The Jesuits graciously welcomed us at their Xavier House residence, providing a base camp from which to do our ministry: follow up on the computer labs we had installed for the Computers for Africa project.We rested and prepared for two days, then were off to Kalungu Girl’s Training Center to revisit the site of the first lab we installed in June 2000.

Engineer Tim, carrying his little black bag filled with light-up gizmos, hanks of wire, hubs, cables, switches, and tools, looked like Dr. Techno walking beneath a dense canopy of gray briar and red blossoms that covered the walkway leading to the computer lab. The lab was already providing income for the school, jobs for its graduates, and training for people in the village. This trip he teamed up with Herbert Busiku, the school’s new computer teacher, to upgrade and network the lab.

Tim’s mission was to work on the machines; mine was to listen to the people who used them and do other tasks to assist the effort. I hummed music and carried a notepad in my heart. By day, a gazillian goldfinches convened, debated and sang. At night the frogs took over, croaking up a hammering, deep-throated swell that almost drowned out the songs of students at choir practice.

Yet there was a pervasive disharmony amid this beauty. The women on staff at the school enjoyed talking. Sometimes we met singly, outside in the shade – sometimes indoors in a group. They told me stories about their lives, stories of war, sickness, poverty, and oppression.

“I am lucky.” said one. “I have a teaching job. My salary ($60 U.S. a month) supports my baby, my mom, and my nieces and nephews.”

Another told of hiding for her life. “It was night, pitch dark. I was covered in mosquitoes and couldn’t move, couldn’t make a sound because the rebels were only a few feet away. I was six years old when the killing began.”

And another told of trying to make a life for herself. “I don’t want to get married. Love can die. Education lives on. I am the only girl in the family to get an education. Here girls are to make babies and to do the work.”

Yet no one spoke to me without first expressing concern for America, asking if we were OK and offering condolences for what many called “that terrible thing.”

When Headmistress Sr. Noelina and I made a short trip off campus, I thought we were to meet with a few leaders of UWESO - Uganda Women’s Effort to Save Orphans.We arrived instead to find a score of widowed grandmothers, about 150 orphans packed into two trucks, and a few men. All had gathered to tell us in speeches, poems, songs, and drama about their struggle to survive and their efforts to keep families together. I pocketed their dream, a proposal for a new sewing center, and promised to try and help find a sponsor. Then we returned to Kalungu, carrying their expressions of sorrow for America.

The official language of Uganda is English. All over the country, smiling, animated children love to spout, “Hello,Mazungu (white person)! How are you?” and tell you, “I am fine!” The day after the UWESO meeting, I saw a young girl walking slowly, child in tow, up a road toward the coffee bean patch where I was taking pictures. She was uncustomarily silent.

Fr. Jim Strzok, SJ, helps unload computers in Uganda.

“Hello,” I said from the bushes, “How are you?” She paused, focused on her feet and whispered, “I am not fine.” I walked over and stood silently beside her. She turned away. “Why are you not fine?” I asked. “My mother died today,” she replied. I stood in stunned silence before offering my sympathy. Her father, too, had died several years ago. She was one more orphan. The girl waited until I returned from the school compound with a 10,000 shillings bill, equal to about $6. She dropped to her knees to kiss my feet.

Each day in Kalungu, Tim and Herbert kept a frenetic pace, cramming every possible bit of shared knowledge into their limited time. On the last day, they were in high spirits. Everything had gone well. The Sacred Heart sisters, too, were pleased, all smiles as they gathered to see us off.

Returning to our home base at Xavier House, some three hours and 80 miles of rutted roads away, I tackled washing our laundry by hand. It was a blue-soap and bare-knuckle affair to rid our clothes of Uganda’s red dust. Chores done, curiosity finally coaxed me beyond the gates of Xavier House.

Little children scurried from everywhere to stare, to wave, to run up and greet the out-of-town white lady rounding the block.When I stopped for a moment to get my bearings, a concerned woman approached.

Students gather around a computer screen in new lab.

“How long,” she asked, “will the war in America last? How long will America be fighting? Will many more people get hurt?” It took me a moment to catch on. She'd read the three-inch headlines in the morning paper: “America Declares War.” I believeshe thought there was hand-to-hand combat in U.S. streets. Her image of war was based on her firsthand experiences.

While Tim worked on Jesuit computers, Fr. Tony Wach, SJ, Xavier House superior, played several videos for me. The first described the plight of African widows and how all can be taken from a woman when her husband dies, even her children. That video angered me; the next one made me cry. It detailed the atrocities and abductions, over the past few years, of thousands of children in Gulu. Gulu is in northern Uganda where ebola has claimed so many lives, where, Fr. Tony tells me later, a single diocese has 400,000 displaced persons.

Ruth and Tim Leacock set up a newly refurbished computer for the St. Kizito High School in Mityana, Uganda.

We made two more stops before leaving Uganda. One was to set up a seven-computer lab at a Catholic high school. The other was to assess how we might help set up a lab at a state-run girls school. Then it was off to Tanzania before returning home.

The America of our return was still in grief, now clothed in her colors of red, white and blue. A neighbor hurried over to welcome us home and update us on the new terrorism: the anthrax scare. “Four people have already died!” he said. My heart sank. Each day 6,000 people die from AIDS in Africa.

It was all so unsettling, so crazy, so backward. Everywhere we went in Africa desperately poor people asked about America. They had little food, contaminated water, mud housing, and no jobs. There was no medicine for the dying, and minimal if any education for the children.

Generations bore the wounds of violence. And they asked, “How is America? How is America doing?” I would tell them “America was hurt badly, but she is getting better.” I believed America would recover. I wondered what power on Earth it would take for them to “get better” too.

I feel the grief and sadness of Sept. 11. It is, however, submerged in the deeper reality of a very real, terribly wounded world. I pray God will heal America’s heart. I pray she will mend and turn her energy outward, graced by God with a broader, more empathic understanding of all people who suffer.

God bless America. And God bless the world.