“Ninety percent of life is just showing up”

“We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.” Mother Teresa

Not many can boast of an address in the leafy, lush, serene and quiet suburb of Nakasero just a stone throw away from the presidential state lodge and Garden City. A swimming pool, fully equipped laundry room and by that I mean washing machines and dryers that run all day just for your clothes to be clean and warm . The occupants don’t need anything, at least not materially. But don’t let the très magnifique and rosy picture fool you, at Bulrushes Watoto babies’ home, the kids who call this place home have had lives so heart wrecking that the almost brought Isaac, the one with a stance of a buffalo, to tears. Their short live have been more turbulent than many an adult will ever know.

Their stories are written in blood, rot and dejection. Take for example John a Mukiga whose parents wanted to rid themselves of him so badly that they had to travel to Gulu to dump him. But his story pales in comparison to Sarah’s who may never know how beautiful sunrises are because half her face and indeed her eyes were eaten by maggots while dumped in a pit latrine. Her story, I considered to be the embodiment of human resilience.

Or even Sari who won’t use her right hand to write not because she is naturally left-handed but because her right hand was broken and almost eaten by dogs which were attracted to her putrid, almost lifeless body as she lay beneath heaps of rubbish where she had been dumped so early into life on earth that her umbilical cord was still attached.

Sam the triplet will have no father figure to teach him cope with heart breaks and girls but will have to do with his sisters’ advice.

Every heartbeat at bulrushes is a reminder and pays tribute to the many that did not make it. Most drowned in human waste or suffocated by the polythene bags they were tied into or starved to death while everyone else was too busy to notice the anomaly at the rubbish heap. And that is not the worst, u will shudder at the thought of those who were not allowed to see the light of day because they were shredded into pieces within the womb. Well like I mentioned they don’t need anything material but could use all the love they can get, they crave to be held and smiled at. For them all u can do is show up and be there even for a while after all “ninety percent of life is just showing up”.

The IJM community outreach team showed up and not only held babies but did work around the home including general cleaning, bottle-feeding which Phillip still refers to as breastfeeding when narrating his story. Grace would not let go of Arafat when the time came for to say bye. Truly these babies had etched themselves onto our hearts in the short time we were there.

Thanks to all who “showed up”

“And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink.”