Hope: A light in even the darkest of places

I woke up this morning and I ran away to a familiar place in town to get coffee and breakfast. I ran because I didn’t want to talk to anyone about the trip I just got back from. I didn’t want to because I had no idea how on earth to even talk about everything that happened. As I hopped on a boda and went into town I looked around at the place I’ve called home for the last two months and it felt unfamiliar and empty. I felt like a stranger again. I was excited to be in the car headed home yesterday but as soon as I woke up this morning I wanted to wake up in the unfamiliar place in the city of Kisoro where my heart was captured in a new way. One I didn’t even know was possible. The emotions that flood back every time I try to write this story leave me unable to put it into words. Unable to write. I feel as though I come up for air only to be pushed back down.
I’m going to try my best to retell the story of what happened these last few days but no promises that it will be well articulated. In fact it will probably be very messy, scattered and broken. Probably because that’s how I feel right now.
Wednesday afternoon Amanda (someone who has been staying at Sole Hope for the last few weeks, and a new friend) and I sat down with Ian, the in country director, and he asked her if she wanted to go on a 5 day clinic trip in western Uganda and before he finished his sentence I jumped in and asked if I could too. I had plans to go to Sipi Falls that weekend but the way I saw it was I was here to serve Sole Hope in anyway possible. Since I’ve been doing a lot of story telling for them I knew that this story needed to be told and I wanted to help tell it. I wanted to be apart of this once in a lifetime opportunity to serve people in the far corners of this country. Ian got a small smile on his face and then said he was going to try and make it happen. We were going to leave Thursday after clinic. I had less than 24 hours til we left and I still didn’t even know if I was going. Then Thursday rolls around and it’s 2pm, “yes, you leave at 3” Ian said. I had one hour to pack and get ready for a 5 days trip and no time to sit and figure out what I just signed up for. Well our 3pm departure time turned into a 7pm departure time. We loaded up, said a prayer and headed out. We drove a packed matatu into the sunset, into the unknown. Right off the bat the car needed new brakes, this would become something we would be reliving many times throughout this journey. We stopped for bathroom breaks, odd stops along the way, stopped at 1am for “dinner” and then kept going. I used a pit latrine with quite the view under the stars and we slept sitting up in the car. Well if you can call it sleep. You see music was blaring, laughter was filling the car and conversations never ended, they filled up the van until they began billowing out the windows. One way for the driver to stay awake driving all night is that everyone stays awake, that way no one carries the burden alone. If I started to close my eyes I’d hear my name being yelled from the back “Larissa, you are sleeping?” 

“No, I’m awake, just resting my eyes”

Amanda on the other hand took Dramamine and she couldn’t keep her eyes open. I slept maybe 1 hour that night. But so did everyone else. We arrive at the place we would be meeting people to show us where we were going at around 9am. We soon found ourselves following strangers who we knew only on a recommendation from back home. They led us deep into the mountains and on the edge of the Bwindi forest. We could basically see the border of the DRC. They told us it was only 20 minutes, 25 minutes, 10 minutes. Following strangers who kept giving us false information. But we continued to follow them. Eventually they got too far ahead of us and we were left with a fork in the road. We picked the one we thought was right. It was a steep hill with a cliff on the side. We started up and the matatu struggled. It stopped moving up and then it started to roll backwards, our driver, Henry tried to push on the brakes but they failed. I jumped out of the car and it slid down the hill until Henry turned the wheel backing it up into the mountain. He saved our lives. His quick instincts kept us from sliding off the cliff. I wanted to cry but I knew I couldn’t.

But now we were blocking the road, we had to push the car up the hill enough to get it out of the way. The people who had brought us here left us, basically saying there was nothing they could do and we should have had a 4 wheel car on these roads. 

Long story short we got our brakes fixed and left the forest where we were supposed to stay in a lodge somewhere. We headed to the city of Kisoro where we decided it would be the safest place to stay. 

A lot more happened in between but we got connected with a lady who was going to lead us to the communities we would be working with the rest of our time there. On Saturday we drove 2 hours into the mountains. The roads were treacherous. Curving around mountains on one way roads with cliffs on the side where you couldn’t even see the bottom. No guardrails, no paved roads, one mistake and we could have all went over the edge. My biggest fear being lived out but somehow even after the experience of the day before God flooded me with peace and my heart was still. Sure I still held my breath and said “Lord keep us safe” over and over again under my breath but I wasn’t afraid. I looked out the window and there stood one foot of dirt road between our tire and the cliff.

We finally reached our destination and it was amazing. Such a beautiful and sweet community of people all waiting to greet us. We set up clinic and got to work right away. The Sole Hope staff started removing jiggers and Amanda and I helped in every other way. Here were these people who didn’t even know they could live a life free of jiggers having a new hope that it’s possible. One lady who was mentally disabled looked to have over 1,000 jiggers came and sat down and then ran. She would come back and sit down but then ran again. My heart broke for her in ways I didn’t even know it could. Her legs were no thicker than my wrist. The jiggers that were infesting her body were draining everything out of her. She was withering away. We left early that day because it started to sprinkle and we feared the rain on the roads. 

The next day we returned to the same place, we started with the people who we registered the day before but didn’t get to due to our early departure. The staff worked for 6 hours without really taking a break, without eating lunch. They were that passionate about helping as many people as possible because we knew we would not be returning there the next day. As we were about to start wrapping it up the lady from yesterday showed up. She willingly sat down to have her jiggers removed but at soon as they started she began to flail and cry out in pain. Members of the community held her down. Knowing that if she didn’t have her jiggers removed she may not live much longer. You could see every bone in her body. Two people worked on her hands and then her feet, making it go faster. Removing over 1,000 jiggers from her hands and feet. She was fitted for shoes and then left. It was hard to watch her go through the pain but we kept having to tell ourselves that her life depended on it.

After that we packed up and headed out for the day. At around 5pm thunder could be heard in the distance, we started driving, and then the lightning came. Raindrops started to fall on the windshield and then it began to pour. Rain turned into rivers that began to flood the already unsafe roads. As we drove I held onto the door handle with one hand, and the other one hand gripping onto Amanda ready to jump out if the car and pull her with me if we started to go over the cliff. I felt so conflicted. On one hand I didn’t want to die and feared for my life. But on the other hand I knew that if we were the only ones to survive I would not be able to live with that either. These people, the Sole Hope staff had become like my family and we were all in this together. The car in front of us got stuck and the roads became like a river. We were driving against the current. I didn’t think we were going to make it out that day. But we did. I started laughing as the rain stopped and the roads became less scary. All I could do was laugh, the alternative was to cry my eyes out. I heard whispers of Katonda in the back of the bus (katonda means God). I too was praying. We finally made it out of the forest and mountains and onto flat ground and I felt like I could breathe for the first time. My fists were white from my death grip onto Amanda and the door handle. I feel like the stress of the situation aged me 5 years. We headed back to our hotel and I had the most horrible nightmares about the place we were staying. It’s far from Jinja, and people didn’t take too kindly to mizungus (white people) I wasn’t afraid I just wasn’t comfortable. I talked to our driver Henry and said “Henry, it’s not that I don’t feel safe here but people don’t seem very kind, and it makes me a little uncomfortable, is that a true assumption?” His response took me off guard. He said “yes, it is not a very safe place, even me, I do not feel so comfortable” or something like that. 

The thing about the place we were in was that there were hardly any white people and those who were, were doing gorilla trekking, none of them really trying to reach this community. So almost every encounter we had was one of being asked money from. It was just so far out of my comfort zone. I get that here in Jinja occasionally but there it was almost demanded of me. 

We fell asleep that night exhausted from that day and the stress it caused. 

The next day we rose early again and headed out to a different community. At first the roads seemed manageable but then they turned out to be worse than the ones from the previous day. Several times we got out of the car to help push or to make sure it didn’t slide down the hill. At one point we all got out of the car and everyone was yelling at each other. People were fearing for their lives, wanting to go back and others wanted to press on. Our main social worker, Adam had us all come together on the top of this hill in the middle of nowhere and hold hands in a circle. He talked about the importance of remaining as a team, how we have come so far we need to finish the work we have started. How we need to trust our driver. How we are the hope for these people who have never been reached. Then he started to pray. A few sentences in and he started to cry. I just about lost it. Ugandans don’t cry, especially not men. Yet as I looked around, almost everyone had tears in their eyes. It was a powerful moment because it brought us together. I felt better but I knew that if Adam was crying then he too must have some fear of our journey. Yet he was the glue that held us all together. We loaded back into the car and we finished the drive to our destination. When we got there we literally set up on the side of the mountain. A small semi flat area in the middle of the hill. We used some tools to flatten out the shrubbery, laid down our tarps and the staff began removing jiggers. We worked until dark clouds in the near distance began to threaten our time once again. “You people must hurry, these roads in the rain become deadly”. The lady who brought us here said. As the staff finished removing jiggers Amanda and I started packing up everything we could. We still had patients who we could not help but we had no choice, we had to make it out before the rain or it could very well have been the end of us. We only got to help 50 people that day. People were lining up and we began handing out shoes, “if we can’t remove their jiggers the least we can do is give them shoes” one of the staff said. To which I agreed. Soon it became a mob and we had to put the shoes away, loading up the bins on top of the matatu. Thunder started. “If you are not removing jiggers, you are helping pack” I said. Starting to fear for all our lives. I have never seen a group of people work so hard and in sync to get packed up. One man had over 1,000 jiggers and the staff member working on him worked until the last possible moment. I have no idea if he even removed all his jiggers but we did the best we could. We finished packing up and all squeezed into the matatu and started the journey out. The road back was just as treacherous as the way there but we clung to hope. Hope that we would make it before the rain, make it out safely, and we did.

We drove home the next day. My heart was so heavy. I knew we changed the lives of so many more people than we realized but we barely made a dent. We removed jiggers from only 168 people, we treat that many people on Thursday clinics. But in the span of 3 days we removed over 10,000 jiggers. That just blows my mind. It’s funny, I wear this bracelet I have everyday that says the word hope, I got it 3 years ago and I bought it for no other reason than I liked the way it looked. I thought it was a funny coincidence that I “just so happened” to be working with Sole Hope. But as I sat in the car fearing for my life, as I sat on those hillsides feeling helpless, as I fell asleep at night fighting back tears I looked down at my bracelet and remembered why I was here. To bring HOPE. To the person living with jiggers who didn’t know anything else. To the community who thought that jiggers were something untreatable. To the village who knew that jiggers were just a part of life. We brought them hope. Hope to live without the pain of jiggers. Hope to prevent them and remove them themselves. But most of all Hope that people care enough about them that they are willing to put their lives on the line for them.

This trip taught me more about life than I could have ever hoped. It taught me how important faith is and stepping out into the unknown. It has taught me about trust. Not only in God but the people I did life with those five days, for my driver Henry to keep us safe. Trust that our mission of bring hope to these people would prevail. 
Most of all it taught me about the power of being a light in even the darkest of places. And how HOPE can be that light.