I looked through the camera to line up my picture. It was a simple picture. Father Leonsyo on the left smiling and the old woman at his side, standing tall with a look of both pride and dignity. I snapped the shutter and captured the moment.
Hold the phone, I missed the beginning of this story. Okay, I will give you the Ugandan TiVo button. How about this, is this good? Tonight was the 7th anniversary of Peace Together Uganda an organization started by my friend Father Leonsyo. It is designed to help the communities of Nothern Uganda (most specifically Pajule and Patongo) repair and heal some of the damage left by the war in the North. I travelled with Father all day to see the aspects of what P.T.U. has already done. I saw the grinding machine that enables the village to grind maize into meal. So they can cook it as porridge and turn it into posho, a starchy staple of the Acholi diet. I saw the concrete piggery and saw the five pigs that are currently there. After a brief side stop to greet a MP (Member of Parliment ), we saw the tractor that has been used to plow fields to replace the labor intensive hand digging for all of the planting. A wide variety of community services started by P.T.U. started the day.
Now was the time for dinner, I arrived back after showering, to see our normal sitting room, full of people. Stretched out on the floor was a woven carpet filled with Ugandan women. They were all seated on the floor and extended their hands to bid me greetings. "Apwoyo, Apwoyo bono, apwoyo Tutwal". Echoed through the room as smiles and greetings were exchanged, I sat down in the blue plastic chair and looked closely at these women. Many of them had come in their Sunday finest, colorfully patterned dresses with puffy, triangular sleeves that went past their ears. Most of the women had matching sashes carefully and traditionally tied around their waists. They smiled once again at me. And then they talked to each other in Lwo. I could now more clearly see the many canes and walking sticks on the side of the carpet. I saw their faces carved with lines of two decades of worry. I saw the dirt and the callouses that lined their feet and I saw the hands sculpted by years of digging and struggling to feed their families. These people who endured hardships worse than my toughest imagination. These women had greeted me as a member of their family. Their long lost white grandson.
This was Leonsyo's idea to honor the anniversary of P.T.U. by listening to the poor. "Let the poor speak." Too many times the biggest hardship for those who struggle is that we do not hear them,....we do not see them. We had moved outside and I took a chair balanced it on a grassy knoll overlooking the front porch of this dwelling. I then saw something quite troubling, the man on the street Father had greeted mid day was arriving. When I saw him on the stret he was on a 3 wheeled bicycle, that had been retrofitted to be powered by his hands. From the waist up, this man was strong and confident, but when I looked at his legs it was quite clear he had never walked. Here he was, crawling through the dirt to attend this meeting. He had removed his flip flops to wear on his hands, and he walked on his knees which just struck me as painful. He moved quite easily, but his knees were full of mud and rocks for the path. I guess the path was too narrow for his bike. He righted himself and crawled into another blue plastic chair. Two circles of dirt and wear still evident quite clearly on his knees.
He was one of the first to talk and encouraged P.T.U. to help him find school fees so his kids could go to school. This man with all of his troubles was looking towards his children. And then it was time for the women on the rug to be heard. Each of them had stories about struggles and death and losing loved ones. There were stories of hunger and poverty. One woman just wanted a walking stick. We listened and listened, giving each a chance to be heard. There soft and anguished stories in Lwo being translated by someone into my ear. Some were critical and wanted P.T.U. to do more, others thanked the organization for being there for them when they needed it the most. Each had a chance to be seen, to be heard, to be given value.
It is the Ugandan custom that before dinner, a woman comes with a basin and a pot of water. As she kneels at your feet, she pours water over your hands and you wash for dinner. A grand act of humility or service. Today as the speeches ended and the dinner was about to be served. Father Leonsyo grabbed the water and the basin and approached the old widows first. There were too many people for him to kneel, but smiles and laughter were shared as this tradition got stood on his head.
It is mid-afternoon the next day, and Father fills me in on half of his plans and a lot of it is surprises the he forgets to mention. Almost all of it is greetings in some form of the other. And in this culture, we greet at the beginning and at the end and maybe a few times in he middle. He tells me about this one. We are going to greet an old woman. "She will be surprised." Down a lonely road we go. "She is lonely", he says with the compassion of a Priest. We then turn into what I think is grass, but it is really a road. I see a round hut and another small hut that looks like a child's hut, but probably is for chickens. As we drive to the hut, Father tells me that some in the village have stolen this woman's field and have run off with all of her chickens. She was powerless to stop them. To them she was nothing... forgotten...thrown away.
We park the car and I see a woman. She is using a bamboo pole to get around. She is gripping with her left hand like you would hold a golf club, but this hand is only 18" off the ground. Her other hand is gripped tightly to the pole, and in this stance she stands only about 3 feet tall. She and Father converse in Lwo. He asks me if I want to see how immaculate the inside of her hut is. A little hard to fathom as her hands, feet, and ankles are caked in dirt. Some of the dirt looks like it has been there for decades. She farms by sitting on the ground and digging with her hands, yet she has lost even this. I duck super low to get in the hut, and see that everything has an order, each item neatly in place. She points to some cushions and gestures to me stridently and talks in Lwo. Father explains that there are 6 mattresses here, one each from her 6 children who have all passed away. She points as he translates to make sure I know what these mattresses mean to her.
We walk outside and Father hands me his camera and asks me to take a picture. As she sees me line up to take the picture, she throws the bamboo stick out of the frame and rises ever so slowly, from 3 foot to now an impressive five foot three. She stands straight and tall. She nods as if to say I am ready.
I looked through the camera to line up my picture. It was a simple picture. Father Leonsyo on the left smiling and the old woman at his side, standing tall with a look of both pride and dignity. I snapped the shutter and captured the moment.
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