I have a question.....

I would consider myself a fairly positive person.  Open minded and able to speak my mind freely. Anyone who knows me well knows that I am very straightforward. I don’t believe in mixing my words with rainbow-colored unicorn nonsense.  A lot of words stay tucked away neatly in my head because my momma taught me that if I can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all. Overall, I am a nice girl. I am not a sarcastic person but I have a wicked sense of humor. I later in life attributed that quality to being a nurse for so many years. When you’ve seen what I have coming out of a human body….. or going into….well let’s just say “it’s laugh or cry”. You develop coping skills. 

Actually, that’s another story. This one is about something on my mind lately that I can’t keep compartmentalized anymore in my brain. It’s leaking out daily into my everyday thoughts and I’m trying to understand it. I am confused. Maybe a bit depressed. I am for sure profoundly disappointed and extremely sad. It’s a question mark that fills the entire spectrum of my understanding these days.

When I was little, I mean even from 6 years old, when I attended Catholic school, we were infiltrated with reel-to reel tapes of Mother Teresa caring for the Lepers in Calcutta or Bangladesh. I am still not sure where all these years later but as a child it seemed a desperate lonely place with one smiling little woman hugging disfigured people. I felt compassion inside my chest. I would lay awake at night thinking about it. I attended Catechism classes on Monday nights at 7. All through the years they taught us charity. We helped others. We felt compassion. We wanted to make someone’s life a little better, even for a day. We did local mission work. Cleaning a house for an elderly person, sweeping a neighborhood. Just because it was the right thing to do.

I was a Girl Scout. We were taught to help others and be kind and considerate. We held fundraisers, visited animal shelters. Sold cookies…. yup THOSE cookies. We were involved in our communities. It was not about ourselves but what we could do for humanity. We were taught to think outside ourselves. To care. To love one another. Maybe I lived in a grand time in history when those things were still a priority. When as Mother Teresa said “if you can’t feed the masses, then feed just one”.

Fast forward to today. I live in a small landlocked, devastatingly poor country deep in the heart of Africa. I am 9,000 miles from anything comfortable. I chose to be here. I saw suffering and thought I could help. Even though I have an incurable autoimmune disease called Lupus. I figured before I died I could get in one last effort to “feed just one”.  It’s ingrained in me. No matter how discouraged I get I cannot shake the compassion I feel in my heart for people.

With today’s media outlets, the world is not so big anymore. We see everything.  Television news is our window to the world. We see children killed in Syria and families on the move, migrating around world looking for a place to sleep, often in a white tent on a donated thin mattress. We see senseless acts of violence in civilized places. People used to think Africa was the barbaric place on the planet. I see more nonsense on the world news from other places. People ‘over there’ seem to care only about themselves. It’s ‘me and mine’ only. When I was a kid if someone in the neighborhood had a family problem like a death or a medical problem we rushed in with casseroles and a hug.

I have chosen, in my 4 years in Africa, to shield my friends and family from the atrocities of poverty I see daily.  I could use social media to portray the harsh realities. Every day on the news there has been another child mutilated and killed in ritualistic sacrifices ordered by the witch doctors. The reason people went to the witch doctor to begin with? To keep their husband from cheating. Or to ‘get rich’. Or maybe they had a dispute with another clan and want to put a curse on them. ‘Witch doctoring’ is big business in Uganda. Even pastors frequent them. Poverty creates ingenuity. When you have to feed your kids you can even exploit mass ignorance to get money. Even if it means stealing and cutting up children.

Daily there are accidents on the pothole ridden and rain-washed-away roads. Government corruption is rampant. Public transportation is the main mode of getting around. Taxi vans stuff people in on top of one another to get more money. When they crash because the driver was speeding so he could get in enough trips in that day, bodies lay torn open and intestines and brains spilling out on the road. I see it on the news. There are no seat belts or air bags. There are very few ambulances and medical centers are horrible beyond description. In America we take our dogs to veterinary hospitals 100 times better than a human hospital in Uganda. I could share the photos and create a shock factor to ask for money but I just can’t. If  ask for help..... am I asking on a whim? To buy myself a Lexus? I could've stayed in my comfortable country but I am a human advocate. I would fight for you no matter where you lived. So I keep questioning in my mind how when I ask for help…. how am I ignored?

I came here to feed just one. I am on a very low fixed income. I try to feed who I can. When they come barefoot to my door, I give them my shoes. I am running out of shoes. I give them any extra money I have in a month. The requests vary from school fees to enough money to buy $5 Malaria medicine so their child can live. Malaria kills many little kids here. It may be even less than $5. Many are just hungry. Let me say that again. They are JUST HUNGRY.

Recently I put out a brochure to finish an on-going income-generating project to provide money to help MORE people. I appealed to my friends and family one time so as to not have to ask again. God bless the small few who responded. I will use every penny towards the project. I am not giving up. I will keep praying and believe in time I can finish the project on my own with my meager resources. Even if it takes 4 MORE years. If I live 4 more years. If there will be any people left to help. They are dying of hunger these days. Drought sucks. I won’t show photos of those ones on my social media but I may keep asking for help…. to help just one. And then hopefully…… maybe……...the masses. 

  In the meantime I will keep having this big question in my mind………….

Does anyone make and deliver casseroles anymore?