The pain of others (not) is always half-pain

‘The pain of others is always half pain’ sang De André.

In Uganda, a land of great contradictions, it seems both impossible and obvious that this is how things are: even though the misery that surrounds me often shocks me, raw and brutal, impregnating the air with its rancid and acid smell, this land is already so familiar to me that at times I almost feel ‘used’ to its poverty. I am thus faced with a strange inner contrast, and the memory of a Liberation Theology prayer heard in Latin America a few years ago is awakened. ‘Lord forgive me because today my heart was not moved before a child who was hungry’.

Visiting schools like the one in Kasimeri (in Moroto, in an extremely poor region of northern Uganda called Karamoja) does me good, because it wounds my heart, moves me again, and reminds me why I have been here for over three years, trying to do my best in building a better world.

Around 800 of the more than 1,700 children who attend the school live in Kasimeri. While a dormitory has recently been rebuilt for the girls, there are about 450 children who are forced to live in a real dump. I accompany my friends from the Costa Family Foundation to see it with their own eyes, because there is no story that can render the idea, and because as an ISP we would like to propose to them that they choose as their next project to be carried out together the renovation of these spaces.

Faced with the anguish of what we are facing, I am reminded of these verses, dictated by my wounded heart during my first month in Uganda and my first visit to Karamoja:

Today I wept

a weeping without tears.

They shed them for me

their eyes,

deep as night.

Rich in their love,

covered in flies and rags,

they welcome me

naked

in my rich misery.

The idea of a child who has as his only space, intimate, protected, half of a mattress thrown on the floor and shared with another child, with a few mice, and with many cockroaches, cannot really leave one indifferent. The idea of 450 children living like this can only shake the heart. I cannot stop asking myself the meaning of so much pain. I have no answer, but I decide to allow myself to feel it: I allow myself to experience this suffering, letting other people's pain become mine to the full, and not just half of it.

A single thought, sincere and profound, arises in my moved and wounded heart: ‘I will do my best to help offer each of these children a dignified space. And it will be worth (or rather, as a dear friend suggests to me, worth the joy!) every effort, every grain of commitment and effort'.

At the moment, a decent dormitory for Kasimeri and her children is a dream, but I look my fellow travellers in the eye. My belief is theirs, and when we dream together, it is the beginning of a new reality.