Shake On It!

A few weeks ago we were lying in bed listening to the BBC World Service, as we often do. It was a Saturday morning. We had nothing major on our agenda for the day, so were able to give our full attention to the major items of world news the newscaster was reading.

As we listened to the headlines we were surprised to hear that one of the items concerned handshaking. Handshaking is something of an art form in much of Africa, West Nile included, so we were interested to hear what the report would have to say.

In fact it concerned a piece of research that had been commissioned from the University of Manchester (UK) by a major car company. The company wished to improve their customer relations and was preparing a ‘handshake training guide’ for some of their customer services employees.

It seems that 19 per cent of people researched hated shaking hands and were unsure how it should be done properly. Major questions surrounded how hard you should squeeze someone’s hand, how long you should hold it for and what could be done about sweaty palms. This was serious stuff.

Fortunately the professor responsible for the research had come up with a lengthy formula to describe the perfect handshake. It includes such variables as eye contact, the nature of the smile accompanying the handshake, the position of the body, temperature and texture of the hand, and a number of others. If you have a chance to look at the formula it is worth studying. It even includes the value π.

Reading a brief account of the research, however, I was bound to conclude that the main reason people in UK can find shaking hands challenging is because they don’t get enough practice. If you are to develop any practical skill you have to practice. Ask any professional musician, actor, or even English footballer (?!).

The research revealed that in Britain men shake hands on average 6.2 hands a week, and women 2.6 times each week. But seriously, how can you become truly competent at handshaking if that’s all the practice you get?

When I shared this piece of information in a sermon at the cathedral, everyone fell around laughing. They all knew a much better way of training the car company employees. Send them to West Nile for a week or two. Here the average frequency of handshaking is closer to 6.2 times every hour (at least), and at a much higher skill level than in the West.

But now, if you can’t come to West Nile, at least you can refer to Manchester University’s research, although it won’t give you the same handshaking experience as you can get here!

Homosexuality and the Church – A View from Uganda

At the end of every workshop I hold with the Pastors in West Nile I include an ‘Open Forum’. Its purpose is to give them the opportunity to raise issues which concern them. In these sessions one of those most frequently raised is the question of homosexuality.

This is not a cause for surprise. Although there is little evidence of homosexual activity in West Nile it is very much in the news. Gay rights are hardly on the agenda in Uganda, and there is a good deal of homophobia. Because of this, Uganda along with other African countries is becoming a major target for the gay lobby. In response a bill has been before Parliament which includes the death penalty for 'aggravated' homosexuality with a minor, or when HIV+. The bill has prompted the EU and USA to threaten the withdrawal of aid should the bill become law. Thankfully this does not seem too likely.

Another reason why the Pastors of West Nile are so interested in asking about homosexuality is because of GAFCON (The Global Anglican Futures Conference). The Conference was held in Jerusalem in 2008 by a number of churches of the Anglican Communion (including the Church of Uganda). These churches felt betrayed by the failure of the Anglican Communion in general and the Archbishop of Canterbury in particular to discipline the Anglican Church in the USA after it had consecrated an openly gay bishop. In addition, the Church of Canada had taken a unilateral decision to authorise gay ‘marriages’. Both of these actions had been taken despite the fact that in 1998 the Lambeth Conference of bishops had resolved that “homosexual practice is incompatible with Scripture” and could not “advise the legitimising of same-sex unions”.

Already some Anglican churches in the USA had sought refuge from their errant brothers and sisters at home by seeking episcopal oversight in various African countries, including Uganda. Like it or not, the consequences of what had begun as a division in the Anglican Church of the USA had been structurally exported into the rest of the Anglican Communion. What was already a mess had been made even more messy.

The rights or wrongs of GAFCON are not really the issue here. The real issues from my perspective as a priest of the Church of England working in the Church of Uganda are many, but here are two.

The first is the perception of an American tail wagging a world-wide Anglican dog on both sides of the argument. Whilst in major cities homosexuality is doubtless a live issue, in my 25 years of ministry in South Yorkshire it simply didn’t feature. The gay lobby may well be active, noisy and often downright illiberal in its tactics, but I do not believe the challenge of homosexuality in the worldwide church is genuinely an issue which should take centre stage. The problem when it is allowed to become a major topic of disagreement is that opinions become polarised, homophobic attitudes are stimulated and the church is prevented from responding pastorally and getting on with its primary task of proclaiming the Gospel.

The second is related, in that what should be relegated to the inside pages becomes a headline in places like West Nile. Clergy are encouraged to sign up to declarations that have practically nothing to do with their day-to-day ministry and sometimes begin to believe that outside of the GAFCON orthodoxy all other pastors (possibly even including myself) are involved in marrying gay people and supporting the principle of equal gay rights in Christian ministry.

Looking on from Uganda, the press furore this week about the appointment of a new bishop to Southwark has raised a number of questions, amongst them: How was it that one of the, presumably, Christian members of the Crown Nominations Commission saw fit to break their oath of confidentiality to leak the name of one of the candidates? Church politics can be such a dirty business! And how was it that anyone could believe that the inclusion of Jeffrey John in a short list (which presupposes the possibility of his appointment as bishop) could be anything but divisive at the present time? There really is nothing like pouring oil on a burning fire.

One thing is certain; if the Dean of St Alban’s had been appointed Bishop of Southwark, it would have been major news here and the ecclesiastical gulf between those I work with and the Church of England to which I also belong would have been widened. That would have been a tragedy.

As it is, I doubt that anyone here will even notice........

Same but (very) different

We have recently returned to Uganda after spending some time in the UK to celebrate our daughter Jo’s wedding to John. It was a wonderful day – the sun shone brightly, the bride looked radiant in a beautiful white dress, there were bridesmaids, everyone wore their best clothes, flowers were carried, photos were taken, the service in church was followed by feasting and speeches, there was music and dancing in the evening before the bride and groom left to begin their lives together.

Six weeks previously we had attended another wedding, this time in Moyo, in the north east corner of the Diocese and a stone’s throw from the Sudan border. It was also a wonderful day – the sun also shone (but it usually does, and the temperatures were in the 30s), the bride’s dress was also white, there were bridesmaids (about 12 of them), flowers were carried (but they were artificial), photos were taken (by us anyway), the service in church (which lasted a mere two hours) was followed by feasting (the entire village came along to share in the food), there were speeches, music and dancing followed, with a local live band and middle aged dancers who performed wildly under the scorching sun until they had worked themselves into a frenzy.

Jo and John’s wedding went pretty much as they had planned, with the bride only ten minutes late (she blamed the wedding car’s late arrival), and there were only minor hiccups later like forgetting to cut the wedding cake until well into the evening – but who cares?

At the hour the wedding in Moyo was due to begin, nothing appeared to be happening except some early preparations for the church service and open air reception. Then the bridegroom appeared – it seemed the car they had planned to use for the wedding party had broken down, so could they use ours? Our trusty Land Cruiser was hastily bedecked with ribbons and flowers, and our driver became the wedding chauffeur. Allan, still recovering from his broken ankle, had to walk! There was an enthusiastic and lively band providing music in the church, so nobody minded the two hour delay in the start of the service. Much clapping and ululation took place throughout the wedding ceremony, which Allan conducted accompanied by a translation into Madi, the local language. The food afterwards was, of course, enya (the cassava mash we love to hate), accompanied by meat, potatoes, rice, beans, cabbage and salad. It was served on long tables in the centre of a piece of grass, with the guests sitting on all sides on plastic chairs (the children sat in school benches) and shaded from the sun by trees or by homemade canvas awnings sporting the UNHCR logo.

Both were significant and enjoyable events, although for us of course Jo and John’s wedding was extra special. But it’s amazing how things can be the same but not the same. The future of the two couples will be dramatically different, but the institution of marriage holds the same significance in both cultures, and both couples were making their vows before the God they know and serve.

For our part, we are privileged to have taken part in both. But we rejoice particularly in Jo’s marriage to John, and in seeing their happiness together. We look forward to sharing many years ahead with them, as with our son and daughter-in-law Ben and Bethan, and are delighted to welcome John into our family.

In praise of the BBC

When it comes to a British national election, we’re usually up until 2am or so waiting for a ‘Portillo moment’ or other such excitement before going to bed. This time it promised to be at least as exciting as 1997. But here we are in Northern Uganda, three hours ahead of GMT and in the heart of rural Africa – any chance of following the momentous events?

‘You can listen to the BBC World Service in so many ways...’ the announcer is fond of saying ....’from a satellite receiver to the internet, or even on a radio.....’ Well, yes, we can do all these things, but it depends on the weather, power supplies, speed of downloading, and countless random factors that are a bit like the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings in chaos theory.

First we have a standard battery operated radio, with short wave capability and a very long antenna. It was Anne’s leaving present from her job at Sheffield University, and an excellent little machine. That gives us the BBC World Service, even on FM, very clearly at certain times of day. It is battery operated so no need for electricity. But without warning it can suddenly produce white sound with no hope of recovery for a few hours at least. Even more annoying, it can lurch into Swahili just as the chimes of Big Ben were signalling a news roundup. Our Swahili is not up to it. Then of course the batteries can run down.......

But we also have a satellite radio, generously donated by a friend who works for the BBC. The hospital electrician, who had never seen such a thing before, patiently attached the aerial to the outside wall of our house in the early weeks after we arrived, and to our amazement there was a good signal. When it works it’s fantastic quality, and always in English. But sometimes, when there is heavy cloud, it develops a serious stutter, so that we miss every third word or so. It’s difficult to make sense of things when such a high proportion of the components never make it from the stratosphere. And the radio needs plugging into the mains, so when Kuluva’s ageing hydroelectricity scheme fails it’s useless.

Lastly we can get the UK radio stations on the internet. The BBC website is a delight, but things are slow here and it often takes 10 minutes or so to start getting the live feed, after the 20 minutes or so it takes to log onto the website. So it pays to plan ahead, and sometimes it doesn’t work at all. But it’s nice, when it works, to hear the dulcet tones of familiar voices like Jonathan Dimbleby on Any Questions, or Sandy Toksvig on The News Quiz. And because our laptop has a battery, we can survive for a while even when the power goes.

So did we follow the election? Well actually we went one better than radio and watched it on TV! A South African company, DSTV, provides satellite broadcasting here, for a price, and we can get BBC World News which carried nothing but the election for days. So 4am here on May 7th (2am UK time) saw us up early, sharing a breakfast of tea and toast with a fellow English expat working nearby in the Congo, enjoying the exhausted newscasters’ commentary on the evolving hung parliament. Even the hydro power didn’t let us down this time.

Who says the electronic age has bypassed Africa? And all power to the BBC.

Meet Michael

It is curious how a complete stranger can suddenly take centre stage in your life; the way in which someone you’ve never met before becomes one of the most important people you know. It’s been like that with Michael.

Maybe it was wishful thinking or just plain ignorance which made me think it wouldn’t take long to learn how to walk again. I had returned to Uganda with a sheet of ‘Foot and Ankle Exercises’ from the hospital. ‘Sitting Toe Raise’, Ankle Circles’, ‘Gastroc Stretch’ and ‘Standing Unilateral Heel Rise’ looked easy enough in theory although the sheet did lack any details about how often the exercises should be done.

But a week after taking the cast off my leg I still didn’t recognise the thing at the end of my body as my foot or ankle, and I could only lift the ball of my foot about a nanometre from the floor using the ‘Sitting Heel Raise’.

Progress was painfully slow, literally, and even new exercises from the internet, ‘Plantar Flexion’, ‘Dorsi Flexion’, ‘Inversion’ and ‘Eversion’ didn’t really improve things. What I needed, but had never been told I needed, was a physiotherapist. Enter Michael!

Physiotherapists are like gold dust in Uganda. We had been told there was a qualified ‘physio’ at Arua hospital, but couldn’t get hold of any reliable information about how to contact him. Just as we were resigning ourselves to another 500 km drive to Kampala to get treatment the Principal of the School of Nursing told us about Michael. Four hours later Michael appeared at our door.

He is the son of a Church Teacher, born and bred in West Nile and the same age as David Beckham but with his Achilles tendon still intact! Originally he wanted to train as a pharmacist, but was advised instead to train as a physiotherapist. He was told that as a physiotherapist he would never have to look for work – work would look for him. The advice, it seems, was spot-on. Now Michael works at Arua Hospital four days a week and is living in Ocoko, a village just a couple of kilometres from Kuluva. He rides a motorbike and has a car – so is doing quite well – and always turns up at the right time looking very professional.

Michael is unfailingly cheerful with a very positive outlook. Nevertheless he said that because of my age(!) it would take longer for me to walk properly than a younger patient! So saying, he went to work on my ankle. Each day since then he has come to apply hot compresses to my foot and ankle. He has massaged and manipulated, pushed and pulled, and entered into various competitions with my ankle.... ...I even understand the exercises now.

Last Sunday Michael told me it would probably take another 3 weeks before I could walk without crutches, but yesterday, Friday, less than a week after I first met him, I confounded the prognosis. For the first time in ten weeks I was able to walk without crutches. Michael is delighted at the progress and I am delighted with him. If we hadn’t met him, Anne and I would have been going to Kampala this weekend.

This week Michael has taken centre stage in our life here and Uganda has done it again. A doctor in Kampala performs an operation on my leg 10 minutes after first seeing me, I am treated royally at Entebbe airport (unlike Heathrow), the car gets repaired within 48 hours of being crashed into by a coach, and now successful physiotherapy at home within 4 hours of learning about it. Beat that!

Return to Kuluva - Tyreless Exploits

On Saturday morning we were reunited with our own ‘wheels’, and soon after lunch were able to set off for Kampala where we were going to stay with some friends over the weekend. Nursing a painful ankle over and around the potholes of Kampala is not an experience I would recommend, but after an hour or so we arrived at Matthew and Anna’s home conveniently located near the road which takes us north, back to Kuluva. The only problem with the apartment is that it is located on the second floor. Normally this would be no problem, but 50+ steps on crutches with one leg is not easy!

Sunday and Monday enabled Anne to get some essential bits of business done in Kampala – like taking the car to the mechanic, and buying essential supplies. But 6.30 Tuesday morning and we were up and ready to go on the final leg of our journey home.

The traffic leaving Kampala was fine. We were soon out of the city and on the open road. When we arrived in Uganda 2½ years ago, the first 200km of the road to Arua were truly dreadful. Quite literally there were more potholes than road. Added to this was the periodic hazard of coaches on the Kampala-Arua route. From time to time you would hear the dreadful blast of a horn and see a white monster closing on you at sometimes terrifying speeds, careering all over the road to avoid the potholes. All you could do was to get out of the way, usually by heading for the nearest ditch.

Now, the road is much improved having gone through a wholesale repair programme. Sometimes this has meant that the road had periodic batches of up to 300 speed humps to slow traffic down around the road works. But on this journey, for the very first time, all repairs were complete – no potholes or road humps – and we were able to make good time. Now we can average speeds which compete with the bus services and we are rarely, if ever, overtaken.

The middle part of the journey takes us on a road which borders Murchison Game Park. It’s a long and straight and feels as though it’s on top of the world. It is one of the few places on the journey which has no phone signal. Anne was driving, and we were pleased with the progress we were making when quite suddenly there was a worrying noise and the road suddenly felt very bumpy. Anne slowed down and I looked out of the passenger wing mirror to see bits of tyre flapping around the rear nearside wheel. A tyre had burst.

Anne has never changed a wheel before, and I have never attempted to do such a thing in a plaster-cast with a swollen and painful ankle. But there was no phone signal, and none of the few vehicles which passed (perhaps one every 6-7 minutes) stopped when we tried to flag them down. There was only one solution and the next half hour or so was spent with a one legged-man on crutches and his wife, somehow, jacking up the car and manipulating what are very heavy Land Cruiser wheels until we had managed to change the wheel.

But we were blessed. There was some cloud cover so it wasn’t blazingly hot, neither did it rain. Another blessing, no wild animals, which you sometimes see on the road, came to bother us!

We finally arrived home after a journey of some 7 hours to be greeted by Lucy and the women who work in the houses around our own. Anne and I collapsed onto the bed with a deep sense of thankful relief.

P.S. Just a week later, and as we were turning right into Kuluva hospital, one of the monster buses which ply their trade between Arua and Kampala decided it wanted to overtake us. It was a miracle that we weren’t killed, but the coach driver managed to divert down the same road we were turning into, and just damaged the front offside wing and bumper. Nobody was hurt, but the exchanges between the driver, the bus passengers, and ourselves were not much fun. But God provided us with some good friends who appeared, and after some time and the involvement of the police,the bus company agreed liability and paid for our repairs.

We are looking forward to a healed ankle and a much quieter life if possible.........

Return to Uganda - A Tale of Two Airports

It had been snowing again by the time we left Leicester on our journey south. I was exceptionally careful as I made my way with crutches over the slushy snow to the Jaguar Taxi which was to take us to Heathrow. It was 6.00 am but Steve and Marion who had been our amazingly generous hosts for the previous three weeks were up to wave us goodbye, maybe slightly relieved that we were finally on our way.

Cathy, Anne’s sister, had arranged to meet us at the airport to see us off, which was just as well as Terminal 5’s support for people on crutches was not great. Pushing a wheelchair and a luggage trolley on her own would not have been easy for Anne. In any case, after Cathy left us, I had a pile of hand luggage on me and Anne had to manage everything (including my crutches) through passport and security checks on her own. At the Boarding Gate the British Airways staff were surprised and apologetic that we had been given no help through the airport and had been left to fend for ourselves.

A final push down the tunnel in the wheelchair to the plane, and we were able to settle ourselves in for the 8-hour flight to Uganda. It was a good flight, but we had plenty of time to contemplate how exactly we would disembark at Entebbe. The airport is equipped with tunnels for access to the aircraft, but they never seem to be used. Instead, steps are used for disembarkation, and although my crutch technique had improved over the previous 4-5 weeks I didn’t feel up to that steep descent. If we had as much support at Entebbe as at Heathrow we would have problems!

We were asked to wait until everyone else had left the plane and then made our way to the door where we were greeted by two African airport staff. Between them they had a feeble-looking metal frame chair. It was a bit like a deck chair, but had two handles, one at the foot and one at the back. I was invited to sit in the chair, and with some apprehension did so. Then, one man at the back and the other at the front, they lifted me up and began to walk down the steps. The young man at the front walked backwards and looked as though he had never been expected to do anything quite like this before and was trying to work out the best way of doing it.

The seemingly vertical descent was not really the way I would choose to leave an aircraft, but the spectacle was enjoyed by a number of airport staff. Eventually, after what felt like an age, to my great relief we were finally on the ground where a wheelchair awaited me. Then, with minimum fuss, our two escorts ushered us to the front of the immigration queue, and thence to the carousel to collect our luggage. They loaded up the luggage trolley which they had obtained and moved us swiftly to the airport exit ahead of everyone else. The whole process had been so speedy that the taxi from the Airport Guest House hadn’t yet arrived. But our minders stayed with us, and did so until they could finally deposit us and our luggage in the taxi for the short trip to our home for the night and recovery before the next ‘leg’ of our journey back to Kuluva.

Facilities for the disabled – Heathrow 2, Entebbe 10.

P.S. Sorry there are no pictures for this one. We had other things on our minds during the journey!

A Winter Break.......

The snow has long since gone from our home in Leicester, replaced by grey skies and a cold dampness which seems to permeate everything. Christmas is a distant memory as is the glorious walk just a few days earlier through the pristine snow in the Rivelin Valley in Sheffield where we had gone to visit Ben, our son, and his wife Bethan.

Anne and I had been looking forward to this Winter break for several months - a chance to go home, to sample seasonal food and drink, spend time with our friends and family and enjoy a ‘real’ English Christmas. We hadn’t expected the snow - that was just an added bonus.

We planned to spend Christmas Day at our house in Leicester. We can’t really call it our home; Anne and I have lived in the house for less than five months and had handed it over to our daughter Jo as her home when we left for Uganda in 2007.

On the Sunday before Christmas we attended the Carol Service at our home church of St Denys, complete with the carols we had sung a continent away just a week earlier. But Midnight Communion at St Denys began our Christmas celebrations proper – ‘good news for all the people - a Saviour, Christ the Lord!’

Christmas morning was cold and icy, but the whole family went to Jo’s church in Knighton for the morning service, returning ‘home’ to open our presents and feast on traditional roast turkey with all the trimmings. It was a great meal - so much better than our Ugandan alternative: a tough chicken accompanied by beans and enya! Jo’s fiancé, John, joined us for an evening game of Monopoly.

New Year 2010 was rung in, once more at St Denys. It’s to be a momentous year for Jo and John, and time was needed to buy clothes, talk about arrangements for the wedding, not to mention helping to make the invitations. But time was passing quickly and soon we were back in Sheffield to visit Ben and Bethan again before our return to Uganda. There had been more snow, but it was starting to melt – and freeze – and melt – and freeze. But it was gradually disappearing.

Sunday 17th January – the morning service at St Thomas’ Crookes. We had planned to go out for a walk in the afternoon, but as we made our way back to Ben and Bethan’s house from church, up one of Sheffield’s many hills, we hit a patch of ice. My ankle twisted under me, I heard a snap, and gently fell to the ground. A visit to Sheffield’s A&E confirmed what I already knew and I left with my leg encased in plaster – a 6-week sentence.

Over the past 4 weeks, I have variously cursed myself for careless stupidity, regretted coming home at all, experienced intense frustration and wondered what I’m meant to learn from all this. Questions multiplied when Jo crashed her car and wrote it off two weeks ago; but thank God she escaped without injury.

We’re going back to Uganda in three days’ time, plaster cast and all. Our Winter Break didn’t turn out quite as we had expected. God moves in mysterious ways. I’m still playing ‘catch-up’, and with a broken ankle that’s not so easy!