A Beautiful Celebration for Butogonha

Dancers perform in front of the new school buildings.

Butogonha dedication day - a day that will be memorable for a long time in the minds of all who were present for the school dedication. This village was in a dilapidated state just 2 years ago, roof collapsed in after a storm and students unable to afford even a pencil. That is now juxtaposed by the beautiful, new school compound and hordes of students who greeted us with a parade before the school dedication – with full brass band and an acrobatics team included!

​The whole community came together to say thank you to the Hearts & Hope team and we want to extend that thank you to all who made this possible in just 2 years. Thank you to Kim Salls for having a vision for these students and enabling that vision to be fulfilled. Thank you to Messiah Lutheran for coming together and sponsoring so many sweet students that now fill the classrooms! What a joy and blessing it was to witness this whole experience.
 
To give you all a better idea of the “before” story of Butogonha, formally known as Namwendwa, here is an excerpt from a journal entry that one of our US staff members wrote on her very first trip to Butogonha (and Uganda!). 

 ​"Namwendwa. We arrived at the worst possible time - the tail end of a funeral ceremony for a young child. What right did we, primarily strangers and foreigners, have to be present during a community's sacred time of grieving? I was already asking Nicholas if we should leave, if it was wrong for us to be there, when some of the villagers started approaching us. They responded with nothing but grace and warmth, their children welcoming us with song, dance, and a kindness that we couldn't have deserved. While the children were just as bright, joyful and engaging, it seemed that there were some salient differences between Namwendwa and the Hearts & Hope sponsored villages.

The former state of the classroom in Butogonha.

 Unlike the strong, furnished Hearts and Hope schools, the school in Namwendwa was a rickety, stick-structure with dirt floors and no sign of furniture, let alone textbooks or other school supplies. Instead of clean uniforms, many of the children were wearing shirts that were ripped and torn, revealing bellies bloated by deep hunger. As I looked around the smiling faces and sparse structures, my mind couldn't help but start to wander.

What will it take for these little ones to know the feeling of a full tummy? For their fingers to grip pens and pencils and their eager minds to open to the worlds of arithmetic, language, and science? For their parents to have access to tools that will allow them to break through the bonds of poverty? What has to happen to prevent another parent from losing their child from a death that could have easily been prevented?

Historically, these are the kinds of questions that can plague my mind, weigh on my heart, and seem to paralyze me with despair and helplessness at the challenges and injustices that are stacked up against this community. It's not really until now, while I write this, that I'm realizing (with a bit of surprise) that I don't feel that way this time. I don't feel helpless. If anything, I feel HOPEFUL.

​The people of Namwendwa are strong, beautiful, intelligent and resilient people. The other villages I'm coming to love have overcome similar difficulties and continue to develop and improve. While I don't know whether or not I will get to see Namwendwa develop in the next few years, I am thankful to bear witness to even this moment.

Looking through my western eyes, it's easy to get stuck on what is missing. I forget to revel in how MUCH of the most important things are already here - love, compassion, community, intentionality, deep relationships, resourcefulness, creativity, spiritual depth, generosity and natural beauty. Things that some of my American friends have only dreamt of and never fully experienced. Depth even I've only dreamt of having in my own life. Thanks to the progress in the other Hearts & Hope villages, I’ve seen what can happen when you place even the smallest resources into the hands of those who are eager to use them. The investment is amazing.

There's no real way to tell what will happen in Namwendwa or many of the villages just like it, but I have hope that change is coming, that transformation is already taking place.”

Indeed, the seeds of transformation were planted, and have now bloomed into something beautiful for these beautiful children and the future of the whole Butogonha community. 

A full classroom full of smiling faces!

Some "smart" students with the deputy head teacher.