A little I know after almost a week in Uganda

• that when you go to the slums, there are kids playing in an empty lot that would be condemned in the states but these children playing there are full of smiles and laughter. And when you are there you play with kids like ring-around-the-rosy or lift them up in the air as high as you can until your arms hurt and you feel well that you helped ever so little.
• that a restaurant is literally a small room with a couple empty chairs, old sofa and a table or two.  Their are no signs, no menus - in my past life I would never have entered but now we sit down and eat.
• that when we go out I have only twice seen another Mzungu (white person) and the children all call out "Mzungu, Mzungu."  This is a strange and a sometimes overwhelming experience: the fact that we are different, there is a name for our difference and you hear it all the time.
• that when we went to the school, there are so many surface differences like no carpeting, no glass in the windows, no running water, no electricity, no flush toilets but when you look harder and under that surface at a classroom you see drawings of the maturity stages of a fly, how wings on an airplane work and other teachings that were done with the intent for learning just like you would see in an American classrooms.
• that when I sat in a class of five grown men that are giving up almost a year of their lives and a significant amount financially to learn to farm, that I saw such eagerness and determination.  They wanted to learn and even though the class was in English, a second language for each of them, they were trying so hard to learn a better way for themselves and their families.
• that babies are left, that children can be given up in hopes that some non-profit can give them a better life than a parent can.  What a terrible, heart-breaking choice to have to make. 
• that the giving of just money has created something that just doesn't work, that can't be sustained.  I am learning that we have to focus on given something else instead of just money -- maybe if we tried giving our hearts?
• that our children just continue to amaze me with their adapting, accepting and enjoying a different everything.
• that there is a great deal of love here and the people of CLD have so much to offer and teach.
• that I know really so little and that there is so much to learn but for now I'm going to focus on giving my heart and being a friend and seeing where that leads...

Troy