This Is the Day, Part I

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

It’s 5:00 am. Outside the birds are chirping and screaming and cackling. The sky is beginning to lighten and the Islamic call to worship begins. I look out my window, through the iron bars, decorative and functional, and see the roll of barbed wire lining the top of the fence. The barbs stand out against the lightening sky and each minute brings me closer to the days I’ve been dreading.

Today & tomorrow Aidah must face her birth parents, one of which has simply been inactive in her life, and the other causing deliberate physical and emotional harm. Ugandan children are taught to face their fears and their hurts, and to face them without tears and very little emotion. It’s almost impossible to read Aidah’s heart when she closes herself off. You give her space and time and within a half hour, she will begin to open up again. But I fear that the wounds caused by her family will make her retreat beyond the space of an hour, or a day.

It is well-within the probation officer’s right to request a meeting today with all parties involved. She hopes to outline expectations, help Aidah’s parents realize that this isn’t a temporary decision. Many childcare agreements in Africa are temporary - “You take my child and pay for their schooling and care, and when they are of age, they can come back and care for me.” For the vast majority of children raised in poverty, they are truly cared for by the village. They are given the consistency of neighbors, friends, aunties, uncles and other relatives who want the best for them and remove them from a bad situation to help. But almost always a child will eventually return, and hopefully the parents will have been able to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and make a better life for them. (More on this in a bit, as I talk about our time spent with the Riley’s.) The probation officer hopes to touch on what Aidah’s life will be like in America. Education is highly valued, and will our “simple home learning” be enough to help Aidah reach her full potential?

My visits to Bulamu have grown more and more uncomfortable. Aidah very rarely leaves her house, so we remove our shoes and enter the home. We are greeted by her house mother, with a smile and a wave, and then directed to the table. Mom and I sit on one side, Aidah and the house mother on the other. Aida’s eyes are almost always down, her hands in her hap, and only when I gently tease her or speak to her, does she look up with a smile. She is quite lonely, and when Bright, the baby boy of one housemother, peeks in the doorway, she greets him with a huge grin. One day, I couldn’t stand the atmosphere one moment more, so I took out my computer and put a movie on for Aidah to watch. I believe I picked Kung Fu Panda, but within a few minutes, she had changed it to My Fair Lady. When Bright came back, I put on Mickey Mouse, and then again, within minutes, heard the opening strains of My Fair Lady. Could she enjoy a good musical? ;o) The housemother sits and speaks occasionally to us, then goes to stir the coals, then comes back and sits. And we ask questions, or compliment her housekeeping, or bring out little gifts to share with the other girls in the house, and things grow silent again. I ask Aidah if she can come out and sit on the porch with me, and as we go out, the housemother follows. We sit on the front porch swinging our feet, and occasionally playing footsies, a phrase that Aidah has picked up in the days I’ve been here. “Play footsies!” I babble on about how beautiful the country is, what does Aidah like most (the trees and grass) and how this little area near Bombo looks remarkably similar to our little farm in Missouri. The housemother makes the little “mmmmm...” sound that means she is listening and Aidah goes in the house to get my computer and look at pictures of the home she will be going to. She points out that the trees look different and I agree. They are much more shapely here. Flat tops and wide spreading limbs, perfect places for hundreds of birds to nest. The wild here seems so much more wild, and the city so much more city-like. I fear Aidah will grow bored in our sterile environment. All the hustle and bustle of normal activity seems like it’s been taken out of life at home. There are no bikes, no constant signs of hard physical labor, no honking horns and no women struggling under the load of 1,000 bananas. At a stop light, there is no one knocking on your window or pulling at your arm. It’s all so in-your-face here, and in a good way, lest my words be misconstrued for insensitivity. Bulamu is building 4 new houses, and the labor is right outside Aidah’s doorway and it is intensive. They bring in mud, to make the bricks. The kiln is made and the bricks are fired. The thin trees are cut down to make ladders which fall apart every hour or so, as they are lashed together with vines. There is no anger or frustration, just a man who falls off the ladder and then gets up and remakes it.

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