Pictures of the Christmas Cantata

 Waiting in the second waiting area.

The stage set up before the concert.  Notice all the trees, lights, spotlights, giant screen.  That pink thing in the middle is the waterfall.

 Breakdancing street cleaners on the side stage.

 Here they are in their bright street-clenar vests!

 Looking out at the audience.

 These were the ballet dancers who turned into break dancers.

Must have an angel choir of children.  Our kids thought they were about their own age; I thought they were quite a bit older!

Mary and Joseph on a side stage, with choir and stuff behind.

Christmas outfits for breakdancing.

Add captionSome more dancing.

 Snow for the grand finale!

This is one of the stories that Emerson and I were reading together.  He could read every other paragraph no problem!

More on the Christmas Cantata

When we considered older child adoption, we discussed many potential challenges and difficulties, including many of the things that we have faced.  But one thing we forgot to consider: musical taste.  We are a household that has earned degrees in music, both classical and jazz; there are two grand pianos in our living room, and another piano living with a friend; and other instruments include traditional drums and flutes from different cultures, classical strings (violins in several different sizes and a viola), and more guitar-like instruments than I can count.  What are we going to do with a child who has spent six years listening to this combination of hip-hop and pop music, complete with three chords and an insistent drumbeat, turned up way too loud.  How many years do we have to balance out this influence before she's old enough to buy her own music, and turn up the stereo on the back bedroom??!!

So Hibiscus thought the concert was awesome and amazing, and wants to go back today.  It was ridiculously loud and ridiculously dramatic, which seem to be the main criteria around here.  It seemed to be a lot of skits with really corny messages, that morphed into a song, and then all the secondary characters around the stage broke into some kind of crazy breakdancing.

For instance, a woman walks by talking on a cell phone and blowing her nose, and then drops the tissue on the ground.  Another woman is sitting on a bench, and reminds her to put the tissue in the bin.  Cell-phone woman rolls her eyes and walks away.  Nice Woman puts the tissue in the trash, and has a long discussion with the man sweeping the sidewalk about how important it is to put trash in the bin and take care of our beautiful city.  (Ugandans attitude towards trash seems to be a lot like that about lying, that they preach a lot about it but  honesty and picking up after oneself doesn't really enter into everyday behavior.)  Then it turns out that the sweeper-man is expecting his sister-in-law to call and announce the birth of his first child any moment, and that he and his wife have been waiting for a child for six years.  Then Nice Woman goes into a little spiel about how that reminds her of Jesus, and how the people waited for their Savior for all this time, but he finally came, and that is about God because of something-or-other, and then the Wise Men brought gifts and did you know that is where gift-giving was started?  Meanwhile, a spotlight comes on a little area on top of the high-rises, and we see Mary and Joseph struggling along, and the spotlight goes off and instantly they are on the side stage in a different spotlight, while the Wise Men appear as Nice Woman discusses them in the story.  Then suddenly they all burst out in song, and Joseph holds the Baby Jesus bundle above his head and swings around while singing this crazy exuberant pop-gospel stuff, and I am very glad that the bundle does not look like the shape that might mean an actual child is inside.  And a dozen other people come along in some kind of random costume and start dancing too.  And the song is not "We Three Kings" or anything that seems kind of related to the story, because "We Three Kings" would not be loud and excited enough, and I think it would be very difficult to add in the required bass and drum section to allow for the necessary switch into break-dancing.  Because everything has to turn into a break-dancing sequence.  Although they added speed and drums to several traditional carols in such a way to totally ruin them as "carols," let alone "traditional," which is apparently what Ugandans are used to because they all hummed and clapped along.

The program started with the (white) preacher enthusiastically welcoming everyone, and then we all sang "Silent Night" together.  The dancers had not yet appeared, so we only needed to go at about 170% of normal speed.  I don't know if Ugandans have a genetic predisposition towards alto-ness, but they certainly have a learned habit of singing in a really throaty voice.  This was funny because there is one sustained, moderately-high note in "Silent Night," and suddenly you could hear my voice singing it, because apparently I was the only person among the couple thousand who knew how to sustain a high note!

The main stage was this giant area in front, which when empty had a large waterfall surrounded by poinsettias and pine trees in the middle.  Then the couple-hundred voice choir filed in and filled most of the space in the middle in risers.  I think their purpose was mostly to look enthusiastic and sparkly, because they didn't do much more than hum in the background on a few songs.  There was a group song at the beginning and the end and they sang along with those ones, and the one at the end was some kind of enthusiastic praise-Jesus kind of thing, so some of them waved their hands around too.  There was a stage on a couple of levels in front of the choir, with a park bench and a few other props, and this is where most of the skits took place.  There was some kind of platform above the choir, which occasionally they used to dramatic effect, and a giant white screen all the way across the stage above that, which they used for different images.  Then there was another stage on either side of the main area, filled with pine trees.  The one towards our side had a manger, and Mary and Joseph appeared on it occasionally when someone sang about them.

I told a couple of the highlights of the cantata yesterday, so the story today is kind of out of order.  So I will go back to the beginning.  We were supposed to pick up our friends at 12:30, to arrive at 1 to wait for the 3:30 show.  But I knew we were on Africa time, so I didn't get everyone ready and over to their house until 1.  The children were all ready to jump in the car, but the mom wasn't, so we waited a while there.  Then we drove downtown.  Ggaba Road has been very slow lately, but it actually went smoothly, but then the traffic was just plain absolutely stopped once we got to town.  We could have walked it twice as fast, even with all seven children.  Finally, we got to the right place and found a parking spot.  Then it was time to wait.

First of all, we sat and waited under a series of giant tents set up outside, as the ushers gradually filled the tent sections in the order we would be allowed to leave them.  In another part of the parking lot there was a stand selling chapatis, popcorn, hot dogs, drinks, and other snacks, and behind the tents were a grand total of six porta-potties.  We arrived at 3 for the 3:00 performance, so we missed it, and waited the whole two hours for the next one -- but at least we were near the front of the line for that one.

About an hour after we started waiting, we were ushered out, through a church, and up to another room kind of to the side, which was also filled with plastic chairs.  It was the second room filled with people like that; I would estimate at least 300 people were in our room.  Luckily, we were up towards one corner, so the kids played with going back and forth out the edge.  I had a book in my backpack, so Emerson and I read that one together.  He was grumpy and tired and didn't really feel like reading, so he didn't want to read on his own.  We took turns reading the stories, switching at the paragraph for a while, until Emerson decided to switch every time we encountered the word "the."  That was interesting!  But inside my head, I was just amazed.  Back in September, he was still reading the Bob books and getting frustrated, and we were going very carefully over simple rules like what does "ea" say so he wouldn't be so frustrated.  Then something clicked, and he has been reading all kinds of children's books, like the paragraph-full Early Readers at school, and the Madeline books at home.  But this is a whole new level; this is totally text-dense read-aloud only, with unique vocabulary and small text.  He's gotten to the point where he wants to read something, and I say "okay, so read it," and he just starts, instead of worrying that it is too hard.  And really, most books in the world are mostly the same words over and over, so once you start in on it you can get a lot of the point, even if you have never yet encountered "vision" or "malicious."

I described sitting down to the concert, which was quite an adventure, so I will go back to some of the program.  The skits all started off corny, and ended with one of the characters delivering a little lesson about Jesus.  One of them was about difficulty, describing the basic story of the engagement, the census, and so forth, and that it was not actually simple or easy for them, and they probably kind of didn't feel happy all the time.  This was the LESSON.  There were definitely children in the audience, but it was not a children's show, and most of it seemed aimed towards the adults.  Is the assumption that adult Christians are not sure about when or why Joseph agreed to wed Mary, or that they had to travel for a census?   I have been shocked and frustrated with how confused Hibiscus is about basic Biblical characters, but I am beginning to understand why: it seems to me that most of the religion around here is totally based on homily and assumption, and very little on the actual Bible.  The children are told that if they are rude to their older brothers and sisters they will go to Hell, and given very specific definitions of Hell, and lists of other behavior that will land them there.  Which is The Divine Comedy, it is not the Bible.  Then they sing lots of songs with "praise God" and "Jesus loves me," and they turn around and tell me that they will beat all the people who are mean to them and to Jesus.  Hibiscus even described a helicopter with bombs she would drop on people who are mean to Jesus!  This is a nice sweet idea about loving Jesus, but when it is paired with no actual knowledge about anything Jesus ever did or said, it turns into a discussion about where he fits when he is inside you, under one's bellybutton or in the rib cage.

This is the child perspective, and it seems like many people do not really deepen their understanding as they get older.  The religious message that I have overheard again and again is how if you believe in God and really love him, LOVE LOVE LOVE, with lots of swinging your arms around and stamping your feet and singing really loudly... then you'll get rich.  Because God blesses the people who love him, especially when they sing really loudly.  I have actually had discussions with my friend the priest on how prevalent this view of loving God = getting rich and lucky, which he finds a big problem, so I am not naively imagining this.

And this bring us to why Hibiscus wants to have a helicopter to drop bombs on mean people, which was the part of the Cantata that made me absolutely livid.  If you are really into melodrama, I suppose Jesus' birth scores you lots of sequins, but the real drama is in the death.  So it couldn't be left out of a Christmas program.  (Unlike the entire life, ministry, and philosophy of Jesus, which was not alluded to in any way!)  I think it followed the young man's monologue about how he slowly descended into peer pressure, parties, alcohol and drugs, until he realized that his life was empty and the only thing that could fill it was Christ.  I realize that a lot of modern churches really like this "testimony," although personally, I would rather my kids don't hear so much about drugs and descending into "coolness."  But then there were some lighting changes, and another guy came out and sang some very dramatic and sad song.  At least I assume it was; I wasn't paying much attention to him.  Because behind him, they started playing a movie on the big screen of the crucifixion.  It might have been part of Mel Gibson's movie, or it might have been something else.  But it was gory, and it was detailed.  It started with Jesus carrying the cross and falling down, and we got close-ups of his arms and his back.  Later we saw nails positioned in the hands, and a hammer swinging.  It was several minutes long, and all fade-ins and fade-outs to different gruesome parts of the crucifixion.  I didn't see most of it, because I don't like to watch things like that, and then I was busy trying to convince the children not to watch.  Emerson was on one side of me, and all the children until Teacher Monica on the far side.  I started in on Emerson, because I know he has this fascination and deep terror of scary things.  He wouldn't look away, and I could cover his eyes but he yelled at me.  On the other side, Hibiscus was watching with her eyes literally bugging out.  Lately she has been especially terrified of bad things happening at night, and bad people coming into our house, and monsters nabbing her.  I know that images of someone being beaten bloody are exactly the kind of thing that pops into your mind when you are afraid of the dark and you want your mama to stay next to you, but she actually has to do your sister's bath at that moment.  So I tried to convince her not to watch, but she told me she liked it, as the tears started to fall.  Then I noticed Hosta on the other side of her, who had huddled up with her knees up to her forehead (she spent most of the program on her feet, jumping up and down), her face totally covered with tears, but she also could not tear her eyes off the video.  After that I was trying to distract Emerson again, and meanwhile thinking about how I could lean my body so Buttercup, in my wrap, wouldn't have an ideal view of the screen.  In the end, I'm not sure how much it helped, and all the children saw way more than was good for them.

So what happens today?  The children have mentioned half a dozen times how much they liked seeing Mary and Joseph, since they just did a little pageant of their own at school.  And then they've spent a significant portion of the day pretending to fall on the cross and discussion exactly where the nails were placed on the feet, and banging pretend nails into each other.  It really makes me mad.  Overall the cantata was not my cup of tea but it was a fun experience, but supposing I actually lived here, I would seriously consider not attending again next year just to avoid that disgusting video. (Or whatever they replace it with next time.)  It is NOT something that is appropriate to put into children's hearts and minds!  First of all, they have so many of their own difficulties to cope with, and this was just plain gory and unpleasant, and these images now live inside them.  Secondly, they are too young to get any actual meaning from it.  The first thing, that we have already discussed several times, is that this was a MOVIE, not the Bible.  In my own home and church life, I certainly expose my child(ren) to the story of the crucifixion, but I keep it simple and based on the actual Bible.  A young child will remember their first exposure to the story, and I want it to be the actual, literal story, not some film-maker's interpretation.  You never know if what will stay with a child will be the parts that he took from the text, or something random that was never important.  (Like Jesus being tall and blond, which he was.)  But the deeper issue is that if the children are too young to understand the meaning and the reason behind the crucifixion, they are way too young to be thinking about the details of death.  Never mind calling for bomb-dropping helicopters, Jesus actively refused even mild violence on his behalf, and refused to protest or defend himself.  Why?  THAT is what Christianity is about.  If you're not old enough to discuss that, you're not old enough to discuss what they used to whip Jesus, and how much he was bleeding.  Period.

So, that was my philosophical rant; let's get back to the cantata.  Shall we discuss breakdancing?  There was really quite a lot of it.  The theme seemed to be a city park, so we had streetcleaners breaking out in breakdancing several times.  However, there was some attempt at variety.  For one number, a ballerina (the one white woman in the entire thing, actually) was in a spotlight in the little stage that was above all the other stages, and she twirled a couple times, and then lights came on the main stage and a bunch of girls in ballerina-like outfits swooped out, twirled a couple times... and started breakdancing.  A later troupe of mostly male dancers were wearing black and white, leather jackets, and sunglasses.  It was a little hard to see how that fit in with the sequins-and-Christmas theme, but they certainly were matching costumes.  And the breakdancing was quite good, and they did a bunch of fancy tricks.  I probably would have been impressed if I weren't so amused by how everyone kept breakdancing!

Another part of the cantata for me was dealing with the children.  I decided to keep Buttercup on my back, where she could see (and incidentally not escape).  She figured out pretty fast that she had a good view and was perfectly content, although that involved lots of jumping up and down in place.  I had also gotten snacks before we went in, and gradually handed them out to the children. I started off with half a chapati each while we waited for the show to start, which went smoothly.  But I had tried to get something at the snack stand that wasn't JUST simple carbs, so I got little slurpy yogurts.  These are small plastic bags filled with sweet yogurt, and you cut off a corner and stick a straw in and drink it out.  This works pretty well if you do it properly, which half the children managed to do.  Unfortunately, half the children wanted to put their yogurt down for a while, and since they are just plastic bags, this is not very technically possible when you are sitting crammed in a pew jumping up and down.  So when Buttercup got full, I gave the rest to Hibiscus, and then I refused to get Hibiscus her own because she'd already eaten half of one and I didn't want her to put down the next one, but when Hosta got tired of drinking I gave that to Hibiscus too.  Needless to say, that made everyone mad at me.  The friends' children managed to drink their yogurts without incident, although the older girl was still carrying the bag when we were trying to walk to the car.  Her mother had to ask her to drop it, which shows how deeply the no-littering lessons sink in -- although she had to ask twice, so maybe the child noticed the discrepancy and the next generation will manage to do better.  But it was Emerson who won the yogurt award.  He asked me to hold his yogurt several times, or offered it to me to take a drink, so I took a drink and handed it back.  But at one point he got the straw stuck inside the bag, so he put it on my lap so I can fix it.  Imagine: it is dark, there are strobelights, you are trying to figure out which of the next six children wants a yogurt, and there is a bag with a hole in it somewhere plopped in your lap.  It ended up spilling yogurt all over my dress, the wrap, the camera case, the floor, and who-knows-what else.  And then Emerson took it back and sucked the rest of the yogurt directly out of the hole, which worked well, except he took forever to do it (like most things that he does), and I think yogurt bags were designed for speedy consumption.

As for the grand finale: Snow.  Snow is really spectacular here in equatorial Africa, and they had an amazing production of it.  We are not in rich Dubai, which apparently has an indoor ski mountain, so it wasn't the actual cold stuff, but it poured from the ceiling in huge quantities for several minutes.  (I think it was some kind of bubbles.)  The kids were very excited and impressed, and jumped around and squealed and tried to catch it.

And now I will conclude my story with what Hibiscus told me the next day.  First of all, she keeps repeating that she wants to go back, and I have not the slightest intention of reliving the rest of the exhausting day in order to attend the performance again!  But then she told me this morning that she was glad we went to this show, because Ugandan people don't go to shows, and no one in Uganda knows about shows like this.  This is pretty amazing information, given that probably between a thousand and two thousand people were happily watching the show, and I saw exactly one other group like ours, which had a couple Americans mixed in with the locals.  There have been two shows a day for the last ten days or so, and they will switch to four shows a day from tomorrow until Christmas -- just at this church, and I think the other churches do their own shows, and a few of the other mega-churches definitely have mega-shows.  A quick estimate gives about 40,000 Ugandans attending this particular show, along with a hundred or so muzungos, which is a slightly different number than "none."  I reminded Hibiscus about the Ugandans who had been all around her, and that our Ugandan friends had brought us, so it was pretty clear that some Ugandans knew about shows like this.  She calmly and didactically informed me that her daddy in Bbunga did not know about shows like this, and she had never been to a show like this while she lived in Bbunga, and no one else went to shows like this either.  Therefore no one in Uganda knows about big shows.  Obviously, mom.

In preparing for adoption, we talked about the significance of taking a child away from their culture, but I think this is the equally important side of the same coin: a naive six-year-old, starting a new life, comes to the assumption that she is the expert on her own culture.  In many ways she knows more about the Buganda than I do, but in other ways, her experience is so narrow and misunderstood, she really knows almost nothing about her own culture.  But since we take her away from it, she thinks she knows everything.  It makes me very glad that we are spending these months here, and hopefully we can combat a little bit of her own assumptions through the coming years, so that she does not believe that her miserable little life in the slums is the only option for Ugandans.  That some people are kind to their friends, and some children like to read, and some Ugandans go to concerts.

We can have those discussions while not engaged in our full-immersion program of symphonies, jazz quartets, and choirs with actual sopranos in them.  And Christmas performances of The Nutcracker, but only if it has been pre-screened for not switching to breakdancing part way through!

b

Christmas Cantata

It is after 10:30 at night, and I am just sitting down to my second meal of oatmeal of the day.  That might be an ambiguous sentence, but it is true either way: it is the second time I've eaten oatmeal for a meal today, and it is the second time I have sat down and eaten a meal.

We have spent the last eleven hours or so attending a "Christmas Cantata," with our friends, the family who runs the American Montessori School (including Hosta).  It was quite something, to say the least.  Also, I am coming to the conclusion that I should take my children and lock all of us in the bedroom, perhaps with some individuals under the bed, and stay there until we have all the proper paperwork to get on the plane. Disasters large and small seem to dog us wherever we go and whatever we do!  Perhaps this entire trip is cursed.  Or Satan is trying to get at us, as Teacher Monica suggested.

I should eat my oatmeal and go to bed, so I will just write a few things and tell the rest of the stories in the morning.  The Cantata was a very Ugandan extravaganza, including the part about waiting for more than two hours in order to get in.  After all, what Christmas would be complete without breakdancing angels?

As for the venue, visualize an American mega-church, with a balcony and stage and everything, and then squash it down Ugandan style.  So the grandeur remains, but take out all the pretty details like carpets and mood lighting, and make it about a half or a third of the size but maintain the same number of people.  There were three different staging areas in order to get the audience into the church!  First of all we all crammed into the space you might ordinarily expect about the average American family with its 2.2 children to sit, as long as neither adult was particularly overweight.  After a while, the ushers came by and asked us to put the children on our laps so we would take up less room.  Since we were two mothers with seven children, we both already had full laps but there were still a lot of small bums leftover.  The usher moved on and was settling people in the aisles, but they had to stand on the side so the performers could go by.  A couple of enterprising ladies came over and announced that they could carry the children on their laps, thus allowing their own bums to be on a pew and the children to spend the entire two plus hours on the lap of a stranger.  Request denied, although it was not so much a request at all.

Then: LIGHTS!!!!  FOG MACHINES!!!!  GIANT CHOIR ON HIGHRISES!!!!  SKITS!!!!  MARY AND JOSEPH!!!!  SINGING VERY DRAMATICALLY!!!!  AMPS TURNED WAY UP!!!!  And so forth.

Oh, and a revival call, or whatever they are called when sinners are invited to stand up and take Jesus into their lives at that very moment.  I personally feel strongly that one's relationship with Jesus is a lifetime of growth, almost all of which happens inside one's own heart and mind and not by standing up when you are told to by a guy with a microphone, but whatever floats your boat.  Who wouldn't want to listen to a nice Christmas music session without being invited to stand up and declare one's sinner-ness?  Well, I'm obliging enough to watch, until you get MY children involved. First of all, Emerson was so exhausted by that point, that when he kept hearing "stand up, stand up," he just kind of automatically stood up.  And since the church floor was flat, it was hard for the children to see and they had kept sitting on the top of the pew, especially Hibiscus (the other kids had been standing more), and the lady behind her had been hissing at her every few minutes "sit down, sit down."  And now she started hissing "stand up, stand up," which got Hibiscus totally confused, and thought maybe she ought to do it.  Maybe it might be a deeply moving religious experience for some people to stand up at a revival call, but I feel strongly that it is not an appropriate time to manipulate 5-ish-year-olds into confessing something that they don't understand in the least.  Actually, I deeply believe (and have witnessed) that children have a deep, intrinsic connection to the Divine, if we give them the space and trust to find it on their own.  Which this could not be more opposite!


And as for the conclusion of the day, unfortunately my bowl of oatmeal is almost finished so I cannot do the story justice.  I will just say, that we gathered up our seven very amped-up, tired, hungry, and wiggly children, navigated the sea of people, then the giant holes in the sidewalk with cars blocking either side in the gradually fading afternoon light, and walked to where we had left the car.  And we said "isn't this where the car was?"  And it had been, and it was not any more.

Going Places Together

(I wrote this on Monday, but didn't quite finish the story.  It gets the idea across, at least, so I am just going to publish it now instead of having it sit around longer!)

On Sunday, we went to church in the morning and a dance performance in the evening.  The church service was over two hours and the dance was four hours and started at 6!  That's a lot of adventure for a family who has just been walking the dusty road back and forth to school for the last month!  

It also proved my instinct of not taking them anywhere was right!  I could handle the random insanity from any two kids at a time, but not all three.  I don't think that's because there are three of them per se, but because all three are in an unsettled phase of their lives, and everything is WAY too exciting, all the time.  Even driving home in the car sent Buttercup into High Manic mode, because she's never been in a car at night and all the lights were super-stimulating.

I also noticed that Hibiscus is doing SO MUCH better than she was six weeks ago, when Daddy left.  She was still much more intense and needy than the average child (especially in Uganda), but she didn't immediately stand out to everyone in the vicinity.  She's made it into the high end of normal, instead of totally insane!

Hibiscus has attached herself right onto Gramma, and Gramma took care of most of her little needs while we were out.  Extra hands make all the logistics easier, but it makes the emotional relationships easier, too!  At one point Hibiscus got sweaty, which made her itchy, and then she was scratching and whining and scratching more and getting really upset and frustrated.  Gramma washed her neck and arms gently in the sink and kept talking to her to keep her distracted, and after a few minutes she managed to stop scratching long enough to stop itching.  If I had been alone, I would have tried to help her, but while I washed her neck and arms the other kids would have started running around the bathroom.  Maybe I could have gotten Emerson to distract or hold Buttercup for a moment, but I would have had to wash quickly and be done.  Meanwhile, I also have to put Buttercup on and off the potty and wipe her, and hold both of the younger ones up to the sink so they can wash their hands, and  hand Emerson the soap and help him rinse it all off, and do all of Buttercup's hand-washing while I did my own.  Since Hibiscus's current ability-to-wait level stands at .03 seconds, she would have started jumping and whining and grabbing at my arm if I wasn't paying attention to her, and I would have gotten frustrated that she couldn't see that her brother and sister needed their share of attention, and then I would have gotten internally more frustrated that she wanted attention for something kind of foolish and superficial, while I was trying to manage basic care for the others.  But she would have felt neglected and un-cared-for, and because she was itchy she probably would have started into big-gross-motor actions and run out the door or careened around the bathroom, which would have either made me genuinely mad, or she would have hurt herself.  I should be an attentive mother for injuries, but I get really, really sick of self-inflicted injuries doing something incredibly stupid, especially when I've told her over and over not to do it.  

(Speaking of which, I don't think I've share my very favorite "is this for real?" injury.  It was a couple days after her head wound, when it was still sore.  She was getting ready for bed, and getting manic, and went diving (literally) into her bed.  She popped up, kneeling by her pillows, and started slamming her head on the mattress.  Then, without pause, she lifted up the pillow and slammed her head on that part of the bed.  There was a book or a toy or something under the pillow, so she slammed her barely-healing forehead right into some hard object at full forward velocity.  REALLY??!!  Banging your wound into unseen objects is a good idea why....??!!)

So anyways, having loving Gramma hands is helpful with not only the hands part, but with the ability to maintain loving patience between family members.

And then, there is the dance troupe.  My husband and I went to the show when he was here, but we decided to leave the older kids behind, because we didn't know if they could handle it.  We thought they would have enjoyed it, but it was really a relief to enjoy the show without worrying about them!  

Six weeks later, they are two totally different children.  Emerson has regained his normal equilibrium after struggling with what it meant to have siblings for the first month or so, and in fact, he has come to a better place than where he had been before they joined our family.  He often deflects Hibiscus's grumpy (and probably unconscious) efforts to pick fights, and focuses on something more interesting.  He apparently remembers or realizes that it is a really bad idea, with really immediate consequences, to throw a giant fit in public or run away.  He still throws fits at home, but he has suddenly developed the vocabulary to say -- well, yell -- something like "I want to just take that plate and smash it all up so it's broken!" which is actually a very healthy release, and we usually can work things from there so he doesn't feel like he needs to do it any more.  It usually feels like he kind of WANTS to calm down, and is TRYING to calm down, and if I help meet him with some calm attention like wrapping him up or reading him a book, he usually makes a big effort to do that with me.  So I knew the show would be way too late for Emerson, but I didn't have any real fears that he would run away  or throw a a screaming fit that would disturb the other people.

I don't have a similar confidence in Hibiscus's ability to control herself, but if we give her attention and something to be interested in, she will stay with that and not tumble off into crazy-land.  She does know the facts about staying close to us in public, and although she occasionally forgets, the immediate and constant hand-holds are strikingly boring and she comes right back with those reminders.  I wouldn't vouch for her good behavior on a long day of errands, but I thought she would probably be interested enough in the dance that she probably wouldn't bother to throw a fit.  Also, her English has improved so much, which makes working together in public a lot more smooth.

Buttercup, on the other hand, is getting to be a lot more of a handful!  But at least she's small enough to contain!

The dance was amazing.  The dance troupe is made up of people from different tribes, and they perform dances from all over Uganda, interspersed with amusing monologues about the different cultures, and short, funny bits of language.  For instance, we heard the greeting rituals from several different cultures.  There are 52 indiginous languages in this country, so understanding the idea of difference but similarity is important.  They are promoting peace and cross-cultural understanding through dance and music.  This is a pleasant idea by American standards, but here in Africa, ethnic warfare, opression, fear, and genocide are real for almost everyone.  Everyone my age and above remembers the reign of Idi Amin and Obote, and has stories about how it affected their lives.  Violence in the north has only just ended, and many refugees eke out their livings in Kampala.  The woman who cleans our house -- despite multiple college degrees, she is grateful for the work -- had her sisters burned alive in their family home.  "Peace" is not just a pleasant idea when you really truly know what the opposite means.

The dancing was beautiful, energizing, and athletic.  The children were deeply fascinated!  

Weekend with Three Kids

Church Adventure - Three Kids!

So, we were invited to a church by someone in Rotary, and we have been kind of discussing going some time for the last month.  I brought the girls over to our house for the whole weekend.  This morning, I got a call from our friend ("friend" meaning someone who knows someone who has met you once, and is therefore fully prepared to go out of their way to host you) offering to pick us up at a convenient taxi stop if we met them at 10:30.  I thought we could get out of the house before 10:30 and, with that excellent and complete logic as well as general complaisance, I agreed.

A couple hours later, I was contemplating a recent email exchange with a friend, where she was discussing not taking her excitable daughter into high-intensity situations unless she was well prepared to deal with wildness or running away.  It was a little hard to remember the details, as the music from the worship band was blasting out of the speakers, the a/v was swirling colors around, and the couple hundred or people around were dancing and clapping and swaying as they sang.  I was impaired from chasing my highly excitable children by the fact that I was holding the very mild-tempered one in my arms.  I comforted myself with the idea that at least this was a church, and at least the people around here don't seem intimidated by interfering with someone else's children, and moreover the whole complex was gated, so probably no one would be able to get into any trouble that had a life-long effect.  

Besides, we might as well be here, because:

A) We have to leave the house as a group at some point, and an outing that is half by private car has a great deal of advantage; and

B) It had to be better than staying at home, or at least different.  The drama that Hibiscus and Emerson had been producing for all of Saturday had to be at least equal to several hundred people in a rousing worship service!  Each day that we spend together, they seem to be focused on figuring out the exact limits of a different boundary.  Yesterday, the theme was Hibiscus hearing the word "no."  Every time this happened, whether something as simple as it was Emerson's turn to unlock the door to something more premeditated like when she drew on her skirt and I took away her pen, she cried and wailed for minutes and minutes and minutes, writhing like she were in her death throes.  This might have been a difficult conundrum for me, because I knew part of her tears were experimenting with the new concept that someone cares about her if she cries, and I might have tried to figure out how to help her feel supported in her sadness without supporting her doing what I had told her not to.  However, since there were three children involved, it was pretty much guaranteed that someone had a clearer need than comforting crocodile tears, so she pretty much got ignored until she decided to stop.  It did not increase the general feeling of household peacefulness, however.  Meanwhile, she and Emerson were either grabbing and yelling at each other, or bonding by being incredibly rude, which is about the funniest thing in the world at that age.  So I apologize to all our apartment-building neighbors, that it took me several minutes to go out into the stairwell and put a stop to the three children screaming at the top of their lungs to hear the echo; it really seemed like a better option than anything else they might be doing. 

 My parenting abilities for Hibiscus are so severely limited by what we are able to say to each other.  Some amount can be communicated through touch and expression and a few words in each other's languages, and this seems to work pretty well for two-year-old parenting, but falls way short of the logic and explanation that a six-year-old desperately needs.  So not only does she have to learn all my new rules, she has to learn them without the benefit of being told what they are, and without being able to understand why I have created them, and furthermore she is not allowed any learning-curve transgressions without the local four-year-old police saying "but MAMA! we're not allowed to talk like that in our family!"  So something like "food must be eaten at the table" is comprehensible, but it involves me physically taking her bowl away as she wanders outside, which creates the obvious interpretation that I am trying to starve her to death, and probably furthermore I plan turn around and give her bowl to Emerson.  After adding ice cream and chapatis.  We eventually arrived at the correct interpretation, which was her returning to the table to finish and me being pleased with her, but there was some serious distress in the middle.  A time or two or three or four.  (The last couple times were mostly to make sure that I would actually go to the trouble of chasing her and her bowl down every single time, and what manner of growling or wailing would make me decide to not bother.  Hopefully she will arrive at a conclusion soon.)

So we had an outing to a new church which was a great deal more overwhelming than I had expected, but my over-excitable kids were so busy staring at all the drama around them, and deciding whether to make friends or run away from the other small children, that they didn't make it any farther than up and down the aisle.  So I had significantly more trips up and down the aisle than any other adult, but kept them pretty much always in sight.  And I was rewarded with each child giving me a huge grin as he or she clapped along to the rousing music.

At least in the first 10 or 15 minutes.  After an hour of loud music interspersed with occasional praise, the kids were more than ready for Children's Church, even patient little Buttercup.  So they headed out with the general exodus, until it was time to sit down, at which point they each decided they didn't want to be sitting in Children's Church.  Buttercup just plain didn't want to be sitting, but was pretty happy to drag her little plastic chair back and forth.  Emerson got the idea that I might leave and go back to the service, and he didn't like that.  Hibiscus, I think, was just plain grumpy.  I think my little clan's attitude towards Children's Church would have improved greatly if they had served the snack at the beginning instead of the end of the hour!  

After a little while, Hibiscus actually settled in pretty well, because the format is pretty similar to the way school works here, so she knew what to do and became attentive.  Emerson went through mixed feelings, from interest in the story to whineyness, that I think would have basically been happy if he weren't so hungry and the whole process weren't so very long.  Buttercup was totally happy, and I pulled her out of the outdoor room where all the other children were trying to concentrate (more or less) and she wandered around nearby and climbed up and down and banged on tables and pulled and trees and basically acted like a little toddler -- which is actually quite a notable accomplishment for this extraordinarily reserved child -- while I followed her around and kept her from falling off of things.  

The final biscuits were immediately followed by our host bringing us to lunch.  (See, I told you they should have come at the beginning!)  The church and everything else took place in a complex centered around a restaurant and a garden, so a group just kind of moved from the meeting hall/sanctuary to a large private dining room, where we had an Indian buffet.  A Canadian group was visiting and had provided the music and and some other leadership, so there was a large group gathered on their behalf.  It was a pleasant break for me to get to speak and hear ordinary American-style English, and be able to assume that the assumptions behind the words were what I would expect.  

It was also a treat to be able to assume that the people around me had a reasonably accurate guess to why a white woman was shepherding around two little African girls.  The idea of adoption outside your own family or clan basically does not exist in Ugandan culture, so some people get very confused about what I am doing.  It will be a cinch to deal with stares in America from people who are amazed to see a mixed race family, compared to strangers on the street cheerfully asking "why are you carrying our child?" or, upon being given an answer, replying "why would you want to do that?"  (To give credit where it is due, a pair of young women also stopped me to shyly say "thank you for taking care of our children, you are doing a very good thing.")  

At this gathering, I was introduced to a woman who had adopted and fostered kids of her own.  Although unfortunately she was sitting at the other end of the table, so I didn't really get to talk with her, we were introduced in the food line.  She stopped and really made a point to connect with each of the three children, and then since everyone was hungry she helped me through the food line.  She started with "what can I do" but then she answered herself, "I'll fill these plates for you, because the children NEED to stay with you, and not anyone else."  It was amazingly rejuvinating to hear that validation for these relationships that are very much under construction at this point.

Buttercup sat on my lap and shared my food, wielding her fork with amazing determination.  (She absolutely refuses to eat with her fingers when anyone else has silverware, despite having surely spending most of her life eating with her fingers and being at the age where most children of silverware-cultures don't actually use their silverware.)  Hibiscus plowed through what I am pretty sure was four entire plates of food, and "plow" is a pretty accurate representation of her eating style!  Emerson, I believe, spent an equal amount of time rearranging the food on his plate and eating three pieces of potato.

I won't describe the complication of taking all three children to the bathroom.  And it was a fairly clean, spacious bathroom where I felt like it was even safe to be in separate stalls.  I do not yet have a game plan for dealing with ordinary Ugandan bathrooms, and, respective of my one-day-at-a-time philosophy, please do not ask me to develop one.  

There were other children around too, and so after a while they did a little playing together on the other side of the room.  

Our hosts drove us all the way back home, which was a great relief.  The minibus ride had gone well in the morning, but with all three children so very tired, it was nice to be able to avoid mid-afternoon.  Buttercup fell asleep in the car, and I got to learn that, although she is incredibly amenable to taking naps and can tolerate a great deal of noise while she is sleeping, she has the ordinary toddler problem of the 10-minute nap in the car, waking on transfer, and feeling like she's completely lively again.  Hibiscus wanted to nap, but Buttercup wouldn't stop singing and jumping on her, so all three children were out and about within minutes of getting home.

I was very pleasantly surprised that the rest of the afternoon went much more smoothly than the day before.  Either they had gotten enough of their crazies out at the church-marathon that they didn't feel so inspired to pick fights with each other, or the act of being in a large group of strangers made them feel more solidarity with each other.  Quiet and peace, we did not have; but it was happy kind of wildness.

They had to go back to the orphanage tonight.  I felt that one overnight qualified under "spending plenty of time with them without completely taking over their care," as the Probation Officer encouraged me to do.  Hopefully the paper will be signed and sealed tomorrow!

I noticed several steps that we took towards a bonded family relationship this weekend.  When the children were at Children's Church, Hibiscus wanted me to stay and called out to me once or twice when I followed Buttercup out of her immediate sight, she didn't just assume that I had left her behind.  Buttercup was happy and attentive in a new place among strangers, as long as she was sitting on my lap or in my arms.  When Emerson wanted her to come and play with him, she was a little hesitant but happy to go with him, but she LOOKED BACK AT ME three times as they walked across the room, and then settled in to play when she saw that I was stationery and content with her.  Visually checking in with parents is something that attached children do constantly and naturally, and unattached children don't do at all; I've felt as well as observed this difference at the orphanage, that the children lose their entire engagement with me as soon as I am not directly interacting with them.  

When we got home, Hibiscus actively sought me out after she fell and hurt herself, twice.  When we first got her, Hibiscus would not only pretend to ignore obvious pain, but if she couldn't hide the pain she would hide herself.  Emerson told me several times when he had seen her upset or in pain, but she didn't want me or any of the other adults to see.  Since she didn't expect any comfort, it must have just felt like weakness.  So that she is willing to cry out, wail dramatically, come towards me (I very actively seek out both children if they have any sign of distress, to demonstrate that I take care of them, so she didn't have to come all the way), and then sob in my arms for several minutes, all over a small scrape on her ankle, shows an amazing level developing emotional openness and trust.

Meanwhile, Buttercup was gallivanting around, actually screaming as she played.  This is a much more physical type of openness developing, that she is simply confident enough to express herself.  I fed the kids a snack, asking if they wanted each ingredient (she still doesn't know how to answer questions like this, but I keep asking), and after hearing the question and getting her bowl, she started chanting "ba-NAAAA-na, er-i-EEEV-u" (which is the same word in both languages), and the older kids were amused and laughed and then chanted along with her.  She was so amazed and proud of herself.  I think that is the first time that she has initiated anything obvious enough for other children to join in.  

The Church Adventure

Church

Today Emerson and I were surprised by being invited to come to the front of the church, where the priest introduced us and handed me the microphone so I could "say something more about myself" extemporaneously in front of about three hundred people.  Even more surprisingly, after the service a number of people came up to me and thanked me for the work I was taking over for the youth ministry, and when should they bring their children by?  So our journey of church-going in Uganda becomes even more exciting!

When I first decided to look for our local church, I was following some vague directions and ending up nowhere near a church.  A young girl of ten or twelve offered shyly to walk me to "the church," and I agreed.  I quickly guessed that she was leading us to the big Pentecostal church, which I already knew about, and not the Anglican Church I was searching for, but she was so earnest and pleased to be of help that we went together to the church and she showed me around.  It was Saturday, and I decided vaguely to give up on the Anglican church for the week and just go to the Pentecostal church the next morning.  Large, charismatic Pentecostal churches are very popular here, and I figured we would treat it as a Ugandan experience.  But in the morning I quailed; I am not very modern and evangelical at the best of times, and I doubted my ability to appropriately shout "praise Jesus, oh yeah oh yeah, pah-RAISE the Lord!" for three hours surrounded by several hundred Ugandans.  (Okay, I doubt they shout that for all three hours, but I have evidence of all three of those items being independently true!)

So we walked the other direction, and eventually encountered other people dressed for church and followed them to the Anglican church.  At home, we are technically Episcopalians, and this is technically the Church of Uganda, but African English ignores all these petty ex-colonial subtleties and calls us all Anglicans.  But this Anglican is a world away from being an Anglican in Eugene, Oregon!

There are resemblances.  The people leading the services wear vestments, and there are sometimes prayer books, and some of the prayers talk about the same things, and the priest blesses the host and we all go forward and kneel and receive it.  There is a sermon and singing and announcements, although those are not specifically Anglican.

The biggest difference is just the overall feeling of informality and enthusiasm. In America, Anglicans are stereotyped as being the buttoned-up, wealthy, reserved denomination, who sing ancient hymns to a full choir and organ and don't talk about impolite things like the blood of Jesus and the fires of hell.  I don't think the casual critic would ever get that idea while attending St John's, Kawusu Parish, Bunga!  I don't know if different churches around here are more High Church, but this is what it looks like in a village at the edge of Kampala.

First of all, it's a large church, and it's packed for the middle service, which is the one English service sandwiched between two Luganda services.  I estimate that between three and four hundred people are there, up to the ushers pulling in plastic lawn chairs at the back and some men standing up at the edges.  People all dress in true Sunday best, with all of the men in buttoned shirts and some suits, and the women in shimmery or long dresses or traditional gomesi.  The building is some multi-sided shape like an octagon, so pews fill around most of the sides but the pews on the edge are right next to the front area.  There is a school on the church grounds, and students from the school, in their uniforms, fill flanks of side benches.  A robed choir is up in one corner, backed by instrumentalists on synthesizer piano, electric bass, and drumset.  The front area is separated from the pews by a couple of steps, but I am not sure it could properly be called an alter area.  The side opposite the choir has a nice solid wood table and chairs, like where you might hold a small meeting.  A fancy carved pulpit is out in front of that, but no one even comes near it; whoever is making announcements or giving the sermon stands at a small lectern in front of the steps, holding a bulky microphone.  There are simple vestments on the two main people leading the service (one is the priest and I'm not sure about the other; he gives announcements but isn't involved in Communion), but no acolytes or deacons or Lay Eucharistic Ministers or Bible-readers or candles or banners or anything else.  At the wall directly behind the speaker in the center of the church, there is a simple cross on the wall, an altar (that looks like if the altarcloth were removed it would be transformed into a dining table) with a green altarcloth with the name of the church in gold letters.  It usually has two white lumps on it, which are the bread and wine covered with plain white cloths.  The altar is flanked by some large and impressive chairs, which contribute to the table-like effect.  There are two large roll-up screens that come down from the ceiling flanking the main area, so the congregation on all sides of the octagon can read them, which display words and pictures during the hymns, and some small words about the state of the computer at other times.   So that is the physical setting.

The music is striking.  It is something like, but not exactly, modern-style hymns, and praise music, and gospel, all mixed together.  The text is always a basic, strong, positive message, like "I rest myself in Jesus" or "I walk with Jesus on the sand" or "I love Jesus and he loves me even more" (and there is no shying away from Jesus' blood, either!).  There are always several hymns as well as solos and anthems from the choir, and some of them are quite long, so a large part of the service is music.  The words for the hymns comes up on the big screens and the choir starts singing, and people just join in when they get the hang of it.  For the lively songs, the choir and congregation start clapping and bouncing and waving their arms and even dancing in the aisles -- and even shouting "hallelujah! praise Jesus!"  If the congregation or the soloist is really getting into the music, the musicians keep repeating choruses and verses and going along.  When "the congregation" sings, you must remember that this is several hundred voices, and at the most there might be three individuals who only feel up to humming or mouthing the words today.  Everyone loves to sing, and even the littlest children can clap enthusiastically and rhythmically.  During Communion today, there were two anthems, led by a group kind of like a barbershop quartet or a lead singer and his back-up ladies (one of each, for two songs).  The lead singer murmured a couple lines about loving and putting our faith in the lord, and as he gradually gained momentum he added in "sing it evver-body" or "sing it out, brothers and sisters" and the whole congregation gently sang the ostinato. There were some verses that the singer and his back-ups sang, and then the intensity built as the congregation sang the lines over and over and the back-up singers (and perhaps the whole choir) added harmony and the lead singer sang the same words in a descant over and around everything else, with the instruments gaining strength in the background.   It was quite powerful and lovely, and a very far cry from the music at an Anglican church at home!

The sermons are similar to the hymns: they are clear and direct and positive.  The messages are along the lines of: God loves us like a father loves his little child, or Surrender yourself to the power of God.  They make this point with clear examples, and no distractions like talking about historical context or current events or the current liturgical celebrations.  (Well, it is the middle of Pentecost, which is not exactly the most compelling time to discuss the liturgical year.)  The priest speaks calmly and fluidly with no notes.

There are prayerbooks for the English service only.  The once we attended the Luganda service, there wasn't any equivalent, or any saying of group prayer.  As it is, the prayer books are barely more than pamphlets, and the prayers included are a few incredibly straight-forward translations of the most common elements of the Anglican liturgy -- and our church barely uses them as it is.  The books also include suggestions on how to use these prayers in your worship, as though they don't expect the reader to be familiar with them.  The prayers are short and in the most basic language imaginable, which makes a certain amount of sense considering they are for Ugandans who speak English as a second language, except that many Ugandans actually use more complex and formal language on a regular basis than Americans do.  I find it difficult to even speak along with the prayers because the rhythm of the Episcopalian translations is drummed into my head, and the prayers here don't have enough words to get into a rhythm.  (Which I would think the Ugandans would enjoy, actually.)  For instance, the whole Nicene Creed is about half the length that it is at home, and the entire final paragraph about the Holy Spirit is wrapped up in one sentence.  I don't even recall that the sentence has dependent clauses; we might just say "we believe in the Holy Spirit"!  The prayers when the priest blesses the host are also much shorter than what I am used to.  So basically, the liturgy and the communal prayers are not a central or pivotal part of the church experience here.

We do usually have Communion, although one week there wasn't any.  The congregation comes forward in a very general, floating way towards the front, and kneels anywhere all along the several sides of the front rail.  There are no neat lines or circling back out of the way or ushers indicating who is allowed to proceed!  However, although it is a very large congregation, there is no tangling or confusion; people just kind of come up when there is room and they feel like it, I guess.  The priest is the only one giving out Communion, and he walks along the inside of the rails with a plate with the chalice on it, and a large pile of pre-dipped wafers next to the chalice, so he drops a couple in the waiting hands of each person as he passes, which keeps things moving quickly.   People dip their heads to eat from their cupped hands.  Emerson, of course, pops right up to the communion rail as soon as he can convince me to get out of my seat!  He is the only young child who comes to the front, for communion or a blessing or anything, although some children around ten or so come and receive.  I didn't know if the priest would allow it, but the first time he gave Emerson kind of a bemused look, and then provides him with a wafer that hasn't been dipped in wine.  Which is just as well, because although the wine is blessed and I appreciate it as spiritual food, it is either vinegar or something very like it, and rather shocking on the physical tongue.

Then there are parts of the service which are not included in American-style services, which seem to me to intensify the focus on community-building.  The other person in vestments leads most of these.  Usually someone in particular comes up and talks at great length about some particular project that they are involved in and everyone is invited to.  This person usually has a stronger accent and doesn't compensate for the sound system and the huge stone space by speaking more slowly and clearly, so I never have the slightest idea what their pet project is.  Another interesting routine is that the leader encourages the congregation to "organize ourselves" and everyone stands up as their particular neighborhood is mentioned, and everyone looks around and claps at the people who are standing.  One that is more surprising to American sensibilities is that the leader goes into detail about exactly how much was raised in donations in every category, from every group at each service, and then they add up all these numbers together exactly -- this exact number of hundreds and thousands of shillings, and one British pound and two US dollars.

There are announcements, when we are all encouraged at great length to come to this parish celebration and that funeral, but anyone involved in these announcements is brought forward and talked about and invited to talk -- like the way I was introduced this morning!  A newly married couple was similarly pulled up and gently interviewed, or other people might be asked to stand for some reason -- no polite "you may stand and introduce yourself if you feel called, but you don't have to"!  One week, I think after the married couple, a young man from the choir area was pulled forward, and generally teased, I believe about when he was going to get married.  He ended up called three friends from the congregation, all well-dressed and confident young men, and they all stood there and people whooped and laughed, and were asked to announce the date -- again, I think it was of their marriages.  The first one said "the second Sunday of August -- of next year."  The second one couldn't think so fast on his feet, but joined in the general merriment, and said the Sunday after that, and the next fellow offered the Sunday following that one.  The last man was more clever, and apologetically said that since that month was so busy, he would oblige by waiting until the following year entirely.  Everyone laughed and clapped and they went back to their seats.  

If that sounds like a lot, it is; the services are quite a bit longer than American services.  Usually at about an hour and a half, the priest closes the program, but that's when the person is invited up to talk about their pet project, followed by some other announcements and a collection for something, and then more singing.  I say "about" an hour and a half, but that is so vague because it is hard to tell exactly when the service starts.  I have been told anything between 8:30 and 9:00 for the service which is listed at 8:45 on the board, but it seems like it really does start somewhere in that vicinity, and it depends on how much of the gathering quiet prayer and singing and greeting your neighbor and watching the processional you feel like calling "church time."  If you arrive at 8:30, you can find something to occupy your spiritual self, but if you arrive closer to 9 you can decide that the other people have just been busy finding their seats!

(And as a post script, I still don't know what I have signed up to do with the church's children!  The Father had offered to "show me around" on Tuesday, so I do have an appointment with him.  And he said that my letter of introduction from my home church said that I had worked especially with the children of the church.  And needless to say, a church this size has a youth program, which I promptly got invited to since I am also helping out with the children.  So I guess I will figure out the details on Tuesday!)