Africa

Megan and I found out that Auntie is actually only here because of us. Beatrice asked her to come while we are here to help. She makes all of our meals, except the Thursday dinner we make, and she is a very good cook. I feel like I am going to be fat by the time I get home. We spend like an hour every meal eating, and you know how in the USA we say, “You better eat all your food, because think of the starving kids in Africa,” well they say the same thing here: “We never waste because there are so many people in need.” So, what happens is we dish out how much we want, and then they put more food on our plates, and more and more, and we have to eat it all, because wasting is taboo. Every meal we have bananas, they boil them and they taste a lot like potatoes.  We usually have beans, rice, potatoes, and boiled bananas each meal, talk about carbs! And we eat chicken, beef, horse, and fish. It is hard to swallow down the horse, but better that than be rude.

Anyway! Back to the point, Auntie is really poor and has nothing, so she doesn’t know what she will do when we leave. She will probably have to leave when we do as well. She told us some of her life story, and it is rather sad. Her parents died when she was very young, and she lived with her Uncle in Uganda. But they were really poor so she didn’t get to go to school, and food was scarce. At 14 she got married to an older man who was very abusive. A 21 or so she had 5 kids and had enough of being beaten up everyday and of his alcohol problem, and left him. She tried to take her kids away but he would only let her take the baby. So she left with her baby girl to the Congo, and her husband remarried another woman, who didn’t care for Auntie’s kids. Those 4 kids all died from starvation. Auntie raised her daughter in the Congo, and came here ten years ago. Her daughter is still is the Congo and really misses her. We bought her a calling card so she could call her daughter, which made her very excited.

So Thursday Megan, Angie, and I were walking to the market to get ingredients for dinner, and there was a big lump in the road. At a distance I was hoping that it was not a person, and surely it couldn’t be, people were just walking by as if there was nothing there. But as we got closer we saw a man sprawled on his stomach, his face in the dirt road, with his arms spread in front of him. At first I thought he was dead, but Megan leaned over and started shaking him, and I tried to take his pulse. After shaking him, he regained consciousness and dizzily sat up. Megan gave him her water and he gulped it all down within seconds. People started gathering around at this point and helping. He said that he needed to go to the hospital, so a boy sat him on his bike and pushed him about ½ a mile to a clinic. Once he got there we took him into the clinic, but we had to transfer him to a larger hospital, and we had Angie go home and tell Beatrice where we were going. Megan, Andre (the man), and I got a Taxi and headed off.

At the hospital we met a man named Immanuel, who translated for us. He asked how we knew Andre, and we said we saw him on he road. It was interesting, although that is all the information we gave him, he started telling us the story of the good Samaritan. “Many people saw the man, and walked on by, and didn’t help. But you, people from a land far away, you stopped and helped the man just like the good Samaritan. The Samaritan lifted the man up onto his horse, and helped him.”

Andre turned out to have epilepsy, and we were only able to buy medication for him for 2 months, and after that we have no idea what will happen to him, because he doesn’t have money to go back to the hospital and get more.  We told him where our church is, and hopefully he will come there. Who knows.

It is interesting how no one stopped to help, but I suppose it would be the same in America with a bum lying on the road. For them, maybe it is such an every day thing to see someone in desperate need, and they don’t have the means to help.  No matter, if you remember this story, keep Andre in your prayers. 

OH and a cultural note, the women here do not shave at all but the men shave their arm pits faces, and stomaches. They thought Megan's prickly legs were quite interesting to rub, and they liked playing with my long arm hair. They also can't believe that my hair is real, they think that I bought it at a Salon. Oh, and they also noticed that unlike them, I have toe hair, and need to repaint my toenails. hahah. I have never been observed so closely before. Megan and i decided we would HATE being celebrities. Uh... good bye! (murabeho in Kinyagwanda)