Friday, June 3, was our second day in Uganda and our first day of ministry. We hit the ground running, joining with a ministry called
Sixty Feet that ministers to children in the prison system. If you read
this post, you already know a little bit about Sixty Feet.
This....
this was the reason I went on this trip. I just didn't know it until I got there.
This is the ministry I stayed up until 1:00 in the morning reading about on their website
and blogs. This is the ministry that weighed so heavy on my heart for weeks before the trip. And let me tell you, after spending the day there, that heavy feeling only grew.
As we rode the hour and a half or so outside of Kampala, the mood on the bus was light and happy. But as soon as we turned off the main road onto the narrow dirt road leading to the prison, as soon as we saw the sign, the mood quieted.
{Because of the sensitive nature of the relationship Sixty Feet has with these government-run facilities, we’re not allowed to post the names of the prisons on the internet, so they are referred to as “M1”, “M3” and “M4”.}And as we came up over the hill and had our first sight of the main building – the exact same sight I had studied for so long on the website – my heart started pounding and my eyes filled with tears. This was M1.
But there was little time for tears. As soon as the children saw our bus, they came running! They swarmed the bus, screaming, waving, cheering – it was like we were celebrities! :) The bus door opened, and little hands started reaching for us.
We spent several minutes hugging these little ones and taking pictures. They LOVED for us to take their pictures and then show them on our camera screens. Many of them have never even seen themselves, isn’t that amazing?
(See that little girl in the front right of the photo above, with her head tipped down? She was wearing something that looked similar to a pillowcase with the end ripped out - nothing more. She had to constantly hold it closed at the top in order to keep it from just dropping to the ground. Someone on our team finally tied a knot in it for her so that it would stay up without her having to hold it. A pillowcase.)I was so overwhelmed by all the kids that – although I did wonder how they were able to just run out and meet our bus (since it’s a prison) – it didn’t even dawn on me to wonder why they were so young. This was supposed to be a facility for 12-18 year olds.
Well, these sweet little ones aren’t actually “inmates” at the prison. They are children from the Karamojong, one of the poorest tribes in Uganda. Many of these little ones actually have parents (although some don't). Their parents often send the children into Kampala to beg, and people see them as a nuisance. The police - ordered by the government, and under the guise of “cleaning up the city” - round up these children in big trucks (like the luggage truck I showed you in my last post) and dump them at the prison. Their parents most often have no idea what happened to them. When they get up to 100 of these kids at the prison, they round them up again and truck them out, typically dumping them in a completely different area (outside of town) so they have no idea where they are and very often never find their way back to their families.
Please understand that these are
babies. Most under the age of 10 or 11 and some as young as
TWO. Do you have a child under the age of 11? Can you even IMAGINE this happening to your child? Your baby? Your precious son or daughter? Can you even imagine being so desperate for food that you would frantically send your 5 or 6 year old into the city to beg for food or money, because you know people are more likely to give to a child? And then, can you imagine your 5 or 6 year old not coming home that night, and you have no idea what happened to them? And you have no recourse because in fact it’s the police who have taken them away and they have no sympathy for you? That's
these babies.....
This isn’t America. There is no Center for Missing and Exploited Children. There’s no one trying to unite these kids with their families. Every one of them is somebody’s child, and it is absolutely incomprehensible the atrocities some of them have endured in their short lives. It dumbfounds my mind and shatters my heart in ways I can’t even explain.
Look closely at every one of these faces and remind yourself, "He's somebody's son. She's someone's daughter. What if that were MY child?"
After we spent some time with the Karamojong children, the Ugandan director of Sixty Feet led us on a tour of the facility.
Side note: Sixty Feet was founded and is based in Atlanta, and the directors are there. However, there is an in-country director in Uganda……and guess what his name is? MOSES. Y’all. Moses! God sent a man named Moses to help free His precious children in Uganda. Seriously, I could not love that more!
So back to the tour. We got to see the boys’ dorm....
(All these beds and mosquito nets were provided by Sixty Feet. Before that, there was nothing. There were a couple of torn, dirty mattress and a few blankets, and other than that, the boys slept on the cold concrete. Look at this photo. It's the same place.)the girls’ dorm....
the “kitchen”, where the boys cook their own meals – enormous black kettles of beans and rice or posho – over an open fire (posho is a thin, watery, porridge-type substance made from corn meal)....
the wood shop, where boys can learn carpentry skills....
and the showers and latrines (also provided by Sixty Feet - no pictures), and then we all met back in the cafeteria, where the kids sang and danced for us, and we got to be part of their “fellowship” (a sermon, delivered by Pastor Fred, a member of the Sixty Feet team.)
(Moses and Fred)Oh, how these boys worship! (I keep saying boys because, even though there are girls at M1, there are only 17 out of 159 inmates, and I rarely saw them.) They praise Jesus with all their heart, soul, mind and strength! To see the joy on their faces as they sing praises to God is amazing. They are in prison; many of them falsely so (
*see note, below); many of them orphans; living in unbelievably hard conditions; many with dirty, torn, too-small clothes; little to no medical care; eating one meal of beans and posho per day; no one to love them or hug them or say “Good job!” or “I love you” or “God has a plan for you” (until Sixty Feet came, just over a year ago)....and yet they give every bit of their strength to praise and worship their King.
As I sit in my plush, comfortable, air conditioned church with its multi-million-dollar facilities and equipment, I really have to wonder who has it “better”.
After the kids sang and danced for us, some members of our team sang for them. They really seemed to love it. :) And after that, we took all the kids outside and PLAYED! We brought soccer balls, footballs, beach balls, frisbees, jump ropes, stickers, and fingernail polish.
And we learned that even here - even in this place that would seem to be full of hopelessness and despair - even here....kids are still kids. :) Those beautiful children ran and played and laughed and smiled like they didn't have a care in the world. Even with the weight of the world on their shoulders. If you couldn't see the evidence, you wouldn't have known they were any different than any other kids in the world.
I spent most of the afternoon painting tiny little fingernails of little girls (the Karamojong) and big, dirty, broken fingernails of teenage boys. They would literally crowd around, stretching their hands out, pressing in to get a turn. These sweet boys have no concept of “gender bias” and just wanted someone to give them some attention and love for a few minutes. I have such a tender place in my heart for boys anyway, and spending that time with those lonely, hurting boys broke my heart all over again.
* Some of the children at M1 are imprisoned due to actual crimes they have committed. Of these, a large number are crimes of survival – stealing to eat, assault in self-defense, etc. Some are crimes where the child was an accessory to a parent or other relative committing a crime. And some of their “crimes” are as minor as running over a chicken with their bicycle. I’m not even slightly kidding. However, a large number of the kids at M1 are actually brought there by their families....for being “stubborn” or rebellious, to teach them a lesson, or even because their fathers remarried and the new step-mother is trying to get rid of them. Yes, really.When it was time to leave, no one on our team wanted to get on the bus. Our team leaders kept having to call us to load up over and over. This was our first place of ministry, and the kids at M1 had worked their way into our hearts in just a few short hours.
They were in my heart before I even got there.
They're there still.
I could go on and on and on (yes, I know I already have, but I could go on more!) about M1. I really do feel like this place was the reason I went to Uganda. I felt God’s presence in that prison in a way I didn’t in any other place we visited. I want to tell you He is there, walking among these broken, abandoned, abused, hurting, scared children. He is the one who had had enough of what He witnessed going on in that place, saw that the time was right for the government to open its doors to Sixty Feet, and opened the eyes of a woman named Nathalie, who had
driven by that sign many times and yet never noticed it before. He is there. And I so want to be where His presence is.
Please, please take a few minutes and go to
Sixty Feet’s website and read the story if you haven’t already. And then ask God what He wants you to do with what you know. It really would mean so much to me. And to them.
"Once our eyes are opened, we can't pretend we don't know what to do. God, who weighs our hearts and keeps our souls, knows that we know, and holds us responsible to act." Proverbs 24:12
“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ And the King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." Matt. 25:37-40
