Opportunity to Give

Near the end of a path, that led off the main road, and around a corner through a little gate in a broken brick wall was the house. One small single room; dimly lit with natural light, casting shadows on the cement flooring and walls. An old white, lace curtain hung up that separated the bed from the rest of the space. It was the size of a small bedroom – maybe 7x12 feet. The single bed took up most of the space, and a wooden shelf stood on the other side, containing many plastic plates, containers, cups and other kitchen-ware.

Jon and I sat on a two person bench, to the left-hand side of the doorway.

“You're welcome!” Sandra's husband, Nimrod, lay on the bed. His collar bone broken from a fall at his construction site in the city. He would be off for the next two weeks. Beside him, his toddler son lay sleeping on his back, in the heat. Sandra busied about... “some tea?...water?”

Sandra (name changed) is 19. The volunteers in my apartment met her, as she comes by and cleans at Suubi every other day. They have had many conversations with her, and she has invited us down to her shop where she works, and now to her home. At 19, Sandra has 2 children. One of them with another man at 16. The other with her current husband. Her eldest daughter doesn't live with them, as it upsets her husband.

Jon brought along a pineapple, and we sat in their home, talking with them. Her little sister (who lives with Sandra) followed us inside smiling and tugging on our hands, looking to play. Sandra came from outside with cool water and poured it in blue plastic cups. Then she hunched near the floor and peeled off the outside to a long sugar cane, with her knife, putting the pieces in a bowl and passing them to us. Her husband, her niece, Jon, and I, sat – chewing, spitting the roughage and chatting.

“We're moving soon” Sandra was saying. “Tonight.”

She looked sad.

“Our landlord is upset. I sell food at a stand on the streets” She waved her hand towards the corner of the main road, and the path to her house “She does too, but I make more business. So she is raising the rent...We are leaving.” I felt sorry for her.

“I want to leave Uganda.” She choked. There were tears in her eyes. I asked her where she would go, if she could go anywhere.

“America”

Sandra ran out a third time and came back with Cassaba for us. It's like a big single “fries” - a fried wedge of potato-ish vegetable. We tried to refuse but she insisted, so we passed them around the room. More children from the area peered in the doorway, chickens milling in the dirt courtyard behind them.

Sandra and Jon have only paid half of their rent for the new house. They still owe the landlord the other half. It costs them about 23$ a month, but they have to pay for the first three months when they first move in. They still owe about 35 dollars. Sandra showed us their new place on our way out. It was right across the road – a green garage with big swinging metal doors. She unlocked us and showed us the sqaure space inside with pale blue walls and a cement floor. The room is bigger than their last.

“Are you happy to have more space?”

She was smiling.

“How much was the water?” Jon had whispered to her little niece. “And the cassaba?...The sugar cane?” He slipped her a little something on the way out for “Aunty” Sandra (as she calls her) and we began to head back.

We stopped at the market and I bought a pineapple and two large avocados - all for only a dollar. Sometimes it isn't fair. The hospitality we'd just been shown, by a 19-year old and her husband who didn't even have money to complete their rent, was unreal. Yet us...we have so much. I hope we don't cease to take opportunity in loving, by giving to those who need, and thus, spending our lives for the sake of others.

"Let us not grow weary of doing good..." Galatians 6:9

Stopping to buy pineapple