The Cost of Knowing

I am in the kitchen cooking, drinking and listening to music. I hear Eileen open the door, and before I look at her I ask cheerily, “How was your day?” She turns the corner into the kitchen and I see it on her face. I see the mental and emotional exhaustion that comes from seeing kids living on the streets because their uncles can’t afford to take them in, women working on the sex market to feed a family left by the father, people bed ridden from curable diseases because they can’t afford the treatment.

My good friend Eileen is visiting, she wanted to do a photo project in the developing world. Last minute, I throw together a gig for her, excited that I get to spend a few weeks with an old friend. I would describe Eileen as a world traveler, and definitely someone I have always wanted to travel with. When connecting her to this orphanage for street kids in one of the many large slums of Kampala, I did not even think twice about whether it would be too much. She can handle anything. And, as it turns out, she can.

But those first few nights, after her initial exposure to the slums, it was disarming to see the tears in her eyes; the confusion, disappointment and helplessness. I pour her a glass of whatever I’m drinking, and we go sit on the roof to hash it out. She tells me about the people she had met, where they came from and the lives they now live. The things she saw as she walked through the slum. Overarching everything was this sentiment of this is just one orphanage, in one slum, in one city, in one country. She wanted to do something about it, but was at a loss.

As she talks, I don’t feel much except for her sorrow, the tragedy of the transformation she was going through from seeing this other part of the world. I feel bad that she now has this madness inside her. What I didn’t feel was sorrow for the kids, or the sick, or the hungry. What she was feeling was so raw, and I had none of it left inside of me - at least not in that form.

As she goes off to bed, I remain on the roof and wonder about this. When did I go from crazy college student shouting at the top of her lungs to get one person to know about what Darfur was, let alone care about it, from the personal breakdown I experienced after returning from Malawi – my first developing world travel— to this person, who can hear some of the most devastating stories, and not even feel the tug of a heart string or a turn of the stomach. How does such a transformation occur?

Maybe it comes in realizing your own capacity. In knowing that even if I gave a kid lunch today, he will still be hungry tomorrow. Even if I paid for the woman’s medical bills, she would still return home to sleep without a mosquito net or eat vegetables washed in sewage. At some point in the past, it became too much for me. Everything is interconnected and it is impossible to take it all on at once. There is a switch I flipped a while ago that enables me to live this life without that madness. I move through Kampala in a sort of tunnel vision – I listen without hearing, I think without absorbing, I walk without seeing, I live without feeling. I need to un-flip this switch, at least occasionally.

At some point I learned that a great deal of damage has been done out of the fear, sorrow and guilt of the privileged. In the face of our impotence to change these matters we hastily throw money at it, we have this need to give tangible things. But in the long run, what does it solve? Tomorrow a tourist is going to come and see the exact same sights, and try the exact same thing, and all it really achieves is a sense of dependency on part of the poor and an ease of the conscience for the tourist.

I choose instead to focus on the positive power of people here. I am constantly coming into contact with people who are taking action into their own hands. They are not waiting on handouts from foreigners, they are done relying on the government, instead they are coming up with creative solutions to their community’s problems. Even better, I found an org that empowers people to do just that.

Gregory David Roberts after experiencing a moment of profound human darkness says this, “There is a truth that’s deeper than experience. It’s beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It’s an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever and the reality from perception. Were helpless, usually, in the face of it, and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay. It doesn’t help us to love the world; but it does prevent us from hating the world.”

I am here now. Some of my colleagues would say I have seen too much for a twenty-five year old. I have seen things that would make a person give up on the world, give up on humanity, but knowing what you know, understanding this truth I find it impossible to give up. I have met people that will turn a heart cold, and experienced things that have eaten away at my love for humanity, but there is a reward to living this life; meeting those people who will save it, if only in their small corner of the world.

A not so silent night

As I step off the boda on the tarmac and onto the eroded dirt road kids in ragged clothes and big smiles run and slip their hands into mine. They escort me to the orphanage I am partnering with, only really communicating through smiles and the swinging of arms.

Inside the orphanage I wander around the side where I find two teenagers playing a silver tuba and trumpet that look as though they have made a tour around the world before they made it to this orphanage. It is school holiday, so kids are running around everywhere, but these two boys are practicing. I explain to them my dad’s affinity for the tuba and how random outbursts of “Tuba Love” are relatively normal. They stare at me, failing in their attempt to mask the fact that they believe I might be crazy.

Two younger boys come and welcome me with warm hugs, grab my hands and help me find my way to the office. I am greeted by five twenty-something men, the founders and administrative staff of the orphanage, “Welcome Madame Rachel”. I am still coming to terms with being a Madame…

This is by far the coolest orphanage I have encountered – an orphanage for street kids by street kids. Everyone that works there and lives there once lived on the street - begging, collecting recyclables, fetching water, pick-pocketing or working as a house boy/girl.

When Bosco was 11 his mother, went to town and never came back. He heard through relatives that she had died in some vague accident. His dad was already gone, Bosco was left alone with his two sisters to look after. He spent his days collecting plastic bottles and fetching water for what amounts to about fifty cents. While scavenging in the Nsambya slums he came across some boys playing brass band – he was enraptured. It became his goal to be able to play as they play. It turns out these boys were practicing for a local school, so he asks the teacher if he could learn. The teacher refuses, the band is only for students (and street kids are rather stigmatized here). But he persists. He really wants to play. Eventually the teacher submits, and allows him to play as long as he pays 500 shillings(twenty-five cents) each lesson. Bosco agrees, and works harder to collect money in the slums so that he can raise his music fee and feed his sisters.

Eventually Bosco invites more street kids to join him in class, and eventually convinces a visitor to help him get a home to establish their own band. This visitor buys them five instruments and a two room house. One room for the boys and one for the girls. After raising his sisters, Bosco is hyper aware of girls issues, especially those struggling on the street. The house becomes a center and in time, a man from the UK buys them a larger house that is the orphanage and music school today. They write for corporate sponsorships and have band uniforms from MTN and coca cola and fundraise through concerts and playing special events. The house currently sleeps about 75, but another 75 street kids come on any given day to play music, sing, dance and eat. They are now a big family, calling the older boys Uncle, and me in my subsequent visits, Auntie.

What blows my mind here is Bosco at 11 thinking not just about himself, but about other kids on the street. Bosco could have just learned music on his own, and not think about bringing in other kids from the slum. When he was given a house, he didn’t have to invite others to stay. At 11 years old, he was thinking beyond his own needs about those of his community. All 75 kids living at the center have school fees paid for by fundraising and private donors. The staff all work for free in exchange for housing and food. And about once a month, the kids do community work. The community no longer looks down on the street kids as they once had. Bosco has built something quite remarkable.

The music program fills a very deep hole in the lives of street kids. It fills them with passion, dedication and drive. The kids are not forced to get their instruments out and practice, it is what keeps them going. As we finish up the tour, Bosco takes me around back.

The band has gathered in secret to surprise me. The moment we step around the corner they start into a rousing rendition of Silent Night. It begins slow and traditional, but after the first verse, the tuba steps in on a double beat, the choir sings faster and louder, the conductor’s body jolts full of energy and they all begin to dance to what will forever be my favorite version of Silent Night. I have the goofiest smile across my face and start dancing with the kids that remain on my arms.

Benson

“Whoever gets education may also become strong leaders, may learn to change things, but the rebels did not want the war to ever end.”

This quote is from Benson Wereje, a refugee from Congo, describing why the Congolese rebels attacked school children, attacked his school. Benson’s life and dedication has become one of the deepest roots of Educate!. Every mentor and every student that passes through our program reads his story, and after they meet him for the first time, a little fire is lit inside. I met Benson for the first time this last weekend. Though, when I met him, he was no longer the frightened young boy running for his life through the Congolese forest towards some unknown destination that had to be better than his burning village. He is now a strong young student at one of East Africa’s best universities and the president of a successful refugee organization who returned earlier this year to his home village to establish his community development organization at the request of President Kabila. Shaking Benson’s hand, a fire was re-ignited in me.

My Peace Corps experience and the aftermath of the Kenyan election made me a cynic. I continued pursing this line of work because it was at my core, this belief, and because to not try was unimaginable. But Benson, Benson gives me hope, he brought out the dormant in me.

After an overwhelming day like today-that started at 9am with me leading a 3 hour meeting with our six Ugandan mentors and went straight into creating the weekly newsletter, holding one-on-one meetings with my mentors, dealing with demands from the state side of our operation and ended at 7pm (only because I made myself stop) with me working on a white paper for the ministry of education-Benson’s story reaffirms why I am here - Why I moved across the world, away from every person I love, every comfort I enjoy and fast internet.

Education, civic empowerment, social responsibility. These ideas really can revolutionize the world. I believe in it, and in my three weeks here I have seen it .

Nimerudi

I have returned. After 2 days of never ending flights and everlasting layovers, I step off the plane and am hit with the hot muggy mid-afternoon African air. To my right is the airport terminal, not be confused with a 3 door crumbling strip mall, and to my left the vast lake Victoria. I have returned. Jua Kali man. The sun is still so strong. I sleep walk my way through customs, crack a smile as I always do when I see my luggage on the belt (this simple joy comes after my first trip out here where I spent the first week without luggage) and wander my way to the arrivals gate where someone is to be holding a sign with my name on it. It almost felt like the corporate world where people in suits hold signs with the name of other people in suits. But then the non suit-wearing man holding the paper with my name on it gave me a big hug, and all felt right in the world.

Peace Corps was more cush than this. Emma, my greeter, and I immediately get on a matatu (minibus-public transit). The conductor decides to jam my two large bags in the back, where they of course do not fit, but maybe repeatedly slamming the door on them will work. At this moment, I am glad for my gut instinct that told me to keep the bag with the $700 camera in it with me. Apparently slamming the door on my bags eventually worked, because we are quickly speeding down the roads, through the hills that surround Lake Victoria. As we climb one hill, a matatu speeds past us honking and pointing to our rear. The back door had come open, and all of my worldly possessions threatened to spill out the back of the matatu. We stop to slam the door a few more times, and continue on.

Through the window I watch the women carrying water in their bright kangas, the mzee pushing his bike with bedroom furniture stacked over the back, the school kids drinking fanta outside shops and the street hawkers with their abundant collections of worthless shit stitch into the red African soil and the outstretched fingers of the great lake. Nimerudi.

The matatu stops. I am back at the old taxi park – Kampala’s chaotic, vibrant, potholed answer to NYC grand central. I help Emma into my backpack, grab my timbuk2 and duffel and we make our way to the final leg of my trip, another matatu, though this time, we opt to put the luggage on our laps.

We alight at a dirt road marked with an official Educate! sign. As I am led into my compound, my mouth drops. In front of me is a beautiful yard with mango, avocado and orange trees and a HUGE house with an external spiral stairway leading to the rooftop deck. The house itself is also the office. There are two large bedrooms, I share one with Maggie, a volunteer who arrived 2 months before me, and my boss, Angelica, has the other. There are two smaller rooms which serve as offices, a large common area which is the main office/meeting space and a large yet very ill-equipped kitchen. Out back there is a boys quarters with two rooms where Connie and Barbara our office staff/mentors and Joe, the Business Coordinator, stays along with whatever male visitor happens to be here at the moment.

I’m greeted by Maggie, who turned 24 this day. She has one of those kind faces and a voice that even when angry still carries joy. I drop my shit in our room and step into the hot shower. I let out a big sigh - in addition to the last 48 hours of airport grime, I wash away the incredibly difficult last year and a half of my life. Nimerudi…

Joe gives me a brief tour of our immediate world. We have electricity (most days), flushing toilets and a hot shower. As well as a man, Emma, who cleans, does dishes, and washes clothes. When I first heard this, I vowed to not have him wash my clothes. Then I realized that when I am lucky enough to find myself with a day off, I do not want to spend half of it scrubbing my clothes and wrists raw.
After living and working here for 3 weeks, the house seems much smaller than it first appeared.

The neighborhood is confused. There is a lot of building taking place. Big houses strewn about haphazardly intermixed with small wooden dukas (shacks that sell veggies and staple food items). When feeling ambitious enough, there is a big hill for me to run up with a breathtaking view of the lake. And gasping for breath I tend to be. Rolex’s are huge here! There are about three stands in 100 yards where a man occasionally sits with his jiko, and makes omelets rolled in chapatti (I ate two today). A few days a week, the morning hours are filled with the sound of weed-whackers. Yes. The people out here are rich enough to grow and maintain green lawns, but not rich enough to buy a proper lawn mower. So. The landscapers cut vast lawns with one tiny weed-whacker.

The power goes out. Maggie and Joe take me up to the rooftop to gaze at the dark sky, talk of African politics, enjoy some tusker malt and smoke. I decide not to start that last habit just yet…