Uganda Afterthoughts

Fr. Herald and Fr. Sylvester at the Padre Pio Shrine run by Indian Capuchins
on the road between Kampala and Entebbe

I have two memories of my last day in Uganda that stick in my mind: paying several million Uganda shillings (the exchage rate was 2300 to the US dollar) for repairs and replacement parts on our Land Cruiser, and a group of young boys catching grasshoppers to eat ("They're sweet!") under the street lights at the gas station.

But there was a passing encounter that took place earlier in the trip that has left a much deeper lasting impression.

I was checking out at the Uchumi supermarket in the Garden City shopping center just off Kampala Road, when I thought I detected a Spanish accent in one of the voices in a small group of people just behind me. I turned and saw what looked like a Latino face on the older woman in the group, and took the chance of greeting them in Spanish and asking them where they were from.

As it turned out, the mother (Carmen) and daughter (Valeria) were Puerto Ricans from the US, and the white young man with them was the Valeria's American boyfriend. The most interesting of the group, though, was Lawrence, the Ugandan teenager whom Carmen had come to adopt as her son.

"How did you make this connection?" I asked. It happens that Lawrence's best friend had been adopted some time ago by Carmen's neighbor in the US. He must have made such a positive impression on Carmen, and spoken so much and so sincerely about his best friend in Uganda whom he never forgot, that Carmen was inspired to look for the boy to adopt him.

Carmen is a Catholic, though not ostentatious about her faith. She simply allowed the evident goodness of her heart, enhanced by grace, to be moved by Lawrence and his friend. It's a really beautiful story, and even more beautiful because it's true. The witness of one young man's faithful unforgetting friendship with his childhood companion thousands of miles away eventually results in a totally life-changing shift for Lawrence. The prelude, of course, is the adoption of the first young man, which must be a story in itself.

It's a chain reaction of charity, and would make a great movie. Maybe someone will film it someday.