Olyotya!

Hello!

It has been another long day. We got back from the Hospice, and I slept for an hour and a half before dinner! Hopefully soon, God will grant us more rest so we can live more in community at the end of the day, rather than be so tired we all just go to bed (myself especially).

This post is definitely intended for my mom. For all of you, but this is especially for her:

Today, the first thing we did with the Hospice workers was to go on a home visit. These people lived, seven of them, in a hut that was probably eight or nine feet in diameter. They build them out of mud/clay, from what I can tell, and the roof comes to a point in the middle above it, made of some kind of leaves or grass. There were three small boys, one small girl, and one older girl, maybe fifteen or a little older. Their father was a patient of the hospice, and their mother was beautiful and sweet. Their father had a large tumor, probably the size of my fist, growing where his two smallest toes were on his left foot. It was yellow because the medicine they gave him to put on it to keep infection away is yellow. He washes it, crushes yellow tablets, and covers the tumor with it. In January, he actually had the tumor removed, along with his two smallest toes, but the tumor, which is rather aggressive, came back. It is heartbreaking to see these things, mostly because in America, he could get insurance, get chemotherapy, and probably get rid of this aggressive cancer that, though it started in his toe, is caused by the bone marrow, so he will eventually die from it. All the Hospice can do is give these people the best life possible for as long as possible, which is largely possible because of pain medications they issue. Watching the Hospice nurses give out morphine is far from uncommon.

So, where does my mom come in to this? Well for one, I am incredibly grateful for my whole family. The fact that they are alive and well is amazing, and that we still have each other, though we are spread out all across the world. Matt is in Baghdad, Sam is in Dunedin, my parents are in Houston, and here I am, in Jinja, Uganda – sleeping a short walk from the source of the Nile River! Secondly, not to get too distracted, but my mom is an amazing woman. She made fourteen dresses for me to take to Uganda. They are made from pillowcases or spare fabric, and the people at the Hospice were so thankful and excited about them, I can’t even express it. So, this family gets the equivalent of two dollars every two weeks from the Hospice (when they come on the home visit) to give them a little something extra. It is not enough to survive on, so they are not dependant on the Hospice, but it helps them get a couple of the more expensive things, like rice and sugar (yes, rice is considered expensive here) occasionally.

The Hospice workers told me, as we sat at that home visit, that they wanted me to give the two girls a dress. I did my best to get a tall enough dress for the older girl, and gave her a shirt my mom had bought, and put the smaller dress on the smaller girl. It was absolutely adorable. They spoke Lusoga, and no English, so I couldn’t communicate, but the mother was incredibly grateful, and I know these dresses made a difference.