We arrived in Uganda on Wednesday, Oct. 7. Our friend Kimi who lives in Jinja picked us up from the airport and drove us to Noah’s Ark Children’s Home in Mukono, just a couple hours from the airport. We got a chance to catch up with her as we watched the beautiful Ugandan landscape pass by. It looked just as Africa should look from all the images I’ve seen over the years. Mud huts, lush grasses, palm trees and lots of people walking, riding bikes, and piling into taxi vans.
We spent five days and four nights at Noah’s Ark. And while we didn’t have much luck interviewing the kids, we did get a good understanding of how the orphanage runs and how the children are raised within its walls. The kids play lots, eat well, go to school, get in trouble, get hugged and get dirty just like any other kids.
If you were to watch most of these children running and playing and laughing and crying, you might suspect they are just like any other kids. In some ways they are. But we got a chance to read through each of their profiles, each child’s story written up with pictures of the child over the years. The stories spoke of devastating pasts, including abandonment, loss of both parents, cruel treatment, physical and mental abuse and even rape.
To see children who have gone through such trauma and at a glance for them to seem just like any other child is a testament to the love given in Noah’s Ark. Their motto is ‘From Nobody to Somebody’ and fits well when you hear the stories.
