Solomon's Story

Yesterday I was invited to join one of the people who works with YES Uganda go visit a family they support, and who I now help sponsor. So I tagged along with David, and we head out to a village north of Fort Portal, about a 20 minute drive. When we arrived at a small mud brick house on a small piece of land. This is where I met Solomon.
Solomon is 16 years old, but lost his mother and father when he was young. He and his 7 brothers and sister ended up living with his maternal grandmother on this small piece of land. She struggled to provide enough food for them, as their land does not produce large quantities of food. When he arrived at YES Uganda, Carol described him as suffering greatly from malnutrition, and his hands and feet were infected with "jiggers" a type of parasite. So YES Uganda came in to help this family, built them a bore hole for water and repaired the home, and paid for the children to attend school. Solomon is now in about grade 9 and is at the top of his class. He is a strong, silent type, an old soul. You can see in his eyes that he has had a hard life, but you can also see that he has deep wells of strenght that keep him going to help support and care for his brothers and sisters. He told me that his favourite subject in school is Biology- they study anatomy and physiology.. and he hopes to be a doctor. If he keeps his marks up, he will probably be able to win a scholarship for University.
The recently tragic part of his story is that his grandmother was murdered by his uncle a few moths ago. Apparently the uncle has a drinking problem and came one day to the home in a drunken rage, and accused the grandmother of hiding money from him. He beat her to death. So now at 16, Solomon is the lone head of the family. They burried the grandmother in the garden next to the house, and I saw her small grave. The uncle was chased out of the village, and has not returned. If he does return, Carol informs me that he will either be chased out of the village again, or killed. They reported the murder to the police, but as you can imagine there is not really any type of legitimate police service out in the villages. The police did not do anything, because his grandmother was just a poor, old woman.
So Solomon goes on. He attends a boarding school, so when he is in school the 6 other younger children are cared for by foster parents Carol has found for them in town. One of the foster parents is the security guard at their offices, and the other is a woman who works as a counsellor at the offices. Solomon was off on holidays between semesters, so that is why we found him and his brothers at home, trying to tend their land and keep the weeds under control. Now there is no one to tend the land when they are away, so you could see that the garden was not producing much food, and the banana fuits were very small, as the trees were not getting their regular pruning. But the boys were out working hard when we came to call on them, and trying to cook some matooke over a fire.
We visited with them for some time, and Solomon's eyes widened when I tried to describe my home city - he was curious what my city was like. He knew about ice hockey and where Alberta was. They study geography in school and know all the provinces and major cities of Canada!
We left the boys with some supplies, soap, toothpaste/toothbrushes and some snacks. Solomon said he would not eat the buscuits because they hurt his teeth. I think he has some infected teeth/or cavities, but there are no dentists to speak of here.
So as we were leaving, Solomon came up to me and thanked me gratiously for visiting him, and that he would pray for me, that I would be safe, and he thanked me again. It made the tears start flowing, because he was so genuine, and I felt like saying "this is the absolute least I could possibly do!" It was difficult to find words to express my feelings, and I wished I had had the strength to say that I was so sorry for his loss, but I could not - or else I'd be a mess crying even more, and I did not want to scare the little boys! So I just gave him a hug, and told him to keep up the great work he was doing, and that I'd be praying for him as well.

I took some pictures of the boys and thier home, but this internet connection is too painfully slow to load them today, but maybe on Monday I will be able to put them up for you to see.