Africa: Part 9 "First Night at Canaan's"

Evelyn in blue

 The evening after our home visits with Return Ministries, we loaded onto our bus driven by Abus and headed to Jinja where Canaan's Children's Home is.  We still had two more ministries to meet, but this was to be our last place to settle in and call home. This had been the place our teammates that had been on previous trips had talked about since day one and to be honest that was the reason I wasn't as excited about it.  I guess my YL camp advice about not talking so much about previous trips was true.  It deflated the balloon for a lot of us on the trip to hear about Canaan's from day one as we were all trying to stay present and take in each day as it came.  Never the less, we arrived in the evening after a long day and were met by warm friendly children while we settled in the best we could to our new home.   As with the other places, the children chose their people as soon as we stepped off the bus.  I was chosen by two older girls but only Evelyn stayed with me the whole time.

 It's a good thing this was the end of our trip and we had seen a lot and were pretty much exhausted because it really was the toughest place to stay.  The accommodations would have seemed much more unreasonable if I was not so drained.  Health-wise I was feeling better at this point and now the exhaustion was settling in.  The things that would have made me cry if it had been the first day simply didn't phase me and looking back that is a miracle in itself.  The bathrooms were located in the back of the little house we stayed in, never had hot water, and there was no electricity in them.  Each stall had a "shower," toilet, and sink, but since the showers were actually just a spray head into a small basin with no curtain they left water all over the dirty cement floor and Mama Rebecca insisted we not wear shoes in the house.  Sigh... at this point I didn't care about dirty feet.  I hadn't felt clean since we entered Uganda and knew now that was a dream that could only be fulfilled once I was home again.  My roommate and I did luck out with the best room seeing as another rooms had some sort of snail creature growing on the wall and the teens had about 1 billion gnats and mosquitoes die over night in their room. NO JOKE, they had to get a broom to sweep them away and be able to see the floor... they COVERED everything.  Here's the thing I had realized by now though, the people who put us up here were giving us the very best of what they have.  None of the people we were serving, including the couple running the children's home, lived in such luxury as we were bunking in for the next few nights.  For this reason, I stayed grateful for my bed and didn't look around in dark corners for things I didn't want to see.

Back hallway to bathrooms

Path between our house and dinning hall

Beyond the conditions of our living area, this was emotionally the hardest place to stay.  On the other days, we would minister to a group and then go back to our guest house to rest up before the next day.  At Canaan's we stayed right on sight at the home.  We were awaken with the children singing outside our house and when you opened the door there were no shortage of children sitting and waiting for you.  Often after a meal or in the morning I would walk outside and find Evelyn waiting for me.  I would feel guilty for taking so long eating, texting with Neil in the dinning hall, or taking my time getting ready in the morning after seeing her waiting patiently for me.  I was exhausted after these days and found it very difficult to give of every moment I was not eating or sleeping.  You could tell who the very strong team members were or the ones that had been waiting the whole trip to be here because they would be up very late playing outside with the children and would rise early to go join them again.  I am a bit ashamed to say I was not among this crowd.  Much of me wanted to be, but I was conserving energy at this point and selfishly I was missing home and Ethiopia a bit.  I spent some free time looking through pictures, journaling, and starting to pack for home.  Poor Evelyn, I wondered if she regretted picking me that first day.

All of our shoes by the front door 

Going to bed that night, I was looking forward to a bit of an easier day ahead of us.  Tomorrow was Sunday and we would have church and our Nile Boat tour the next day.  It probably would have felt like a sabbath if we were staying anywhere else, but it was what it was.  I had no idea the morning that I was in for!