Last Friday, I was working at Wisdom Tea House (a dream of a place) when my friend Daniel Clark came in to join me for the afternoon. “30 hours ago I was in a jungle,” he said as he sat down. “Being here makes me feel sick.”  
Daniel was in the midst of culture shock–that cognitive and spiritual dissonance familiar to anyone who has displaced themselves and come home again, especially anyone who has spent time in a region devastated by poverty. Daniel had spent his last week in Uganda working with orphans as part of his job for Children’s Hope Chest. He told me that he had taken a big bag of socks with him to Africa, planning to give them out to the kids he met. But he wasn’t able to give away a single pair–the kids couldn’t use socks, because not one of them owned any shoes. 
Daniel is posting a belated travel journal at his blog. Below the jump, I’ll post an overview of one of the foster homes Daniel visited–harrowing stuff.

Canaan Children’s Home was started by Papa Isaac, pastor of Jinja Full Gospel Church.  Two of his staff, Josephine and Olive, took us around their facility.  There are 105 children there from age 2-18 years old.  They are broken up into six groups that each has a foster mother.  That’s 17 or 18 children in a group – much too large to be a family.  These foster mothers are not paid a salary – instead they work for room and board.  The children in residence at Canaan are from the most desperate situations.  They have been brought there by other pastors, by police and local authorities, and 18 of the children are formerly abducted children forced to work as boy soldiers and sex slaves by the Lord’s Resistance Army in the north of Uganda.  Other children were found abandoned in sugar cane fields, in the gutter, or being starved and torched by dysfunctional families in town.  In addition to an orphanage and school, Papa Isaac is providing kingergarten to 185 poor children in the community, and tailoring, carpentry, and farming training for the older children at Canaan, and a health clinic that is free to the orphans and comes with a small fee to people in the community.


Read Daniel’s blog


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