The battle of good & evil

Here's a post my friend Julie wrote - I'll update later with some of my reflections, but wanted to share these thoughts as they've been heavy on our hearts this week!

(referring to a phone call received late one evening…) In all my 3 years of knowing Solomon, I’ve never heard that tone before. He used all the credit on his phone to call me to come right away. ‘I even don’t know what to do… I’m feeling so bad… the landlord refuses to listen… he is here and taking Mama Cissy’s things…’ I had no idea what was going on but I’ve never know Solomon to be upset, so I turned around and headed in the opposite direction than home, to Thread of Life sew shop.

I arrived to find Solomon with his arms crossed inside shop, while 2 men were relaying things from inside out into the street. The landlord (whom I’ve never met because he’s never actually been around to care about his tenants) was standing beside his car in the street. Both of them too furious to talk to each other anymore. So calmly I listened to Mr. landlord, nodding to his ludicrous reasons for kicking this women, Cissy, from Solomon’s shop. Then I went to Solomon, he was so furious about what was happening he couldn’t even think straight.

[If I were to write a manual for living & working in Uganda] I will talk about how there is ‘Good’ and there is ‘Evil’ in Uganda. Evil seeks to oppress, corrupt, destroy and frustrate the progress of Good. Good is weary but she endures because her sole purpose is to bring Life and Love to the broken, the reward is so great that it cannot be measured or found in this world. It’s incredibly black and white, and unlike America you don’t find much grey area to float along in.

Solomon is the manager of Thread of Life sew shop. He has been a part of dozens of slum women lives who have come through the TOL program. Whatever ‘it’ is… he gets it. He knows his job is more than teaching destitute to sew and make beaded necklaces – he is the church to all these women. When their kid is dying of malaria, when they ran out of food the week before, when they have no where else to go, they know where to find him – he doesn’t take that lightly. He represents the Good in this place with dignity and gentleness; he is honestly the most gentle man I know.

Mr. Landlord is an aggressive and greedy man. To me he represents the corruption and oppression that people of poverty are imprisoned by. He over charges on every single bill, he never responds when the water hasn’t been working for months and the ceiling is caving in (because he built rooms on the roof) and hassles Solomon every chance he gets – yet Solomon remains humble and compliant because being kicked out of the 3-room shop would be unthinkable…

Tonight when the Mr. Landlord came threatening to kick him out and ordered men to take Mama Cissy things into the street, Solomon stood up to him and fought back. It wasn’t fair that he flex his muscles of authority whenever he felt like, it wasn’t fair that this mother and her child had no where else to go for a few days, it wasn’t fair that her daughter Recheal was killed one year ago and it isn’t fair that she’s dying of AIDS … the list continues.

Her youngest daughter, Cathy, is 4 now and stays with her. She is the only one of her 4 (now 3) children that hasn’t gone to live in the Children’s Home. I can’t help but wonder if the situation now would even be happening if Rech hadn’t died last year – she was her mother’s greatest advocate. Now, little Cathy just stands in the corner watching, as we brought back all of her mothers things from off the street without saying a word. It amazes me how much she looks like Recheal, same strong stature, same exact face … what a reminder to me to keep fighting for Mama Cissy on Recheal behalf.

I was proud of Solomon that night for standing his ground. I really didn’t care about the landlord and all his accusations … There was no negotiating this time. We simply carried all the things back inside while he watched us and he didn’t argue because I think he recognized injustice in himself. He just drove away and I haven’t seen him since.

In my manual I would say that “to look after orphans and widows in there distress” are just words that are spoken. Security and stability are only things you hear. Community, Love, Relationships are only terms we use in ‘CLD orientation’. They all mean nothing until inaction becomes action, and that is a choice we have to make on our own. For me it’s a conscious decision not to keep walking, but for Solomon it’s a lifestyle – like how could you do anything but love. After laying out the mat on the floor between the sewing machines and saying good night to Cathy and Mama Cissy I wondered if this was the purest form of ‘religion’ … standing there in a true church.

“It’s just not fair.” I hear that often during our morning devotions at the volunteer-house. I’ve wondered why Solomon never says that. Before leaving that night I was trying to encourage him, at that point I was more concerned with Solomon being so disheartened than if Mr. Landlord was feeling disrespected or undermined. Stability is something he has to be to these women. I assured him no matter what happens he will never be alone, that there is an entire community that loves him and this ministry. I reminded him of our last TOL meeting – we talked about buying place, no more renting. To just keep working hard and maybe, depending on how Christmas sales go, we can move to a new shop sooner than we think.

The funny thing about a manual is that if it could be written, if someone figured out ‘how to help’ that would mean Africa didn’t need us to be here. I don’t think anyone has figured it out otherwise things would be better by now.

In this manual (that I won’t be writing) there will be a small clause on the very last page, because honestly … it’s only in those moments where nothing else matters, no guidelines or expectations, when you begin experience who you are and what you believe in. Only when you can’t consider anything else but love does Good have a fighting chance.

So I’m left with little advise to give because what I conclude for today may not hold true tomorrow, this is an unpredictable land where sometime Evil distorts the plan. Yesterday I wrote down the program for today, but it didn’t go at all as planned because yesterday I didn’t know that Nakato would die in the night … the 3 year old daughter to Sula, one of our staff at the volunteers house. Yesterday I didn’t know we’d be helping to plan a funeral rather than the original program to take her and Sula to the hospital to get some new tests done today.

I just hope I can continue to see all of this as an opportunity to give Good a fighting chance, to never put following Jesus in manual because the path is unpredictable, there are no rules, there is no right way… yet the reward can’t even be measured

Love,
Julie