You can read National Geographic or watch the Africa Channel on television, but nothing can prepare you for the first time you go into a small village in rural Uganda.

 

First of all there's the welcoming committee. As you drive up, the first young child will let out the cry "Mzungu" which is the way locals refer to white people. At first we were told that it meant just that, but later learned that it literally meant, "person that walks around in circles."  The name actually came from the missionaries who would always end up lost and were continually asking for directions.  The locals always seem to use the term without even the slightest hint of maliciousness, almost the way an older brother looks out for his young sibling.

 

That first excited youthful shout is followed by a whole chorus of kids yelling "Mzungu" as they come running after you, chasing your vehicle until you stop.

 

Once you get out of the van they run up to you as if you are a new toy and one of the braver ones might reach out to take your hand and lead you off to where all their friends are.  These children don't really have anything but what little they do have they are happy to share with you.  

 

They don't seem to ever lose this generosity.  Adults would see us outside and bring us chairs to sit on and once we were seated they would bring us eggs.  Afterward, we realized that the chairs were the ones that they had been sitting on and the eggs, their livelihood.  It just didn't matter to them, we were in their village so therefore we were their guests and they wanted to make sure that we were happy.  

 

The children in some of the villages that we visited had probably never even seen actual "Mzungu" before and were also very amused by our cameras. It was really interesting to see them look at the screen on the camera and be able to pick out their friends reflections before they could pick out their own, and why not, there were no mirrors in the village so maybe they had never actually seen themselves before. Once they had figured that out they were happily hamming it up in front of the camera, climbing trees, jumping in the air, and all manner of other things.

 

And then it hits you. These kids are happy, really happy - maybe happier than kids are in the cities, maybe happier than kids are in more developed countries. They may not have much in the way of clothes. They may not own a pair of shoes. They may only have one shirt and one pair of pants. But they are really genuinely happy in their village, with their friends and families.
Now I'm not saying that their lives are easy. In fact, one of the doctors who was traveling with us said that out of every hundred children he saw each day,  maybe one of them did not have stomach parasites and maybe one or two did not have Malaria. But that didn't seem to stop them playing and having fun like kids do.