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This is a paper I wrote for my English class this session. It's a narrative essay. I'm not the strongest writer but I thought this was a good first attempt. It's also a story that means a lot to me personally and I'm not sure all my friends would have heard it before.

Making a Connection With Happiness

It was fall of 1998 and the beginning of the rainy season when I arrived in a very hot and humid airport on the northern shore of Lake Victoria in Uganda. Travelling with me was my beautiful bride of 3 months and a team of our friends from our local church. I came expecting to build an orphanage, to feel good about helping others and to experience a piece of African culture. Instead I left with a life lesson I will never forget, that regardless of our circumstance, happiness, true happiness, comes from making connections with the people around us.

After the blurry passing of the first day, burdened with sleep deprivation and jet lag I awoke on Monday morning, full of energy and ready to take on a new experience. This is when I met Godfrey. Godfrey was our driver, and for me, he soon become much, much more. Being the biggest person in our group I always sat in the front of the van we used for transportation. This meant I sat with Godfrey, and as we passed through the strange and chaotic streets of Kampala I would bombard my new friend with a deluge of questions. He taught me key phrases in Luganda, the local language, and pointed out points-of-interest and the history behind them. By the end of the second week, Godfrey and I were inseparable, often to the dismay of my wife. So it was on one particular Saturday that I had gone into the main shopping district in Kampala to walk around. The streets were as chaotic as ever, dirty diesel exhaust settled on pedestrians who scampered across the streets haphazardly, barely avoiding the traffic which did not brake or even slow for them. Distracted with the chaos around me, I forgot myself and stepped out into the road. In an instant Godfrey’s warm firm hand was on my shoulder pulling me back onto the sidewalk just as a van sped by in the exact spot my body had just occupied, I had looked the wrong way. As I turned to Godfrey I felt a surge of emotions, amongst them a really strong sense of happiness, and I knew, that the connection I had made with Godfrey had saved my life and changed me forever.

The team I arrived in Uganda with had been together for almost 8 months. We had done all sorts of training and team building and had grown close. We had experienced the beauty of the Ugandan countryside and it’s people, seen the ravaging effects of AIDS on a parentless generation of children and had been exposed to the devastating hangover of a ruthless military dictator. Despite experiencing all these things, it was the times spent together, in an old undecorated guesthouse on the edge of the city where true connection occurred. The impact of this time is remembered in friendships that were deepened 13,000 kilometres from home. Whether it was sharing a taste of home - a box of Kraft Dinner, encouraging our spiritual growth during a group bible study or the joint efforts in slaying the enormous cockroaches that descended upon us in the evening. It was the connections with my teammates, which provided the true happiness and lasting joy of my adventure.

There are memories in my life that bring an instant emotional response. The children of the Watoto Orphanage Project on the outskirts of Kampala are one of those memories. I would arrive at the orphanage site daily around 8:00AM and work throughout the day in the blistering heat and suffocating humidity. We would stop only briefly to eat lunch and would work again until 5:00PM when Godfrey would come to pick us up and take us back to our guesthouse. There was very little time for interaction. Over the almost 3 weeks that we were there, we slowly built a relationship with the children. Often at lunch they would come and watch me, stroking my white skin or grabbing my arm hair whenever I got close enough. It was a day like that, overcast and humid but stifling hot, that 5:00 came and Godfrey did not come. I had stopped working for the day and we had put our tools away. We waited near the road at the top of the site and the children joined us. I spoke in my broken Luganda and they responded in what English they knew. That’s when I saw the cutest little girl just staring at me; she was 7 or 8, had black braids down to her shoulders and wore the biggest smile I had ever seen. I motioned to her, “Would you like to play?” I asked. “Yes,” she replied with a rewarding smile. So I picked her up and threw her into the air as high as I could. Looks of fear and jubilation all mixed together crossed her face and when I caught her, she looked up at me with her deep brown eyes and asked, “Again?” Not only did I throw her up again, but also I tossed, wrestled and hugged the other 30 children who quickly formed a line at my feet. I realized in that moment, that black or white, rich or poor, Canadian or African, it is the need to love and be loved that binds us together.

My memories of Africa have faded. I don’t recall the rich greens, browns and reds of the coffee and tea fields like I once did. The memories of the bombed out schools are a muted reality and no longer seem as real to me. Pictures remind me of what I saw, but they do not bring me happiness. True happiness does not come from my African batik or my inflated sense of altruism. But rather, when I think of Godfrey, my teammates, or those children, and I remember the connections we made, my heart remembers. And I am happy.

- RoneTyne

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