Reading Francis

When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.” But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” They said to him, “Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii^[a] worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?” And he said to them, “How many loaves have you? Go and see.” When they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.

—Mark 6:35-44

“This has sh*t show potential” is not a phrase I can find coming from the disciples in any translation I’ve seen, but it wouldn’t be hard to imagine one of them muttering the Aramaic equivalent as he [let’s face it, probably Thomas] assessed the situation. Five thousand men, plus women and children. Five loaves of bread and two fish. Yeah, that could go poorly.

+++

Since I first wrote about my friend Patrick in Uganda and the unlikely story of our connection, there have been some ebbs and flows in the effort to sustain their school in a Kampala outskirt that strives to feed, house and educate several hundred kids, most of them orphans, refugees, or otherwise given up by their families and pretty much everyone else. We raised enough money for the water filter…but Facebook’s Network for Good has been slow to get the money to the US-based non-profit that supports the school. Patrick was able to raise some money for desks for the kids, but the school year was briefly thrown into chaos due to a teacher strike, which reshuffled their fundraising priorities. He was able to raise money to buy supplies for their agricultural venture, but they added scores of new students from South Sudan who had fled their country to a refugee settlement and saw this hanging-by-a-thread school as a better chance to a better life. Even though they really didn’t have enough for the kids already under their roof, they couldn’t turn away these others in even more dire need. So it’s been up and down. Throughout, Patrick and I message each other most days.

Patrick reached out recently to ask if we could send clothes to the kids. As they begin a new school year there, some of them new arrivals don’t have clothes, especially shoes. Could I send some from the US? I explained to Patrick that, if I had the money to ship clothes from America to Uganda, it would be better for all involved just to send the money directly to the school so they could buy their own clothes. But I don’t have that kind of money.

Oh. Hey, Mr. Segawa (the school’s founder, Segawa Ephraim) is planning to visit the US, but I think he’s too far for you to see him. He’s going to a conference in Hartford, Connecticut. (Yes, it’s too far.)

Patrick, if we could get some clothes to Mr. Segawa could he take them back?

He could take two suitcases full – up to 23 kg (50 pounds) each.

Thus began what one of the semi-willing co-conspirators confessed had sh*t show potential.

+++

Patrick and Mr. Segawa at the airport.

I started off thinking that we could collect clothes in Florida and ship them to Hartford, but the first wake up call was that Mr. Segawa was leaving for the US that day, and would be returning less than a week later. That pretty quickly scrapped the idea of collecting and shipping. Not enough time to marshal te troops, and too expensive to ship on that timeframe.

I know, basically, one person in Hartford, Connecticut, so I asked her if she knew anyone who might be able to donate clothes for kids 5 to 15 to a guy who would take them back to Uganda to orphans and refugees. [Confession: every time I tried to explain this project to someone, I end up laughing at how absurdly unlikely it is.] I figured, best case, she’d know of a non-profit in town I could pitch. Instead, she turned to her friends, several of whom, apparently, have LOTS of kids clothes they don’t need. In the span of about a day, it looked like our biggest concern would be that we had more than two suitcases full for Segawa to take back. All we needed to do was get the clothes to the Super 8 Hartford where he would be staying the night before he returned home, and we’d actually make this happen! My friend is a superstar who went above and beyond, and her friends were awesome to respond so quickly and abundantly.

Then we realized he didn’t actually have suitcases. [This would be when the sh*tshow potential comment came.] I assured my friend that, yes, this was pretty chaotic, but I was confident we could get suitcases. She didn’t seem convinced, but she said she’d keep working on clothes and look to me to work my magic on suitcases.

It turned out I didn’t need to. Before I heard back from a friend who is a Franciscan priest in St. Pete, who used to be a pastor in Hartford, and who said there were plenty of old suitcases that friars had left behind in the friary there, my friend’s friends had scared up two suitcases to go with the shoes and clothes to go back with Segawa.

Through it all, I kept in steady communication with Amish, the manager of the Super 8. He was less than enthused, but handled the chaos relatively well – packages, suitcases, bags of clothes coming in at odd times for a guest who wasn’t arriving for a couple days. By the last drop off, he was ready for Segawa to arrive so he could hand over all this stuff. But at the end of the day, he did his part. Sunday night I got word from Segawa that Amish had given him the suitcases, bags and packages.

Amish receiving suitcases full of clothes from strangers.

+++

There is a modern reinterpretation of the feeding of the multitudes, the miracle of the loaves and fishes, which is assuredly not what the gospel-writers had in mind. In it, it’s not so much that Jesus says “Shazam” over the bowls of breadcrumbs and multiplies them. It’s that, by encouraging the one small soul who gave what he had, and tearing it into small pieces, he convinced everyone in the crowd that if they all took what they had squirreled away just in case and threw it in with the others, there would be enough for everyone. There is something terribly daunting about taking on the responsibility of feeding 5,000+. There is something imminently doable about throwing in the crumbs you have on you to contribute to the good of the group. It still takes some goodness and some trust, but you can do it. And when 5,000 do it, there is more than enough for everyone.

That is the sort of miracle that happened at the Super 8 Hartford last weekend. A total stranger from the other side of the world needed clothes for the kids back home with nothing. Friends of friends of friends of his heard about it and looked for what they and their friends could spare. And he went home with two suitcases, full to the brim with hope and clothes and shoes of all kinds.

Let those with ears to hear, listen up.

+++

One more thing before the photos of what came of this caper. If you missed this boat and you’re still willing to help Segawa and Patrick provide for these kids, PayPal Heart for People directly here. Thanks.