Uganda | Chayah House

While in Uganda last January (2013), my heart and eyes experienced things I will attempt to relay here.  Upon arrival, dehydrated after the near 36 hour trip from Los Angeles to Kampala, I found myself immediately heartbroken as our van pulled to a stop light where a small boy stepped forward, he couldn’t have been more than 3 years old, holding a can of some kind waiting for the passersby to give him change.  Had this been in the middle of the afternoon, the sadness would’ve been there but the fact that we arrived close to 2am this being my initial experience of Uganda, I began to unravel inside.

After a several hour drive to Jinja, where we would be staying for the next couple weeks, we arrived at a hotel, similar to what us living in Los Angeles would view a church retreat campground facility.  The beds were glorified twin sized cots with mosquito nets above, because as rumor has it, the primary mosquitos carrying malara are out at night… creatures of the darkness.  Since I’ve never had a mosquito bit in my life, and yes, I grew up in Oklahoma, this wasn’t a concern for me, but definitely something I saw the ill effects of first hand just hours later.

Meet Caroline, she and her sister Nevis are pictured below.  As one of my traveling partners Nicole and I stepped from the gate of the soon to be opened Chayah Children’s home, we were greeted by a little girl standing in the middle of the road, beckoning us into her world.  As we walked through the mud-dirt pathway, hedged about with tall green grass and made our way to a building similar to that of a storage space, Nevis called to her sister who came through a heavy metal door, with a deep cough.  As we sat with the girls on the concrete porch, c