Dungeon thoughts

Hello everyone. Today, i write with a very heavy and sad heart. Last week started with a lot of promise and positivity. One of my senior pastor friends and father figure here in Soroti called early in the week and told me he was in trouble. My heart raced and i kept thinking about the bad news he was about to break to me, only for him to tell me that the trouble was that he missed me and he needed to call and find out how i was doing! I was pleasantly surprised and encouraged to know that someone thought about me. 

Later in the week i video talked with my mentor; maybe those who watch “The Voice” music competitions would call him a mega mentor? We had not talked for a while and it was good to catch up. I felt the week was going on well, we had given out food to families that needed it most and helped a few people here and there with XYZ.

Then yesterday we had a great Sunday service at home, i thought, and had planned to have a big dance party at 5pm as a family just to make sure we’ve all still got our moves, and also as a way of telling COVID-19 we were not prepared to let it steal our joy and our everything.

Then i got a call from one of our church members and also workmate that a brother from our church had his three and half month old baby on oxygen fighting for his life! I had to rush to make some petitions to God and switched off my phone in order to concentrate. Later in mid afternoon Beckie comes in and breaks the news that the baby had passed on to glory! This is our first loss as a church and it hit really hard. I called the brother who had called earlier and he told me the kid’s dad was unconscious and also needed much prayer. I was told the baby was supposed to be referred for more treatment out of Soroti but there was no transport means readily available due to the travel ban and also the hospital resources being reserved for COVID response. I was mad that i would not be able to go and give a hug to brother Julius and sis. Sophy because of a ban on funerals and also the travel ban. We sent help their way, though to me, no amount of money can compare with a good hug and words of encouragement from a friend or family.

After about 40 minutes Beckie walked in again and said “are you ready for more bad news?” I almost screamed “NOOOOOOOOO” but i said sure and she told me one of our most vulnerable church family members who we had just helped with food and medical treatment two days earlier also had her youngest daughter admitted in the clinic after she just suddenly collapsed! The baby who died also started by collapsing and then just kept on getting worse and worse very fast. We are still praying for this baby and petitioning our father to save her life and bring complete healing. Her family is already in tatters and the worst thing you want right now is more sickness or even death in that family.

About two hours or so later, i was now seated outside, sipping some hot tea thinking deeply when Beckie came out again and called out and asked if i was ready for more bad news! We had to cancel the dance party because of all the bad news and i was seated there thinking whether i should cancel our daily family Bible study at 8pm as well when the latest news came in. Our dear friends who are more of family than friends had also lost a baby, they had a miscarriage! In my head i was like Lord, what’s going on? 

Let me leave that sad news there….

COVID19 or however they call it is turning our lives upside down. I was watching BBC News last week and the UNWFP was forecasting the East African region to be hit hard by a famine that had already started hitting some parts. They attributed this to poor rains last year, locust invasion this year, poor rains this year as well as the effect that COVID was going to have in these economies. Whenever i hear that word “Famine” my mind rushes back to the “great famine of 1993”. As i told you last time that i would touch on it a little this time and maybe i will continue on it next week God willing.

I was about 8 by then and in primary school. The famine was so severe that there was a lock down of sorts. Schools and churches were shut. I don’t know about those in town but for us in the village the situation was dire. We had no food. We would go with our grandmother to work for those who needed help in return for food but this also ended soon as the famine started catching up with even the so called “village rich”. We cooked every green thing imaginable until there was nothing green anymore and everywhere was just dry with dry heat. All the trees had shed off their leaves and were bare. We hunted for all the bush rats we could find in the beginning before we all became too weak to even lift a hoe up! There was food relief which to me looking back now was more like food punishment of the sorts. We all had to walk for about 4 miles to the distribution centre so that those giving food would see all the members of our family. Then we would be given four cups (roughly two kilos or four pounds) of maize flour (posho) and two cups (a bout a kilo or two pounds) of Beans for our family of 6 to last a month at least until the next distribution! People would still fight for food and we would hear rumours of how those who were in charge had first taken XYZ number of sacks of Posho and Beans for themselves. We would then have to trek back home slowly with regular stops once all of us or any member of our entourage would lose sight! Yes, lose sight! By this i mean your vision would just go black and you would feel your head spinning and you had to sit down immediately for a little while until you are able to see again and then trek again. Our grandma would pick a handful of Posho flour and drop it in a big saucepan of boiling water just to change the colour of the water and then serve us to drink. She would say “drink until you sweat all that hunger out”. Mingling the posho (making it into a sort of doughy bread) would be wastage and so we just drank it in water (i am saying drank and not eat because it was not thick but just white water!). She did the same with the Beans. She would boil a handful and put salt to just have the colour of soup and give us to drink. You would be lucky to have a Bean in your bowl and if you chanced to get one or two you would pick it, put it or them in your other hand and then drink the soup first, after you finish, you run somewhere either behind the house or where you are not seen and then take your time biting and chewing your Bean or Beans slowly just to have the feeling of chewing something! 

People we knew died from that famine and we came close ourselves to death a few times. To let you know how serious this was, even birds were starving, and once in a while, when we would go to hunting for birds with our slingshots especially after gaining the energy from drinking something hot, we could find birds that were tired of flying once in a while and when we opened them up we would find no food in the food sac (i hope that’s how it’s called). That famine altered and changed the dynamics of our society forever, the old normal went through the window and the new normal was ushered in. I will tell you how next time…

So whenever i hear news of famine, the one of 1993 is my benchmark though we haven’t had anything like that since. But i have serious fears that this time, we might descend into something close to or even similar to that because if this virus persists and our already fragile economy collapses (God forbid), coupled with the damage that locusts have caused in some parts of the country and irregular rainy season that’s already hampering the planting season, then we will be in serious trouble. A friend of mine who i have known for years has two kids who have sickle cell anemia, he had a small stationary shop at their centre that he survived on besides farming that he had to close down due to the lockdown, had his entire gardens and fruits eaten by the locusts and is now in serious need of help and this won’t affect him only this year but next year as well. This past week some of the people we gave food burst into tears because they had no food and didn’t know where their next meal was going to come from. Government is also overwhelmed and is only giving food to two districts out of the 132 we have and even in those two it’s overwhelmed. The food they give (6 kilos of Posh and 4 of Beans) is very insufficient to run a home until their situation improves. In fact it cannot even feed most families for four days and yet we are hearing the effects of this thing will not disappear anytime soon.

Yesterday we checked the prices of Beans in town and already they have gone high by significant amounts. Last time we bought our bag of beans at 332,000 Shillings, yesterday we were told it’s now 400,000 Shillings! And so are the prices of all other essential foods. I am hoping tomorrow when the president addresses the nation, he will give some good news. I am happy with how government is handling this pandemic with now 47 recoveries and no deaths and no new infections found so far in over two weeks from among the citizens except from truck drivers coming in from our neighbouring countries. I hope we will have some phased reopening of the country so that people can go and hustle for some food because any extension will make an already difficult situation worse.

On a positive side though, i have been able to spend more time with our son teaching him some of the things we used to do as children. We have been able to make a cow from the anthill mud. We also started making letters of the alphabet from the mud and we have made some “bullets” for my slingshot. We are exploring ways of starting a side business of selling these “bullets” to those who might need some in order to make some money. I was joking with a friend that we can do home deliveries for these on a small fee.

I know this is a long read, so, bless your heart for making it all the way to the end. I would also like to hear how you are doing and coping up with this pandemic. Till then, Stay safe and take care of yourself and your loved ones, Shalom.