You are most welcome.

Benson greeted us from the porch of one of the hundreds of indistinguishably ramshackle government dwellings in the police barracks.  "Hello!  You are most welcome."  We explained that we were a couple of university researchers conducting a very brief survey, and talked to him.  He smiled.  He spoke proudly of his family: "In fact, I am having many children."  7.  But keeping them all fed and clothed is a challenge, to say nothing of keeping them in school.  "This one," he said, gesturing back into the house at his teenage daughter, "this one is a wise lady."  But she got a year behind in school after he couldn't afford school fees.  They live, he said, by God's mercy.

Benson is from the north of Uganda, and he came to Kampala 20 years ago fleeing rebel violence.  His parents were killed.  There, he told us, whether you wanted to or not, they would arrest you and bring you to the bush.  Benson escaped, but he showed us the scar from a bullet just above his elbow.

Just seeing us there, in the police barracks, he told us, gave him hope that "I am not forgotten."

Geez.  There's me, smartly dressed bright-faced pink-scrubbed American university student, loving Benson with all the shards of the heart his story has just broken in me.  Basking and cowering in the magnanimous warmth of his acceptance, the sacredness of his sparse sincere narrative.  Retreading all the recurrent qualms, considering in the brilliant light of this human being whether anything I do means anything.  And hoping that to the extent surveys and data and analyses matter, they matter because of this smile, this welcome, this story, the holiness of which I pray I can communicate some germ.  In my uproariously inadequate offering.  Let me have ears to hear.  Let me hear.