We come and then we go...

Well, we have already taught our last classes at the Nateete Orphan School. They are so resilient. They have lost their parents, one or both and many have parents that are too sick to get up anymore. HIV or any other illness that they can't afford to treat. Their uniforms are dirty and torn and they are wearing second hand shoes from Glenmore Elementary.
Their smiles are so beautiful I start doing things just to get them to smile. I try to make eye contact with each one, share a moment with each. What they are enduring is not possible to relay. The shacks they live in in their neighbourhoods have ditches nearby and you see people standing in them in the trickling garbage holding a water can to get their day's water. I don't know what their comforts are. School in a shack, hot and crowded, runny porridge out of a communal vat in the dirt for a snack at 10:30. No lunch. School until around 5. Grade 6 and 7 do evening studies as well, then going home to sickness, or to nobody. Life is tenuous for these valuable people. Their tattered books hold lessons that are scribed so beautifully on the history of Uganda, the art of poultry raising, the ancient kings of their land. We come and then we go...And now I don't even know what to say.....
Rhonda Draper