UGANDA JOURNALS - The Inside Scoop

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Jenna's journal was included in the Burlington Free Press feature article about the SMC summer trip to Uganda. We are incredibly proud of Jenn for all her efforts to take this journey, we are thankful to Robert and Adie her professors who organized this trip to make it possible, we are appreciative that Jenn met Atem and has shared in his awesome family reunion, and we are grateful for all who have supported this endeavor in any way.

Here is just one excerpt of Jenn's Journal, June 28, 2005:
"I am home now. I overheard some girls at my work talking about tanning, and I became extremely frustrated.

For the past few weeks, I have only discussed intellectually about what I have experienced. Our group has been trying to decide where the money we raised this last year should go.

Yet these girls couldn't decide if it was better to tan themselves at home with a spray bottle or pay the extra cash and bronze at a spa.
My discomfort was not so much in the subject but in the fact I couldn’t fit into the conversation. It's not as if I could explain that there were people literally starving and living off measly rations and needed money so desperately.

I felt terrible not being able to say anything, especially when they finally decided to get a professional tan, the more expensive option.
When people wonder what I have been up to for a month, I tell them I was doing service in Africa, and immediately they ask to hear all about it. As sincere as his or her curiosity is, I know that no one really wants to know the horrid truth of what happened in Uganda. And Sudan. And Rwanda.

I can't even bring myself to verbalize some of the stories I have heard or describe how many must live. I tell people stories that will make Africa seem exciting and beautiful. How we had to wait for a family of elephants to cross the road, how I bought a pair of shoes for a girl who once wondered the market barefoot on top of garbage, how I met great people with interesting lives.

But I have yet to tell the really sad stories that I will never be able to erase from my memory.

I talked to people who watched their own homes burn to the ground, whose family was killed right before them while they hid in a potato field just a few yards away, who was forced to join the army and to kill others so not to lose their own lives.

I don't know if people are ready to really listen. And when they ask to see pictures, I wonder what it is they want to see: Pictures of people so skinny you can count their ribs? A picture of a woman who has been sick for 20 years whose eyes are clouded over in complete blindness?

I went to Africa and saw people who need our help now more then ever. These people were begging me, running after me calling my name, grabbing my arms, asking me for anything that I could spare. They would fight over my empty water bottle as if it were all the gold in the world. It makes me so sad that people have to hear these stories to be motivated to help, but at the same time, I have to remember that they don't know and are genuinely interested..."

Thank you, Jenna