Some of you may have read about the massive flooding of Biblical proportions that’s plaguing several African countries, including Uganda. Especially Northern Uganda. Never fear; Gulu has been spared, though it’s heart-wrenching to read the stories about how whole villages and IDP camps have been washed away. After everything else Northern Uganda has been through, now this.
I thought about that yesterday, as I was sitting on the front porch of the main house on Plot 26, Samuel Doe Road. It was pouring rain, but the sun was shining just as bright as day. Usually, when that happens, I get excited, because it means there’ll be a rainbow. And rainbows are my lucky symbol….not because I’m expecting to find a jolly leprechaun beckoning me toward my own pot of gold at the end of one someday. It’s just that rainbows are so darned psychedelic, and magical, and beautiful.
The last time I went to Hawaii with my best friend Faith, it almost got ridiculous how many rainbows I saw, every single day. Maui is already an aggressively, astonishingly beautiful island geographically, but then everywhere you looked, there were rainbows. At least 10 a day, I’d guess. Heck, you could sneeze and make a rainbow, for Christ’s sake.
At the time, I took it as a sign that somehow, some way, my life would get better. It was December of 2006, and I had survived several years of trauma, grief and stress that at times had threatened to break my spirit completely. In the span of about 3 and a half years, both my parents had died, my eldest brother had killed himself, and my sister Julie had been diagnosed with colon cancer. I was a wrung out, beaten down, walking sack of bones by that point, but finding myself on Maui staring at rainbows everywhere gave me the sign I needed…..somehow, I would be okay.
Well, go try and find a rainbow in Gulu. Jeez! I mean, it’s rained on bright sunny days about a dozen times since I've been here, and yet I’ve never, EVER seen a rainbow. It’s like Uganda is the only place in the world where rainbows don’t mystically appear on a sunny, rainy day.
I really, really needed a rainbow yesterday. I found out that doctors confirmed that my sister Julie’s colon cancer is back. She’s not doing so good.
I’ll be back in Illinois at her bedside by Friday afternoon. Say a prayer for Julie. And then say one for me.
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