This is a picture of Jordan and I completely surrounded by dozens of little African children. I have this picture on my cubicle wall so that I can see it every day. It makes my insides light up b/c I remember their fascination with the "muzungu" (white people) and I recall so many other memories with the children. For many of these small children it was their very first time to see a white person. There was one afternoon as we left our hotel that we waved to all the little kids across the street. All of the kids are waving and shouting with excitement, "Muzungu! Muzungu!" One little boy burst into tears and started screaming. He had never seen white people before and he was so scared.
This is my most favorite picture of us from our Uganda trip. I remember feeling all the kids pressing in just to get close to us. Some were even shoved out of the way. If you can see, there is one boy with his arm around my neck and another boy is reaching out to touch my hair. They simply LOVE and they look into your eyes with an anticipation of hope; hope that you are there to change their poverty situation; hope that you can give them $20 to pay for their school fees for a year; hope that you will love them b/c their parents died of AIDS and they have no one else; hope that you can buy them medicine to treat the malaria that they will otherwise die from... Those are the thoughts that break my heart and cause me to want to do more but for now I can look at this picture and remember their smiles and know that for one small moment they were happy and I played a small part in it. That alone is worth it all!
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