“I have nothing to give to God, so I sing to Him and pray
only.”
That’s what Esther told me as she dried her eyes,
emotionally tired after pouring her life story into my open journal pages. I sat next to her, calm and still, letting
the afternoon breeze lift the hair off my warm, sweaty neck and face. Soon, a medical missionary team would be
coming to check in at the guest house. Esther
would need to go back downstairs to her kitchen and prepare a homey dinner for
all of us. But for that moment, we sat
on the shaded porch, letting everything just be.
I didn’t want to speak then. Esther let me in to the pieces of her that
were vulnerable and painful. Any words I
could have said would have felt small and trite; an attempt to make sense of
things that don’t make much sense at all.
I asked her if I could share her story, and she laughed and blew her
nose. “Yes! Share with everyone so they will know my life. Esther in Uganda!”
Pull up a chair, friend.
When Esther was two weeks old, her mother left her father
and married someone else. Shortly after,
someone poisoned baby Esther and she most likely would have died, if her
grandma hadn’t given her some local medicine.
Her grandma also took Esther to her biological father and ordered him to
take care of his sick child. His
response was, “Girls are useless. Throw
her into a pit latrine.”
But she didn’t.
Esther’s grandma prayed for her and kept giving her local
medicine until she was cured. An aunt
stepped in to raise Esther with her cousins.
There wasn’t enough money for school fees, or clothing for that
matter. Little Esther grew up wearing
her aunt’s blouse with a belt to form some semblance of a dress. They’d wash it at night and she’d wear it wet
the next day. Esther’s uncle scraped
together enough money to put her through third grade, but after that, she went
to work as a house girl.
A small eight year old, Esther had more work than she
could handle. The family had a dozen
gods in the house. One of her jobs was
to hang the gods outside in the surrounding bushes and clean the gods’
house. When that was done, Esther was in
charge of cleaning up after the family’s puppies. They didn’t give her a brush or any supplies,
so she had to wash the excrement mess with her hands. In exchange for work, Esther received cold
leftover food.
As she told me this part, I felt so angry that she didn’t
even receive wages for this demeaning job.
But Esther glazed over the part about no wages. Her voice broke and tears welled up when she
said, “No hot food.”
Life continued to be steeped in difficulty. When Esther was fifteen years old, a man
raped her and she got pregnant with her first born son. She was a tiny teenager and everyone thought
she would die from the pregnancy. Esther’s
family took her to live with the baby’s father.
Over the next four years, they had two more children. This man was an alcoholic and often beat
Esther. She would take her kids and
sleep outside when things felt unsafe in the home.
Eventually, she took the kids, left him and went to stay
with her mother. A year and a half
later, Esther’s mother became sick and died after one month of illness. Esther was 20 or 21 years old, with three
small children and nowhere to go. She
finally found refuge on her uncle’s land, living in a house made of mud,
sticks, and grass. Her uncle’s son was
not happy about this and threatened to destroy the house. He wanted the land. Esther left.
She got a job working in a secondary school for 2300
Ugandan shillings per month ($0.87 USD).
The pay was sporadic, though, so Esther stayed up nights sewing
tablecloths and making chapatti (flat bread) to sell. Somehow, she was able to send her three
children to school on these earnings. As
Esther talked to me, she kept repeating, “I didn’t study in my life.” She didn’t want her kids to miss out on an
education like she did.
Things got much, much better when her cousin’s sister
opened the company Airtel to sell phones.
Esther shared her story and this relative set her up cooking for the
Airtel workers. This time, she made
50,000 shillings per month (just under $19) and, she emphasized, “They actually
paid me!”
When her Airtel relative married a mzungu (white person)
and went to America, it was hard for Esther to keep her job there. She ended up working for an Asian
businessman, cooking and cleaning at his home.
This employer didn’t pay her, but she stayed because the house worked as
a place for Esther to live. Her kids
went to stay with Esther’s aunt.
While
this situation was difficult, it put her in a position where she met a
missionary couple who took Esther on as the head of hospitality at their
guesthouse in Kampala. The couple was
generous with Esther and even gave her three months salary so she could build a
house for her kids in northern Uganda, where they lived. The house is 3x6 meters, with two rooms. Esther was proud to say that the roof is
sturdy, made of five iron sheets.
Throughout her life, Esther has gone to church. The day her mother died was the day Esther
got saved. Esther is an only child, so
her mother’s death was an especially heavy blow. “I have no one to lean on. I have no one there, so I have to lean on
Jesus.” Her mother’s dead body was in
the house, and people from church were there, singing and giving
testimonies. Esther started talking
about her old life and said she wanted to be free of sin, so they prayed for
her and she became born again.
If Esther hadn’t come to run the guesthouse in Kampala,
she thinks she’d probably be in heaven with her mother. One day, she was so tired of this world, she
wanted to kill herself. She cried to
God,“I have no one, nowhere. At least
let me die.” Later, Esther confessed her
feelings to her aunt. It helped to share
the pain with someone, and ever since, this aunt is the one she stays with when
she goes north to see her family.
Her oldest son finished high school and now has a
wife. Esther’s daughter became a
secretary. The baby of the family, her
second son, is now finishing school to be an engineer. All of Esther’s salary was going to pay this
son’s school fees, until a visiting American heard Esther’s story and took over
the payments. He has a passion for
engineering, and it blesses him to see Esther’s son pursue this dream.
Esther looked at me, held my hand, and furrowed her dark
eyebrows.
“This world is difficult.
This life is difficult. Satan can
continue to say, ‘Kill yourself’, but now I know I’m glad I’m here.
God is good.
With God, all things are possible.
I have nothing to give to God. Nothing.
So I sing to Him and pray only.”
And she does.
In the guest house, I could hear her strong, clear voice downstairs,
rising above the clattering of pans and sounds of running water, singing
worship songs. As she headed for bed at
the end of a long day, Esther was humming another hymn. She gives God all she has.
I tried it too. I
hung our wet clothes out to dry and sang, I played with kids and taught them a
new song for God. Now, I’m in Seattle
again, and when I do dishes, my voice rings out above the water too. My story is very different from Esther’s. I can’t fathom all the pain she’s been
through. Still, the most valuable thing
I can give God is just the same as what Esther gives.
So I sing to Him and pray.
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