Goals for Uganda.

I started this blog to communicate some and also to maybe process some of the issues and moments in Uganda. Partly because I know they will be memorable but also because it is a way for people to keep in touch with me and my family while I am there. I called it dreams and nightmares because in my western thinking this is what I was projecting onto Uganda. But as life continued and my trip was delayed and delayed again, I thought to myself, "who am I kidding, Uganda is not the nightmare, this, here right now is the nightmare."

And so I began to write about the here and the now--in the U.S.

Some have asked about what my goals are in going to Uganda.

1. I will be going to reunite with my husband and the father of my twins. The girls will be seeing Daddy for the first time in person.

2. I will be assessing the over-all situation in Uganda. I was there in 2011. I have no idea what has changed. I am more than willing to entertain the possibility of living there long term. Some of the details that I will have to work out is how we are going to live there, if we are.

3. What will I be doing there? First, I will rest. I haven't rested or taken a break or a vacation, since 2009. Then I will look around. I will look for job opportunities for an individual like me. I will look for situations and organizations where I can be of service. I will help my husband in his efforts to run his business and build an institute. We may be looking into doing some large scale farming. Uganda has tons of needs but it also has a multitude of organizations intending to make a difference. I intend to first establish my own existence there, if it is possible, as I look around and try for improving and enriching the lives of others around me. Perhaps. Just maybe, I might be able to make a huge impact for the better. I'll shoot for it. But I know that I'm not that awesome or that big of a mover and a shaker.

4. My husband will make sure I have unlimited internet access for the first month. That will cost about $100 and it may not necessarily be unlimited because if the power goes out, I will be limited. I will use the internet to do some research and to keep in touch with friends and family in the U.S.

5. I intend to live like a Ugandan in as many ways as possible. I will work on learning the language. I will work on building local friendships. I won't be going there to live like an American in a foreign place. I won't have a car. I won't have any plumbing in my house unless I build a system myself. My husband and I will farm and grow our own food. We don't have a refrigerator. We don't have the multitude of conveniences we have here. But that is okay. People who are close to me, as well as the Water Company and the Electric Company, we know that I have tried living like that here. It's interesting and it is doable.

For all those that are the help and support.

I sometimes hear women talk about how their husband wasn’t there for them or wasn’t doing enough for them during the birth of their children. The husband often was stressed about the financial pressure of the new dependent. He was supportive in that he worked over-time at the job to bring in more money. He did useful and helpful things. But the thing that looms large in a pregnant lady’s mind as she is sitting on the couch and can’t get out is that he was supposed to be home at 5:00 pm and he isn’t. Now, I have to pee, my whole body is screaming in pain and I don’t have anyone to help me get out of this couch.

My story is like this in that I was the pregnant lady but I had volunteers come to help me in place of the husband. The not so good part about that is that truly nobody or a massive amount of people giving even a fair amount of support would barely make up for the support of a missing husband. I’ve encountered triplet Moms who are suddenly single and the only way the babies are raised is by another individual stepping in to help Mom full time. One meal a week for a year is a tremendous commitment from someone but the truth is for the single mom you’ve got 6 more days a week to go and then there is all the other stuff that has to happen as well. The point is not that the volunteer is negligible; it is that the partner living in the house is irreplaceable.

I truly did get help from people. People brought food. The neighbor donated an old computer and set it up so I could have internet and I used it to find organizations and loans to fix the broken things in the house. A church group came to clean the yard in the spring. A friend brought me to the hospital and was with me during the C-section. She gave up her whole day and she helped me celebrate it when all I wanted to do was pretend it wasn’t happening this way. She was my advocate and told my story to the church group who donated money to buy the baby supplies. Through that connection I met one of the biggest supporters of all time, a woman who herself went through single mothering of young children. She came with her daughter twice a week for two years, bringing dinner and quiet support. One of my sisters took the babies every other weekend when they were infants. The other sister moved into the house when the twins were toddlers and stayed for a year. I would not have survived that winter had she not been there. People came and cleaned the house here and there. My mom cleaned the house while I was in the hospital. A friend came over and did daycare for me when I first started working. Other friends helped at the hospital and were informational resources. The twin club I joined was truly a blessing. Strangers and friends alike giving clothes. My married sister offering to take the twins for a week so I could rest and do the dangerous repairs around the house.

This was all amazing.

While other parts of my story focus on the hardship of the moment and the injustice people in my situation experience, I would never want those who contributed and sacrificed so much to feel inadequate because they couldn’t make it go away for me. The load was lightened. I was tremendously grateful. Here we focus on how redemptive that is. In the other posts I focus on the injustice and the social sins we’ve gotten tangled up in.

My Story

As for my story, there’s a part of it that people remember which makes them really sad and the part that I remember, because that’s who I know myself to be. I graduated with a M.A. in theology because I love philosophy and faith and have a passion to seek out the peoples of the world and love and serve them. I also have a degree in chemistry because I wanted my life to be grounded in something tangible and helpful to humanity. This is the part that I remember about myself and who I know myself to be on top of the fact that I am almost always successful at most of the things I need to fix, whether it is home repairs, running, then closing a restaurant, business paperwork and taxes. I’m a writer, a scholar, a teacher and humanitarian. This is who I know myself to be.

Most recently, however, there is the sad story of my life that seems to loom larger than all that I could have accomplished: the story of my husband who was abruptly taken out of our business one morning while we were opening the restaurant. ICE officials came and got him and not even two whole months later, he was deported. Sometime during those two months, I ran the restaurant. I got married to him in a prison. I hired a lawyer to save him from deportation, to no avail. I then began constructing a path to closing down the business. I found a job just to make some quick income. I organized a trip to his country and by June I saw my husband at the airport, for the first time since our quick jail-house ceremony. We had a real wedding there, full of family rivalry and fun and our hearts healed a little. We knew I might become pregnant, while there but decided it wasn’t too much to budget for—of course we were calculating singleton figures. I stayed for 2-3 months, then returned because I knew I was pregnant and after the hell I had to pay for being white in the heart of Africa, I wasn’t about to give birth there. I came back to US and began job hunting. My optimism changed when I got my first sonogram and there were twins. After a few pregnant interviews, I knew I was defeated and I began to research options in public assistance. I was happy about twins and my husband was also but the reality of the difficulty of it all hit me every day as I boarded the bus for a temp job I managed to land during my second trimester. I also began working on an emergency Visa application to get my husband here to help me for what I knew would be the challenge of a lifetime.

Forward, 8 months, after being admitted to the hospital numerous times for premature labor, I delivered the twins a month early, due to pre-eclampsia and HELLP syndrome. Sadly, all that and near death, wasn’t emergency enough to grant my husband a visa. So, I’ve carried on. I’ve been recovering. I’ve raised two babies, worked temp jobs, saved all my dimes for airfare and have been trying very hard to get the house packed-up, repaired and ready for rental. That’s where I am at today.

Somewhere in the midst of all this is the happier side of the fairytale. Somehow I will one day see my husband again and he will meet his twin girls for the first time. Some day I will have enough space in my mind to look back and appreciate the people who came alongside to help. But right now it is like a marathon, the focus is one goal.

Welfare State

To people who have been indoctrinated by propaganda concerning welfare (state assistance)…

… welfare is where the government pays all your bills while you sit on your lazy ass and do nothing but eat food purchased by food stamps.

… there is government assistance that is out there that people become dependent on and that the taxpayers slave away to pay

… or those who say that before you put people on government assistance; they should be subject to a drug test.

I used to be as ignorant as the next person when it came to knowing what kinds of government assistance there is. Then, I got laid off, became pregnant with twins and immigration refused to allow my husband to enter the country even for the severe emergency that became the birth of my twin daughters.

I knew things would be rough, even with my husband present. But I knew I would at least survive, if he was with me. However, the chances of having him get a Visa were slim and I had to make alternative plans if he was denied. I drafted a plan and a budget for before and after the twins were born and I handed it out to family members at Thanksgiving and Christmas. It was met with kindness and some skepticism but largely, I don’t think anyone realized the true health risks I faced in birthing twins. My family only started to realize how serious things were, when I began to end up in the hospital repeatedly. Everything climaxed when I finally had an emergency C-section and had to stay in the hospital because those in charge of releasing me wouldn’t because they knew I would be going home as the sole care provider, and I was not well enough to do it. By then it was too late to move in with a brother or sister, as it would have required moving across the country.

Needless to say, if the sole care provider of preemie infants is still laid off and too ill to work or look for a job, there is no income into that household. Who is going to put a roof over their head? People helped here and there and gave baby gifts and that part was all good. I was tremendously grateful. But as things progressed and I began searching for jobs and applying, I saw the writing on the wall, when stumbled out the door to an interview and I nearly passed out. This was just the beginning of the day, not the end. How was I supposed to work to my fullest of potential and keep a job if I was exhausted at 10 am before I even got to the interview? Needless to say I didn’t get that job, nor the next and the next.

I had begun to research state assistance (welfare), while I was working, even before I gave birth. I researched it as a last ditch option and a worst case scenario. And for The Visa application for my husband, I spelled out how much it would cost the government to support me in my husband’s absence. It may be a shocker but the truth of the matter is that to go on the maximum benefit, government program, for my family of 3 it would cost the government a direct cash amount of $1,005/month. I am quoting DHS’s 2013 informational flier. Note that this number has increased ever so slightly from the 2011 number I was quoted before my babes were born.

A family of three — two children, one adult — with no other income can receive $532 in cash and $473 in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program support monthly. 

https://edocs.dhs.state.mn.us/lfserver/Public/DHS-4737-ENG

This might be another ingenious observation but there is no housing available for $532/month. Further, this is assuming you buy nothing else but housing with your cash grant. Diapers, clothes, shampoo and any other baby items as well as energy costs and car insurance all need to remain in that $532/month budget or things will start looking pretty dismal really fast. This is 100% of what a person is eligible for.

Wow.

How does one live? Where does one live? Maybe I’ll sleep in the car with my preemies and use paper towels from the gas station to diaper them in the middle of winter.

…oh, and by the way, the food assistance kicks in right away when you apply but the cash assistance begins 2 months after your income drops to $0/month.

I wonder how many people, if forced to live within this budget, would call this kind of existence, “sitting on your ass and doing nothing?” If you were so unlucky to have found yourself in the $0/month situation for 2 months, your ass would be sitting in a homeless shelter or the street. I don’t call that easy living. I don’t call that desirable living. I certainly wouldn’t begrudge someone for living off a “government handout” in this situation. How could anyone in their right mind become dependent upon this lifestyle?

There were a number of people that encouraged me to apply for government assistance during this time. The way in which they encouraged me to do so, seemed to indicate that they thought my basic needs would be easily met. When you do the numbers, it simply doesn't balance out and it’s not because I can’t do the math because I’m on drugs.

It’s time people started to see the truth about welfare and government assistance. 80% of people on welfare are working  20 hrs/week or more. This is required in order to get a handout at all. The remainder are not able to work due to a health condition or disability. Only a very small percentage of people on welfare are able bodied and jobless. I was considered able bodied and jobless in my first and second trimester as well as immediately after I was discharged from the hospital, following my delivery.

Of those 80% that are working, the government pays more money to subsidize their daycare expenses (so they can work and not become lazy) than the individual actually generates by working. Here’s the break out. Single mom finds a min. wage job at $8/hr for 40 hrs/wk. Single mom brings home $300/week. Daycare cost for her 1 and 2 year old children are $310 and $270/wk respectively. Total $ 580/wk. Because the Mom’s wage is so low, the childcare assistance program will pay the entire daycare expense of $580/wk, so the Mom can earn $300/wk for her household, because this is preferable to paying the Mom $532 in cash assistance to stay at home and do nothing. This is the result of laws generated by misinformation and false propaganda.

Most people on welfare are struggling and they are frantically working their butt off trying to stay ahead of the crush of life. Read the rest of my blog. They live in the shadows, alone and afraid of ridicule. They either put on their best face and pretend to be someone in a different state of life until the demands are too much to bear, then they give up and succumb to their destitute existence. Meanwhile, those lucky enough to have married a well employed individual/well insured individual…lucky enough to have not been laid off or have chosen the education and career path currently hireable…they feel it their duty to insult those whose life (by no fault of their own)was plunged into a struggle.

I have to fight my emotions when I hear people who have been lucky/blessed enough to have a comfortable life then judge my struggle and attribute it to laziness. I want to be angry with them. I want to wish them a struggle that would humble their privileged opinions. And I know I work far more hours than they do and much harder. But I have to leave it to the Lord. I know what God has done in me. I know that God has visited me and provided for me in my struggle. perhaps some day they will get what they wished for and voted for. By that time, I will have moved on into a different stage of life and it may be them that now needs assistance.