The Perfect Gift

image courtesy of flickr

Today as I walked across the playground to my car, carrying a big box of treasures my little ones and their families had bestowed on me, I stared up at the pale sky and grinned at small miracles, like the joy of outside recess for the first time in weeks.

As I crossed the playground past wallball courts, one of my little boys, who stays for after school care, came tearing across the blacktop, running full speed and only stopping when his arms were tightly wrapped around my legs, like it had been years since we'd seen each other, instead of the short side of half an hour.

I adore this kid.  He's helpful and kind, smart and hilarious.  He excels in making armpit noises.  He's everything a kid should be.

Earlier in the week, he'd strutted into class and during the "Good News" portion of our Class Morning Meeting he'd showed off his new, fast shoes.

He lamented, "But, Mrs. McCauley, it's been raining forever and I'm never going to get to show you my fast shoes during P.E.  All I want to do is run and play."  He rested his head on my shoulder.

"Buddy, I'm with you.  All I want is for you to be able to run and play.  Believe me," I said with utter sincerity.  Sweet teacher friends, you know the desperation that arises after days on end of rain and no recess.  It's a visceral need akin to thirst or hunger.

As I balanced my box and he hugged my legs, he looked up at me and grinned, the windowed smile that is the hallmark of first grade.  This kid has freckles for days, smattered across his nose and cheeks.

"Have a merry Christmas," I leaned into him. 

"Merry Christmas, Mrs. McCauley.  I'm going to miss you."

For many of my little ones, the last day before Christmas break is a difficult day.  Being away from school, from friends, from teachers and librarians and aides and cooks and custodians who love them so much is hard.   This little one has a family who loves him, a warm house, food on the table, but still it's hard.  Two weeks is an eternity to a kid.

"I'm going to miss you, too, but I'll see you after vacation.  And then we'll tell each other all about the things we did,"  I assure him.

I felt him nodding his head against my leg.  He peeled away from me and walked a few steps before turning back toward me.  He swallowed hard.

"I love you, Mrs. McCauley."

He waited for me to say it back.  I always do.  I tell my kids all of the time, but still never enough, that I love them.

"I love you, too, buddy,"  I smiled.

He gave a last wave and ran toward the swings.  I watched his fast shoes splash through the puddles.

At home, I unpacked all of my gifts, filling two notepad pages with names and items for one of these lazy vacation mornings when I'll sit in my pajamas with a cup of tea and pen thank you notes.

As I sat under the light of my Christmas tree, I smiled because I knew I'd received a gift too big to be listed in a notebook, a gift so perfect that I'll be grateful for it long after I've penned my thanks for all the other kindnesses I received today.

Vigilante Kindness: Bringing Light, Water and Love to Te Okot

Sweet Vigilantes of Kindness, I know you've been waiting to hear all about the well in Te Okot.  I wasn't quite sure how to tell the final chapter of this story.  A blog post wouldn't be enough.  A digital picture album wouldn't suffice.  So on my eleven hour flight from Cairo to New York, I taught myself to use iMovie.  The movie is about 15 minutes long and isn't professional by any stretch of the imagination, but I like that you get to go with me to see the finished well for the first time and you get to hear straight from the mouths of the people at Te Okot just what this well and the gift of solar lights mean to them.  So grab a big glass of clean drinking water and settle in for another great story of Vigilante Kindness.

Vigilante Kindness: The Cabinet Maker

One of the hardest things for me to get used to each time I visit Uganda is "African Time".  It's not a stereotype.  Nor is it an insult.  It simply is.

African time means when my language teacher didn't show up at all during the hour long lesson we'd scheduled, he offered a quick and sincere apology at the beginning of our next lesson and then we moved on.

African time means that when it starts pouring rain and I'm stranded under the overhang of a store until the storm passes, there will be no animosity for my tardiness waiting for me whenever I arrive at my destination.

There are really some nice things about African time, but it still frustrates me.  I'm a time oriented person.  I like to know what time it is.  I like to be on time.  When I'm late, it upsets me.  It means I naturally look for the most efficient way to accomplish a task at work.  It means balance between time at work and time at home is vital to me.  A few years ago, I wrote down 100 Things I Believe and one of my core beliefs is, "I believe that time is my most valuable resource."

African time is hard for me.  It's hard for me not to feel disrespected and unvalued when someone doesn't hold my time in esteem.  In Uganda, I have to constantly remind myself that African time isn't something I should take personally.

I was having this particular conversation with myself on my last day in Gulu as I sat in the tiny rectangle of shade behind a cabinet I'd had made for the primary teachers.  The primary teachers, especially Mr. Martin, had asked for a cabinet to lock their supplies in.  Aside from student desks, they have no furniture in their classrooms.  Imagine that, teacher friends, not having a single shelf, drawer or cupboard.  

So Mr. Martin had hired a couple of local carpenters to build a cabinet to his specifications.  My job was to make sure it was paid for and picked up by the school truck before I returned to the US.

There I was waiting in the shade of the cabinet for the principal to come in the school truck and pick it up.  I'd been sitting and waiting for over an hour.  Each time I called the principal, he assured me they were just on the edge of town and would be there any minute.

Ha.

As I sat and waited, Denish, one of the carpenters sat down to keep me company.  He told me about how the main carpenter, Moses, is his teacher and mentor.  Then Denish and Moses told me all about traditional marriage ceremonies and the dowry needed to marry an Acoli woman.  It was fascinating and I found myself forgetting all about waiting for the cabinet to be picked up.

Then Denish began telling me about his wife and two children, how he wants four more and about what a beautiful life he has.  Happiness shone in his eyes.  I just listened, seated in a wooden chair Moses made yesterday.  Then Denish told me about being abducted by the LRA and being a child soldier for six years.

Six years.  It's unfathomable to me.

I kept listening.  This is not something former child soldiers usually discuss openly.  I knew I was on sacred ground and I tried to take careful steps to listen without judgment, to ask sincere questions and not brashly pry open his past.  Denish unfolded a horrific story, but as with so many of the stories here, it ended with escape, with hope.  He talked of going to a rehabilitation center where he learned to stop killing.  I tell him that my son also went to that center.  He simply nodded.  I asked if his nightmares had stopped.  

He still has nightmares.  Every night.  But he wakes to his wife and children.  And then he comes to work and builds beautiful furniture, rebuilds himself a little more each day.

The daily gunmetal thunderheads rolled in and Denish shook my hand and told me he had to ride his bicycle home before the rain came.  I asked to take his photo.  He smiled and posed with me by the cabinet.  He asked if I wanted to show people the snap of the cabinet.  I promised to show it, but I told him that most of all I wanted the picture to remember him, to remember his story, and on hard days to remind myself to wake up with the intent of creating something beautiful each day.

The principal arrived at the carpentry shop two hours late.  He apologized and gave me a puzzled look when I remarked how glad I was that he was late.  He muscled the cabinet into the truck and as I walked back to my hotel room, the rain sprinkled and spattered the red dirt road.  I reached the covering of my hotel just before the deluge torn open the sky.  I hoped Denish had made it home already.  As I dried off and watched the storm from my balcony, I thought about what an unexpected treasure it was to spend two hours with Denish.  Maybe African time isn't so bad after all.

Vigilante Acts of Kindness: School Supplies

I've always loved school shopping.  Is there anything more beautiful than a brand new box of Crayola crayons?  Don't even get me started on the perfection that is the big box with the built in sharpener in the back.  And can we talk for a minute about Trapper Keepers, the hands-down best binder ever created?  My favorite one had wild horses on the front.  Yes, I was that nerdy girl who played pretend horses at recess.

As a teacher, one of the best things about a new school year is buying fresh, new supplies.  Rectangular, lined Sticky Notes and Sharpies, unblemished by little hands still sticky from the peanut butter and jelly sandwich from lunch, are my go to staples for starting a new year off right.  All is right with the world when I have a bouquet of Sharpies and a pad of sticky notes on hand.  

This year school shopping looked a little different for me.  I made all of my preparations for the coming year in May.  I ordered my supplies and put them all away, so tidy on my shelves, and then I locked my door and left for Uganda.  

The calendar flipped to August and you, dear teacher friends, started posting pictures of your school supply finds, carts of crayons and folders and glue sticks.  Be still my heart, I love those purple glue sticks.  Seeing your school supply deals filling up my Facebook feed made me feel, well, left out.

So I took my friend and fellow teacher, Mr. Martin, school shopping.  You remember Mr. Martin.  He's the same guy who when asked what he needed for his classroom this year had a list of only one thing: string.  And he used the string beautifully to hang posters and word walls and all sorts of learning materials that made all the walls of his classroom learning spaces.  

This year there are now three primary teachers and their classrooms are still desperately bereft of basic materials like books, shelves, clocks, pencils, paper, and almost everything else.  Fellow teachers, I know you can relate to the continual challenge of teaching on a shoestring budget and making due without the materials you need.

So I asked the primary teachers to get together and make a list of the supplies they needed.  This time the list was significantly longer and I was thrilled.  In the good company of Martin and the principal, J.B., we hit the bookshop in Gulu hard.  That's right, the principal went school shopping with us, too.  They checked things off their list and a pile of supplies grew in the store and suddenly I didn't feel so left out.

I didn't buy anything, save for one item.  There was a kid in need of a mattress.  He didn't have one and his family couldn't provide one.  As we shoved the mattress in the back of the car we'd rented to haul our plunder, I thought of the kid last year who needed a mattress and how out of his need and out of the generosity of my friends and family, Vigilante Kindness was born.

This year a pocket full of Vigilante Kindness shillings has stocked the the primary classrooms  and given another kid a bed to sleep on.  I don't have pictures of carts full Sharpies and Crayolas and sticky notes to post.  Instead here's a shot of Mr. Martin, and his school supplies.

Dearest teacher friends, I'm with you half a world away as you prepare for a new year.  I'm with you as you organize your rooms and fill them with things shiny and new.  I'm with you as you create warm, stable environments for kids who don't have beds to sleep in or homes that provide them a soft place to rest.  Thanks for making a space for them in your classrooms and in your hearts.  Now go and buy yourself some new Sharpies because you're about to make a big mark in this world.

Vigilante Acts of Art: Abandoned Art Project

A few months before I returned to Uganda, Barb, the proprietor of Happy Go Smile, my favorite boutique in Cayucos, started participating in an Abandoned Art Project.  The deal with abandoned art escapades is that you make a piece of art and abandon it somewhere for someone else to find and keep.  I offered to take one of Barb's pieces with me and abandon it in Gulu.

She gave me this heart piece to abandon.  Since today is my 18th wedding anniversary, I decided today was the perfect day to abandon this heart piece and send some love to The Hubs on the other side of the world.

And I had the perfect co-conspirators to help me do it-Seddrick and Ivan, my two student artists.

After church we set off to Pece Stadium, a soccer stadium built as a War Memorial to honor the role Acolis had played in WW2.

The back wall of the stadium has a mural by Calvin to commemorate the end of the more recent war against Joseph Kony and the L.R.A.

This stadium, meant to be a symbol of peace, seemed like a perfect place to leave a little piece of love from California.  Plus it's right across from my hotel, so my plan was to inconspicuously watch to see who took the painting.

Ivan and Seddrick casually placed the painting on the stadium wall and then we watched and waited.  Ivan and Seddrick eventually returned to their studio to work on their own paintings and I sat out on the patio casually waiting with my camera nearby.

Hundreds of people passed the painting without giving it a second glance.  Even the cows didn't seem to notice.

When Alvin, the son of one of the hotel employees showed up, I admit I lost focus.  I love this kid.  His giggle lights up my day.  Alvin and I had some rousing games of Peek-a-Boo.  

Then I taught him This Little Piggy on his toes, which he the proceeded to play on the toes of every adult not wearing closed toed shoes.  

I looked up from our game of This Little Piggy and the painting was gone.

So to the person who found the abandoned art, I wish you lots of love today.  To the Barb at Happy Go Smile and to Ivan and Seddrick, thanks for creating beautiful things.  And to my husband, who has loved me with reckless abandon for all of these years, thanks for loving me and sending me out into the world with a heart that is full.

Vigilante Kindness: From the Bottom of My Liver

Sweet Vigilantes, your Vigilante Work Study dollars have been hard at work helping students who want to earn school fees, money for textbooks, etc.  Using work study dollars I bought some of Ivan's paintings and Ivan was able to pay the balance of his school fees and those of his sister, Lillian, for the term that has just ended.  Now that you're buying up the rest of his paintings, almost as fast as he can paint them, he and Lillian are in good shape for next term.

Opiyo Chris, the first Work Study scholarship kid, is teaching math classes to primary kids during their upcoming holiday break.  He will earn enough Vigilante Kindness Work Study dollars to pay for everything he needs for his next term, while we wait interminably for his passport to be approved so he can finish his high school career in Medford, OR. where he received a full ride scholarship to a private high school.

And of course there's Denis.  I used Vigilante Kindness Work Study dollars to pay for textbooks and in return Denis is teaching the women of Te Okot to make paper bead jewelry, which will allow them to make and sell goods and earn money of their own.  I love these business minded women so much.

My son, William, is also one of the recipients of the Work Study Vigilante Kindness dollars, but not in the way you might think.  William works as a biology and computer lab assistant at a high school here.  He is in college and uses the money he earns to pay his tuition, but also to pay the school fees of his younger cousins.  William is such a hard working kid, but this year he didn't make quite enough to support his cousins as well, so your Vigilante dollars helped William pass on the gift of education to the next generation of his family.

There's one last recipient of your Vigilante Kindness Work Study dollars.  And he's not a student.  Patrick is a father of four and his two youngest children are in high school.  I met his two youngest kids, Emmanuel and Lydia, on my first trip to Uganda when they wrote beautiful pieces for our book.  Patrick is a part-time literature professor and has been struggling to pay their school fees on his shoestring of a salary.  Teacher friends, I know you can relate.  Because he's an educated man and a teacher, I knew Patrick would be the perfect person to teach me Acoli.  So each day I go to his house for an hour to an hour and a half and he patiently teaches me to speak, write and read Acoli.  In return I pay him so that he can pay for Lydia and Emmanuel to attend school.

There are a few other things you should know about Patrick.  He takes in his nieces and nephews who don't have anyone to care for them.  One of his nephews is my son, Martin, who Patrick rescued from the streets when Martin was a very young child.  Another interesting fact about Patrick is that his father was a chief, but when his father became a Christian, he renounced his chiefdom because being chief meant preserving practices he no longer agreed with, like witchcraft and polygamy.  So Patrick's family doesn't receive any of the benefits of being in the lineage of the chief because they have chosen to live as Christians, even though that means missing out on many privileges.

Needless to say, I've learned quite a lot from Patrick, but for our purposes I'll stick to some things I've learned specifically about the Acoli language.  The Acoli language doesn't have the letters h, q, s,  x or z.  They also have a letter that makes the "ng" sound that looks like an n with a tail.  My keyboard won't type it.

Learning and conjugating verbs is the toughest thing for me so far.  Pwonyo, one of my favorite verbs, means to teach.  Leko means to dream.  Ngwech means to ride a bicycle.  And perhaps the hardest one of all for me, both to say and learn to do, is ling mot, meaning to be quiet and still.

In addition to learning verbs and the alphabet, I can now name body parts.  The funniest one I've learned so far is "dog" meaning mouth.  My mouth often gets me in trouble so I like the idea of being able to call it bad dog.  Dog arach means "My mouth is bad."  It figures that would be one of the first sentences I'd learn.

Perhaps the greatest thing I've learned is that when the Acoli people speak of their feelings, they don't speak of the heart, they speak of the liver.  

Sweet Vigilantes of Kindness, it's because of you that Ivan, Lillian, Opiyo Chris, Denis, Lydia, Emmanuel, and William's young cousins get the privilege of being educated.  

It's with all sincerity and profound gratitude that I say to you, "Amari i wi cwinya."  I love you from the bottom of my liver.

Vigilante Kindness: A New Lens

I take a last sip of steaming hot tea before meeting up with Richard, one of my sweet boys, on this blessedly cool morning.  He arrives dressed in his school uniform, complete with necktie, and we walk the streets of Gulu, already flush with sound and color.

We're walking to the hospital.

Again.

"Let me see your socks," I say.  Richard is taller than I am now, but still thin as a rail.

"You remember that?  You can't forget anything," he grins, the gap between his two front teeth making him still look like a kid.

"Of course I remember." We're both quiet, remembering the day last year when he got dressed in the dark and accidentally put on mismatched socks, the day when we went to the hospital for his HIV test, which to our delight and surprise was negative.  "Now show me your socks."

"My socks are not there today," he lifts the cuff of his pant leg and shows his bare ankle above his shoe.

Today we're going to a different hospital to get glasses for Richard so that he can read again.  

"Excuse me, can you help me cross the road?  I can't see well,"  another teenage boy walking in front of us turns around and asks.

When he turns I see that his right eye is white with cataracts.  Richard introduces himself to this boy and tells him that we're going to the same place.

"I'm Alicia," I say, shaking his hand.

"I'm Kennet," he greets me in return.

Richard grabs Kennet's left hand and I grab his right hand.  We turn to the road.  It's wide and teeming with cars, boda bodas, bicycles and people on foot.  It's tough even for perfectly sighted people to navigate.

We cross halfway and stop, letting more cars and boda bodas pass.

"Wait," I tell Kennet as a last car zips past.  "Ok, now we can go."

We cross the street easily and Kennet drops my hand.  He keeps hold of Richard's hand and I slip in behind them, tucking in away from the traffic, listening to their conversation.  Richard guides Kennet beautifully, asking questions about where he goes to school and questioning him about the future of his eye. They hold hands every step.

We cross one more street to the small gated entrance to the part of the hospital that specializes in optic care.  Kennet branches off to the door of his department.  Richard and I sit on benches near the clinic where we wait to get glasses.

We wait.  And then wait some more.  Last year we waited for hours and hours on end at the hospital.  Waiting for HIV test results felt like two eternities, so waiting for glasses is nothing.

"I'm one of the lucky ones," Richard tells me.

"Why?"

"Ten of us came and seven needed surgery.  I'm one of the lucky ones because I only need glasses."

We're both quiet.  I think of Kennet.  Lucky indeed.

An hour and half later the nurse arrives.  She's a wide woman with a kind temperament.  Her name is Ida and I like her immediately.  She apologizes for being delayed and explains that her husband got a last minute job driving a group of people on safari and she had to help him prepare.

"It's ok.  That's a well paying job, not one he can pass up," I smile and she is visibly relieved.

"It's not easy to make money here," Ida explains.

"I know," I don't know how to reassure her beyond that and I don't want to cross the line into pity, so I change the subject.  "What do we need to do today to get this kid glasses?"  I motion at Richard, who has taken a seat on a rolling stool opposite me.

"The glasses need to be paid for and I need to make sure his vision hasn't changes and then measure the space between his eyes for a good fit,"

"That's all?"

"Yes." Ida rolls Richard over to the eye machine.  He rests his chin in the machine and tries unsuccessfully not to blink. 

We're done in five minutes and I hand Ida a thick wad of Vigilante shillings.  In return she tells me where to pick up the glasses the following day.

The following afternoon I deliver the glasses to Richard at school.  He's outside having P.E., a basketball lesson with special coaches from town.  I pull the large, sealed envelope containing the glasses out of my backpack and hand it to him.  He puts the glasses on immediately and I take a snap with my camera.

It's a clear day, not a cloud in the sky, the perfect day for perfect vision.

Watching him try out his new glasses, I can't help but think of the pastor's message a couple of Sundays ago at church.  He said that we all have a choice, to look at life through the lens of fear or through the lens of faith.

If you've spent more than a minute with me, you know fear is not on my radar.  Frankly, I could use a healthy dose of fear now and then.  

But faith is also not on my radar.  

Now hold on before you go thinking I've denounced Christ or something dramatic like that.  I'm not talking about my faith as in the doctrine of what I believe.  That's a well dug deep into the core of who I am.

I'm talking about having faith.  I want to tread carefully here and not start speaking Christian-ease because I hatehatehate it when people can't talk about having faith without throwing in pious buzzwords.  

What I'm saying is this: I struggle with believing in things to come that I can't yet see.  I've said before that I'm the kind of girl who has to stick my fingers in the nail holes to believe.  I'm not proud of that, but I'm on-my-face grateful that God knows that about me and extends His nail holed hands to me anyway.

If you've been following along in my Vigilante Kindness adventures, then you know a well to provide clean drinking water for the small village of Te Okot is in the works.  What you don't know is that the well team has been delayed and are still finishing a well in another part of the country and that the funds donated to begin the well have not yet reached me.  

My mom, who was here with me and who seems to have an infinite amount of assured faith, kept telling me not to worry, that it will be accomplished in God's perfect time, that I should have faith.

All of those things are true.

And yet, I can't rest easy until I see that water, until the people of Te Okot are drinking water not infested with diseases and elephant fecal matter.

I want to touch the water, to pump it into a bucket and see it run clear.

I'm losing hope of being able to see the water for myself.  I'm here for a scant twelve more days and not an inch of the well has been dug.

Not an inch.  Not yet.

I'm clinging fiercely to that 'not yet'.  It's all the faith I can muster and thank God, thank God, thank God a smidge is enough.

I'm trying so badly to see this well project through the lens of faith.  I'm choosing to believe it's going to happen.  And I mean the kind of choosing where Having Faith and Not Having Faith are on equal footing and I'm grabbing hold of Having Faith and running away from Not Having Faith, which is perpetually gaining ground on me.

Dear ones, I imagine you know that kind of desperation, to cling to faith with trembling fingers because holding on and running like hell away from doubt is sometimes all you can do.  

Me, too. 

God is in those times with you.  And with me.  Is anyone else overcome with relief?

At night I wake thinking of Richard and his new glasses and I pray for God to help me see life with more faith.  

I think of Kennet, who will have his cataracts removed soon, and I pray for two things: for God to remove my lack of faith and also that I'd be boldly humble like Kennet in admitting when I need God to hold my hand along the way.  

I think of the people of Te Okot who are strong and sure in their faith that clean water is coming.  I think of all of you: family, friends and complete strangers who doled out your faith in lumps of cold, hard cash believing right along with the people of Te Okot that safe, clean water is on the way.  I say a prayer of thanks that when my faith is present in the most meager amounts, your faith in God, your faith in this work I get to do remains steady.  In my dreams I cling with trembling fingers to that, to all of you, and when the sun shines through my curtain in the morning, I wake grateful for another opportunity to see things with a little more faith than I did the day before.

Vigilante Kindness: A New Dress

We walk through the dark streets of Gulu, letting the sounds of town fill in the silent spaces of our conversation.  There aren't many spaces to be filled and the lack of electricity means there are also fewer sounds of the town, only the hum of a handful of generators and throbbing dance music coming from a club a few streets away.

Our stomachs are full of pork and cassava from my mom's going away dinner at a local pork joint called Alulululu.  My mom called it Alulululululululululululululu and everyone at the table giggled because, as she said several times, all of her syllables are in the wrong places.   There were six of us at dinner and in order to be heard over the din of the rain on the tin roof, we shouted most of the night.  

Everyone else peeled off after dinner, riding bikes or bodas back home.  This, this distilled quiet time, walking back to the hotel with Ivan is precious.

We recount the dinner conversations and pretend to speed skate home through the streets of town.  In our minds we're fantastic speedskaters.  Power is scarce, so light is also scarce and nobody can see well enough to laugh at us.   Ivan rarely gets to be a kid, so fake speedskating through town, laughing until our cheeks hurt and doing other goofy things is a necessary component in each piece of our time together.

He paints, well and constantly, to ensure that he and his sister get to go to school.  He pays the rent for his studio and collects the rent from other artists sharing his space.  Most nights he sleeps in the studio because he can't afford the boda boda fare from his house to the studio.  He keeps a rolled up mattress under the table and pulls it out each night to sleep amongst his paintings.

As we walk, he tells me the story of painting at the TAKS (Through Art Keep Smiling) Center.  His face is all lit up as he fills in the details of getting to paint in public and getting to talk about what painting means to him.  He painted a LOVE Africa piece and at the end of his time, he was offered a position helping teach Art Therapy.

He's over the moon and I'm somewhere beyond that because he deserves to be a successful, working artist.  He deserves to make a living.  He deserves to have a bed, not a rolled up mattress under a table.  He deserves an education.  He deserves not to worry about his sister.

"I bought my sister a new dress with some of the money I got from the paintings you sold," he smiles, his big toothy grin brilliantly visible in the inky night.

"From the fashion store you were telling me about?"

"Yes.  Do you know why I bought her a dress?"

"Um, because you love her?"  It's obvious in everything Ivan does just how much he loves his sister.

"Because I love her and I want her to know she's special.  Just because we don't have parents, I still want her to feel cared for.  I don't want her to think she has to go looking for that from guys and then get into trouble."

Just when I think I can't love this kid another drop more, he goes and buys a new dress for his sister and my heart shifts into overflow mode.  

"You're a great big brother, you know that?"

"Thanks," he swallows hard.  Compliments are difficult for him to accept and I make a note to speak them more often.

Ivan's learning to skateboard and as our conversation ebbs and flows we fake skateboard down the last street.  We practice all of our best fake tricks and in our minds we're fantastic.

Saint Vickie

"Denis, how come you never talk about your wife and kids?"  It comes out harsh and more accusatory than I intend, but I don't know how to say it any other way.  Friendship is so darn hard to navigate sometimes, especially when I'm all kinds of blunt and don't know how to be otherwise.  Add to the mix friendship between two such different cultures and things really get messy.

"What do you mean?" he shouts over the wind whipping in my ears.

"I mean, we're friends, right?" I soften because this is the real root of my question and being vulnerable enough to ask it dissolves any toughness I purport to have.  

Are we friends or aren't we?

The lush green of Uganda passes in blurred shapes as we fly down the road.  This is how most of our conversations take place, me side saddle on the back of the boda boda as he threads through traffic and pedestrians and cows and pot holes a cacophony of other road hazards.

This is what we're doing now, threading through pot holes and trying to remain on the path of our unlikely friendship.  It's not the first difficult conversation we've had and odds are it won't be the last.

"Yes, we're friends." Denis is perplexed by my question.

"But I didn't know you have a wife and children until this week.  We've been friends for a long time now.  It feels weird that I'm just now knowing your family.  You know my family-my three boys and Terry.  You've even talked to Terry on the phone."

Denis doesn't respond.

"If you don't want to tell me about your family, that's really okay-I won't make you, but I want you to know that you can tell me things, trust me with things.  I'm safe.  And I'd like to be friends with your wife."

"Like I'm friends with Mr. Terry?"

"Yes, like you and Terry are friends and you and I are friends.  I'd like to be Vickie's friend, that's all."  I leave it there, like an offering, meager as it might be and then I back off.

"My mind has been divided.  Last year I was focused on going to school and this year I'm focused on shifting to Te Okot," Denis explains.

"Your mind was so divided that you forgot about your family?"  So much for backing off.  I'm not letting him get away with that one. No way.  If Terry's mind was so divided that he forgot he's married to me, well, let's just say that wouldn't end well.

I'm quiet, pressing my lips together to keep from spouting off my indignance on Vickie's behalf. Denis catches my eye in the mirror on the handlebar and I wait, unblinking.

I once heard that when you ask a question, you should wait seven slow seconds to give the other person time to think, time to compose their response.

Seven seconds feels like an awkward eternity.  Go ahead and count them out.  I'll wait.

You couldn't make it past two, could you?

On the back of the boda boda I waited, counting the seconds.  I waited, maybe for a response.  Maybe for an explanation.  Maybe for nothing.  Because sometimes nothing is the only response. But I waited nonetheless, giving breathing space and thinking space and the space of time where there wasn't the luxury of physical space.

Denis doesn't offer up an explanation of why he safeguarded his family from me.  Instead he extends an olive branch.  "Would you like me to tell you the story of how I met Vickie?"  I hear a small smile creep into his voice.

"Very much."

Denis unfolds the story of how he met Vickie when he was still staying in an Internally Displaced Persons Camp.  He tells about his sweet, kind father, who was legitimately bitter and angry, ravaged by war and loss.  I nod because if my child had been abducted I'd be beyond furious and seven shades beyond bitter.  Denis took his mother and moved out of the camp with Vickie, who was kind and soft when he needed it most.  Denis continues and tells me about his reconciliation with his father.

"I can't imagine Musee being that way." I say over the wind.

"War breaks a lot of things."

It's the truest sentence I've heard in a long time and I let the words sit between us before asking my next question.

"What does Vickie like to do?"

"She stays at home."

"I know, but what does she like to do?  Does she like to sing or build things or sew or cook or dance?  What does she like to do?"

"She likes business.  She makes paper beads.  I learned how to make paper beads in the IDP camp and I taught Vickie and my sister, Conci.  Vickie wants to make jewelry and earn her own money."

"Can I bring her a gift of bead making supplies when we visit Te Okot?"

"Yes, of course."

"Good."  I feel the embarrassment of not knowing about Vickie start to fade. 

"From seeing her, how old do you think she is?"  Denis grins in the mirror.

I tilt my head to the side and conjure up her face.  She served me beans and posho the last time  I was in Te Okot and had the grace not to laugh at my feeble attempt at thanking her in Acholi.  She had a shy smile and smooth skin.  "I think she's twenty-three."

"She told you!"  Denis chides.

"No, she didn't tell me.  She just looks twenty-three."  I imagine being twenty three, raising four small children in the bush, where daily living is so very hard.  Vickie is remarkably unhaggard.  "What are your children like?"

Denis tells me about Mercy, a first grader who loves to write.

"You're just saying that because you know I love to write."

"No, you will see in Te Okot.  Writing is her best subject."

"And what about Lucky Maurice?  What's he like?"

Denis shakes his head and tells me about his second child, Lucky (who incidentally is my favorite kid in the whole family because he's always laughing and making mischief).  Denis tells me that Lucky used to pick on all the other kids in Bungatira and that trouble was Lucky's shadow, but now he's mostly grown out of that.

"And the twins?"

"Opiyo is sweet and Ochin is stubborn, so stubborn."

"I know.  The last time I was in Te Okot he was using the panga outside and Vickie asked him to bring it inside and from inside the house all we heard was a groan and his footsteps stomping away."

"That's Ochin.  Stubborn, stubborn boy."

"I wonder where he gets it," I elbow Denis in the back.  "You know she's a saint for putting up with you,right?"

"Who?"

"Vickie.  Sweet Vickie.  Saint Vickie."  I fold my hands piously.

He laughs and a few minutes later we reach our destination.  I pull out my notebook and scrawl a reminder.

"What are you writing?"

"Bead materials for Saint Vickie.  I love that she wants to be a businesswoman.  Who knows, maybe I'll be her first customer."

Vigilante Kindness: Te Okot, Part 3

I swore to myself I'd never ride a boda boda out to Te Okot or anywhere else that far away again.  

And yet yesterday morning I found myself on the back of Bitek's sport bike.  The nobby tires made quick work of the slick mud that is half of the road to Te Okot.  All hope I had of arriving to the village in any sort of tidy condition was quickly taken care of by the skunk stripe of mud up my back and the mud splattering my face.  The road was so rough that every tooth nearly rattled out of my head.  My shoes were slick with mud and my feet were full of pins and needles from sitting in the same position for such a long time.  My feet kept slipping from the foot pegs, so that I burned a nice commemorative quarter-sized exhaust pipe tattoo above my right ankle. And we'll just not even go into the condition of my hind quarters, which are still not speaking to me for the atrocities I committed against them by taking a boda out to Te Okot and back, not once, but twice in a single week.

Mud stripes, exhaust pipe burns, rattled teeth and a tush that will probably be on permanent strike-all of those minor inconveniences pale, pale, pale in comparison to hardship of living without drinkable water.  And for me, those minor pains couldn't hold a candle to the hope I held that when Bitek surveyed the land, he'd find a viable place to drill for water.

Water.  Beautiful, clean, healthy water.

We reached Bungatira and I laughed when Denis greeted me by shouting, "Acureque!"  (I have no idea how to spell that word.) In Acholi, it means something like, "You've kept me waiting!"  It's our joke because each time Denis would pick me up, I'd put my hands on my hips, furrow my brow and shout, "Acureque!"  Then as we pulled away, we'd break into peals of laughter at the shocked faces of the surrounding Acholis who were stunned to hear a Muzungu shouting in Acholi.

So when Denis shouted it at me, I broke into a wide grin and hopped off Bitek's bike, almost falling on my face because my feet, legs and rear had all conspired revenge upon me.  I regained my balance and hugged Denis hard, trying not to wince at how thin he's grown, trying not to think of how little food he and his family have had access to lately.

After introductions, Denis led us inside his hut, which he'd worked hard to expand this week just so we could come inside and have a place to sit.  We sat inside drinking lukewarm bottled soda that Denis had purchased for just this occasion.  Men and women and children entered the hut and greeted us, some staying and sitting with us, others shaking hands and returning to the hard work of life.

After a sufficient amount of rest in the hut, we tromped through the compound and through the bush to the water source.  Everyone followed us, except some of the women who were tending to the littlest children and the people who were too old to make the trek.  Men, women, children all trailed the Musee, Bitek and I.  We were quite the parade of people.

Bitek and I snapped photos, he for documentation of the project and me for the joy of it, for the sheer delight I took in this community expedition in search of the best place to mine water.  Bitek stopped several times examining the rocks and dirt, fingering the soil for moisture content, peering into the roasting pit at the the stratospheric layers of the ground.

We spent quite a bit of time at the current water source and snapped a handful of photos of Agnes filling her jerrican full of the dank water.  

I shuddered thinking of sweet Aber drinking that water and felt a pang of sadness stab at my heart because just minutes earlier as we'd walked down the path, Agnes had leaned into me and whispered, "If you can't take Olarra, take Aber."  The desperation in her voice to give her children a chance at a healthier, educated life gripped me and I blinked back tears and told her I can't take her children.

After Bitek surveyed the water hole we marched back up the hill. Bitek took several small side excursions off of the trail to examine all of the possibilities and then to cross some of them off because they were in the direct path of the elephants, who had trampled the tall grasses so flatly that it looked like large trucks had motored through.

We paused under a large tree and Bitek declared that this would be the first drilling site.  If the well construction team reached undrillable rock, they'd move further down the hill and drill at a second site.  

We finished tromping up the hill to where the rest of the community had gathered on mats in the shade of a large tree.  There were four chairs set in the front: one for Musee, one for me, one for Bitek and one for Denis.  As I went to sit in the chair beside Musee, Bitek pointed to the mats, "Women sit on the ground."  He was half joking and half informing me of the culture.  I replied that I'd sit wherever the Musee asked me to.  Musee was quick to respond to Bitek, "Alicia sits in the chair beside me."

Denis spoke briefly, followed by the Musee.  Then it was my turn to speak.  I told the group how I'd done what I'd promised, I'd written their story and indeed people had responded.  I told them about how my little brother was spearheading money collection at home and they broke into applause and asked me to pass along their joyful thanks.  I told them how I'd placed a call to Bitek, the only person I know who knows how to build wells.   

Then I turned it over to Bitek who told them all the details of their coming well.  He told them about the well site and why he'd chosen it and about how the construction team trains the community members to repair and upkeep the well.  He told them about their responsibility to feed and house the construction team while the well was being built.  They had many questions and he answered each one with care.

When would construction begin?

In one week after the construction team finishes building a well in the town of Sorotti.

How long would it take?

Two weeks.

How many community members would they train to keep the well in working order?

As many as want to be trained.

Would they leave them the appropriate tools to maintain the well?

Repair of well only requires the use of one wrench.  I nodded emphatically when Bitek asked if I was incliding the purchase of the wrench with the well. 

Would there be a possibility for the men they train to go out and build wells for them?

Yes, they take workers from each past well construction site to build wells at the new sites.

If there's any money left over from the building of the well, could it go into their community microloan treasury?

My heart did a happy flip flop at that and I answered, "Yes, definitely yes."

When the questions had all been answered, we moved on to discussing the solar lights. One of the community members thanked me for the lights because he no longer has to buy and burn paraffin in his hut.  Denis told me that for the past two nights the wild elephants had come through the compound and when the people put their lights out, the elephants moved away.  Another member timidly asked if there were any lights still left because some of them had been sewing seeds for crops during the last meeting and didn't receive a light.  Again I answered, definitely yes.

As the meeting drew to a close, one of the members spoke to Bitek in Acholi.  Bitek laughed and turned to me, "You're building them a medical clinic next?"

"No, I don't know anything about building a medical clinics, Bitek."

Patrick, one of teenagers of Te Okot, spoke up, "Yes, Alicia, but you don't know anything about building wells either."  He smiled at me with a glint of mischief in his eyes.

"Good point, Patrick."

Then it was time to say goodbye and get back on the dreaded boda boda.  My lower half protested as soon as I sat down.  After an hour on the morotcycle, Bitek and I stopped for a late lunch in the town of Annaka.  He ate goat.  I had beans and potatoes.  

We talked about the other wells Bitek has built and then the conversation turned back to Te Okot.  "It's going to be hard for them to get enough food to feed us.  Maybe you could buy the food and their contribution could be preparing it for us?"  Bitek suggested between bites of goat.

"Of course.  Just tell me what and how much to buy and where to buy it."

After lunch, I told Bitek that I simply could not, could not, could not get back on the boda.  I was in too much pain so I would either walk the 52 kilometers back to Gulu, find a car to take me or, if necessary, take up residence in Annaka.

To my delight, Bitek found a taxi taking four other well-dressed women to Gulu.  It was leaving right then and for 10,000 shillings (roughly $4) I bought a seat in the taxi, a banged up Honda Accord.  Dear ones, let me tell you that may be the best four bucks I've ever spent.  

Bitek insisted on following the taxi back to Gulu to make sure I made it there safely.  As I drifted in and out of sleep to the sound of the happy chatter of the women in the car with me, my rear end gave thanks for small things like taxis to Gulu and my heart gave thanks for larger things like glorious, clean water.