Leading By Example

I almost wish I could take a bronzed copy of this story and ram it down the throats of all the fat cats, big time pols, and their media whores who smugly write off NOLA as a lost cause--hat tips to YRHT and No Katrina:

The Kireka slum clings to a stony hillside above Kampala, Uganda, home to at least 5,000 impoverished refugees who live in hand-fashioned shelters bordered by outdoor latrines. The hillside is not only home, but work: Strip quarries line its face. Men dig out its larger rocks, while hundreds of women spend their days in stooped manual labor, pounding the rocks by hand into walnut-sized stones for sale as construction material. They earn about $1.20 per day.

So American aid worker Amy Cunningham could scarcely believe it when she was summoned to Kireka last month for a festive celebration in which dozens of women handed over nearly $900 in wages: their gift to victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

"I was just completely blown away," Cunningham said. "At first I thought, 'This can't be true. These people are just scraping by.' But I went to the ceremony, and they were so happy to be able to send over this money.

"They were just overwhelmed with joy because they were able to do something to help."

The women turned over their money to AVSI, a Catholic Italian aid organization in Kampala, which will forward it to an AVSI office in the United States.

In a few weeks, the money, combined with donations AVSI has collected from other sources, will be sent to families in New Orleans, Metairie, St. Bernard Parish and other hard-hit communities, said Jackie Aldrette, an AVSI worker in Washington, D.C.

And that's not all. In a country where the average annual income is about $300, Archbishop John Baptist Odama raised $500 over several weeks among Catholics in northern Uganda in special collections for New Orleans relief, Aldrette said. In that part of the country, a 19-year civil war continues to disrupt life...

Weeks ago, the women breaking rocks on the hillside above Kireka heard the news of Katrina's devastation in the United States.

Busingye said their hearts had been touched last year, when they donated some of their earnings to victims of the tsunami in Southeast Asia. But she said she did not have the heart to ask for another effort, so she asked only that the women pray for Katrina's victims.

But they wanted to do more. In a written account of their relief effort, Busingye told AVSI that one of the women, Akullu Margret, told her she knew she would die of AIDS. "When I die, my children will be left like those in America. Someone will have to care for them. I want to care for someone also. I want to give a lunch, or at least a malaria treatment."

Busingye said others agreed.

The women of Kireka believe that "those people who are suffering, they belong to us. They are our people. Their problems are our problems. Their children are like our children," Busingye said.

Soon 200 women pledged their work. They broke rocks for weeks and donated most of their wages to the Katrina pot. A few others turned over their revenue from selling bananas, necklaces and small chairs.

At a ceremony in Kireka last month, Cunningham and other officials were invited to receive the women's gift, which amounted to 1.6 million Ugandan shillings, or $800 to $900.

Cunningham said she was struck by the women's joy at being able to make the donation. There was dancing and seemingly endless testimonials as individual workers explained their motives for giving, she said.

Many are members of the Acholi tribe, driven out of the northern part of Uganda by a bloody, long-running civil war.

"One told me, 'We know what it's like to lose our homes,' " Cunningham said.

This generousity is, as Oyster describes, "incredible." Likewise incredible is the money donated by Palestinian refugees. We can all learn a lot from these examples, but those who could especially use the lesson are probably too busy figuring out where they're going to have lunch right now.

Jerks.