ORIENTATION DAY

One by one the grandparents stepped into the shade of the Community Center and took a seat. It was an open-sided space, no more than a roof suspended on posts set deep into the soil, but it provided some relief from the heat.

Eight of the ten were women.  They were dressed for the occasion in their very best clothes – an array of bright colors except for one of the two men, who was dressed all in black. They were all recent arrivals to the Nakivale Refugee Settlement and they did not know one another, so they sat in silence.  Wary.  Uncertain. The reserved expressions on their faces a sharp contrast to their festive clothing.  

They were greeted as they came in by a young man with a big smile and a soft voice, who told them his name was Daniel Ocen Osako and that he was the Country Representative in Uganda for an organization called Focusing Initiatives International and also the Program Director for the project they had been recruited to be “grandparents” for – A Better World for Kids.

There were three other young people with Daniel.  The energetic young man who had first recruited them and two young women with smiling faces.  

The grandparents sat stiffly.  Separate.  

They had been told that they were chosen because they were known as storytellers.  They were to tell their stories to the children of Nakivale.  Children who had lost their families and hidden from soldiers in the forest and traveled long distances alone until they found their way to Nakivale.  Angry children who threw rocks at the goats and sullen children who spoke to no one and attempted to be invisible. Hungry children who clung to you and smiled if you gave them something to eat, but would steal your lunch if you said no and turned your back.

“At risk” children the recruiter had called them.  “Disrespectful” the grandparents thought them and wondered how such children could be expected to sit still to listen to stories about talking animals and hard working farmers and disobedient children. They glanced at the others. Maybe their stories were better.

After the tenth grandparent had arrived and taken a seat, Daniel introduced the three young people as team members who would support them all on the project.

The elderly people before him had been told they were recruited for their stories, and of course this was true.  That was why there were so many women.  Grandmothers always have many stories to tell.  

But they had also been chosen because they were as “at risk” as the children.

These people, too, had been separated from their families.  Their lives had been disrupted by warfare and disease and political repression.  They had been forced out of the villages where they had anticipated their final years to be a time of respect – a time when they would be valued by their communities as human reservoirs of local knowledge about planting seasons and soil preparation and survival during periodic droughts and floods.  All that precious knowledge was useless here in this great valley filled with scattered tents and makeshift homes and small gardens that made up the Nakivale settlements. Here they lived in isolation or with families desperate to survive in an unfamiliar environment, their elderly relations a burdensome responsibility – an extra mouth to feed with little to contribute.