“We love you for loving us!” Was the passionate shout I heard from above a crowd of women in rural Uganda. I was stunned and deeply touched and that is the essence of my last trip to Uganda and the essence of the TGC program.
When I meet with the groups of women we support in Uganda, it is usual to be met with exuberant songs and dances as I enter the villages. They perform to express their appreciation for all the program has done to change their lives and to express their unbridled joy. Inevitably by the end of the day’s events, they also present my fellow travelers and myself with bags of corn meal, millet, beans, rice, bananas, avocados, beautiful African fabric, ceramics, live chickens, and occasionally even a goat. We are always overwhelmed at the generosity of these women who live in straw and mud structures and maybe own one pair of shoes but whose lives have so improved since the advent of the TGC program that they feel compelled to express their extreme gratitude with such gifts.
The gifts are certainly an expression of love but there’s more. The women are now happy and proud to be givers and not beggars. Now, in the village there’s a very palatable feeling of joy and love.
We’ve provided loan funds, education, and mentors, but they’ve done the hard work of defying the cultural expectations of their husbands and their communities. They needed someone to have faith in them.
