Lasting impressions
Linda Lesage — Wasaga Beach, ON
This distribution to Uganda was my first with
Sleeping Children and it was an unforgettable experience. Here are a few of
my impressions:
- Our initial drive through the city of Kampala revealed poverty
side by side with affluence. Homes and businesses were enclosed with coiled
wire or broken glass atop high walls with locked gates.
- Roads had monstrous
ruts and pot holes, heavy choking pollution, and car emissions. Extreme contrasts
– a third world country.
- Reading in Uganda's newspaper, The New Vision, of
the corruption by top government officials. Charges being laid regarding
the embezzlement of funds from the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.
Wondering how the people can rise above distrust in the leadership of their
impoverished country.
- By bus approaching our first distribution and seeing
the range of bright colors of yellow, blue, green, red and orange – five
hundred children, standing in five color lines, dressed in their SCAW clothes.
- In
contrast seeing numerous children wearing tattered, dull clothes, calloused,
bare feet, on the periphery watching and waiting.
- Encouraging children to smile
for their photo – pointing and demonstrating a full face smile. Realizing
for many this act is not a natural response.
- Seeing children suffering from extreme
poverty – TB, AIDS, malaria, ringworm, jiggers. Seeing the cruel act of genetics
– an albino child surviving in Africa.
- Children looking after children. A parental
generation missing due to AIDS.
- Not understanding the mass marketing by Coca
Cola. Reading numerous eye-catching billboards from the bus window – “Live
on the Coke side of life.”
- In awe of the Inner Wheel of Kampala. The dedicated
women of this club did “set the bar” as far as practicing “service before
self.”
- Finding
myself humbled when a child curtseyed or quietly uttered a thank you with
head bent low, eyes cast down, in respect.
- Appreciating the response, through music
and dance, to the unconditional gift of a bedkit. All parents and caregivers
strive for a better world for their children.
- SCAW — love has no boundaries!
