Uganda's ChildrenJeffrey Bamford -- North York, ON
At each distribution site, a sea of colour awaited us: five hundred Ugandan children dressed in new uniforms of blue shorts or skirts with red, yellow, orange, or green t-shirts, waiting patiently for us to arrive. Some had walked a long distance to the site, others had been driven many kilometers in the back of a truck, or on a bicycle or motorcycle. Some wore shoes but many arrived with bare feet. They arrived early in morning to be dressed and ready for our arrival. Their singing and rhythmic clapping energized us as we emerged from the bus after a long and bumpy ride. The children were not sure about us and our mission. They waited quietly and patiently to get their picture taken. I could not believe that five hundred children could be so quiet. The younger children were often frightened of the muzungos (white persons); the older ones were watchful. They would politely say, "Good morning," or "How are you?" since teaching in schools in Uganda is in English. It was fun to get them singing while in line for their picture. "If you're happy, and you know it, clap your hands," always worked, but with soft unsure voices and actions. Following a strange muzungo took a lot of coaxing. To get a smile for the photo, "musake" ("Smile.") prompted a modest response. The real smiles came at the end of the process when they had received their bedkits. Then their smiles were relaxed, joyful, and could light up a room.
After the distribution, we had lunch in the community. This was an opportunity to see children being children. If I closed my eyes and listened, it was like being at home near a school with lots of laughter and shouting. Children were running in the school yard and sitting and chatting in groups. What was different was the lack of playground equipment. There were no swings, jungle gyms, goal posts, or slides. Throughout our stay in Uganda I did not see the kinds of play equipment typical in communities and homes in North America. They say play is the work of the child. The children of Uganda create their play from their own environment. They are resourceful and resilient. One of the memories I will always have of rural Uganda is driving by homesteads with several children playing in the yard with each other. Often a young child around six years old would be carrying a younger child on her back -- clearly looking after her younger sibling. As we drove by, there were always big smiles, waves, and shouts to us of "How are you?" A doorway would often have a young child in it sitting quietly or playing with a basin and water. I leave Uganda with a great appreciation of the work that is being done there by many groups hoping to improve the lives of the people. We visited a school that had developed before-school programs to help children learn to read. Students wrote stories that were put into the library for other children to read to make up for the lack of books. Peer education programs have been developed to teach youth about HIV/AIDS and malaria. Both diseases remain a problem in Uganda but HIV/AIDS incidence has been reduced from a high of 30% of the population to 6.8%.
In the distributions, children orphaned by HIV/AIDS were one of the groups chosen as recipients of bedkits. The plight of this group of children is a great concern. In the school we visited, special vocational programs had been developed to teach the orphans skills that will enable them to be productive and support themselves. The children of Uganda are beautiful, patient, hopeful, serious, joyful and resilient. They are the pearls of Uganda. |
