NHS Seniors Till ‘Fields Of Growth’ In Africa

By Nancy K. Crevier

Seventeen-year-old friends and rising Newtown High School seniors Riley Wurtz and Will Fletcher love lacrosse, and they love Africa. The opportunity to combine those two passions came together when they joined with the Fields of Growth International charitable foundation, and traveled to Uganda, August 4 to 19, teaching and playing lacrosse on fields created by the foundation, and helping to build a home in the mountainous rainforest region of Bwindi.

“We both saw the Invisible Children film, about the child soldiers in Africa, when it was shown at school two years ago, and were really impressed by it. We thought it would be cool if we could go to Africa and help out somehow,” said Riley, who is on the NHS Varsity Girls’ Lacrosse Team.

Will has played lacrosse for ten years, and is on the Boys’ Varsity Lacrosse Team at NHS. He visited South Africa on vacation with an aunt in 2008, “and I knew I wanted to go back. My mom saw a flier about Fields of Growth at the national lacrosse convention in Baltimore last year and picked it up, and showed it to us. This organization is perfect — it’s lacrosse and Africa.”

According to the Fields of Growth website, the organization, founded two years ago by college lacrosse coach and former Merrill Lynch Wall Street employee Kevin Dugan, has community connections in Uganda, East Africa, and is working “with the close-knit lacrosse community throughout the world to build relationships with some of the top athletes with some of the most vulnerable children in the world.”

Partnering with Makerere University Business School (MUBS) in Kampala, Fields of Growth has brought the game of lacrosse to the university. Mr Dugan and the USA lacrosse community have strong business ties that can benefit students at MUBS, as well. It is Mr Dugan’s hope that Fields of Growth volunteers in Uganda sharing their love of lacrosse at MUBS will open a dialogue with some of the future business leaders of Uganda and help Ugandan business students create “enterprise-based solutions to poverty, while at the same time putting Uganda Lacrosse on the map.”

Fields of Growth is affiliated with HOPEFUL (Holistic Organization of People’s Empowerment) Uganda, a community group in Kkindu Village, where Fields of Growth volunteers assist with transporting children to receive treatment for HIV, and support the HOPEFUL orphan school, women’s groups, youth athletics, and social entrepeneurism. One of the organization’s earliest programs continues to thrive in Kkindu Village, the Children’s Barefoot Choir.

The group also sends volunteers to build homes for the displaced Batwa pygmies of Bwindi Impenetrable Rainforest, and has developed land there for a sports program.

The ultimate goal of Fields of Growth, according to the website, is “to take communities that have been built around fields of poverty, disease, injustice and heartache and turn them into Fields of Growth on every level; social, physical, economic and spiritual.”

In December, Will and Riley got serious about traveling to Africa, filled out the Fields of Growth application, and started fundraising in the spring. They also collected lacrosse equipment and school supplies to distribute on their visit. “We got a lot of donations, especially of cleats,” said Riley. “As a matter of fact, we got so much that we couldn’t take it all with us, and have to have it shipped,” she said. “People think of lacrosse as a ‘preppie’ sport, so they think it is odd to bring it to these villages in Africa. But this program is more than building fields and teaching the game of lacrosse,” Riley said. “It’s about getting to know other people, and giving them hope and a dream to follow.”

This year, said Will, Fields of Growth started the first organized lacrosse teams in Uganda. “We worked with the teams in Kampala to help train for their goal of reaching the World Games in Denver, in 2014. It was amazing,” he said.

A Friendly Welcome

Neither Will nor Riley knew quite what to expect when they and 22 other Fields of Growth volunteers from all over the country landed in Entebbe, “over an hour from Kampala on an incredibly bumpy and rough road,” said Riley. After a two-day stay in Entebbe, the group traveled to Kkindu Village in Musaka, the site of the HOPEFUL School. “They had a big festival in honor of our arriving,” said Riley. “There was dancing, a children’s choir, a church service, games, and food. It was incredible. People were so friendly,” she said.

Despite the fact that most of the villagers do not speak much English, Will and Riley found there was an international language of dance, smiles — and lacrosse.

Accommodations in Kkindu, and in Kampala, were cramped but comfortable, they said. In Kkindu, the two dozen young people were housed in the local pastor’s guesthouse, and in Kampala, at the bishop’s home. Showers were generally cold and infrequent, but the perfect weather made up for that, said Will and Riley.

“I think it was about 75 degrees every day, sunny, and no humidity,” said Will. “And there were hardly any mosquitoes,” he added.

All of the visitors had received numerous vaccinations before traveling to Uganda, they said, including against the mosquito-carried malaria, a disease so common in the area that they visited that most villagers thought of it as Americans might think of a cold.

Will was shocked to discover how prevalent AIDS is in Africa, even though he had read of it. “In Kkindu Village, I think there are at least 140 kids unable to attend the public school because their parents have died of AIDS, and a lot of the kids are HIV positive or have AIDS,” he said. It is those orphan children who benefit from the HOPEFUL School, he said, as well as the program at a nearby hospital sponsored by Fields of Growth, for AIDS testing. “It makes you think a lot more about all the things you have [back home]. I’m thankful for a roof over my head, food, and my health,” said Will.

Departing Kkindu, the group endured a 14-hour bus ride on a rugged mountainous road to the edge of the Bwindi Impenetrable Rainforest — “Where there are supposedly the most gorillas in the world living,” said Riley — to assist in building a home for one of the Batwa pygmy families. “Something like 20 years ago, the Batwas pygmies were displaced from the rainforest where they had lived for generations, and they are still not adapting to village life and farming,” said Riley. “They had always lived off of the forest.”

The group was again housed simply, but richly in comparison to the villagers, they said. “The Batwa community had selected a family who needed a home built, so that was our project,” said Riley. The approximately 200-square-foot house, completed in one day, for a single woman and her children, consisted of a wooden frame with stick sides. “We filled in the sticks with mud that hardens. They say that once it hardens, it will last about 50 years before they have to replace the mud,” she said.

Carrying the water from the river, one-half mile downhill from the building site, was an experience that Will and Riley will not soon forget. “We hauled water in these gasoline canlike containers, filled with about five gallons of water, on top of our heads. The village women would just walk along, hands at their sides, carrying the cans on their heads. Our water was spilling down our faces,” recalled Will.

Even so, once the art of carrying the jugs was more or less mastered, it was surprisingly easier to do so than to try to carry the water by one’s side, said Riley.

There was time for play and celebration when the house was finished that afternoon, they said, and once more, they were impressed by the hospitality and warmth of the native people. “There was a big dance party. It is tradition, that a dance shows appreciation,” said Riley. Food was also served to the guests, and like many meals that they had in Uganda, consisted of a lot of rice and matoke, a vegetable somewhat like a potato and banana combination. “We had meat, too, but I don’t know what it was. I didn’t ask…” Riley added.

A Lost Way Of Life

In Bwindi, the Fields of Growth volunteers were also treated to an expedition into the Bwindi Rainforest, guided by Batwa elders.

“It is a way for them to make money and to show the old way of life. They want to help people remember the Batwa way of life,” said Will.

The tour gave rise to some mixed feelings for Riley. “It was kind of sad. They were just kicked out by the government and have nowhere now that they really fit in. It’s difficult for them.”

The mountain trek took them into the rainforest where the Batwa guides showed them how the tribe had hunted, and what they had eaten. “They showed us their huts and the tree huts that they had lived in. One guy,” said Will, “who I think was in his 70s, climbed way up a tree and got some honey to show us,” he said.

The volunteers were equally impressed by the stamina of the Batwa guides.

“They were amazing,” said Riley. “We’re all athletes, and we could barely make it up this mountain behind this much, much older man,” she laughed.

Returning to Kampala, Riley and Will coached the new lacrosse team at MUBS. “We picked All-Star boys’ and girls’ teams one day, and our female and male volunteers played against them. It was so much fun,” she said.

Providing a crash course in lacrosse to youth who had not been raised playing the game had its challenges, said Will and Riley. “It was a lot of rules to teach at one time. Here, you start out learning a few rules when you are younger, and by the time you are teenagers, you know them. We had to try to explain them all as we went along,” she said.

“I was really impressed with their passion about lacrosse, though,” said Will. “They were so energetic and appreciative.”

The trip allowed some time for free exploration, and Riley and Will have remarkable memories of white water rafting on the Nile River, as well as bungee jumping over the Nile. “That was definitely cool,” said Riley.

What sticks most in their minds, though, said both Newtowners, was the Kkindu Village experience.

“Being in Kkindu with the little kids was my favorite thing,” said Riley. “They immediately loved you.”

“I liked Kkindu Village, as well,” agreed Will. “We stopped by an orphanage, too, on our way back from Bwindi. It’s a place just for kids with disabilities, whose families can’t care for them. They just leave them there, and the nuns raise them. The kids are so happy to be in that house. They even sang for us. It was really interesting,” said Will.

Post high school plans are in the air for Will and Riley, but both said that they hope to return to Africa.

“It opened my eyes,” said Riley. “I already miss it, and the kids in the village. We want to return after we graduate,” she said, looking at a nodding Will, “and work with the kids in Kkindu. We’re trying to think what we can do to really help them.”

Fields of Growth is a nonprofit organization, with 501(c)(3) approval expected by the end of summer. To donate, send checks to Fields of Growth, PO Box 751, Notre Dame IN 46556. Online donations are not currently accepted. For more information, visit fieldsofgrowthintl.org.