CRAMMED WITH HEAVEN: Happiness and the lady from Uganda

A monthly column in which Jenni Pretorius Hill shares stories of hope which bring Heaven’s perspective to Earth

Children delight in the simplest things. When they were little, my children would become ecstatic with the suggestion of a beach outing and could tip-over into near delirium if this was accompanied with the promise of an ice cream cone as well. A simple game of hide-and-seek would send them screeching around the garden in delight, and the cheapest Crazy Store purchase of bubbles or slime would keep them happy for hours. With age, their tastes have become more sophisticated, but they have not completely lost the giggling pleasure of a shower-down with a hosepipe on a hot day or catching the drips of an ice cream on their tongues. I hope with all my heart that they will never lose their thrill for the simplest of life’s wonders. When we stake our happiness on the hope of attaining things like fame and fortune, we end up as miserable grown-ups, forever in pursuit of that elusive rainbow that exists only in the artificial world of social media. 

It is a rare and wonderful thing to find an adult who has held on to a child-like sense of wonder. As I write this, my minds-eye recalls the impression of a woman entering my dry-walled, windowless classroom. As she walks through the door, she brings with her the little bit of sunshine that rebelliously defies the English winter, and I feel happy at the memory in the same way as I did with her arrival into my language class so many years ago. I was teaching at an English school in London and my students came from all over the world, from every continent and people group. Some had come to London in the hopes of finding a better future and others were driven there by necessity to flee some horror in their native land. There was a Chinese border guard whose job it was to find smuggled North Koreans entering his country and send them home to die; there was the Cameroonian liberation fighter who had lost his short-term memory through torture, and the professional Brazilian ballet dancer who had given up her life’s passion for the man she loved. 

And then there was Lina, the mixed-race Ugandan woman who taught me so much about happiness. Lina was happy; and she would capture all of us into her happiness like a mother sweeping her children up in an embrace. Her understanding of English was sufficient, but she needed to improve considerably in order to pass an entrance exam to nursing college. It was not easy for her; she did not have a natural flair like some of my other students and she would often stay after class to grapple with a concept she did not understand. But even then, she never lost her sense of humour nor her unshakeable confidence that she would eventually overcome, and she never ceased in her proclamations of praise and love for Jesus. I was curious about her story; I knew she didn’t have it easy; she was poor and although she wasn’t older than 40, I knew she had raised a daughter on her own. But her radiant joy, even when she creased between her eyes over a language question, was intriguing. One day, after class when we were alone, I asked her to tell me about her life. 

Lina had been raised a strict Muslim in Kampala in Uganda. Being female, she had never learned to read or write and from a young age she knew she was destined to marry a man of her father’s choosing. When she was 14 years old, her father gave her to his best friend, a man in his sixties. Lina would be his fourth wife. She told me he was kindly towards her, and indulged her, but she was hated and abused by the other wives because of her youth. By the time she was 15, she gave birth to her daughter. While she was struggling with motherhood, being only a child herself, and enduring the abuse and hatred within her own home, Idi Amin was unleashing his brutal lunacy on Uganda. In his madness, he had a particular hatred for Asians and mixed races. All her male relatives she told me, risked indiscriminate slaughter if they stayed in Kampala, and the women would be raped and taken as sex-slaves until they died. Her husband was a wealthy man, and she knew he was making arrangements to move his family out of Uganda. She had no reason to doubt him, so when he said he was going out one day with his other wives to attend to some business, she was content to stay at home. He never came back; his other wives had so poisoned his mind toward her that he had agreed with them to secretly leave Kampala without her, but taking them, and their children with him. The next part of the story I remember the most vividly because it was so scorched into her memory that she could retell it in a way that I could see it for myself and smell the blood and fire and hear the screams and taste her fear like something acrid on my tongue. She took her newborn baby and strapped her on to her body and ran through the streets of Kampala, looking everywhere, hoping that what people were telling her was not true – that her husband had abandoned her to the slaughter that was unfurling all around her. She told me she stepped over bodies, and slipped in blood, calling his name, seeking out the places he frequented in her flailing hope that she would find him. As she spoke, I’m sure I must have put my head down in my own tears, just as she sat down at the end of that terrible day, on the side of the road. 

There was nothing else left for her but to cry out to God; but the God who rescued her wasn’t the one of her childhood. He wasn’t the oppressive, discriminatory god she had prayed to in her youth; He wasn’t the god of the man who had left her in the streets of Kampala. Her journey out of Uganda was long and hard, devastated by loss but sometimes infused with hope – like it is with many refugees. I cannot recall the exact details of her conversion, but on the journey, she encountered Jesus and gave her life over to Him. And when she got to the retelling of that part, her face lit up again and her story turned to the wonder of her life, reborn. She eventually found her way to London and started working menial jobs. It was always just enough for her and her daughter; and while she worked days, she attended night classes and put herself through school, eventually graduating from high school; and now she tells me: “I’m going to be a nurse!” Her eyes blaze, and I feel the same leap of expectation in my own heart.

“Yes!” I say, “You’re going to do it! You’re going to pass the test Lina, I just know it!”

I believe she did, and I’m pretty sure she’s in a dour hospital building today, somewhere in the world, radiating the same joy that she did in my classroom. I’m so grateful for people like Lina, and for my children too, and for every person who does not overcomplicate the business of being happy.

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