, not objects for our western sympathy, money or salvation.   Moses and Penlope are passionate about the children – they want to start making their lives easier and helping them get to school straight away. They have incredible energy and enthusiasm. They would have taken us to meet all 19 children if there had been time because they knew if we met the children, we would understand the problems – not because they were trying to make us cry. It’s not about knee-jerk solutions to a crisis, it’s about understanding a whole structure and culture and seeing how we can support those who know far better than us what those solutions might be. Tom and I mostly asked Moses and Penlope questions and filled in forms and wrote proposals from their answers… then asked more questions. We rarely produced answers.

Today we were walking with a guide in the Park. We saw loads of huge termite hills, some even blocking the road. We looked at one with a big hole and tunnel in the middle.  Moses our guide (there are always lots of Moses in my blogs!) explained that the holes were made by aardvarks at night feeding from termites. Then suddenly there was a loud rustling from a bush beside us and a herd of disgruntled warthogs thundered out from the foliage right beside us. Startled I grabbed Moses as we watched them charge off away from the wretched people who had disturbed their sleep talking about termites and aardvarks.  
Moses turned back to the termite hill. ‘When the aardvark leaves, the warthogs use the hole and make it bigger as a sort of cave for them to sleep in.’

 said they were ugly brutes, but Tom announced, ‘I love warthogs – they’re fine and they’re just themselves, they don’t care what anyone else thinks – they’re happy to be warthogs.’ 

I think we need to learn to live like this…. We need to work together - and see the value in each other.  We shouldn’t judge but fight for justice for all.  Without the termite, the aardvark has no food and the warthog doesn’t have a cave.  We saw herds of impala with zebra and vervet monkeys.  Moses said they have a symbiotic relationship – they always travel together. The impala browse vegetation and disturb insects which the monkeys eat. The monkeys act as look-outs warning off predators such as leopards and baboons (who knew baboons eat young impala?).  I think we need to work on symbiotic relationships – we learnt so much from Moses and Penlope, and we learnt from the families too – seeing how love and care can bring joy and security to children with disability even when they have no real hope for the future.  I’d like to think that in different situations I can be a termite or an aardvark, a monkey or an impala - maybe I need t try being a warthog… I never want to come like a baboon, someone who needs to be kept from the vulnerable for using for my own gain.

PS one little girl had a paralysed leg which she dragged around to move. The open ulcer on her leg was a problem to be solved... How could we protect the leg and support healing. Penlope sat on the ground and talked to the child. She gently asked if she could lift her dress to look at the leg. She was gentle, respectful & spoke with dignity. I learnt from Penlope.