Some wounds are not treated with a food hamper. Counselling at Mercy For Life Africa goes to the house: a floral curtain, a yellow jerrycan, a packed-earth yard, a grandmother and six children on one mattress, a mud house with a sewing machine in the corner.
On a brick wall Director Nalubega Fausta sits with an elder and takes her hands. In a compound three women hold each other until they can laugh. On a veranda a counsellor in the red Africa-map polo sits with a boy and an old man. This is what “hope for the hopeless” looks like when it has an address.
Later, on a Kampala pavement, an elder in a knit cap stops walking to work long enough to wave at the camera. He wanted to say hello. Dignity does not always need a speech.
And in a banana garden the same staff hold a neighbour until she can stand. Two boys wait on white chairs. Guidance is a stool, a hand, a back held.
From the field
The photographs and films of this story.
Guidance & counselling
Holding on is the sermon
Director Nalubega Fausta holds a neighbour in a banana garden behind the house. Two boys wait on white chairs. Guidance is not always words. Sometimes it is a back, held, until the person can stand again.
Guidance & counselling
On the veranda
A counsellor in the red polo sits with a boy and an elder on a timber veranda — jerrycan, floral curtain, packed-earth yard. Guidance is not an office hour. It is a stool in someone else’s house.
Guidance & counselling
The boy and the old man
The same visit, closer in. A child in a mustard shirt, an elder in a white vest, the timber wall behind them. Counselling often looks like simply being in the photograph.
Guidance & counselling
Holding a hand is the sermon
The counsellor takes the elder’s hand. No pamphlet. No crowd. A visit that tells a man he has not been forgotten by the house in Makindye.
Video · Guidance & counselling
He wanted to say hello
On a Kampala pavement an elder in a knit cap stops to wave. The clip is short on purpose: dignity does not need a speech. A greeting is sometimes the whole visit.
Guidance & counselling
A whole household on one mattress
Staff and a visiting friend sit with a grandmother and the children in a single room. Guidance is not an office hour. It is a stool in someone else’s house.
Guidance & counselling
Prayer in a mud house
A family gathers on the earth floor of a mud house — a sewing machine in the corner, children kneeling, a household held. Some wounds are not treated with a food hamper.
Guidance & counselling
Holding a hand is the sermon
Director Nalubega Fausta sits with an elder against a brick wall and takes her hands. No pamphlet. No crowd. A visit that tells a woman she has not been forgotten.
Guidance & counselling
The beads, the children, the visit
The same elder, later, with children at her shoulder. Counselling often looks like simply being in the photograph.
Guidance & counselling
Until she can stand again
Three women hold each other in a compound. Guidance is not always words. Sometimes it is a back, held, until the person can laugh again.
Guidance & counselling
Two children at the brick house
Director Nalubega Fausta kneels with two children in a yard of coffee trees and washing lines. The visit is the ministry. The photograph is only the proof that someone came.
Guidance & counselling
At the stall
Staff sit with a mother and her children beside a basin of tomatoes. Poverty has an address. We go there.
Guidance & counselling
Hands on a back, in the lane
Staff and visiting friends gather around a neighbour in a Makindye lane. Guidance is not always words. Sometimes it is a circle that will not let a person stand alone.
Guidance & counselling
A child at the doorway
A small child in a red shirt, a mud wall, a hand nearby. Poverty has a face this close. The visit is the ministry. The photograph is only the proof that someone came.
Guidance & counselling
A whole household on one stoop
Staff in the Africa-map shirt sit with a grandmother, a mother, and the children on the step of a small house. Guidance is not an office hour. It is a stool in someone else’s house.