It has been too long. I know. I’m just, I don’t know. Just
so bad at this updating thing. If you know me, you know I am the WORST text-er,
the worst call-you-back-er, the worst email-er, the worst at anything that has to
do with keeping in touch. I suck. My problem is, when I leave a place and then
return, I pick up exactly where I left off with any of the relationships I had.
This is fine for me, but not everyone else is like that, and I end up leaving
people hanging. For that, I apologize. Anyways, to the update…
I’ve been in Jinja for the last month and have most definitely
gotten a lay of the land. Jinja is a town 2ish hours outside of Kampala, right
on the Nile. It’s been such an interesting transition from Kampala because the
two are just so different. Worlds apart really. It’s impressive how close they
are, yet so the pace of life, the traffic, the shops, and the people are so
different.
As you probably know, I’ve been interning at Abide Family
Center, where their goal is to reduce the number of orphans in Uganda, and they
do that by empowering families through things like business classes, emergency housing,
and parenting classes. My focus coming in has been in the pastoral/ministry
realm, but I’m working on something a bit outside that umbrella, which is not really
surprising being in Uganda and all. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been helping
to create a program called Abide Advocates that focuses on getting specific
people from back home information about orphan prevention and family preservation,
with the hope being they will then share this information with people in their
own circles of influence. It’s an interesting concept because the focus is not
on fundraising or money, it’s truly about building relationship with people
back in the states and getting them access to new information regarding orphan prevention.
I think one thing I have valued most about my time here in
Jinja is that I am being exposed to vocabulary and concepts that finally put
words to what has been going on in my heard. A lot of the time I have felt like
there has got to be something more for these families, more for these kids, but
I didn’t know how to express what was going through my mind. Now, things like
spectrum of care, kinship care, double orphan, foster care, resettlement, and others
have been shared with me and have given me a better way to express my feelings
on what I see not just here in Uganda, but in the states as well.
I love that I have had such
different experiences each time I’ve been in country; it gives me a broader
perspective on the things going on. I don’t know if we’ll ever come up with the
perfect way to ‘help’ families, or give ‘aide,’ it’s all just so subjective and
dependent on learning culture and being immersed. I’m thankful for the chance
to see another way of doing things though and I am so thankful to all of you who helped
to get me here for this new experience.
