A Hasty Goodbye

I distinctly remember throwing a pity party for myself in the 8^th grade when a friend (Laura Dubach… cheers to you wherever you are!)’s grandparent passed away and our whole St. Pius class was so empathetic and supportive of her. I panicked, realizing that I was going to a different high school than most of my peers. I couldn’t stop thinking, “When my grandparents pass away, who will support me if I’m not here at St. Pius? Who will comfort me?”

Little did I know at the time that 12 years later I would find myself seated in a circle on the floor of a home in Kampala, Uganda, surrounded by 22 teenage boys showering me with well-wishes, advice, and farewells. These boys, filled with years of their own trauma and pain, are not those I would have pictured lifting me up when my grandmother passed away on Sunday. Yet, I should have known back in 8^th grade that if I followed the quiet voice of my vocation, this life would continue to surprise me, and I would never be left alone in my times of loss and grief.

On Sunday I had to tell the boys unexpectedly that I was leaving Uganda to come back to the US for my grandmother’s funeral, and that I would not be returning to Uganda any time soon. I was supposed to stay in Uganda for four more months, but the ticket to go back is too expensive to make returning a reality.

In these boys’ lives filled with transition and abandonment, I hated having to be another caregiver who left them at the drop of a hat. Yet, rather than holding it against me, they were so kind and supportive. When I received an email Saturday, informing me that my grandmother was not going to make it, one of the boys sat with me on my bed holding my hand as I cried for hours (until he eventually fell asleep). When word got out to the three boys whom I had formed the strongest connection with that I was leaving, they held constant vigil in my room for my last 48 hours in Uganda. They would come in, lie down on my bed, and cry, and it would tear my heart out. We were all painfully aware of the fact that I lingered with them as a comet, soon to jet off into the distance with no promise of returning soon. I've lived this pain of separation many times before, yet somehow it still catches me by surprise.

Some of the boys keeping me company in my room hours before I left.

A few years ago, most of these boys were so hardened that they simply could not show emotion nor connect with anyone. Joseph was one of these boys. He could not be bothered by anyone’s attempts to get through to him. He is the same boy that thanked me for coming back to Uganda on my first night back, and he and I grew closer each day I was back. On Monday morning (the day of my departure) he came into my room and sat quietly on my bed. No sooner had I put my arm around his neck than I began to feel his silent teardrops running down my hand. He uttered, in a barely audible voice, “When you leave, I will not feel so good. I will feel so bad. You were the one who would tell me ‘come and we go.’ (When I would take him with me wherever I went). I will be missing you, and I love you so much Auntie Jen. I am going to work hard and be a mechanic. Then I will build a house in the village and when you come back, I will take you to visit my house.”

Joseph is one of the boys that could not articulate a long-term goal for his life if you paid him a million shillings to do so. Making this goal a reality will certainly be an uphill daily battle that will likely test every ounce of Amanda’s (the home’s founder) patience in the process, but the fact that he can now allow others to love him, return that love, and imagine a future for himself is no small victory. As Father Greg Boyle states in his book, Tattoos on the Heart, we have to trust in the “slow work of God”, and Joseph is certainly a product of this slow but certain work.

Joseph and I saying goodbye to Oola, Cloe, and Winnie

After rushing around all day Monday trying to say goodbye to the people I love in Kampala, I came back home in the afternoon and Joseph was sitting on our front step, staring at the gate, waiting for me to come back. He and our three dogs ran up to greet me and he told me he had been waiting for me all afternoon. I mentioned that my flip-flops were so dirty from running around all day and he took them off my feet and went out back to scrub them clean.

A few hours later, he accompanied me (along with 5 other boys) to the bus park in the center of Kampala to catch a bus to the airport. As we bused to the city center, he flopped down and laid his head in my lap as he always used to do when feeling overwhelmed. Once we reached town, he held my hand and rushed me through the crowded streets, telling me we had to hurry because he didn’t want me to miss my flight. They hoisted me and all of my things onto the last open seat of the bus that was headed to the airport and stood, frozen, shouting well-wishes all at once, perfectly framed by the opening of the bus door that closed all-too quickly on this chapter of my life, drowning out their final goodbyes.

As the 6 of us had scurried through Kampala’s dark streets, shoulder-to-shoulder with throbs of people headed home, dodging the wares of the candle-lit street vendor stands, I couldn’t help but think that not too long ago, this scene was these boys’ home. This was prime time for pick-pocketing, time to dodge police beatings, time to search for leftover food scraps, time to pull out their plastic bags to cover their slender bodies as they prepared to rest in the callous arms of the streets that claimed their childhoods.

Thanks to their brave commitment to changing the course of their lives, as well as to Amanda’s willingness to listen to the urgings of an over-zealous college student (me) 5 years ago and decide to move to Uganda indefinitely, they now have a new home. I will miss them dearly, and I am eternally grateful to have taken part in a short leg of their journeys at this home. I have learned from them (and from Amanda) the true meaning of forgiveness and resilience.

The Need for a New Cassette

To be honest, this home and living here 24/7 has tested my patience more than any other place I’ve lived in my life. I now have a very visceral understanding as to why social workers and caretakers at group homes in the US work in shifts. I am also getting a crash course in how parenting can be maddening, because there are no shifts. Unless you’re blessed with a great support network, there’s no one to work nights for you while you rest, nowhere to send all of your children while you take a retreat, and no higher authority to revert to when you’ve exhausted your parenting tactics.

Many of the boys at this home display a wide array of attention-seeking behaviors, due to their complicated pasts and low self-esteem. I have to remind myself daily to continue to love them, and to remember that their behaviors are a product of the social exclusion they endured for so many years on the streets (and still face in many ways). I remind myself not to shout, and to make patient requests rather than demands. I read Marshall Rosenberg’s “Non-violent Communication: A Language of Life” (Read it anyone and everyone who hasn’t, it is amazing!) yet I fail each and every day to implement the empathetic, non-judgmental listening techniques that I aspire to possess.  

Often times it requires paying acute attention to the boys’ behaviors to unmask what is provoking them. For instance, we have started making paper beaded jewelry with all of the boys this holiday season in order to sell it in the US and fundraise for the home. The woman who cooks for us at our home has two small granddaughters, and last week they were “helping” to make beads with us in the sitting room. They were sitting on the table attempting to make beads as the rest of us worked. One of the boys (who is about 14 years old) came into the room and proceeded to put one of our dogs on the table, spilling all of the beads, scattering the papers, and getting the table dirty with whatever the dog had last walked through. Every time I took the dog off of the table, he would put her back on. We ended up ceasing our bead-making activities for the day, and it wasn’t until later that he came to me and told me that he was annoyed that the baby girls were sitting on the table that we eat on, so he had put the dog on the table out of anger. I will never understand the logic behind this approach, but had I understood his behavior as it unraveled I could have spared us a shouting match and we could have continued making jewelry.

Joseph and his trusty dog Max

One of the most painful aspects of this work is to witness the way in which power relationships and cycles of abuse play out in their lives. Having been the objects of scorn for so many years, many of the boys have internalized the resulting rage and now take it out on the boys who are younger than them, on our cook’s grandchildren here at home, or on the dogs (their former competition for left-overs when they lived on the street). They’ve been taught for so many years (first in their homes and then on the street), that the stronger person wins—the one who exhibits the most power prevails.  Though they were once the objects of severe beatings (at home and then by the local police on the streets), they remain convinced (as do 99 percent of Ugandans in an informal poll taken in my brain) that beating children is the only way to educate them.  

Our cook's grandchildren helping me wash my clothes.
(Sadly they are no exception to the rule as far as harsh disciplinary practices are concerned...)

As much as I try not to be ethnocentric so as to respect cultural norms and beliefs, I will never believe in beating children. While it can certainly change behaviors, it doesn’t change attitudes. While children may stop stealing after being beaten, they change their behavior because they are scared of being caned, not (as Marshal Rosenberg states in his book) “because they recognize the responsibility for their actions and are conscious of the fact that their wellbeing and that of others is one and the same.”

I simply don’t believe that we were placed on this earth only to fear and invoke fear. Many of the boys have gone back to their respective villages over their school vacation and those that still have fathers have described a similar pattern. When they were growing up, they lived in fear of their fathers’ wrath and constant beatings, and in most cases this influenced their decision to run to the streets of Kampala. Now that they have grown up physically, however, and they know how to fight, their fathers are now scared of them. They can now go home only because their fathers are scared of their sons beating them and can no longer lay a hand on them.

As I think about this phenomenon, I can’t help but imagine the sadness of a loving God watching Her creation turn life into a cassette tape whose music evokes fear and pain, until it is flipped over at a given point and then remains silent, fearing the wrath of its listeners who have had enough if its music. I can only hope that wherever we are on this earth, we seek out those whose ears are ringing with the caustic tune of fear, pain, and uncomfortable silence and do our unique part to turn this into a melody of unconditional love and mutual understanding.