Well Kept

**This story is shared with permission. Names have been changed to protect privacy.

There were no decorations, nor a pile of presents in the small home. Uganda’s prison barracks aren’t designed for show. The woman who had invited me to visit made a living for her family as a guard in the women’s prison. Her memory is dear to me, her hearth and home defied my westernized ideals of comfort.

The warmth was inside the woman of the house. She referred to herself as my mother and as my children’s grandmother, “Because your own mother is far away.”

Today, she had asked me to come alone.

“Let me put on some chai for you. You are welcome to my home.” Deborah always led with that hospitable opening line. Quick as a sprite, she placed a small pot of water on a single charcoal-fueled burner that sat just outside the back door.

“I will boil it long, because your stomach is from America, and mine is weak.” She laughed aloud at the statement, but she wasn’t wrong. Sometimes you must laugh at life’s realities, even the grim ones. One of the many things I learned from Deborah over the years.

The back door was a mere five or six feet from the front door, I guesstimated, with the entire room stretching only around eight feet in the other direction also. A generous 48 foot square, one room home. A single picture of her late husband hung on the wall.

In the corner, a twin mattress lay on the floor and on the mattress lay Deborah’s aging mother-in-law. The mother-in-law had recently recovered from a dual bout with pneumonia and syphilis, was blind in her eighties, and still had a lot to say. She spoke of how she believed that soon she would see her husband and children again, in the life after this one.

Deborah was raising her three grandchildren as well, her husband and most of her children had passed away from AIDS. Two of them had been poisoned by a neighbor who disagreed with their politics. Deborah herself, and one of her grandchildren were living with HIV.

That was how I met Deborah, she was referred to the organization I worked with for help with school fees for the children, and through that connection was introduced to a clinic where she could access the latest antiretroviral (ARV) medications at no cost to her.

At the time this story takes place, I had known her for a while, the kids were thriving in their schools, and access to good treatment was keeping Deborah and her grandson healthy and strong. We sat on a mat of woven papyrus with our teas, she sent the children out to play so the adults could speak.

Deborah always had a story. This is in her words, a speaker of English as her fourth language.

“I have been wanting to tell you about the time I used to make local brew. It was after my husband died, and my children were still small. Because my husband, he brought us the AIDS, we all were sick. I didn’t have a job, and I didn’t have school fees for my children.

“There was money in making the local brew, you know? Many people are addicted to that, and they used to come all the time.

“For long time, God is telling me, ‘Deborah, this not good. You are helping people to break their families. You are helping people to drink themselves to death, and they don’t keep jobs. It is not good money. It is bad money.’

“And I say to him, “Now God, what do you want me to do? I’m here alone with my children, and I have no husband to help me. I have no schooling, no work. What do you want me to do?’ So I keep on selling the brew. Ah!” She flinched as if in pain at the memory.

“Every day I fill maybe twenty jerry cans and sell them all. It is a lot of money, because when it gets less, people pay more to get what is remaining. The men in the village who like to drink, they come in the night, midnight, sometimes 2 am, pounding on the door. ‘Give us drink, Deborah! Give us the brew!’

“And in the night I get up and I sell while my children are there sleeping. Sometimes they wake up and feel afraid of the men coming. And I say, ‘What else can I do?’ You know? It was very, very hard.

“Then one night, a man comes and he is very, very drunk. I had no more to sell. He is banging, pounding on the door and he shouts, ‘I’m going to break down this door and take what I want!’ He know there is money inside.

“I tell him ‘There is no more drink! Come back tomorrow when I have more!’ But he don’t listen. He pounds and shouts for a long time, I don’t know how the door held itself, it was God’s protection. Then, my neighbors come and chase him away with sticks. I was so tired I fell down!

“Then, God say, ‘Deborah, I told you this is bad. This is not safe. You do something that isn’t making people turn away from me. You do something else. Do something good.’

“I said, ‘Okay God. I’m like a bird, I’m like a flower. I have nothing, I only look to You. Here are my open hands. They are empty. If I stop selling the brew, it is You to feed us, You to clothe us, You to put my children in school.’

“I know that I can’t keep doing the brew, but I didn’t know what I was going to do.” She smiled, as if she were about to tell me a great secret.

Indeed, she was.

“That same morning – the same one – there is a knock on my door. I don’t know how they found us. I don’t know why. It was people from Holland. They had a sponsoring program, like you. They paid for my children’s school fees. They paid for the rest of their lives. All my children finished secondary school, the ones that remained alive to finish. That’s why I know that my grandchildren will also finish schooling, though I’m still alone. Because God keeps us.

“The same day that I gave up my own struggling and I stopped doing bad things to get money, the same day my children get schooling. God is good.

“Then soon after that my friend tell me about the prison hiring. I have been a guard for over 40 years. Was it easy? No. But God keeps us.

“Even now, God is keeping my grandchildren. My mother-in-law has seen eighty years. I am never alone. Now, why do I tell you this? Your children are small, you have your husband.

“I tell you this because you will have hard times. Everybody have hard times. If we have much or little, it is only God who keep us. Learn how to say, ‘I’m a bird, I’m a flower, I have nothing, God. You keep me.’ Learn how to say it. I wish, I wish I learn it when I was young. I still wish I never made that brew and help people do bad things. But God has mercy. God is good. We are well kept, up to now.”

Deborah had told me enough of her story at other times that I knew there was no explanation for the physical and mental strength she possessed. In spite of her meager living, she walked and spoke with the dignity of a queen. Far more, in fact.

There was a captivating confidence in this woman who had suffered so much loss and pain in her life. Who continued to sustain her loved ones in her age. Who found laughter over a pot of contaminated water and turned it into chai and life lessons.

“Now,” she continued, “Sometimes husbands betray us. Sometimes our children die. We can’t depend only on the good things we have. That’s what I wanted to tell you today.”

Had she heard the rumors?

To this day, I don’t know. The village rumor vine is long and winding.

Here’s what I know. I know that the timing of this lesson proved to be impeccable. Hard times were in my family's near future. Of many things that have carried me through many sleepless nights, Deborah’s words have repeated themselves and proven unceasingly true.

It is when we have nothing in our hands, nothing left of ourselves to lean on, and when we know that to be true, that we are most held and most strangely at peace. It isn’t in money, nor in health. Not even in the hearth or the home.

Hope is in the heart, in choosing rightly through the most difficult of decisions we face, and in recognizing that we don’t need to struggle through it alone. “We are well kept. God keeps us.”

“Tell your people in America that story. Tell them they hope in God, not money.”

“I will tell them.”

When I think of hearth and home, so many places come to mind. My parents’ fireplace crackling, the tree on display nearby. My children’s faces as they unwrap their gifts. My grandmother, cooking a feast with all the trimmings, making the sign of the cross as she bowed her head in thanks. I’m grateful for so many things.

Yet there is a gratitude that I imagine means even more to the One who keeps us. Deborah’s smile, the generosity of her chai and her welcome, the humble service she gave to so many in her care. Never wealthy, but rich in gratitude, humility, love, and hope. She saw all of her grandchildren finish secondary school, all while smiling and sharing whatever she could in spite of her own struggle.

All while whispering, “We are well kept.”