I went to weekday mass this morning,
for the first time in a few years. I'm getting over jetlag from a World Vision
trip to Uganda last week, and as I lay in bed in the dark this morning my mind
could not help but cling to the darkest portion of our many projects visits.
While we saw plenty of positive programs, met communities engaged in their
own transformation, and celebrated compelling signs of hope, the week was
bookended by two riveting experiences that seem to overshadow the others, at
least at this point in my recovery.
I had cringed when I saw our planned
agenda a few weeks earlier, knowing the impact of these visits but also aware
that the logistics of our travel would require that these be at the beginning
and end of the trip. Knowing this in advance probably shielded me from some of
the initial "blast" of the experiences, but even that could not
protect me from the stinging and clinging residue.
On Monday morning, we visited a
project designed to combat a hideous practice called "child
sacrifice" for lack of a more accurate term. Children are abducted
in order to harvest their blood and body parts for superstitious practices
carried out by witch doctors. This happens in only one quadrant of Uganda, so I
hesitate to even tell about it for fear of perpetuating old stereotypes of
"deepest, darkest Africa." But without a doubt, this is a very,
very dark practice.
We saw all sides of it: First we met
Robert, a lovely young boy with a fun-loving smile who was found and rescued in
the midst of getting his throat cut. Today he is in a wheelchair, his spinal
column mostly severed but hopefully healing. Nothing can keep this
seven-year-old down, and he showed us how he can now walk again while hanging
onto his chair or his grandmother.
Next we met an energetic committee of
community members who have implemented an Amber Alert-type system activated
with drums, loudspeakers, cellphones, and motorcycle taxis, with all the
government and community leaders involved. Because of this project, which
was underwritten by the Innovation Fund, there has been an 85% reduction in the
incidence of child abduction and sacrifice!
The World Vision project leader, Obed,
risks his life to come up against an unholy alliance of witch doctors,
superstitious customers and kidnapper/body-snatchers, all powered by the money
that the ongoing demand creates. The project is empowering the community
to stand up against this evil practice, change hearts, immediately send out
search parties, and prosecute the perpetrators.
About 80% of the 500-plus traditional
healers have now taken a pledge rejecting this practice, and our next visit was
to one of those. We all entered his compound, but only half the group ventured
into his lair. At one point, Obed said, "You see these rocks in the bowl
between us? That's where in the past he would sprinkle human blood." Obed
had comforted some of the reluctant ones in our group when we arrived there,
"You have nothing to fear. You're covered with the blood of Jesus."
So I went into his hovel, to affirm the commitment this witch doctor
made... but I can't say I'm glad that I did.
Our last visit of the day took our
breath away. Jimmy was 18 months old when he was abducted last year, his heart,
genitals and blood 'harvested', and his body dumped back on his family's land
to be found by his six-year-old sibling. We met his grandmother, father and
uncle. Mom has been sent away to recover, and Jimmy's siblings are clearly
traumatized. They clung to Jaaja (Grandma) until the
conversation got so graphic that we sent them out to play. Wise or unwise, the
adults wanted to show us the spot where Jimmy was found, and then the family
plot where he is buried. But the young father couldn't do it. He hung behind by
a tree ten steps away and wept silently, breaking everyone's heart. We
witnessed the depth of trauma that this hideous act has wrought on three
generations of this extended family, a broken, motherless home that will
forever be scarred, and a killer who is still on the loose.
Mercifully, the next few days were
encouraging ones of visits to other projects underwritten by the Innovation
Fund, projects which include radio and cellphone training of saintly Volunteer
Health Teams who are the first-line of defense in the health system; mobilizing
faith leaders to advocate for sanitation and hygiene to their congregations;
and a low-cost way to manually drill for water which is sometimes inexpensive
enough for community members to pay for a pump-well themselves! Along the way,
we visited a health center where a woman was just then giving birth and were
invited to see the suckling 8-minute-old baby, we learned a lot about
defecation in the Bible(!), and we passed through a national park complete with
safari animals and a ferry ride across the Victoria (White) Nile River.
Then on Friday, before we flew home,
we had the opportunity to visit the recently-closed Children of
War center. World Vision's regional office is now housed in this
compound, and I'd heard about this program and advocated and prayed for it for
so many years that I was very eager to see the place firsthand, even as an
'historical' site.
The center was created because of the
20-year reign of terror of the marauding bands of the so-called Lord's
Resistance Army, an abhorrent and aberrant-Christian version of ISIS.
Among their despicable practices was abducting children between 10-16
years old, the boys to become trained killers and the girls to be given to LRA
commanders as "wives." The Children of War center was the primary
facility for healing and repatriating abducted former child soldiers and child
brides, and we were told that some 15,000 former abductees had come through
this program since 1995.
We were hosted in our visit not by the
World Vision staff, but by two former child "wives" (often one of 20
or more "wives" of an LRA commander) who had escaped with their
children born while in captivity. Angela and Janet have now started an
organization called We Have Hope, not so much to support former
child brides, but primarily to help the fatherless children of these women, who
face great stigma and behavioral issues, and who were sometimes brainwashed by
the LRA before their mothers escaped with them.
Hearing about the ongoing,
multi-generational damage from this evil and violence--after our Monday
experience with the child abduction project and Jimmy's family--became a very
heavy weight. Lying in bed today, I realized I must take care of my soul
to avoid hitting a wall, sinking into an abyss of unbalanced despair by
allowing these searing dark memories to overly-shadow the bright light of the
others.
That's when I felt motivated to go to
Mass.
I arrived late, and there were lots of
distractions. But as the service was concluding, I gazed up at the cross.
There Christ still hung, in proper Catholic tradition.
And as I gazed up, a song began to run
through my mind from the musical Godspell. It's a
rendering of Psalm 137:1-4, with a lamenting melody that perfectly fits the
lyric:
On the willows there we hung up our lives
For our captors there required of us songs
And our tormentors mirth, saying,
"Sing us one of the songs of Zion"
"Sing us one of the songs of Zion"
But how can we sing, sing the Lord's song, in a foreign
land?
On the willows there we hung up our lives
Captivity. Torment. Joylessness.
Despair... Reverence.
That's when I realized the solace so
many have found over the centuries: by hanging their overwhelming burdens up
there on the cross with Him who is crucified. He who bore the sins of the world
stretches wide his arms to also welcome and bear our burdens.
I accepted the invitation.
The cross is a story of utter defeat,
of no one coming to save the day.
But it was not the final day. Nor did
death have the final say.
On that willow there, we too can hang
up our lives.
Cory
March 2015
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