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Out of Africa
Hillsdale students reach out to Ugandan
orphans
By Emily Stack
Collegian Freelancer
Caitlin
Nichols recalls the young children, dirty and unclothed outside
of their mud huts. She grimaces at the remembered taste of posho,
a bland cornmeal mush served with various seasonal crops: ground
nuts, potatoes, bananas and lots of plantains.
Walking to the market, Nichols
and Kim Ryan passed small children and their families on the
packed dirt roads.
"They would yell 'muzungu'
at you, which means 'white person,' in Luganda," the native
tongue, Nichols said.
At the market, the barter system
is still in place, and vendors raised prices for the fair-haired
ladies and other tourists.
For the month of July, Gabrielle
Silverness, Hillsdale College admissions counselor, Niles Emerick,'03,
senior Jordan Butts, juniors Carrie Gregory, Caitlin Nichols
and Kimberly Ryan, sophomore Scott Kallgren, and freshman Jamie
Brogan and her family all traveled to Uganda to work with the
New Hope Uganda missions program and its orphanage, Kasana Children's
Center.
Jay and Vickie Dangers began Kasana
after a draining, unsuccessful year of missionary work in Colombia.
Jay grew up in the Congo and, when he heard of war in Uganda,
seized upon the opportunity and bought land in the Luweero District,
amid the fighting. While still in Kampala, Dangers met and convinced
Pastor "Uncle Jones," a native Ugandan, to help with
establishing an orphanage. The orphanage began with a shack,
dubbed "The Sheraton," constructed from sticks and
mud.
Dangers sent out a request locally
for orphan children, and had about 300 responses from orphans
or kids with one parent. Overwhelmed by the initial response,
Dangers and Uncle Jones knew the facilities could not take on
that many orphans. In a strange twist of fate, on opening day,
only 10 kids showed up. Rumors
had spread throughout the communities about child theft.
Later, when the natives saw what
good work the center was doing, they brought their children,
but the Dangers had to refuse because they did not have enough
space or funding. With 19 residents, the Sheraton became home
not only to the Dangers family, but also to 10 orphans and Uncle
Jones. Slowly, buildings were
added and the Sheraton became Kasana, meaning "sun rising"
in Luganda.
Arriving at Kasana, the team began
its work at the orphanage. Kasana has a school, ranging from
first through twelfth grades, and a new "baby house,"
housing five orphan residents. The team worked as teachers in
the school, as caregivers for the babies, and as manual laborers
in the fields.
The number of students depends
on the number of donors. It costs $25 a month to support an
orphan. Kasana now houses over
150 orphans and students with a vision "to bring the fatherhood
of God to the fatherless," Nichols said.
In keeping with this vision, all
of the boarding orphans are divided up into family groups led
by an adult or older student. Every evening the families held
devotional time where the children or the adults would lead
discussion, prayer or worship. The team itself divided among
the families, though "it was more like they adopted you,"
Gregory said.
"Kasana really emphasizes
the role of fatherhood. They teach kids parenthood to go and
raise good families," Nichols said. "By dividing the
kids into family groups, it's not so institutionalized."
Nichols describes a blind, 10-month-old
baby named Hassan. Beaten before he came to the orphanage, cerebral
palsy made his limbs completely tense. Nichols and Mrs. Brogan,
a physical therapist, spent hours rubbing, stroking and massaging,
working to relax his muscles.
"God cares for orphans and
widows. Yet orphans and widows are on the bottom of the social
ladder. They're the most helpless people, and the Lord has laid
a compassion for them on my heart. It breaks my heart when kids
don't have good families," Nichols said.
This is the third group of Hillsdale
College students to go to New Hope Uganda since 1999. Emerick
is the only returning veteran from the second voyage, which
took place in the summer of 2001.
In preparation for the trip, the
team met weekly to pray and learn about the Ugandan culture.
In addition the entire group attended a conference, titled "Ministering
Across Cultures," intended to prepare them for understanding
and communicating to a new culture. They raised the funds through
local churches and fundraising letters.
Cultural change affected team
members in different areas.
"Everything is so new that
you go in knowing that you have to be open to the culture and
learning new things," Gregory said.
Without modern conveniences, daily
tasks became new adventures: cold showers, heating milk on a
stove, and sewing clothes from patterns constructed out of brown
paper bags.
"While we were there, about
140 kids and staff at New Hope tested positive for malaria-it's
just a part of life there," Nichols said.
Even one of their own team members-Ryan-
contracted the disease.
Kallgren had a chance to run with
some of the boys who ran to meet weight requirements for soccer
tournaments. One spunky 12-year-old even ran with Kallgren at
6 a.m. After three miles in flip flops, the boy decided to take
a lighter training schedule the next day.
"I wish that I had known
the need [for shoes]," Kallgren said. "Even the [Hillsdale
College track] team's old shoes were better than running in
flip flops."
All of this close contact brought
insight to team members.
"You'd hear second-hand of
what they'd gone through: parents dying right in front of them,
or just orphans, alone," Brogan said, "but I've never
seen so much smiling, even here in America. Especially seeing
little kids going off to the fields to do hard work, laughing,
joking, teasing one another."
After the team left Uganda, they
received news of a fighting, rebel army called the Lord's Resistance
Army that menaced the region near Luweero. Many of the missionaries,
adults and older children at New Hope are taking relief supplies
to the many homeless and tortured people, Gregory said.
"The stories of the deaths,
beatings, and other horrible things going on there right now
are terrible," Gregory said. "It is amazing, though,
to know that the people who we went to reach out to and to serve
are now serving these other people who need help. We saw that
as we prepared for the trip, and we see it now as the Ugandans
and missionaries at New Hope reach out to others with just a
few supplies and, more importantly, the comfort of a savior
who loves them."
By tradition, another team from
Hillsdale College will return to Uganda in two years. Everyone
is already anticipating the return.
"I felt an urgent sense to
minister to these people," Kallgren said. "That's
the same attitude I should have here [at Hillsdale College]…
as a mission field."
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Photo courtesy of Caitlin Nichols
Hippos out for a swim at
the Queen Elizabeth National Park, where the team took a two-day
safari during their trip. While there they saw lions, hyenas,
elephants, water buffaloes, hippos and zebras.
Photo courtesy of Carrie Gregory
Gregory spent plenty of
time with the children making crafts.
Photo courtesy of Kim Ryan
Niles Emerick, '03, carries
a set of encyclopedias the team brought to give to the secondary
scool, which had a very small library. "The older kids
loved looking at the encyclopedias," Nichols said.
Photo courtesy of Caitlin Nichols
Nichols and one of the orphans,
John, pause for a picture on their way out to the groundnut
fields. In addition to the school, the team also contributed
through manual labor. Nichols worked in the fields with John
"most every day."
Photo courtesy of Carrie Gregory
Gregory (L) and Emerick
work on their cooking skills with Agnes and Mega. Here they
were passing on the finer culinary secrets of banana creme pie.
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