Vigilante Kindness: Piglets for the Piggery

I sat on the back of a boda wrestling a sackful of squealing, wiggling pigs as Denis carefully threaded through the trafficked streets of Pece back to his village. My skirt was slicked with mud and manure and as I grinned from ear to ear and hugged the squirming sack, I thought about the sequence of events that had led me to this exact moment in my life.

This story of Vigilante Kindness begins with my dear friend, Julie, and her husband, Clark. Upon reading the story of Denis, my boda driver, and his quest to have a piggery to earn money to return to school, Julie sent me a message asking how much it would be to buy Denis four more pigs. The amount was sizable in American dollars and an absolute impossibility for Denis to earn in Ugandan shillings. What I love about Julie is that when I told her the amount, she responded with a simple, "Done."

On the day we were to pick up the pigs, Denis first took me to his village Bungatira, meaning 'of the forest'. It was a beautiful ride with several stops along the way because Denis had to pick up cakes for me to eat, milk for me to drink and other special things that were quite costly. I watched him shell out his hard earned boda money in my honor and was humbled to be considered worthy of such sacrifice.

Denis in Bungatira

Once off the main road, the trail to the village became more like a single track mountain bike trail and as we bumped along, I smiled at the scenery of the land I've come to love-the red dirt that stains my hands and face and washes down the drain in mahogany from my hair, the piercing blue sky like the feathers of millions of bluebirds and the bright green grasses growing up along either side of the trail, flicking against my billowing skirt.

The 'Hellisha Project'

When we arrived at Denis' compound, I was tickled to see signs posted all over welcoming me to their home. I met his family and toured their farm, which included sugar cane, beans, millet, groundnuts, maize and sweet potatoes. It's humid in Uganda and I worked up quite a sweat. We reached a creek that runs along the back of their village.

"Do you want to bathe?" Denis felt badly that I was sweating so much.

"I'll bathe back at the hotel. Really, I'm fine."

"You fear the water?"

"No, I just don't bathe in public. I only bathe in private."

"We bathe here. You can bathe here, too. It's okay."

"Coo apwowo, Denis." (Thank you, but I cannot accept, Denis.)

"Then let us go back to the house and rest."

Back in Denis' thatch roof house, Denis, his older brother Michael and I were served posho, beans, bread made from millet and chicken that was slaughtered and cooked that very afternoon. I drank the milk Denis had purchased along with glass bottles of Mountain Dew that were purchased just for the day.

After the meal Denis' immediate family all joined us inside the house. Although I'd already met them, I was reintroduced to the family formally and I knew then that I was in sacred territory, in the presence of a family meeting. Around the room they went showering accolades about this amazing gift Denis was to receive. I proudly showed photos of Julie and Clark and their family.

Denis' mother, who had earlier in the day welcomed me with traditional songs and dances, pressed her hands in mine and declared me her daughter. She made me miss my own mother and sent pangs of sorrow through me for Julie, who misses her mother every day.

Sweet Mama

They continued to speak of this great thing I was doing and though I insisted it wasn't me-that it was all because of Julie and Clark-they kept saying that it was only possible because of me. Michael, Denis' older brother, translated their words of kindness to me and told me it was no use deflecting them because I was the vehicle for Julie and Clark's great generosity. Over and over again, they clapped their hands in appreciation and I sat quietly and took it all in.

I fell in love with this sweet family who had gathered together to celebrate this second chance for their son. I especially fell in love with the eighty-something-year-old parents who still tend to the crops.

When Michael bragged about how bright Denis was when he was in school, I thought of Clark who, on the other side of the world, was at that very moment preparing for his own brother Michael's funeral. The thought of these two sets of brothers honoring each other in such different, yet loving ways brought me to tears and when I told Denis' family about Clark's loss they sat in sorrow with me for Clark.

The family sent me off with their sincerest sympathies mixed with their profound thanks and then Denis and I hopped on his boda to go purchase the pigs. The ride to the farm was a long one that wound away from the villages, back through Gulu and into Pece, the home of the famous Pece soccer stadium. At the farm Denis climbed into the pig stall and selected his four new pigs, three females and one male. He placed them in a sack and then tied the top of the sack making sure there were breathing holes. The woman selling the pigs stepped inside the house to get her receipt book and I slipped the money into Denis' hand so that he could be the official purchaser of the pigs.

A sack of piglets

Denis sat on the boda and I straddled the back of it, leaving a space in between for the sack of piglets. The woman hefted the sack into my lap and the squealing pigs wiggled and grunted as they tried to get comfortable for the ride. The sack was covered in mud and manure which as we rode back through Pece ground itself into my skirt and covered my hands as I held onto the precious cargo.

"Are you okay? Do you want me to call someone else to help me take the pigs home?" Denis asked me for the millionth time.

"I'm fine. When else am I going to have a chance to carry a sackful of piglets on the back of a motorcycle? Never."

"Sure?" Denis grinned at me in the rearview mirror.

"Sure. Let's get your new pigs home." We bounced along the road and I spoke sweetly to the squealing pigs trying in vain to calm them down. Several times I felt pig hooves and snouts poking out of the air holes and smiled at the Ugandans laughing at what must have been a comical sight, a muzungu woman wrestling a bag of pigs!

Back at Denis' village the family greeted us again and helped unload the new pigs into Denis' piggery, which he'd renamed the 'Hellisha Project'. (On a side note, Hellisha is the most fantastic misspelling of my name ever. Hellisha will now be the name of my alter ego.)

The women in Denis' family tsked over my dirty skirt and Denis looked at it in alarm.

"You must take it off and let me wash it." Denis insisted.

"It's fine, Denis. I'll wash it when I get back to the hotel."

"No, you must let me wash it." Denis insisted.

"Coo apwowo." I replied.

"You must."

"Denis, it would not be appropriate in my culture for me to sit in my underpants while you washed my skirt. Thank you, but I truly cannot take my skirt off."

"You cannot move around town like that."

"I will wash these clothes and put on another pair before I move around town."

"You're sure I cannot wash your skirt?"

"Absolutely."

"Then I'll take you back." We said our goodbyes to the family and again rode back into town.

That night as I sat in my hotel room bathroom scrubbing my skirt clean, I couldn't help but smile at all the cultural differences I'd encountered that day. I hung my skirt to dry and showered off the sweat and dirt from the day. Rivulets of red mud dripped down my legs and swirled down the drain and I thought of how at the end of the day we are so much more the same than we are different.

We are friends who laugh together.

We are loud families who gather for a meal.

We are brothers who love each other through life and beyond.

We are mothers and fathers who work hard to provide for our children.

We persevere in the pursuit of education.

And on our best days we see the need of a stranger and place it above our own needs.

On our best days we are Julie and Clark.

Vigilante Kindness: More than a Mattress

This trip hasn't been at all what I've expected, and not in that happy wow amazing way.  Frankly, it's been full of deceit, painful conversations, disappointments and a host of other things that I'm choosing not to go into.

My time with the students has been great, but there are some things on this trip that have both threatened to and successfully robbed me of the joy of being here.  It is the hardest trip I've ever taken and I'm fighting constant homesickness.

With the help of some of some of my friends back home, I've started looking for opportunities for what I'm calling Vigilante Kindness, acts of kindness not born out of an organization or a specific mission, just kindness for the sake of being kind.

I think these Vigilante acts of Kindness are going to be my saving grace and if I'm laying all my cards down, I could use little grace right now and I'm betting you could, too.

I bought a mattress today which might not seem like a big deal, but as is always the case here, there's so much more to the story and a mattress isn't just a mattress.

At the market for a mattress

There are two brothers who attend the school I'm working at.  They were both accepted to the school this year and when a student is accepted into the school, their family must provide them with a mattress.

The father, a peasant farmer, was only able to purchase one mattress and promised to purchase a second when he was able to earn the money.  The two teenage boys have been sharing a bed since they were admitted.  Education is a gift only some here receive, so sharing a bed is a small price to pay.

Two weeks ago their father was involved in a land dispute.  Land equals food.  Land equals income.  Land equals life.  The dispute became quite heated and the father was murdered.

The boys are left without a father.  The family is left without an income earner.

By purchasing a mattress for this boy, his family is now free to use what little money they earn to focus on things like feeding the family.  The boys will be able to sleep better, focus better in classes and hopefully succeed in school so that the tragic loss of their father doesn't spiral into the loss of their future.

A mattress is so much more than a mattress.

When I gave the kid the mattress and mosquito net, he was so overcome with gratitude.  He kept thanking me over and over and I received his hearty thanks on behalf of my friends Becca and Gerald who prior to my departure shoved bills in my hand with simple instructions to find a kid in need and help them out.

I did and tonight he will be sleeping soundly in his own bed.

The Boda Diaries: A Pig Named Alicia

"I've started a new project," my boda driver, Denis, tells me as we're whipping down Juba Road on the way to the school.  Denis is one of my favorite boda drivers from last year and he's forgone our usual language lesson, wherein he teaches me Acholi words and shakes his head at my terrible pronunciation.

"What's your new project?" I yell over the wind in our faces.

He answers, but between our differing accents and the wind, I'm sure I heard him incorrectly.

"Say it again, Denis, I can't hear you."

He repeats the word.

"Did you say 'piggery'?" I call to him.

"Yes, piggery," he nods.

"I'm not familiar with what piggery means."

"You know the animal pig?  P-I-G."

"Yes, I know what pigs are, but what is piggery?"

"Keeping pigs."

"For eating?"

"For selling."

"So people buy them and then eat them?"

"Yes."

It's interesting to me, this new vocation Denis is beginning, but I wonder why he's telling me this when he'd usually be reviewing Acholi phrases with me and making me repeat them over and over until my pronunciation is almost passable.  Or he'd be giving me a geography lesson, making me tell him the names of the areas we pass through and making me name the countries surrounding Uganda.

"I used the money you paid me last year and bought two pigs.  Then those pigs had eight pigs."

"That's a good litter.  Ten pigs is a lot of pigs."

"It's not enough.  I need at least 50."

"What would you do with 50 pigs?  Do you have a pen for them?"

"A what?"

"A pen.  Like chickens have a hutch."

Denis is quiet.  I'm not explaining myself well.

"Do you have a house for your pigs?"

"Yes, in the village by my thatch roof house.  You can't let pigs run wild.  People will get mad because the pigs will destroy everything and eat the crops."

"I imagine so."

"If I sell 30 pigs, I can buy my own boda instead of renting this one.  Then I can earn enough money to return to school."

Ah, there it is.  Pigs equal education.

"That would be really amazing, Denis."

"Yes, so if you have time, I will take you to see my pigs.  I'll give you one. You can pick it out."

I don't know what to say, but I'm pretty sure declining a pig without a very good reason would be a horrible offense.  "That's lovely of you, Denis, but I don't think they allow pigs on the plane back home."

"You will eat it before you go."

I laugh.  "I'm a terrible cook, Denis, just ask my husband.  I wouldn't even know how to begin to prepare a pig."

"You slaughter it and I will cook it for you."

I laugh again.  "I have NO idea how to slaughter a pig."

"I will have it slaughtered and then cook it for you.  You come and pick it out."

"Um, okay.  Apwowo."  I thank him, tucking my head to my chest as a truck passes and covers us in a cloud of red dust from the road.  Meat is a rarity at the school and I wonder how many kids could be fed off of one pig.

"Apwowo matek, (Thank you very much).  We'll go pick out your pig tomorrow afternoon."

"Okay."  I don't tell Denis that in addition to not knowing how to slaughter or cook a pig, I haven't a clue on how to pick a pig.

The next morning, Denis drives me to the school again, my skirt flapping in the breeze and my rear end bouncing on the seat as I ride side saddle on the back.

"How are your pigs?"  I ask as we pass a group of schoolchildren walking down the road in brightly colored uniforms.

"Very well."

"Do your pigs have names?"

"Only the big female, Mama.  I will name the female piglet after you."

I'm glad I'm sitting behind Denis where he can't see my face because I can't help but smile and stifle a giggle at this most unusual compliment.

"My American name or my African name?"

"You have an African name?"  Denis is surprised.  "What is it?"

"Lanyero."

"That's a nice name.  Do you know what it means?"

"I'm told it means 'joyful comforter or 'happy' or 'laughter'.  Is that right?"

"Yes, it also means a person who is always smiling and laughing.  What does your American name mean?"

"Truthful one."

"Hmmm, joyful or truthful," Denis repeats the names several times, weighing them back and forth.  "I will have to think of which one is more suitable for a pig, but I think Alicia.  We will go see her this afternoon and know for sure."

That afternoon at lunch, I tell the kids at school about being offered a pig.  They confirm that a pig is a gift I cannot decline.  They tell me that only the very wealthy buy pigs and that pigs are often given as a dowry.

I'm late leaving the school that day and Denis tells me it's too late to see the pigs.  I sigh in relief, grateful to give Alicia the pig an extra stay of execution and wondering if I've done the same for myself.

Love Has Come

I ugly cried in church last Sunday.

I'm not a big crier.  Crying in front of someone or worse yet, lots of someones, is my #1 Top Most Embarrassing Thing Ever.

And yet there I was absolutely weeping.  Mascara dripping, nose running, shoulder shaking, flat-out sobbing.  I blame Jeremy Riddle and his song God of the Redeemed.  Go ahead, take a listen.

I didn't even make it through the first verse.  "Love has come.  We're orphans no longer."  At that point it was all over.  I didn't have time to swallow the lump rising in my throat before the tears started streaming.

By the time it got to, "Hallelujah, to You, the God of the redeemed," I was a complete wreck.  All I could do was stand there, lift my face and cry.  The tears dripped down my cheeks and into my ears, so many tears that my ears filled up and overflowed down my neck.

I cried in joy because I'll see my boys and all my other Ugandan kids in a few short days.

I cried for my boys who were orphans.

I cried because I'm overcome that they've chosen me as their mother.

I cried for my son who used to think he was nothing.

I cried out of gratitude for a school that in tangible ways shows my boys they're worthy of redemption.

I cried the tears of a thousand hallelujahs.

And when I ran out of tears, I stood in silence doing nothing, not singing a word, barely uttering even a breath.  And in my quiet, in my stark nothingness, I stood and didn't care how many people saw me cry.  In that moment everything else ceased to matter.

I'd been looking for a gift to give my boys, something to remind them that they're not orphans anymore, that we have claimed each other as mother and sons.  I looked and looked, but nothing was right.  And then I saw them.

Simple rings, one for me and three for them, reminders that love has come and that the best love often comes in unexpected ways.  Meeting the love of my life when I was fifteen and filthy dirty from helping build a church in Mexico.  Finding my sons 9,049 miles away.  The baby in a manger who redeemed us all.

Love has come and it leaves me in such awe that it's all I can do to whisper hallelujah.

Great Uncle Bill's Bible

I borrowed a travel Bible from my mom.  I'd given mine away and was in need of a small one for my trip to Uganda.  She gave me this tiny one which is smaller than a deck of cards.

It was one of several small Bibles she offered up and I picked it from the stack because it would easily slip into my pocket.  I added it to my pile of things to pack and yesterday before I slipped it into my carry on, I opened the cover and saw an inscription.

The Bible originally belonged to my Great Uncle, Courtland William Lieberg, Bill for short.  He was probably seven or eight when he received this Bible in September of 1928.

I feel like I'm carrying my family with me as I travel to Uganda.  I've got photos of The Hubs.  Tucked away in my bags are special letters and gifts from my mother and sister to the kids they sponsor at the school.  My mom even wrote a letter to one of my Ugandan sons.  Best of all I'm carrying a Bible with pages fingerprinted by generations of my family.

I smile each time I add another item to my backpack and the Bible peeks out at me from its assigned pocket.  I just love that this tiny Bible came through all that space and time to travel with me to Uganda.

Thankful Thursday #96

image courtesy of hopefullysomethingcute.com

This week I'm thankful for...

• celebrating another birthday with The Hubs
• minor league baseball games
• cheesecake
• messages from my Ugandan sons
• my Mom and all of her help getting my classroom ready

Thankful Thursday #95

image courtesy of life.paperblog.com

This week I'm thankful for...

• paying Dominoes with The Hubs
• air conditioning
• talking to my sons
• snuggling in bed with The Hubs
• health care
• icy cold beveragees
• reading in bed with The Hubs
• the This American Life podcasts on Harper High-both fascinating if not heartbreaking to listen to while I was working in my classroom
• my uncle Jon who summited Mt. Kilimanjaro to celebrate his 60th birthday
• my mom who has been helping me get my classroom ready
• American Ninja Warrior.  Don't judge me.
• a fresh haircut

Timing, Tetanus Shots and Hakuna Matata???

When I was in Uganda last summer, Colin and I went on safari. We were joined by, Mikayla, another girl working in Uganda. Mikayla celebrated her 21st birthday while she was in Uganda. She's a champion fencer and has the energy of a hundred people. When on safari, Mikayla was absolutely delighted to see so many animals from The Lion King. She sat in the car joyfully snapping pictures and singing 'Hakuna Matata', which, of course, means, "Don't worry."

Today I want to tell you a story about listening to God's voice, the humor of God's timing and, yes, 'Hakuna Matata'.

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been yearning to return to Uganda since the day I got home last July. This year, several trips to Africa were planned and then fell through or were cancelled for reasons beyond my control. In the midst of being brokenhearted by all those undone plans, I've been trying to hear God in the quiet spaces and to heed what He's telling me to do.

A few months ago I felt prompted to call the Public Health office and schedule an appointment to update my tetanus shot and get a prescription for malaria pills. Both are things I'd need before returning to Uganda.

Here's the thing though, I didn't have a departure date or a plane ticket or a plan or anything. It can take months to get an appointment with a travel nurse and so I wasn't surprised when Public Health told me that they needed to give the appointments to people who knew for sure when and where they'd be traveling. It makes a lot of sense and I completely understood.

A month ago, Public Health called me and asked if I still wanted an appointment. Due to budget cuts, the travel health office would be closing its doors on June 30th, but one person had cancelled their appointment and I could have it if I still wanted it.

Mind you I still didn't have a departure date or a plane ticket or a plan, but I heard that voice again and I took the appointment. The logical part of me reasoned that tetanus shots are good for two years and I could just hold onto the prescription for malaria pills and fill it when my return trip became a reality.

Almost a month passed and I still had no new information or plans. Holding onto hope of returning was becoming so painfully hard.

The day before my appointment with the travel nurse, I got a surprising phone call and before I knew it my trip back to Uganda, back to the children I love, unfolded before my eyes.

Of course it did. And of course it did the day before my appointment with the travel nurse. I should have known.

As hard as I try, I so often still miss the voice of God, but He patiently speaks to me, often in unconventional and even humorous ways.

The morning of my appointment with the travel nurse, I couldn't help but laugh when the nurse came out wearing a scrubs top made of material with The Lion King's Timon and Pumba romping all over it. I laughed out loud when I heard him sing a line of 'Hakuna Matata'.

I left the Public Health office with a sore arm, a prescription for malaria pills and 'Hakuna Matata' running through my mind.

Okay, God, I got it. You're timing things out in ways I can't even dream of and I don't have to worry.

Hakuna matata, indeed.

The End of the Dry Season

This year has been a season of waiting. I am awful at waiting, even worse at waiting patiently. Since the day I returned home from Uganda last summer, I've been yearning to go back. Yearning is a powerful word and for that reason it's a word I don't use often, but it's the only word that fully captures this visceral longing I have to return to the children and to the place I fell in love with last June.

It's strange to love the people and the life I have here, but to have that same depth of love for the people I met in Gulu. It's a wonderful kind of strange though, to feel at home in two such different places.

It's the place where I had the privilege of facilitating students in writing stories of their lives, stories that both broke and mended my heart. It's the place where I continually found unexpected beauty, so much so that nightly I dream memories from my time there. It's the place where I first met my sons and began my surprising journey into motherhood.

All year my sons have been asking when I was returning. Each time they asked, I swallowed back the lump in my throat and responded that I didn't know when, but I would return.

Each time I thought I had a return trip to Uganda planned, it was cancelled or fell through for reasons beyond my control. And each time the trips fell through I thought of my promise to my sons. I thought of how they have lives built upon the painful shards of other broken promises. I vowed not to become one of them.

Last year I went to Uganda with the words of Isaiah 30:21 as a guiding thought for my trip. The verse says, "Whether you turn to the right or the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, 'This is the way; walk in it.'"

As bad as I am at waiting, I'm even worse at waiting and listening for God's voice. Then there's the whole issue of hearing God's voice and choosing not to be obedient.

Can I be honest with you? Even the word 'obedience' makes my spine prickle. It is a word and a concept that feels as easy and as appetizing as swallowing rocks.

But I love God.

More than anything else.

And here's the great part, He loves me, too, and wants to work in me despite my impatience and disobedience. Because God is a good parent, a good Father, part of His love means helping me move beyond impatience and disobedience. Part of that love means giving me time and space to practice patience and, gulp, obedience.

So this year, I prayed and tried to listen for God's voice telling me what to do. I don't really relate to pious prayers filled with thees and thous. Wanna know the prayer I prayed most this year? Six simple, but not so easy words, "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief."

Sound familiar? It's the prayer of a father who had a son inflicted with a spirit that gave him such massive seizures that on more than one occasion the boy seized so violently that he fell into burning fires and deep waters. The father brought his son to Jesus and the father said, "If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us." Jesus responded, "If I can? All things are possible to him who believes." And this is the part I love, the father doesn't pretend to be pious. He doesn't pretend to have faith that he doesn't actually possess. The father says, "I do believe. Help my unbelief." Jesus healed the little boy, which I think is the bigger reason that particular event was recorded in the Bible, but it's not why the story captivates me.

What captivates me is the desperate honesty of the father who looks into the face of Jesus and admits he both has faith and lacks faith and then he asks for help. Now that's a guy I can relate to.

Each time my return trip to Africa collapsed beneath me, I was left brokenhearted. I felt like a failure and a liar and it was hard not to lose hope of returning. So many times in the middle of the night, those words 'failure' and 'liar' looped in my head. In the middle of the night, with the sounds of the quiet house around me and my sleeping husband snoring next to me, I'd pray that father's prayer. "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief."

And each time I prayed, the words of Isaiah came back to me. "You will hear a voice behind you saying, 'This is the way; walk in it.' I listened for that voice, listened with such desperation that my heart sometimes felt like it was going to pound out of my ears. Do you know that kind of desperation? I imagine you do. It's the kind of desperation that comes when we are broken with such acuteness that praying six words and then being quiet enough to listen is all the faith we can muster.

I needed to be broken this year. I needed to learn to wait, to wait and cling fiercely to the promise of hope. I needed to learn to have faith that there is so much more happening than I can see. I needed a year to learn to listen for the voice behind me guiding my steps.

I listened and it was how I knew that I was supposed to begin getting my classroom ready for the next school year in June instead of waiting until August like I usually do. It was how I knew that I was supposed to book an appointment with the travel nurse and get the one last shot I needed for my trip, even though I didn't actually have a departure date.

Last Wednesday my waiting came to an end when plans to return to Uganda came to fruition. Last Thursday I had my appointment with the travel nurse and booked my plane ticket. Last Friday I gave my sons the exact date I'd be returning. I leave in a little under two weeks and am counting down the days until I get to hug my beautiful sons.

With my son, Otim Geoffrey, 2011

These seasons of waiting, these times of fervent yearning for things that are yet to come, are sometimes called dry seasons. They are desert times when my spirit feels parched through to my very bones.

Here we have four seasons; winter, spring, summer and fall. Did you know that in Uganda there are only two seasons? There is the dry season and there is the wet season. The dry season ends in June, giving way to the beginning of the wet season in July.

After a year of walking through my own dry season, it is only fitting that my return to Uganda, my return to my sons, coincides with the start of the wet season when the rain in Uganda falls heavy and hard onto the parched earth.

Today I prayed a different prayer. I'm sure there will be many times in my life to come when I again pray, "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief." But today I was able to honestly pray three beautiful words, words that have been a long time coming, words that have never rung more true for me.

"Lord, I believe."

Thankful Thursday #94

Image courtesy of bitsofwisdom.org

This week I'm thankful for...

• making homemade ice cream
• running errands with Magnolia True
• the local street fair
• the tamale truck
• sleeping in
• shopping at the Goodwill
• green apple spray paint
• spin class
• my Ugandan sons
• riding with Terry in the MINI with the top down
• cool summer mornings
• blackberries from my backyard