back in uganda

Welcome to my blog! The following stories detail my experiences in Uganda for the summer of 2009. I will do my best to update them as regularly as possible, but with Internet in Africa I make no promises.

So you can have a better of understanding of what my summer will entail, I have come to Uganda to work with two groups. The Street Child Project is a Christian organization that uses art to rehabilitate and educate Ugandan street children. It's a group I started with my Ugandan friend Andrew a few months ago and that I wholeheartedly love. I'm in Ugandan now working on the organization's registration and preparing for a team of American volunteers that will arrive on June 20th to lead an art and sports camp for the boys currently in our care. Mid-summer I will move to Nansana to work with the group Come, Let's Dance, a non-profit, grassroots organization dedicated to empower African youth to initiate positive social and economic change in their own lives and communities. Enjoy!

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June 11th, 2009

Well, I am finally in Uganda. I arrived yesterday morning, on the 7:45am flight from London, exhausted, but happy to be back in Africa. The Nortons, my darling host family and a couple who works with FOCUS:Uganda, generously picked me up from the airport and drove me straight to the FOCUS camp at Gerenge where Andrew and the boys are now living. There was no where else I would have wanted to go. We hopped into Adolf's car and headed down Entebbe Road.

We pulled up to the camp around 9:30am and when I saw the camp approaching my entire stomach filled with butterflies--I couldn't wait to see everyone. Andrew was eagerly waiting our arrival and hugged us all as we arrived. He invited us all into the main meeting hut and as soon as I entered my jaw dropped.

Lined around the room were the most beautiful paintings that our oldest boy, Calvin, had created. Some of the paintings were brilliant, beautiful, bright paintings of everything wonderful Africa has to offer. Others were deeply painful scenes depicting memories from when the Lord's Resistance Army attacked his village many years ago. Each painting offered something different, a new color, style, texture or meaning. One painting depicted a woman with a jug that seemed to wrap around her--it was meant to depict the hold that alcohol has over some women. A three part series he recently completed shows a barely visible young man, covered by dark, chaotic layers of paint. In the subsequent pieces the colors become brighter and the young man becomes clearer, more visible. Calvin describes the pieces as representative of his time coming to Christ--the more he follows Jesus, the more he is able to understand and see himself. He has visually captured what The Street Child Project hopes to achieve--the visibility of all street children.

Among other things, I was happy to learn that Calvin had sold over half his paintings to the InterVarsity team that had orientation at the camp last week!

As I was looking at some of the pictures, a familiar face came up to me. Brian ("our Brian" for those of you who know what I'm talking about) wrapped his arms around me and greeted me with the sweetest welcome I have had in quite some time. Soon another Brian came up to me, shy as ever, but grinning at me with that smile than no one can forget and welcomed me as well. Finally they were all there, another Brian, Mede, Calvin, Adam, Robert, Mark and our newest boy Moses.

I noticed immediately that the boys had changed--it was so obvious. They were well-dressed, well-rested and well-fed. They were happy-demonstrating the type of joy that comes from more than several good meals and clean clothes can offer. Their maturity both surprised and impressed me and caused me to stop and thank God again for this incredible opportunity God has given us all--to see the lives of children transformed. I suppose the only way to explain it is that God has so visibly breathed new life into each of these children. We all praised God.

I was sad to learn that one of our boys, another named Brian, had decided to go back to the streets in an attempt to make money. My heart broke when I heard that and I just pray that he will change his mind and decide to join us again soon.

After sitting on the boys morning devotions, which they all choose to attend and take turns leading, we said our goodbyes to the team and headed home to the Nortons beautiful house where I have been resting from jet lag and gaining strength for the coming weeks. From the schedule we created with Andrew this afternoon it looks like they'll be incredibly busy so keep checking in for more updates!

with love,
Amanda