what Christian charity looks like

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Nov 25, 2005

While millions of Americans lazily begin working off the calories from a big turkey dinner, as others launch furious assaults on the local shopping malls, the New Orleans Times-Picayune gives this humbling report from a country where things are a bit different:

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.

The story by Bruce Nolan goes on to tell about the AIDS epidemic that is scouring Uganda, the civil war that is killing women and children and stopping relief shipments. And this:

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...