I feel like i need to debrief after today. How can we be so cruel to each other? Today was a day of sad stories. First Dinah, an 18 year old girl that I've been sponsoring for school came back from the her home in the village to tell me that her relatives are mistreating her. She's what they call a bastard here and they keep reminding her of that. Her mother had her when she was young and for a long time she didn't even know who her father was. About 4 years ago her mother died and so she's been staying with her grand mother and aunties. But while she was at school they ate the food that she had planted which she intended to sell when she finished with exams so she could build her own hut on the compound. Now the aunty wants her out of the house she is currently staying in and yet she has no money to build her own, they complain about feeding her, and wonder why she doesn't contribute money to the food. they're just generally mean to her and the grandmother mainly wants her married off so she can get some cows out of the deal. ugh. Now here she is in my living room crying and asking for help. I want to go and shake some sense into all of the relatives but instead I'll just look for some money and try to help her build a hut. and more importantly speak words of Truth over her and to her.
After she left we went to a school in a nearby village and was talking to the headmaster, Julius, about which students are most vulnerable in the school. We have begun researching for students who we can look for ugandan sponsors for. He told us there are many, 32 just in the bottom two grades, meaning they are either orphaned or living with HIV or their parent or guardian is living with HIV, etc... Then he told of one exceptional case where there are 5 kids in a child headed home. The oldest kid is a boy who is in 5th grade, then one in 4th and one in 3rd and two girls in kindergarden. The father killed one of their siblings so the village decided to kill the father and the mother ran away to her village which is reasonably far away, leaving her precious children behind to fend for themselves. ugh. So julius asked that even if we focus on the youngest ones if we could in this case think of at least two older boys too. Julius is currently letting them all attend school for free and taking it upon himself to pay for their uniforms. Please pray for these kids, i don't know their names yet, but God knows. And the two little ones only go for half day of school, so when they finish they don't go home and eat lunch, but they have to wait for their brothers to finish the full day and then go home around 4pm. And then they'll start cooking, which means these little kindergardeners probably don't eat breakfast and definitely don't eat the whole rest of the day until a late supper. Seeing them just standing around the school, just the two of them, broke my heart. I wanted to take them and just keep hugging them. Needless to say we will be trying to find sponsors for that family and the 32 other vulnerable kids in those lower grades at that school, and will also try to do a saturday program with them sharing with them the word of God and also giving them extra help in school work. I just needed to get that off my chest. I release them to our Good Father and entrust them to His care. To Him who sees us and is with us even when we feel so alone and invisible. amen.
