Jesuit Journeys
fall 2004

	Ruth Leacock
	Invitation

PHOTOS BY RUTH LEACOCK

An open ditch carrying raw sewage runs through a residential area in Kampala, Uganda.

Life can turn on a dime – or a question and an invitation – as it did four years ago when Fr. Jim Strzok, SJ overheard my husband, Tim Leacock, remark that his employer, the Union Pacific Railroad Company, was buying new computers and donating their old PCs to charitable organizations.

“What about Africa?” asked Fr. Strzok, whom we knew from our involvement with the Jesuits as Ignatian Associates.

Two eastern Africa Jesuits studying in Omaha, several local Jesuits and friends, and a group of Creighton Prep students helped recondition that first shipment of more than 50 PCs. We packed them up into a shipping container with piles of donated clothing and, at Fr. Strzok’s invitation, accompanied the shipment to Uganda.

That was our first journey to help transplant used computers in eastern Africa and meet some of the folks who would use them. I made my fourth trip in June, this time with a group of students from Prep, which has become an integral part of our growing Computers for Africa ministry.

All told, Prep has helped CFA refurbish more than 700 computers for 40 African communities. Two more schools in Omaha recently joined the project. We are also developing a “how-to” template so other cities can follow our lead. Moreover, some CFA beneficiaries in Africa have formed their own non-profits to expand internet access for the students and people they serve. This fall, Tim and I are planning to entrust our work on this side of the ocean to others, inviting them to take over the work here while we move to Uganda and continue our work there.

An open ditch carrying raw sewage runs through a residential area in Kampala, Uganda.

But not before Prep’s first student delegation of six students completed the eight-time-zone journey under the watchful eye of Sue Stein, the school’s CFA Club advisor who organized, lobbied for, and invited club members to make the trip.

For 11 days these young men left their familiar world of fast food, reliable electricity, paved roads, and clean water to experience Africa. Along the way they saw and felt things they could not have anticipated while exploring the deeper, personal mystery of how Africa’s countryside, cities, and people would touch their hearts in unexpected ways.

And at journey’s end, they carried home an important message from their hosts: Thank you for loving us.

	Sue Stein
	Family

“How are you, our visitors? You are welcome very much.” With gracious chants of this nature, school communities in Uganda greeted Creighton Prep’s Computers for Africa delegation. I became CFA’s school moderator in 2001, and dreamt early on of organizing a service trip to eastern Africa.

Although I don’t know much (perhaps anything) about the innards of a computer, I teach a unit on African literature and the club seemed a natural way to blend my academic interest with the Ignatian call to justice.

This year the dream of a trip became a reality with a major assist from CFA’s part-time agent in Uganda, Herbert Busiku, who made most of the on-site arrangements and served as guide. He was indefatigable and so were the students as they visited schools, taught Frisbee to nuns, coached students in baseball, helped girls with their Saturday morning chores, and cheerfully endured power failures, cold showers, and bumpy roads. They danced with seemingly everyone they visited, including teens in a Muslim neighborhood and HIV positive clients at a clinic.

One night, we learned a song that captured the spirit of our intentions and our trip: “We are all one family/ One family are we….Blessed is our family.” The blessing of this trip was the invitation to be part of the beautiful family of east Africa.

On the flight home, the students wore their newly purchased African shirts. One had a gold heart embroidered on it, prompting me to recall Joseph Conrad’s bleak depiction of the Congo in Heart of Darkness. How in contrast it was to that golden heart, and how clearly my heart told me which was most emblematic of what we had witnessed on our two-week sojourn.

	Shane Sandhoefner
	Poverty

As much as I had read about and studied poverty, only after seeing it in Uganda, an experience that put me into a state of unequivocal, cognitive imbalance, did I realize just how bad some people have it – houses with no running water or electricity; no furniture; rusty corrugated roofs and wooden frames thinly covered with mud that erodes in the rain.

And then there are the slums: shacks that almost touch, with basically nothing inside many; sewage running through the streets; children without shoes or adequate nourishment. No peace or quiet or privacy. When people speak of such poverty in the U.S., they are usually met with an answer like: "We have it lucky here." That's a terrible excuse for letting human beings die.

We have the means to help, though whether we deserve them in the first place is another question. Regardless, right now we need to help these people, and others like them elsewhere, have their human rights met. In a world of finite resources, wealth for some means poverty for others. We have to sacrifice some of our comforts and excesses for the human rights and survival of other human beings.

Many people there are happy despite their poverty, but too many people use this happiness as an excuse to not help. There is no excuse for poverty. In the Bible at the last judgment (Mt 25:31-46), people are judged not in regards to going to Mass or praying or even religion, but on how they treated other human beings, particularly those in need. That's love.

	Michael Cunningham
	Open

One night, Fr. Stephen Msele, SJ, who runs a community project called UNDUGU, took us to one of the group’s cultural performances in the backyard of a tiny, shack-like home in an impoverished Muslimneighborhood in Kampala. Fr. Msele promotes peace and reconciliation, through community organization, good sportsmanship and economic development for different tribes, religions, and dozens of youth groups.

As we made our way to the performance area, a large group of children descended upon us and followed. During the performance, a little girl maybe 3 years old and dressed in a dirty, tattered nightshirt made sure she had a spot up front. She looked at me several times from her vantage point and captured my attention with her dark, piercing eyes – a look that made me feel like she could see right through – a look that caused me to do a lot of thinking.

I began asking myself many questions. What are you going to do now that you have seen all of this? Are you going to change the way you live? If you don’t, then isn’t this trip a waste? Are you going to be open to how all this might affect you or are you going to put up a facade to keep yourself from absorbing it all?

That little girl reminded me that if I were to make my experience worth something, I had to dive in and embrace what happens. Nothing would come from closing myself to Uganda’s struggling yet enriching culture and a people so deserving of the world’s attention.

	Matt Fielmeier
	Children

On the refrigerator at our lake house, my mom has a plaque that says “money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.” After meeting the children of Uganda, I better understand this message.

The thing that impressed me most was that even though the children we met did not have much money and wore mostly hand-me-down clothes, they seemed happy. I also admired how they made toys out of found objects like tires. They were grateful for what they had and were imaginative. They were not like some Americans who seem to be happy only if they possess luxury items and are devastated if they cannot.

The kids in Uganda also had an uplifting attitude, making us feel welcome. When we went to a slum area, I saw this positive attitude in the midst of horrific living conditions. The kids were so happy that people from America had come to see them and swarmed about us.

Rarely on our trip did kids ask for money, and, when they did, it was horrible to hear them cry out in such desperation. They made me understand that we need to be more aware of sharing our wealth, more thoughtful of others in need. I know that I can be very greedy, and now have learned and seen that my greed can have an impact elsewhere. I hope to do better by sharing and working in service to others.

The trip also taught me the importance of being open-minded and sensitive. It is a great thing to be able to want to help, but we need to respect other people’s cultures at the same time. We came back from this trip with so much more than we brought, and I hope we made a small difference in people’s lives.

They made a life-altering change in ours.

	Ronan Conlon
	Hopeful

After watching a DVD on a laptop one night, Herbert, our tour guide, mentioned he would be visiting his older brother in the hospital the next day. A friendship had developed between us, so I asked if I might tag along, and he agreed. Late the next afternoon we left for the heart of downtown Kampala and the hospital. As we approached the entrance, Herbert briefed me on his brother’s condition. Paul had been in the hospital for four months with AIDS, his right side paralyzed by two strokes. The night before, Herbert’s mother had called to say that Paul fell out of bed, badly cutting his head on an adjacent cart.

Seeing a full-grown man in such a deteriorated state moved me to tears. Herbert even told me that he wished his brother, rather than dying bit by bit, would have died in a freak car accident.

Shortly after experiencing this sorrowful sight, I was given an opportunity for hopefulness. The next day we visited an AIDS clinic where The AIDS Support Organization, or TASO, attempts to restore hope and improve the quality of life for people with HIV/AIDS. TASO was founded in 1987 by Dr. Noerine Kaleeba and 15 other colleagues most of whom have now passed away due to AIDS but were unified by common experiences they faced at a time of high stigma, ignorance and discrimination.

Maybe with organizations like TASO, fewer families like Herbert’s will be devastated by this horrible virus.

	Scott Elson
	Values

In the United States, our values make it difficult for most people to be content with what they have. Companies here use marketing techniques that target the public’s lack of contentment and cultivate a desire for more and better things. On the other hand, from what I saw, in Uganda people generally do not have the latest and the greatest, yet are often satisfied with the few possessions they do have.

It was mind-boggling for me to try to explain to Ugandans the American concept of always buying to keep up with the latest trends. They questioned me about why we would pay more for a specific brand when a less expensive brand might be just as good and serve the same function. From the logic of the eastern Africa perspective, people whose values dictate these types of needs and shopping habits are not very practical.

After my experience in Uganda, I feel that America has, for the most part, set aside the ideals of Jesus and his example of living a simple life and being content with less. I have learned that we should be a model for others and encourage our fellow Americans to not always feel they need more to be happy. We shouldn’t complain about gas prices. Our country is too well off for that.

The abundance and freedoms that we enjoy here in America are not rights but privileges that we should learn to cherish.

	Jim Kult
	Complacency

It is easy in the United States to be content with the way things are in the world today. Most of us have no reason to change our lifestyles since we are enjoying such fantastic economic benefits.

But the American Dream has a major shortcoming. It does not include being aware of the nightmares others face. Would we really suffer that much by helping underdeveloped countries achieve basic human rights? The United States has taken so much from the world. We need to consider giving back more than we do.

When I started helping out with Computers for Africa about a year and a half ago, I had no idea what an impact those refurbished computers had on the schools in Africa where we sent them. Now I’ve been to some of them. I’ve seen how the recipients, especially the students, are so grateful that some people in the United States care about them. The smiles on their faces, knowing they had many new job opportunities because of Computers for Africa, these things helped make my involvement feel worthwhile.

By going to Uganda, we showed students there that students in the United States care about the future of Africa, and we embodied the hope that the next generation of U.S. citizens will champion basic human rights for everyone. Andy Warhol said, “They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”

Together we can change the future of Africa and the rest of the world. Change is not easy, and it has to begin within each one of us.

Go to www.computers4africa.org to learn more about the Computers for Africa program and www.creightonprep.creighton.edu to learn more about Creighton Prep.

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