Spending

From July 11, 2010

It’s a regular sight to have my red moleskine notebook on hand, to have a pen tucked behind my ear, to scribble on a blank page as people around me talk. What’s strange is the numbers. The sign for Ugandan shillings next to words like “cross-training shoe” & “Bata sneakers” and Mr Price receipts. It’s accountability–my own–for the best expenditure of money I’ve made in a long time.

Between the 12 kids that my family sponsors in the FOCUS Child Project, there are seemingly infinite stories. There’s so much depth of experience with each child, things you couldn’t imagine as a Westerner, no matter how much empathy you think you could muster; there are simply things that they’ve already experienced that you never will and could never completely understand. And, yet, there remain places in this small city of Kampala that they have never been, stories that would seem commonplace to others in this city.

And, they don’t go, because they don’t feel welcome, don’t feel comfortable, don’t feel like they deserve to be there. Places like the nicest shopping mall in the city or an Indian restaurant with columns lining the courtyard feel exclusive to them, because they’re from Kalerwe or Kyebando or Katanga.

The gift of my family to those kids was to take them to those places, and tell the whole world that these kids deserve every second they spend in the nicest places in town.

Latifa, Jonah, Mark & Farida in style

We went to Garden City, in a taxi-bus rented for the day, and the kids shuffled into Uchumi, a Kenyan supermarket. We split into groups of three, two and two; the kids picked up soccer balls from the wall and wondered, almost aloud, if someone would chastise them just for examining the ball, feeling its weight and texture in the palm of their hand. We went up the stairs to Bata, to pick out shoes and buy them for the kids, and once the disbelief disappeared, they discerned which shoe would fit best, which would look the smartest, which they preferred over another, making their own choices.

The personalities came out: no, not that one, I don’t like that color; maybe something more adult, more mature–these loafers; look at these sneakers, I’m going to be the talk of school with these. And, the choices continued at Mr. Price in the Nakumatt and a boutique shop near city square. This one, not that one. Jo-el-o, what do you think? Walking out of fitting rooms like catwalks, taking pictures on the digital camera and immediately reviewing how it makes them look. Aya! Have you seen me?

Brown or black?

And, they stayed within their budgets, as I marked down receipt after receipt. They shined. They picked shoes practically; they picked blouses because they were vibrant with color. And, each one picked whatever they bought as who they are.

Lunch at Khana Kazana, easily my personally favorite restaurant in Kampala, was an adventure, too. The prayer before the meal contained something along the lines of “And, God, please don’t let this new food upset our stomachs.” But, we played it safe: buttered nan, vegetable rice, Chicken Tikka Masala, Vegetable Korma–no ghee, avoided cheeses of all kinds. And, the kids drank every soda, polished the plates, and leaned back in their chairs, completely full.

Doing the Dew

And, it’d be cliché to say that it was as much a gift to them as it was to me to see them so satisfied and outfitted. It’d be trite, because it’s not that simply put that what’s done to someone else is done to you; it’s not all Karma and the Golden Rule. But, it can be as simple as the gift is beauty, to see a child whose never been told in her whole life that she’ll amount to something, that she deserves better than her circumstances would have of her, that that same girl could lace up a new pair of shoes, pull on a new blouse and you could say: “yours.”

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