The Village

I leave for Uganda in less than two weeks. And before I finish my last blog and tell you what God told me to do, I'm going to give you a little background info. on the village where we will be.

The village is outside of a larger village, that is outside of a larger city. There is a mosque near the entrance to the village, but no Christian church. There is a witch doctor, but no medical clinic. People sit in doorways and children run in the streets. Like the children, skinny dogs wander around looking for something remotely edible to fill their bellies. No clean water is found in the village.

322 people per day in Uganda die of malaria. 45 die of HIV/Aids. In Africa as a whole a child dies every three seconds from AIDS and extreme poverty, often before their fifth birthday.

More than one billion people do not have access to clean water.

Every year six million children die from malnutrition before their fifth birthday.

More than 50 percent of Africans suffer from water-related diseases such as cholera and infant diarrhea.
More than 800 million people go to bed hungry every day, 300 million are children.

Of these 300 million children, only eight percent are victims of famine or other emergency situations. More than 90 percent are suffering long-term malnourishment and micronutrient deficiency. (From Cozay)

All of this is immensely disturbing in and of itself, but what struck me the most was the blackness, evil, and oppression that these children live under. Young children are sold by their parents who can't afford to feed them. Sometimes they are sold out of their parents' ignorance, with promises by a sex trafficker that their child will go to school, receive a job, or have a better life.

Sometimes parents sell their kids because they need money to feed their other kids. Often, children are not sold at all, they are stolen right off the streets where they live as they run, play, or look for food. They are either lured or just thrown into trucks by passersby. These children are sold as slaves, into the sex-trafficking industry, or as human sacrifices. Human sacrifices. You read that correctly. It is real and it happens every day.

Perhaps one of the most impactful things on my last trip was a newspaper article. On the front page of the local paper was a picture of a headless toddler. The story went that the child's father wanted a boda-boda (a motorbike). I mean, he REALLY wanted one. The farmer he worked for told him that for the head of a child, he would give him a boda-boda. This young father severed the head of his only child, his son, and traded it to the farmer for his motorbike.


The child's head was found in a pot on the farmer's stove. When asked about the "pot", the farmer explained that he was making a "potion" to sprinkle around the perimeter of his farm to increase his land borders and make his farm more fruitful.

This is horrible, sickening, and enough to make an italian girl like me have a heck of a temper tantrum. While on this trip I also ready this quote by journalist Andrew Rice: " Some people (Ugandans) worshipped the God of Christianity, some the god of Islam, but they all retained a measure of the age-old belief in the power of nature spirits and in the rainmakers who communed with them." I think this is abundantly clear.

The newspaper article is dated September 30, 2009. This JUST HAPPENED people. How can we turn a blind eye to this? The thing is, maybe you think there are lots of Christians in Africa. Maybe you think that you can't make a difference. But for us who call ourselves the Church, we must take action! This should not be happening on our watch! How will you respond?

Total Injustice

*I just need to get a few things off my chest so if you're easily offended or deeply in love with either Farrah Fawcet or Michael Jackson, I suggest you not read any further.

What the heck is wrong with us Americans? I am personally appalled by all the public mourning, weeping, and carrying on about two have-been pop/tv stars. Farrah's battle with cancer was admirable and she educated a lot of people with her documentary about fighting and finding a cure for cancer, now sadly her death is certainly taking a back seat to MJ's. So if I had to pick favorites, yeah it would be her. Michael, on the other hand, may have written some good songs which defined a decade, but do we forget such incidences as him dangling his son over a balcony or all the "allegations" of child pornography and sexual abuse going on in his own home? Okay, so they're only allegations, and OJ only "allegedly" chopped his wife's head off.

But this is not my soap box. My anger and disbelief are directed at the media and those who are skipping work to stay home to watch the live telecasts and tributes to these individuals. They're dead. People die every day. In fact, 28 million children die of curable diseases each year! 17 million children die from starvation. STARVATION! They don't die because they have fought a valiant battle with cancer deserving of media attention; they don't die of heart attacks sleeping between the finest of linens. They die because they have no FOOD. They die because they don't have a basic antibiotic to treat malaria....a $25 antibiotic!! But these children get no media attention. They get no justice. What is wrong with us? How can we sit in front of our big screen TV's munching on chips and watching and mourning the death of a freakin pedophile for goodness sake when children are dying TODAY because they have no food to eat? It's pathetic. It's inexcusable.

The child you see in the above picture is a REAL child from Uganda. This photo was taken in May; his body was lifeless and he was literally starving to death. You don't see these faces on the news. You don't see the ticker rolling every time an innocent child dies from lack of food or totally obtainable and affordable medicine. Instead we are content to live in our world with delusions of grandeur and Neverland ranches, while idolizing those pretty faces we see from our TV sets. We choose to ignore the suffering and the dying in places like Africa. Why? Because we are so far removed or because it hurts too much to watch or because we're too selfish and like to put ourselves up on pedestals because we're better, richer, and prettier than the rest of the world? No wonder the world hates Americans.

Did you know that every year 10 million children are involved in the sex industry? And some of that is within our own borders!? Instead of mourning Michael Jackson for his "music", wouldn't we be more effective in giving our time and attention to free the innocent from the bonds of sex slavery?

It's time that we wake up people. It's time that we did something. No more pathetic excuses. Two weeks ago two 11 year olds set up a lemonade stand and baked cookies and raised $40 to buy food for kids in Uganda. If they can do it, so can we. We can choose to not ignore the statistics, we can choose to not idolize people for their good looks or the ability to write songs, we can choose to make a difference, to pay attention, to do SOMETHING!