Laceys in Arua

Shake On It!

2010-08-21T13:43:00.007Z

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

2010-07-10T12:08:00.002Z

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

2010-06-20T11:34:00.010Z

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

2010-05-09T09:17:00.007Z

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

2010-03-27T13:26:00.007Z

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

2010-03-08T08:52:00.008Z

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

2010-02-27T09:57:00.000Z

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.......

2010-02-17T14:30:00.006Z

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!

Only in Africa

2009-12-18T18:17:00.002Z

The BBC World Service, Africa network, has recently been running a feature called ‘Only in Africa’. Listeners write in with 400 words describing an incident, funny, tragic or just plain weird that can happen ‘only in Africa’. Passing through Kampala on our return to UK recently, we encountered a suitable entry – though it won’t be committed to the airwaves.

We discovered, to our delight, that our two days in Kampala included a Sunday when Namirembe Cathedral was holding its carol service. Three years ago, coming here in December for a visit, we had happened upon a rehearsal for this service, hearing strains of ‘Once in Royal David’s city’ coming from the open doors of the cathedral as we walked outside in the tropical heat. But we had missed the actual event on that occasion. So now was our chance.

Namirembe has an excellent choir of men, women and boys. They are accomplished in a wide repertoire from classical English church music to rhythmic African songs and visually stunning in traditional red cassocks and white surplices. So we rejoiced in traditional settings of Christmas carols accompanied by excellent organ playing, with the usual nine lessons read between the carols.

It would have rivalled most services of Nine Lessons and Carols in England, almost..... but for the ‘Namirembe Cathedral Media Team’ - four or five men dressed in the fluorescent yellow jackets more usually worn by men repairing roads in England. Of course mending roads is a lost art in Uganda so maybe the gear had been re-designated for use by cathedral staff. Their brief was clearly to capture as much as possible of the event on camera, both still and video. So, throughout the service, members of the Media Team, resplendent in fluorescent yellow, (beautifully counterpointing the choir red) stood directly in front of the singers and readers, pointing camera lenses into people’s faces and shining brilliant arc lights to illuminate the action (“ve have vays of making you sing”!!!). Rarely could we see the choir at all, just the back of three of four men bristling with electronics. They fell over each other and had whispered conversations, wires trailing and lights shining, while the conductor and choir tried to carry on regardless. Whether the choristers could even see each other or their conductor most of the time we doubted – ‘Only in Africa!’

But despite it all, the significance of the event was not lost on us and it was a great service. Here we are in Uganda, temperature around 30°C, brilliant sun illuminating palm trees standing outside the open cathedral doors, joining a full congregation to celebrate the same wondrous events of Christmas we remember in much colder climes. The truth of what we sing and hear is universal throughout time and across cultures, not ‘only in Africa’; although that Media Team was probably unique to this continent.

Come and worship...Christ the newborn King

An Englishman’s Home is.........Part 2

2009-11-28T12:51:00.009Z

Following our last blog the good news is that the dreaded Chapel tower ‘clock’ chimes have been silenced, and it involved no vandalism on our part, (so no bail required, Simon)!!! Before we had a chance to make our feelings known, others had already decided. Normally a bell (or more accurately, the metal rim of the wheel of a car) sounds to announce a service or a death, or some other significant event. The apparent 15 minute frequency of ‘significant events’ was so disturbing to residents and patients at Kuluva that a unilateral decision was taken (in the absence of the German expatriate) to turn off the chimes. We uttered a prayer of heartfelt thanks.

From time to time we still experience power cuts and the accompanying flying insects. The crickets and spiders also continue to keep us company, but they are not the only visitors to come to our humble home.

The approach of a human visitor is normally accompanied by a call outside the door of ‘ho-di’. It’s a cheery call, but often sotto voce so that you can hardly hear it. Sometimes this means that the owner of the voice can be left standing outside our house for a short time. It depends on the music we’re listening to and whether it is fortissimo or pianissimo at the time. Sometimes the call might be so quiet that even if all else is silent it sounds little more than the far cry of a turtle-dove. Generally these visitors are persistent though, and some are prepared to wait for 5-10 minutes ‘ho-diying’ until they get a positive response.

Many of these visitors are trying to sell something – Tom with his wood carvings, Luke’s table mats, assorted women selling fruit and vegetables or charcoal. Other visitors are keen to encourage you to pay for their children’s school fees, or their own university fees, or hospital fees, or make a contribution to their motor-cycle fund, or..... Our reaction to these requests tends to depend on what sort of day we’re having and whether we are still in bed or not.

Some visitors though are very welcome and a pleasure to share time with. This morning (Saturday), for example, we had two visitors in succession – first the hospital chaplain, then one of the senior laymen from Kuluva Parish Church. They were with us for 2-3 hours in total, but wanted to talk about things of real importance here at Kuluva and in the diocese as a whole. Both are truly spiritual people with much wisdom and great humility. It was refreshing to talk with them and we felt blessed by their presence. Such visits are a joy.

The animal and insect visitors are mostly quieter than their human equivalents. One exception is the monkeys. They enjoy performing gymnastics on our roof first thing in the morning which makes the tiles rattle, and us wonder if they are going to fall into the room. They come to hoover up the insects that have been attracted by our external lights during the night. We lost three fluorescent tubes in very quick succession because of monkeys jumping on to them to retrieve juicy morsels for their breakfast. Fortunately a metal guard seems to have solved that problem.

Geckos are frequently seen scuttling up the wall and into the roof, but we have no idea when a snake visited us to shed its skin. We simply discovered the skin in our living room one morning.........

And although termites leave tell-tale trails up the walls and over the floor if they get into the house, often they leave them discretely behind pieces of furniture. It was with some surprise that we removed a flip-chart from the top of our mahogany chest of drawers only to find a big hole in the top of the chest seething with termites. Some months later we removed a rolled-up flip-chart from the floor to discover it was half eaten and a trail of termites heading for the leg of the bed.......

An Englishman’s home is.......well, here it certainly isn’t his castle. But if it were it wouldn’t be half as entertaining!

P.S. We’ve got a new cooker too!

An Englishman’s Home is.........

2009-11-15T16:12:00.007Z

8.00 in the evening and we have washed up the dirty plates and saucepans from dinner. Dinner itself is often a technological triumph. The oven in our cooker has ceased to function in the proper way. It insists on going out at regular intervals. But we’ve discovered the solution! A piece of wire wound around the spindle of the oven-knob and tightened to hold it in place once the oven is lit works well, and usually results in a well-cooked meal. So far there have been no explosions, but time is probably not on our side and we think we might need a new cooker.

Of course for washing up there’s no running hot water – and indeed, sometimes there’s no running water at all. In that case we resort to the jerry cans Lucy has (hopefully) filled. But after dinner, provided we remember to put a pan of water on the gas to heat up whilst we’re eating, we can get cleared up pretty quickly and have a couple of hours to relax.

Sometimes one of us might decide to have a ‘pour’ (the local equivalent of a shower), in which case another pan of water has to be heated up. It’s a bathing process you get used to after a while; pouring boiling water into a bowl and mixing with cold water to achieve a reasonable temperature. Then, with the aid of a large margarine tub you can wash your hair and have a general, well, pour... It’s quite effective really, with the only attendant problem being the possibility of spiders or crickets jumping on you (see earlier blog for details).

But more often we’ll settle down to read, or watch a DVD, or listen to an episode of ‘This Sceptred Isle’ (we’re up to 1815 and the Battle of Waterloo), or even (sad people that we are) listen to the latest episode of ‘The Archers’. Sadder still, we have even been known to watch the odd episode of ‘The Weakest Link’, but don’t tell anyone!

It’s usually in the middle of a DVD that the power goes off and the DVD dies. That’s the cue for falling over the furniture in search of our solar lamp. Provided we’ve remembered to charge it we can at least read or do a Sudoku, or chat (we do talk to one another occasionally). At intervals we have to spray the lamp with Doom to annihilate the multitudes of flying insects that tend to colonise it. This results in a mini-graveyard which has to be cleared up after the power has been restored between 15 minutes and an hour later.

Bedtime is usually around 10.00 pm. A cup of tea in bed (old habits die hard) and a half-hours’ read, then the mosquito net is deployed around the bed, we turn off the light and are ready for sleep. Often we go to sleep pretty quickly, unless we’ve used the mozzie-net to trap a mosquito inside to share the night with us. It’s extraordinary the way they manage to discover where your ear is in the dark. They sound like light aircraft when they get that close. Then, it’s on with the head torch to hunt down the little beast, but they usually manage to hide very effectively. And so to sleep – until the water decides to return and we are woken by the sound of a mini-Niagara from the cistern in the roof as it fills up.

One other addition to the Kuluva day and night experience is a bell that has recently (yesterday) been installed in the Chapel clock tower. There’s no clock as such, but every quarter of an hour the bell strikes. Once at a quarter past, twice at half past, three times at a quarter to, then four times on the hour followed by the number of strokes to mark which hour it is. At midnight that’s sixteen strokes of the bell. This new arrival which so wonderfully and accurately marks the passing of time is the gift of a German expatriate – I doubt that he can hear it from his house, and in any case he’ll soon be going back to Germany. I don’t know if the Africans appreciate it, but for myself I may indulge in a little vandalism in due course.

Garden Talk

2009-08-31T10:20:00.007Z

They say that if you plant a walking stick in Uganda it will sprout and take root. Uganda is, for the most part, blessed with fertile soil, temperatures that are not too hot (this is Africa!) most of the year, and plenty of rain. In many parts the countryside is green and lush all year round with banana groves, tea and coffee plantations, fields of maize and beans.

But our rocky hillside is a little more challenging. The soil is very sandy and doesn’t hold water well on the 1:3 gradient. Its also pretty thin, with bare rock showing through in many places. This year we had a serious drought (see previous blog) when most of the plants turned brown and sickly. We gave some of them up for dead, as we couldn’t justify using precious water to keep them alive when people were watching their crops die for lack of rain.

But now the rains have come, with regular thunderstorms and torrential downpours. When it rains hard the water pours off the roof and rock garden and runs down the hillside outside our house to form a river running into the storm drain and creating a lake on the path below. The land has turned green again – it happens within a day or two of the first good rains.

We’ve now been here two years, and its taken us this long to learn how to create a garden in such conditions. But now its beginning to take shape, though we are still somewhat envious of friends who live in the south of the country, whose garden of tropical luxuriance and abundant bird life blossomed in only a few years. During the first year here we planted a few shrubs in the front garden, to keep company with the one rather sad bougainvillea that was already there when we arrived – it had been pruned to within an inch of its life, but is now resplendent with purple blooms. Then last year we tried growing vegetables in the plot at the side of the house – but the monkeys ate all the groundnuts before they were ripe, and the tomatoes produced only pea-size green fruits that were of no use to man or beast. So we cut our losses and planted some more small shrubs there. At the back, where the soil is thinnest, we made a little rock garden with cuttings from a friend’s established estate.

Some of the plants we used to grow as pot plants in UK are naturals here. Mother-in-laws tongue, and tradescantia (‘wandering sailor’), for instance, and poinsettias that reach shrub-size proportions. Spider plants do very well in pots outside our front door – the single one we started with has produced babies with no regard to family planning! Then we have some small pink flowers that remind us of mesembryanthemums, only coming out when the sun shines – but of course that happens a lot more often here than at home. And succulents are happy here, though they look a bit different from the spiky cacti we are familiar with. Then there are the exotic beauties such as hibiscus and frangipani that wouldn’t stand a chance in a British climate.

So we enjoy walking around our little plot, talking to the plants and encouraging them on. And after the recent drought? We haven’t lost a single plant, they have all sprung up again, though some are still convalescing. That should be a lesson to us to persevere in other ground that may seem unpromising and dry.

Blessings from heaven

2009-08-28T10:02:00.006Z

When it rains in Uganda, everything is disrupted. Its a bit like snow in England. We awoke this morning to a grey sky which, during the next hour, became blacker until the inevitable happened at 8am, just as we were due to go out for the 9km drive to the Diocesan HQ. Thunder, lightning, deafening rain battering on the roof. Torrents of water cascading down the hillside. A little frog sheltering beside one of our pot plants on the verandah – obviously this was too much even for aquatic creatures such as he.

But Allan was taking the morning devotions at the Diocesan HQ, so we felt we had better make the effort, even though rain in the morning usually means nobody turns up at work until it stops. After all, we have a roof that doesn’t leak, a car that goes, several umbrellas and kagoules – we don’t really have any excuse. Clothes already wet from the short run to the car from our back door, our car felt like a speedboat as we drove to Arua along roads that were all but deserted. The usual crowds around the market areas had vanished, the boda bodas (motorbike taxis) absent from their stands. An occasional lone pedestrian trudged along the road, drenched from head to foot.

Arriving at the Diocesan HQ we parked the car in a small lake and paddled to the office. Amazingly, we found a couple of doors open. Dripping into the office of the Diocesan Education Secretary we discerned four people already assembled in the gloom (the power was off), including the Bishop himself. So we sat and shared the Bible passage from II Corinthians 10, those who were too far from a window using a mobile phone torch to see the words. We considered Paul’s vehement defence of his calling as an apostle, and pondered our own calling on this soggy Ugandan morning. We prayed for those struggling in the weather, and for the Bishop going off to Maracha (usually an hour’s drive away, today rather more) for confirmations this morning. The rain will disrupt that for sure.

But six weeks ago we were suffering from the worst drought for some years, and the prayers were generally of thankfulness for the life-giving provision of rain, today and over the last few weeks. Now people’s beans and cassava will grow strong, and they will have food for the next year. That is much more important than soggy clothes and disrupted work patterns – even confirmation services.

“(S)he had suffered...under the care of many doctors” (Mark 5.26)

2009-08-08T11:20:00.002Z

.......Well, not that many actually, only about three.

I had first visited the doctor about my leg about four or five ago. Anne has always been keen on extending my life by applying healthy doses of walking, and after particularly strenuous exertion I had begun to feel a dull ache in my right leg. In addition, I noticed a small lump developing around the site of the pain.

The first doctor diagnosed a varicose vein, which was a bit of a shock because I have always associated such things with advancing old age!! She said there was little that could be done at the time, but if things got worse to return.

I did return about 12 months later as the pain had become more frequent, about once a week, and a little more intense. By this time the GP had changed, but the verdict was much the same. Some gentle examination caused a little pain on that occasion, but not enough to complain about.

Just before coming to Uganda, the lump was much more pronounced and the pain more frequent and acute, so I visited our new GP in Leicester. He looked at it, and then proceeded to prod and squeeze the lump with some violence, causing extreme discomfort, nay, agony. He then added insult to injury by informing me there was nothing he could do about it, but maybe some cream applied externally would help........ I limped home from the consultation thinking dark thoughts about doctors in general and this GP in particular.

By July this year, the pain had become considerably worse and was occurring 2-3 times a day for around an hour with each episode. It seemed to be associated neither with extreme activity or standing still for a long time. It would occur at any time, sometimes even in the middle of the night.

Anne made an appointment for me with an expatriate GP in Kampala. I had refused ever to let another medical practitioner near it after my last experience – but Anne insisted, probably because I don't like pain and tend to inflict pain on others when I experience it.

So it was, that on 24th July I found myself in the doctor’s surgery in Kampala explaining how much I dislike doctors who prod me and cause pain without doing anything useful. The doctor looked, prodded (I yelled – but didn’t punch him on the nose), and said “You've got a varicose vein, but it's not that. I can get rid of the real problem.”
“How?” I asked, still aware of the painful throbbing in my leg.
"Just a little operation."
"When?" I enquired.
“Now, if you like. It’ll take about ten minutes.”

Five minutes later I was lying on a bed. The local anaesthetic was a real joy as, gradually, the pain in my leg subsided. I felt nothing as the doctor made his incision and exclaimed, “It’s a glomus body! I came across one of these when I was a student. The book said it was v.painful.”

I agreed.

Ten minutes and three stitches later the procedure was over. I got off the couch and have felt no pain in my leg ever since.

Anne and I reflected on how long such a procedure would have taken in the UK after consultations, scans, waiting lists........

Our conclusion – come to Uganda for an accurate diagnosis and speedy treatment.

Pastors, preaching and Plasmodium

2009-07-19T12:23:00.009Z

Madi West Nile Anglican diocese is quite big – around 120km north to south, and 80 km across. That doesn’t sound too bad until you remember the state of the roads, and the fact that the River Nile has to be crossed on a dodgy ferry to reach Adjumani , the furthest point from the centre. The diocese is divided into ten archdeaconries, and recently we’ve been visiting each of them with a one day workshop for pastors.

On a typical day we set off about 8am, having loaded up with flipcharts, pens, handouts, water, Bibles, Lugbara hymnbooks and mosquito nets (all will be plain later!), and travel for perhaps two hours on suspension-shaking roads, not always entirely sure just where we are going. But there aren’t so many roads to choose from, and we haven’t got lost yet. We reach the archdeaconry headquarters around 10am, as promised, to meet a delighted archdeacon, who always seems slightly in doubt that we will actually come at all. He has called all his pastors together, usually around 10-20 men, and a sprinkling of women.

The venues are hardly ideal, but actually work pretty well – usually a round, open sided grass thatched hut, sometimes a simple church. Twice we sat outside in the shade, once on a verandah and once under a mango tree – a scene that has all the stereotypical qualities of Africa about it.

But the pastors won’t actually be there yet – over the next hour or more they gradually assemble, arriving on ancient bicycles or on foot, some having travelled for two hours or more to get there. Despite that they all arrive with a big smile and a handshake for everyone who is already there.

Then we begin with introductions, and talking about holistic mission and the appropriateness of combining teaching about spiritual and physical health. Next its Allan’s turn to teach about the vital importance of the preaching and teaching ministry in the Church of Uganda, where the pulpit is all too often given over to any lay person who fancies their chances, and little emphasis is laid on Biblical foundations. He includes some group work, and the pastors sit earnestly working together around a Bible, producing fascinating answers that give us many insights into local culture.

During the morning session we stop for ‘break tea’ around noon, usually bread, nuts, sweet potatoes or rice with a cup of black and sweet tea. Then lunch is around 2pm, or whenever the good ladies of the parish manage to produce it from their basic kitchen facilities. Sometimes the food is pretty unpalatable to us, but for the pastors it’s a feast and an essential part of the day.

In the afternoon Anne takes over with teaching on malaria prevention, and distributes some mosquito nets left over from a previous project. The pastors’ excitement at receiving a high-tech insecticide treated net is perhaps overshadowed by the offer of the packaging materials – particularly the strong metal bands that bind the bales. Excellent building material, we are told.

We finally manage to get away around 5pm, home by 7pm.

Each workshop is different, in ‘feel’ as well as in location, but all have been rewarding and have revealed so much to us about church life in this corner of Uganda. We have been appreciated as if we have been visiting heads of state.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, malaria is caused by a parasite, Plasmodium Falciparum

Timber!

2009-06-29T16:12:00.008Z

In the grounds of Kuluva Hospital is a marvellous variety of trees. Eucalyptus can be found in quantity throughout this part of Uganda because they grow quickly and provide a sustainable source of timber and fuel. Others can also be found including mahogany, and these hardwoods are usually used for making furniture. Even the most ordinary pieces of furniture, chests of drawers, tables, plain chairs, etc. are usually made of solid mahogany and weigh a ton.

My dad, who was a master cabinet maker, would have loved it here with so much quality timber on hand. When he retired he had two or three garages filled with pieces of timber he was saving for some indeterminate job in the future, but there was nothing in those garages to compare with what is available here in West Nile.

Kuluva Parish is in the process of constructing a new Church building. It is an ambitious project, but the congregation has been working hard on it, and our home parish in Leicester at St Denys has been supporting them in the venture. In the present building the congregation sit on solid cement/mud benches (which are not too good if you suffer from piles!), so they are planning hardwood furniture for the new church.

The present church stands at the entrance to the site of Kuluva Hospital. Behind the church are several rows of terraced houses occupied by hospital staff, and surrounding them many trees, some small and shrubby, but others, truly venerable and majestic.

One night earlier in the year the area was buffeted by high winds. One especially strong gust of wind brought two of the biggest trees crashing to the ground. Miraculously they fell in such a way as to miss both the church and the houses and nobody was hurt. In fact they fell in about the only direction they could have done with causing very significant damage.

The church the following week echoed to songs and prayers of thanks to God for preserving both life and property in what could otherwise have had devastating and possibly tragic consequences. What was more, the church leaders realised that these trees would provide much of the timber they needed to construct the church furniture they required. Jehovah Jireh! Indeed, there was much rejoicing, and the following Saturday a team of church workers cut up the tree into manageable chunks.

They discovered, however, that there was not quite sufficient timber to make all the furniture, and so decided to fell another of the big trees to make up the shortfall. The work was carried out on a Thursday morning, the men cutting away at the base of the trunk, careful to ensure that it fell safely. But just as the tree was about to fall, a small breeze blew (or so I am told) which nudged it slightly to the right causing it to fall elegantly, but very heavily - on to the back of the church, demolishing half of the roof and one corner of the building! Nobody was hurt and the Pastor remained cheerful, but there was a degree of embarrassment at the irony of the situation.

Anne and I went away on a trip the following day wondering what they would do – the church did look pretty bad. But returning a week later, we found the back of the church reconstructed, the newly felled tree cut into pieces, and everything back to normal.

The resilience of these people is truly astounding.

Hunger Season

2009-06-24T16:47:00.007Z

The cricket season followed the first rains. But they didn’t last. A couple of months of occasional downpours was enough to green up the grass and rejuvenate our struggling garden, but not enough to grow the life-giving crops. Now it is dry again and likely to remain so for a few weeks; hence the hunger season.

A small group of women meet on our verandah on Wednesday mornings for a short informal Bible study. Most of them do domestic work in the houses around here, and others are members of our local parish church. They are uniformly poor, engaging in subsistence farming with their families. In a mixture of Lugbara and English we sing, read a Bible passage, discuss, pray, and finish with a cup of tea – our sugar jar is always empty after Wednesday mornings! One of the women acts as translator both ways, as I have little Lugbara and some of them have little English. It’s always an encouraging experience to share with people who are hungry for some teaching, however brief, and who express a simple but profound faith.

The prayer requests illustrate the difficult lives they live. One woman had a field of cassava uprooted in the night – that represented her family’s bank account. Another said the neighbour’s goats had been eating her crops, and there had been arguments between the families. Another couldn’t find school fees for the orphans who were living with her family. But the biggest problem at the moment is ‘hunger’ and the lack of adequate rain – stalks of maize look fairly healthy, until you discover that they are all leaves, and the cobs that will feed the family are not developing. Groundnuts have withered before anything like a nut appeared. Stores of beans from last year’s harvest are running short. The next planting season is next month (provided it rains), but the harvest won’t be in until October.

So we pray that neighbours will tie up their goats, that fields will be protected, that school fees will be found, and for rain. It hasn’t come yet. But these women never waver in their trust in God. He will see us through, they say. They have seen hardship before. And our passage today? Consider the birds of the air...........your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more valuable than they? (Matt 6:26)

It’s difficult, when the verandah is outside our little house – TV, computers, books, and a well stocked kitchen. The women never once cast an envious glance. But I am conscious that the loose change in my purse would buy them and their children a few meals. We give, yes, but it can never be enough, or sustainable against future ‘hunger seasons’.

Of course it’s a vicious circle of environmental degradation as well as the usual vagaries of weather and harvest. Trees are being cut down at an unsustainable rate to provide firewood and charcoal, still the commonest sources of fuel for cooking and washing. Land is increasingly scarce, and many people have no rights to the land on which they live, so risk eviction if a landowner is sufficiently unsympathetic. Soil is not enriched with any kind of fertiliser, so crop yield is low. Water sources are often polluted and streams reducing to a muddy trickle.

But the women still meet with a smile, and if we go to their homes we are never allowed to leave without being given some refreshment. “God is testing us”, they say, “but He will provide.”

We pray He does, soon.

We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land
But it is fed and watered by God’s almighty hand........

Cricket Season

2009-05-30T10:09:00.007Z

I can’t play cricket. Anyone who knows me well knows that. At school I was no good with a bat and usually managed to be out first ball which, to be fair, didn’t give me much chance to improve. I also remember the experience of attempting to catch a cricket ball. Instead of nestling neatly in the palms of my hands it hit the end of my index finger. In this way I discovered that cricket balls are dangerously hard, and concluded that they are best avoided. Such cowardice was not an attitude best suited to becoming an effective cricketer.

But even if I can’t play cricket, I do enjoy watching it and remember several sun-soaked days relishing the contest as it played out on the cricket pitch before me. But too often I also recall ominous dark clouds gathering and large spots of rain beginning to fall, such as happened at the Anglican Clergy v. Imams of Leicester match Anne and I attended in Leicester shortly before coming to Uganda. On that occasion, the match was played to its (bitter for the Anglicans) conclusion, but “rain stopped play” becomes the epitaph of too many cricket matches because, for some reason, in Britain, the arrival of the Cricket Season seems to herald the coming of rain.

But if in Britain the coming of the cricket season signifies the coming of rain, here in Uganda it’s the other way round as the welcome sound of thunder and the opening of the floodgates of heaven marks the coming of the crickets.

Crickets are wonderful creatures with shiny, leathery, brown bodies. They come in many different sizes ranging from the size of a pea to just a little smaller than a golf ball. They have the most incredible ability to leap and spring and bound great distances. Their trajectory is hard to predict which can be a little alarming as they explore the living room, but when you get used to them they are strangely endearing.

Unfortunately, my first encounter with a cricket was in the ‘shower’. I was washing my hair (the little of it that I possess), my eyes closed to protect them from the shampoo. Suddenly I felt something jump up my leg. Quickly washing the shampoo suds from my eyes, I looked down, and saw this thing (I didn’t know what it was at the time) clinging on to me for dear life trying to escape the pools of water accumulating on the floor. I have to confess that the shock forced me to consign the poor, harmless creature to a watery grave. Having now grown more fond of them, I feel frequent pangs of guilt as think back to this summary execution.

But crickets aren’t the only creatures that show up with the coming of the rain. Moths, beetles, appear in profusion, as do white ants which emerge from termite mounds in their thousands, and after dark fly around outside our window attracted by the light. By the morning the verandah looks like a graveyard, littered with the wings and bodies of countless ants.

Our Ugandan friends wonder why we don’t collect them, after all they will lie in wait by termite mounds ready to catch them when they emerge. They cook them to eat mixed with beans, or grind them into a sort of paste from which they make ‘cakes’, which actually look a little like meatballs. We have eaten both forms, but there are more appetising delicacies to our taste (like Bendicks Bittermints). However white ants do provide extra protein which the local diet often lacks. Folks here are so fond of them that they preserve termite mounds, even though they are home to the termites which gobble up their houses (quite literally), in order to maintain this source of extra nourishment.
“How many are your works, O Lord!
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.” (Ps 104.24)

Indeed, the world is home to a fascinating variety of living creatures, insects, peoples and customs! And what a privilege to be a part of it all!

Bendicks Bonanza and Baboon Bandits - A Bittermint Tale

2009-05-23T13:16:00.007Z

"A firm fondant very strongly flavoured with peppermint oil, enrobed with intensely bitter chocolate.”

These words scarcely do justice to the amazing experience of eating a Bendicks Bittermint. For many years they have been my (Allan’s) Christmas treat. At times I had been tempted to buy them out of season, but the discipline of keeping them as a luxury limited to only one season, something to be looked forward to with anticipation from year to year, always enhanced the experience of biting into this most exclusive of mints - silky textured and outrageously delicious but with the ‘bite’ of real peppermint.

Coming to Uganda and abandoning Bendicks Bittermints was a sacrifice in itself, but through the kindness of friends and relatives, Christmas 2007 saw two boxes of this exclusive confectionary turn up in Arua Post Office. But Christmas 2008 was another story – not one box appeared.

In desperation we made an appeal to any visitors coming out to see us. At Christmas we may have been bereft, but a whole year without another Bendicks ‘fix’ would have been unthinkable.

A visit to the Post Office in April, however, was rewarded with a parcel, and wonder of wonders, it contained one box of the thick, dark chocolate-covered peppermint bombs. The parcel had been posted in November! The mints were still in excellent condition, a real testimony to their ability to travel thousands of miles in sometimes extreme conditions without adverse effect. Our spirits rose as were able to acknowledge that someone had thought of us.

Just a few days later we travelled to Kampala and Entebbe to meet our visitors. Richard and Helen presented us with two boxes, and Anne’s sisters Cathy and Kathy (don’t ask!) another two. Five boxes in one year was little less than a miracle and we rejoiced!!

Returning to Arua with the two C(K)athys, we stopped off at Paraa Lodge in Murchison Park for a game drive and a Nile River Launch. Because Anne and I had done the river trip several times we saw our visitors off and returned to our room taking with us one box of Bendicks we had retrieved from the Paraa fridge. Our intention was to enjoy them together with our visitors after dinner that evening.

Leaving the box in our room we went downstairs for an afternoon cup of tea and a snack. After a short while Anne went to collect her sisters from their river-trip to the Falls, whilst I returned to the room.

At first sight everything looked normal, unchanged from when we had left it. But then my eyes fell on a quantity of green and gold silver foil lying on the floor. A short distance beyond lay the box of Bendicks Bittermints, its top gouged open by some wild and voracious beast and empty (apart from 3) of its original contents! It lay before the open door to the balcony of our first-floor room.

Then I remembered a previous visit to Paraa when I had chased two opportunistic baboons from the balcony. This time they had returned, but on this occasion with greater success and to their greater benefit. Amazingly, nothing else in the room, laptop, camera binoculars or anything else had been disturbed.

But now, we are looking forward to encountering a new and more classy breed of baboon at Paraa; baboons who have begun to appreciate the finer things of life, and whose eating habits will more reflect the refined character of the food they have now tasted. The alternative, of course, is that they will be driven into a wild frenzy (like me) in their search for more of these glorious mints, very few of which can ever have made their way to Murchison Park, and will rarely ever do so again.

Certainly we will be much more careful in future!

Sunrise

2009-04-13T07:42:00.015Z

“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb.........” (John 20.1)

We got up at 5.30 am and it was certainly dark as we walked down to the hospital chapel on Easter Sunday morning with the temperature having dropped to a ‘chill’ 20 degrees in contrast to the rest of Holy Week when it had been around the 33 degrees mark.

The week had begun at Kuluva Parish Church on Palm Sunday (see last blog) a truly cross-cultural experience as the children and young people waved their palm branches enthusiastically and responded with spontaneous applause to the Christmas messages from St Denys. They didn’t seem to think it remotely odd that we should be talking about Christmas on Palm Sunday. After all, a king whose first bed was a manger and who had to flee to Egypt to escape the anger and paranoia of Herod fits well with a king who rides a donkey and whose throne was a cross.

But half way through Holy Week, Alice, the new Chaplain at Kuluva Hospital, asked if I knew anything about Easter Day Sunrise Services. She had attended one when at University in Mukono which had made a lasting impression, but since that had been in 1990 she couldn’t remember much about it.

My mind drifted back to parish life in South Yorkshire and the almost 20 years of Easter Sunrise Services we had shared with the churches of Rotherham. There we had climbed a hill overlooking the town’s shrinking industrial landscape to pray and to celebrate the resurrection, often in sub-zero temperatures and freezing rain.

Kuluva was a different context, but it was the same celebration, and indeed I had compiled some material during preparations for a Muzungu Sunrise Service in Arua the previous year. That had been a bit of a disaster, but when I showed the material to Alice she thought it would provide a good framework for what she wanted to do.

And so it was that by 6.00 am we had begun the walk to Kuluva Hill, the growing company singing Lugbara songs accompanied by drums and guitars. For much of the night it had been raining with thunder in the distance, but now it was dry, although we were wrapped up warm against the new, lower temperatures.

Arriving at a collection of grass thatched houses just below the hill, the home of Shadrach and Josephine and their family, we read John’s account of the resurrection before continuing up the hill singing 'Thine be the glory'.

There, at the top of the hill, overlooking the hospital and with a backdrop of sunrise over the distant hills through now dispersing clouds, Alice set up a little table for an al fresco Eucharist. A gusting wind stirred things up a bit – pause for thought – and the sixty or seventy of us shared in Lugbara/English/Celtic/Anglican and Free Worship and prayed for the hospital, for unity, for peace and that the transforming power of the resurrection would make a difference in all of our lives.

We descended the hill, again singing as we went: Above all powers; How deep the Father’s love for us; Jesus Prince and Saviour, as well as a collection of Lugbara songs Anne and I didn’t know the words to. So what!? We were overwhelmed by the privilege of taking part in this special service and experiencing something of the miracle of the cross and resurrection as we shared in cross-cultural fellowship.

This, we felt, is what we are really here to learn.

Christmas Delayed

2009-04-04T13:01:00.008Z

Mid-March, and great anticipation as we visit the Post Office in Arua to see if there is anything in our PO Box. Often there are letters, or our Guardian Weekly, but at times there’s a slip of paper, a real source of excitement because it means the Post Office have received a parcel or packet for us.

And so it was this day in the middle of March. It always takes some time for the PO officials to rummage their way through the piles of parcels and large envelopes, sometimes having to go through them several times. But always, eventually, they come up with the goods, today a large brown envelope – not the DVDs or chocolates we’ve been waiting for, but exciting none the less, and more so because we have no idea what it is.

We always wait until we get home to open these treasures – it heightens the level of anticipation. So having arrived home, we made a cup of coffee and proceeded to investigate the contents of the envelope. From the envelope that had travelled so many thousands of miles from the UK, we pulled a large sheaf of coloured card and paper, and emblazoned on the front were the words “Happy Christmas”.

The parcel was a collection of Christmas cards ‘To the children at the Church of Kuluva from the children at St Denys Junior Church.’ The Ugandan Postal Service had truly excelled themselves – only two-and-a-half months late!

What should we do with these cards? Leave them until next Christmas? Just hand them over to the Pastor to make a decision? Forget about them? None of these options seemed right. But with the cards there was a poem ‘Jesus and the Donkey’. As far as I could recall, the only place the Bible actually mentions a donkey and Jesus in the same verses is on Palm Sunday: ‘Jesus sent two disciples....”Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there with her colt........the disciples went and did as Jesus instructed them. They brought the donkey and the colt, placed their cloaks on them, and Jesus sat on them.......”’

Of course, that was it! Why not bring Christmas into Palm Sunday and Easter? Why not wish the Children at Kuluva a Happy Christmas, invite them to welcome Jesus on Palm Sunday as King, just as the crowds of Jerusalem welcomed him, not to forget him as quickly as they did, but so that he could be born anew in their hearts to be their king for life?

So here we are on the day before Palm Sunday, and that’s what we’ll be doing tomorrow. Another bridge built across the miles from our home church in Leicester to our home church in Kuluva and a bridge across the Church Seasons to celebrate the greatest bridge of all from God to each one of us.

A singular blessing

2009-03-14T11:25:00.007Z

A ‘wheelchair blessing’ was not to be found in Common Worship or other service books that Allan had to hand, but that’s what he’d been asked to do. As ever, things were not quite as they seemed. Our friends Mary and Isaac had asked us to come to their house to bless Tom’s new wheelchair. Tom is a young man of 17 years and delightful temperament, but who has been severely disabled from birth. His old wheelchair was ancient and showing its years. The government, courtesy of the Wheelchair Foundation, had provided a new one, quite miraculously it seemed, and for no money. But Tom had refused to sit in the new chair until it had been duly prayed over, and Allan was requested to provide the service.

If it had been me, I’d have just gone with a prayer half formed in my head. Being Allan, he did a little preparation and produced a short service in a mixture of Lugbara and English, so that the whole family could join in. Then it became clear that half the village had actually been invited, our church pastor was also going to be there, there would be food afterwards ..................... clearly we needed to write off the whole afternoon.

But it was delightful. Tom sat in the old chair as we arrived, lapping up all the attention and beaming whenever he caught anyone’s eye. Canvas awnings, tables covered with lacy linen and hideous artificial flowers, floor mats and plastic chairs were all set out in good Ugandan style and about 20 adults came along as well as numerous kids. The service proceeded with some order, thanks to Allan’s preparations, but there was a good deal of improvisation and unexpected speeches too, not to mention the gusty wind that blew up and threatened to sweep all the decorations away. In a moving moment, we all gathered round the new wheelchair and laid hands on it and on Tom – black hands joined with white ones in a symbolic act. We prayed for Tom, who shows such joy and delight in his life, which is necessarily devoid of so many resources that most of us, disabled or not, take for granted.

Then he was lifted into the new chair, and family photos were taken to record the moment. Afterwards we all proceeded to the house for enya, beans, rice, chicken, meat, and fellowship. Our Lugbara teacher threw in a provocative question (in English, luckily) about whether newly converted polygamous men could be baptized in church before renouncing the spare spouses....................................... a good time was had by all.

Outdated, Failing and Redundant (No! Not us!)

2009-03-07T14:06:00.007Z

At the end of October 2007 we were eulogising about the wonders of our new yellow box. It was a great little piece of technology to get us on to the internet and put us in touch with all you folk. Our lives were transformed – the world was at our fingertips. If we’d had the time, we would have written an ode to the wonderful little yellow box and shared it with you all. At least you were spared that!

In recent weeks, however, we’ve been cursing the terrible plastic yellow thing – a waste of space. It would, tantalisingly, get you on to the internet and just as you were about to do something useful online it would disconnect itself. It felt deliberate, as though The Thing was trying to annoy us. It's interesting to discover just how easy it is to become paranoid.

There we would be, having just started to listen to the omnibus edition of ‘The Archers’ from the BBC, and the nasty yellow object would go offline and refuse to connect again. Or we would just have been ready to send an email (deathless prose that had taken an hour to write) and, again, the nasty yellow box would die.

So the much-lauded technology of yesterday has been declared redundant, and is now superseded by its’ younger brother – the Black Slug.

All this is to say we’re now back on line, and our contributions to the Blog Universe will recommence.

P.S. If we get round to writing ‘An Ode to the Black Slug’ you’ll be the first to know.

Slithering into 2009

2009-01-24T11:17:00.005Z

New Years Day. 8am. Allan is in the shower. I am making breakfast.

New Years Day is big around here. Its almost bigger than Christmas. We have church services on New Years Day to thank God that we have ‘made it’ into another year without dying or otherwise being attacked by the devil. These are big celebrations. Allan is to preach at the service in our local parish church at 10am. Hence the shower, though he might need another one by the time he has spent two hours or so dressed in clerical robes designed for a cooler climate. Its about 25° already.

I go out of the back door to throw away the coffee grounds from last night – coffee was the tipple during our New Years Eve celebrations, as no alcohol is allowed on the hospital site. But we enjoyed an evening of convivial company with some fellow expatriates nonetheless, and went to bed at a respectable 11pm.

As I throw the coffee grounds on the bare earth, I notice movement – a snake, I thought. Then it registers – A SNAKE! We have seen one before just here, but it slithered away like lightning last time. This time its slithering is decidedly sluggish – nevertheless I retreat to the kitchen and close the netting door. From here I can watch the enemy in safety. Its about 18 ins long, grey and skinny. Its then I notice a large, rather obscene swelling partway down its thin body – it has clearly just swallowed a large meal of frog, maybe, or a small rodent. That would account for the sluggishness. I’ve caught it feeling post-prandial and mellow. Well, maybe not so mellow.

Briefly I consider tackling it alone. All the advice here is to kill snakes immediately on sight. Some are poisonous, some not, but you don’t hang around to find out. Then I decide God gave me a husband for occasions just such as this. While I await Allan’s emergence from the shower – I can’t expect him to tackle the thing naked and wet – I keep an eye on it. We wouldn’t want it to get away again. Its slithering its way, slowly, across the cement outside the back door.
Allan comes out of the shower. ‘There’s a snake outside and we have to kill it’ I greet him. ‘Well, you have to kill it’ - I add – ‘I’ll help.’ What a wonderful fellow I married. We don suitable protective clothing – strong shoes or boots to prevent bites. Allan decides it might be better to put trousers and shirt on too, rather than the dressing gown he was wearing.

We creep out to the store, so as not to announce our presence to the recumbent reptile, and find suitable implements – a rake and hoe are the best we can do. Allan then stands behind the snake, which is still snoozing gently, and brings the rake down on its neck with full force. The snake certainly wakes up, but isn’t killed instantly. It tries to bite the rake, but Allan stands firm. I stand ready with the hoe in case he needs reinforcement, but hoping to be redundant. Eventually he manages to cut off the thing’s head with the rake and hoe combined. That is that.

We throw the two bits of snake onto the vegetable plot (thats a euphemism – not a single vegetable has been known to grow there successfully). There it remains, looking increasingly revolting, until our gardener came the next day and buried it.

But we were very proud of our conquest as a suitably assertive beginning to the new year. None of the snake’s relatives have yet been back to seek revenge. So we trust we will live to thank God for bringing us safely on to the beginning of 2010.

The Big Six-O

2008-12-27T10:30:00.010Z

One big advantage of living in Uganda is being able to do exotic things on big birthdays. This year took us to Eastern Uganda for my Big Six-0 and to the highest mountains we have yet seen in the country, with Mount Elgon, its highest peak, at 4165 metres. Our destination was Sipi Falls, a modest 1,800 metres above sea level, but high enough to be free of mosquitoes and cool enough to need blankets at night – a real treat.

We were staying at Lacam Lodge, which prides itself in being electricity-free, using gas for cooking and kerosene lamps to light the restaurant and bandas at night. Another feature was the toilets.

Being built on solid rock, digging ‘long-drop’ toilets is impossible, so instead the Lodge provides bucket loos. These look like ordinary toilets, but instead of a flush guests are provided with liberal quantities of sawdust to sprinkle as appropriate. It was ideal, and 100% effective in rendering the toilet odour-free. Every couple of hours one of the staff would enter the toilet via a back door to empty, clean and return the bucket (presumably ensuring the toilet was not in use at the time). This was a job we decided not to apply for, but to show our gratitude, left a healthy tip under the loo seat.

During our stay in Sipi, we were fascinated to be met by several groups of young people jogging and dancing their way along the road, singing, shouting and blowing whistles. We enquired of our local guide, Fred, what this meant and he told us with some pride that they were preparing for circumcision rites. He explained that these usually happen in the month of December in even numbered years. We thought of little babies, but no. Here, in the home of the Bagisu and Sabini tribes, circumcision is carried out on males, generally, between the ages of 16 and 26!

The ritual marks the transition into true manhood and qualifies the initiate to marry and take positions of leadership in the community. Initiates nominate themselves for the ritual in the previous May or June, which apparently gives them time to prepare for the event. I wondered how you could prepare for such an event. Circumcision is performed, with no anaesthetic, in public before family and friends, and even tourists can attend – although these tourists didn’t. Subsequently we noticed a number of young men wearing skirts – they no longer have to prove their manhood. Fred confirmed what we thought, again with great pride. He had been circumcised in his teens. Better to look back on than to look forward to, I thought.

That aside, Sipi Falls is a beautiful spot. There are four main falls, the last and longest of which provides a magnificent setting for Lacam Lodge. From our banda we could both see and hear the long and extraordinarily elegant cascade plunging 100 metres into the river below. It was a glorious view looking down into the valley and the plains beyond, towards the north-west and our home in Arua some 600 km distant.

On my birthday itself Fred took us along the edge of the ridge above the falls, and then steeply down into the valley itself. The slope was precipitous, involving some rather hairy walking/climbing, including an almost vertical ladder down part of the rock face, but it gave us great views of Lacam Lodge across the valley, and then the Falls themselves. As we descended, our daughter, Jo, rang to wish me a happy birthday and I received a birthday text message from friends in Doncaster, UK – a lightly surreal but delightful reminder of home.

At the foot of the Falls, out of the sunshine, it was very wet, muddy, slippery, and a little scary., but as we ascended back out of the valley into the sunshine again, we encountered a girl and young boy. Both were carrying great loads of bananas on their heads from the banana groves growing on the valley side. Being unable to balance anything much on our heads we were much impressed by their amazing ability to scale rock-face ladders with such a burden.

We stopped to talk to them as they, and we, rested on the way. The girl’s name was Emma. “It means ‘God is with us,’” she explained. “Of course, from Emmanuel,” I said, “Jesus’ name.” “You’re a Christian!” she responded with a bright smile, and told us she was a singer in her local church. She then sang us a song about heaven and the truth that if we trust in Jesus we will all be there together one day – ‘every nation, tribe, people and language’.

Our best wishes for a very happy Christmas and joy-filled New Year.

Health care delivery on the edge

2008-12-08T13:48:00.011Z

Health care in rural Uganda is a million miles away from anything you might imagine if you have been brought up in UK since 1948. Yes, the NHS has plenty of faults and will never have enough resources, but it has an impressive way of swinging into action when anything life-threatening occurs.

Not so in Uganda. There are hospitals, yes, but they rarely have many, if any, doctors in them, and the nursing staff can be hard to find. When you do find them they may not be very quick to respond to patients’ needs, and the care is all done by ‘attendants’ – long-suffering relatives who volunteer to feed, wash, toilet and accompany the patient through 24 hours, sleeping on a mat beside the bed. Such is the tradition of extended family responsibility here.
There is nothing equivalent to a GP, unless you count the private medical practitioners who keep shop in the town and charge high prices for dubious investigations and treatments. And then there are the witchdoctors of course......

But on the ground in the rural areas are the health centres. These small buildings, often in remote locations in the bush, are the mainstay of healthcare for most. Of the five health centres run by the Church of Uganda in this Diocese, none has running water or mains electricity. A small solar panel might run a satellite phone and emergency lighting. Their equipment is old and battered, and they don’t have nearly enough of anything. They are staffed by a couple of nurses, midwives and nursing assistants, with perhaps a laboratory technician, a guard/groundsman and a cleaner. The staff live in at the centre in grass thatched houses like those of the community around. They provide out-patient consultations for everything from malaria to worms, from attempted suicide to HIV testing. They cater for a range of maternal and child health services including deliveries, family planning and immunizations. Some include in-patient facilities, and even those that don’t will put a mattress on the floor to keep a dehydrated cholera case under observation until he or she is well enough to move. None has a doctor or clinical officer.

Visiting Kei health centre for a meeting with staff and community members, I was reminded of the constraints under which they work. Kei is the most remote of the five health centres I help to supervise, but it is also one of the biggest and busiest. It serves an area of rural poverty very close to the Sudan border in the far north of the Diocese, and is reached by a terrible road that is regularly impassable in the rainy season. The health centre, like the region it serves, has seen its share of disturbance in recent years. But at present it is well run by Mary, a nurse In-charge who has a sweet but strong character, and is a very committed Christian.

After the meeting, while we were drinking tea and eating cassava and biscuits, Mary approached me to ask if we could take a seriously ill patient to the nearest government hospital on our way home. There are no ambulances here. She wanted to refer him because he had been an in-patient at Kei for two weeks, was deteriorating, and she felt he needed more specialist care. He has AIDS, and had a serious infection in one leg that was causing much swelling and pain. There were already five of us squashed in a ‘double cabin’ pick-up, which left only the open back of the truck available. But that was what was wanted. The staff and relatives spread blankets on the floor of the pick-up, then lifted the thin, frail man onto the back. One of his sons sat upright against the cab, cradling his father’s head on his lap so that the patient was as comfortable as possible on the rough road. We set off for the 20km journey with five of the family in attendance, together with bedding, cooking pots and personal belongings.

It wasn’t an ambulance journey I would have chosen for myself, but it was the only one available and the family were grateful. We left them at the hospital in Yumbe – the patient might get some medical attention there, eventually, but I doubt he will receive as much care and concern as he did whilst at Kei.

Prayer Mountain

2008-11-22T12:37:00.007Z

A visit to the Murchison Falls just a week ago saw them at their most dramatic. Now, at the end of the rainy season, the Victoria Nile, wide and languid for much of its course, was full as the white water cascaded towards the narrow cleft in the rocks before plunging 140 feet to the river below and on to Lake Albert. In the brilliant sunshine it was truly awesome with clouds of spray and rainbows in profusion.

That experience was in marked contrast to aggressive and objectionable baboons, one of which decided to leap through the open window of our Land Cruiser whilst we were waiting for the ferry at Paraa. No one was in the car at the time but the intruder was chased out empty handed, and without causing any damage.

Some 10 minutes later, however, we managed to suffer a 3 inch gash in our tyre as a result of a torn piece of metal on the ramp on to the ferry. But even that had its upside as three South African employees of British American Tobacco who were making the same crossing executed an impressive Formula One style wheel change, completing the whole operation in the time it took to cross the river – around 7 minutes! The Parable of the Good Samaritan came to mind!

We had gone to Murchison Park with Emma and Pete, and Laura, British expatriate doctors and a midwife, also living and working at Kuluva Hospital. It was a brief weekend’s break from work, and en route to Murchison Park we decided to visit the Nebbi Prayer Mountain some 20 km beyond the town of the same name. We had heard a great deal about the Prayer Mountain as a place to pray, praise, and find peace and space to gain a renewed and God-centred perspective on life.

The Prayer Mountain is a Retreat Centre built on the Korean pattern and belonging to Nebbi Diocese, Madi/West Nile’s southern neighbour. The foundation stone on the main chapel was laid in 1996 and the whole site was funded and built by a retired Korean Business Executive at a time when the present Archbishop of Uganda, Henry Orombi, was Bishop of Nebbi.

Prayer Mountain is set in a stunningly beautiful countryside, close to the Congo border, and is made up of nine Prayer Points marked by small stone ‘chapels’ located at various places on the mountainside. Each Prayer Point has its own unique and powerfully symbolic design, giving a particular focus which individuals can use to direct their prayer.

The focuses for prayer reflect a global concern, but naturally with a particular emphasis on the needs of Africa. There is also an emphasis on young people, families, and the worldwide need for revival and spiritual renewal. Different arrangements and numbers of windows feature strongly in the design of the small Prayer Points buildings symbolising, amongst other things, the 10 Commandments, the 9 Fruits of the Spirit, the 66 Books of the Bible, the 12 disciples, and so on. Through the windows you can see out to the hills beyond in every direction which gives everything a sense of space, freedom. But the often very strenuous walks between the various Prayer Points prevent any possibility of prayer becoming simply a form of self-indulgence and escapism. Prayer involves work.

On this occasion, ours was simply a fleeting visit; an opportunity to visit somewhere of which we had heard but had never visited. Places to stop and reflect, places to retreat to in order to regroup and move forward again, are few and far between in NW Uganda. Life is full of people and busy-ness, although often not very productive. But even in our brief time at Prayer Mountain we were able to gain some new insights into our work here. Perhaps especially that, whilst living in Uganda, God has not simply called us to work for him with and alongside others. He also wants to work with us and to continue his work of transformation in us.

Murchison Falls has always had the capacity to impress with its power and grandeur, and Prayer Mountain is also about power - the power to transform and change individuals, and so the world. It is just 90 minutes from Kuluva, and God-willing we will return to Prayer Mountain to be empowered for the work God has sent us here to do, and to be transformed a little more ourselves.

Hey Jude.....

2008-10-29T19:00:00.007Z

We met Jude a couple of months ago. He popped into our office at Mvara one morning, “just to say hello”, but he was also very keen that we should visit him at his school just over the way from our office.

Jude, I guess, is in his early 40s, but quite youthful in appearance and manner, as seems to be the case with many Ugandans. He is a teacher, and by all accounts a good one; indeed, a few years ago he won an award as the Best Teacher in Uganda. Drama and music are passions for him, and over the years he has been responsible for a number of singing and dance groups which have performed at weddings and other events in the area. But his particular specialism is as a teacher of special needs students.

It was about three weeks later that we visited Jude in his classroom/workshop. We met some of his students, one of whom who had no use of his hands, played the odungu with his feet! Unusually for a Ugandan classroom, the walls were adorned with posters, many concerned with health issues, and it was full of all sorts of equipment, much of which looked as though it had come out of the ark. In particular, there were many broken Braille machines. Jude explained they were all second-hand and waiting for him to repair them. He took in other pieces of equipment from other institutions in Arua for repair and used the additional income to supplement his rather small government teacher’s salary.

But there were other things Jude wanted to share with us. Resources for Special Needs Education are as scarce, if not more so, than other resources in Uganda. But Jude is not one to be put off, and with some pride he produced some of his own creations – modifications of the abacus and other calculating machines for use by visually impaired students, and many other ideas to aid the learning and mobility of his students.

One piece he was particularly proud of was a model solar system with an assortment of spherical objects attached at varying distances by wires to a central spindle. These rotated around a light bulb suspended in the middle of them, and representing the Sun. The model was driven by battery power and he used it to teach the principles of planetary motion, seasons, and so on to students with different special educational needs – they are all kept together in one group. It was remarkably inventive and did actually work.

Talking to Jude, he had a real passion for his work and at one time had been employed as a lecturer in SEN at the Teacher Training College next door to the school. Despite having worked there for some time, he was bitterly disappointed when told he could no longer teach there because he didn’t have the required qualifications. If he wanted to teach there again he would have to go and gain further certificates.

Sadly, the educational system here in Uganda, has hardly heard of part-time or distance learning, and the only way you can gain an academic qualification is by becoming a full-time student. This is a very expensive option and taking professionals out of the workplace for a number of years whilst they study – not the best economic option either for the student or the workplace – although I suppose it’s not so bad for the training institution!

Jude clearly hopes we can help him in some way – and he probably deserves help – but so do so many other people here. That’s one of the challenges it’s hard to come to terms with.

Another is, how to make sense of the fact that since Jude lost his job at the Teacher Training College, they now have no one to teach about Special Educational Needs.

A Week In The Life Of......... (Part 2)

2008-10-09T09:31:00.008Z

True to his word, during the Sunday I spent in Omoo (see A week in the life of.....) Robert planned with me a programme for my week ‘shadowing’ him in his work. He was concerned that I should be able to visit each of the eight churches in Mingoro Parish and get to know something about the challenges they face.

Robert and his family face their own personal challenges. He is married to a teacher and was ordained just three years ago. They have two sons, the eldest of whom (7-year old Godwin) has been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. This would be hard for any family, but for Robert it also involves travelling 500 km to Kampala for treatment and a significant bill once he gets there. On top of the 25,000 UGX fare to get to Kampala, he has been told the treatment will cost around 1,200,000 UGX. Robert gets paid just 50,000 UGX per month (c.£16), but earns some more by growing onions, ground nuts and cassava. It’s a hard life for him, not least because this means he often starts the day at 6.00 am with 3 hours of digging. But he remains amazingly cheerful and leads a busy life running a large parish of eight churches.

One major issue in Uganda is the issue of land rights. In a country where most of the title to land is hereditary and not formally established, land without title deeds can be very vulnerable. This applies as much to churches as to private individuals and several of the churches in Robert’s care have neighbours who are trying to encroach on their land. One church I visited has a major project growing thousands of eucalyptus tree seedlings which they will eventually plant out as boundary markers.

This project has a further benefit as well. Eucalyptus trees are very fast growing, and the timber will in a short time provide a good source of income for the church. Some of the churches in Robert’s parish are also growing other ideas to develop the local community or generate some badly needed income. These include building technical schools, dispensaries, or establishing bee and honey projects. It’s a far cry from parish life in Britain.

Of course day-to-day parish life also continues amidst these other activities. Coming from Britain I have been used to being able to manage my diary. Weddings, for example, are arranged often years ahead. But in particular it is unusual not to have several days’ notice of a funeral. Here, however, things are very different.

The Tuesday programme for my visit to Mingoro Parish had read: Visit of Church of Uganda Kubo – Visitation of the sick Kerekere. Robert had warned me on Monday that the programme would have to be extended because a 12-year old girl had died and her funeral had been arranged for Tuesday afternoon. Arriving at Omoo on Tuesday morning, however, I discovered that a man had died there suddenly on Monday evening, and his funeral was also taking place on Tuesday afternoon – well within 24 hours of the death (and without the body ever having been seen by a doctor).

Robert was very glad to have me around that day because my car would make his life a whole lot easier than having to travel the heavily rutted roads on his bicycle. We travelled first to Kubo to visit the church to collect a Church Teacher and to have a meal. It was there I discovered I had a flat tyre and had to change the wheel in the rain – with a number of fascinated spectators who had never seen anything like this before. We then proceeded to Kerekere for a sick communion (followed by a small meal), before driving to a village some distance away for the first funeral (preceded by a meal of enya and beans, and concluded by a similar meal), before finally returning to Omoo for the second funeral (also accompanied by food).

These were the first funerals I had attended, and sadly I forgot to take my camera. I had been assured there would be no problem taking photographs. But at least I was able to concentrate on what was going on – the open coffin for the young girl (no coffin at all for the man), the relatives speaking about the deceased, the sermon, the procession to the graveside in the village near the home of the deceased, the burial and the scattering of petals. I declined Robert’s offer the day before that I should preach at the girl’s funeral, but this didn’t stop him asking me to say a few words at each of the funerals, and to pray for the deceased man’s wives and family at the second.

I left Omoo as darkness was falling.

My week with Robert was interrupted and we weren’t able to complete all Robert had planned. But it was concluded by a very joyful wedding at Olevu Parish accompanied by two udungu bands and children’s choirs. I was able to take a full part in the service and even able to eat the meal preceding it. Unfortunately I had a chest infection for most of the week but was able to use this as a good reason to avoid the second meal of enya, meat, rice, beans and cabbage.

PS. Two days ago Robert appeared at my office in Mvara. Three of the churches in his parish had complained. Because of the interrupted programme I hadn’t been to visit them. Robert is going to Kampala next week but when he returns we will resume where we left off. I look forward to that and think that Mingoro Parish, its Pastor and Church Teachers will be a useful place to develop some of my ideas about ministry in the future.

Water, water.........not necessarily everywhere

2008-09-21T10:39:00.010Z

Thunderstorms here usually seem to happen in the middle of the night heralding a period of sleeplessness maintained by crashing thunder and torrential rain. Today it waited until 6.30 when we awoke to the sound of distant thunder, and the skies which had promised dawn, darkening again as heavy spots of rain began to fall. Soon the heavens were open, with forks of lightning striking terrifyingly close to our house. The claps of thunder were awesome.

Sheltering in the porch we found our local mat and basket maker. He was delighted to be offered a cup of tea, a banana and refuge from the storm. We hope he also enjoyed Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony which we were playing in celebration of the thunder storm.

Anne and I arrived in Uganda last year in this same season of dramatic thunder storms and heavy rain. But the irony today is that, whilst we are experiencing frequent deluges, the UN is warning of drought in the Horn of Africa, including Karamoja in NE Uganda.

Here in Africa, water is king. Of course, that is true everywhere, but here it is much more obvious. Too much water, as in West Nile at the moment, and crops are ruined; too little, as in Karamoja, and the land remains arid and unproductive - both result in hunger and/or increased food costs.

Then there is the question of water quality. Water spells the difference between sickness and health, life and death. Here in NW Uganda many people still have to walk to the local river or spring to collect water where quality is far from certain. A spring or borehole protected by a concrete enclosure is best, but even this can be a source of disease. The college at Ringili has its own protected borehole, but there have been suspicions that this water-source may be responsible for cases of typhoid.

In Kuluva we are just over the hill from Ringili. Here we are blessed with a ready supply of water pumped from the hospital borehole to a tank in our house. Sometimes, though, even this runs out. Then we have to rely on 25 litre jerry cans. Lucy is a great asset as she transports these heavy yellow cans on her head from an alternative borehole on the site.

Having to decant water from jerry cans for every use is very tiring and annoying. It makes you think twice about having a shower (or a ‘pour’ as it actually is), or even flushing the loo. Water shortages can go on for days, and it is a great cause for celebration when we hear water beginning to pour into the tank in our roof once again. The only downside to this is that it tends to start in the middle of the night and wakes us up. It’s a bit like a thunder storm and torrential rain really.

We’ll see what the next 24 hours has in store for us.

A Week In The Life Of.........

2008-09-06T14:45:00.008Z

It was about 7.45 am on Saturday morning when my phone rang. Normally we set the alarm for 6.45 but on Saturday Anne and I can have a lie-in. Sometimes one of us will get up to make a cup of tea, but otherwise we enjoy the chance to come to slowly - as slowly as possible. The sound of the phone was unwelcome. Who would ring at this time on a Saturday morning? I contemplated ignoring it, but reluctantly I negotiated the mosquito net to retrieve my phone from the living room. I’d left my glasses in the bedroom, so with some difficulty focussed on the screen to identify my anti-social caller – Robert Arua 2, it said.

I’d met Robert in December on our tour of the archdeaconries. He was a young pastor in a rural parish in the Arua Archdeaconry and a tutor at the Archdeaconry Training Centre. Robert had impressed both Anne and myself as a bright, enthusiastic and thoughtful pastor, so when someone suggested I should spend some time ‘shadowing’ a pastor in his parish for a few days, Robert came to mind and when I approached him he readily agreed. But that had been in May, four months before this phone call.

I answered the phone and heard a cheerful African voice at the other end. “Hello. I’ll meet you at Jaiko at 9.30 tomorrow morning. There’s a communion service at Omoo church at 11.00 and we’ll sort out the programme from there. Sorry not to be in touch earlier. I’ve been in Kampala. By the way, you are preaching.” My brain was only half in gear, but in the dim recesses of my memory I recalled my conversation with Robert and our agreement to get together at the end of August.

At 7.45 that Saturday morning I regretted the arrangement, but in the event, the week that followed was an experience I shall not quickly forget.

I met Robert at the Arua Archdeaconry HQ at Jaiko the following morning, and drove some 8 km along one of the worst roads I've encountered in Uganda, finally arriving at Omoo, one of the eight churches which make up Robert’s parish of Mingoro. Each church is in the charge of a Lay Reader, and this Sunday it was Omoo’s turn to have their pastor present to lead a communion service.

It transpired that the whole parish had been looking forward to my arrival because Robert had announced that I was coming some three months earlier. All eight Readers with their Churchwardens and other senior laity were present, and before the service began – summoned by the beating of a drum – we met together in a rondavel for a meal of beans, meat, rice, enya, a boiled egg and sweet tea.

With the exception of my sermon, the service was conducted entirely in Lugbara (the local language), but one of the chief wardens – a former policeman – had good English and was able to translate for me. Robert translated my sermon to the congregation which had steadily grown in number from about 50 to 250 during the first part of the service. Members of the congregation have to travel considerable distances by foot or bicycle to get to the church, so it’s not too surprising if they’re not all there at the beginning

I sat down after the sermon, to some extent relieved that my rather hastily-prepared offering was over. But towards the end of the service (about two hours later), I was surprised to be asked if I had another message for the church.......Ugandan Christians seem to have an insatiable appetite for listening to speakers and sermons, with absolutely no time limit on worship.

At about 2.00 pm the service finally ended and I was steered back to the little rondavel (via a large group of children from the service who wanted their photograph taken) for yet another meal of beans, meat, rice, enya, a boiled egg and sweet tea accompanied by much good humoured conversation in a mixture of Lugbara and English.

Towards the end of the meal I could hear people again gathering and the sound of drumming and singing coming from the church about 100 yards away. It was the start of the Fellowship Meeting. We made our way back to the church and took our places at the front. Singing and dancing were in full swing. From time to time the singing would give way to one of the church leaders speaking (or shouting) to the congregation. This would then be interrupted some few minutes later by someone else starting to sing – and more dancing into which one was propelled, like it or not. And at the end I was invited to come and deliver another message to the church.........

I left Omoo at around 5.30 pm, arriving home with much to think about and wondering what else the week might hold.

Laceys (not) in Arua

2008-08-17T11:53:00.007Z

Back home now after our holiday in UK we have been received with enthusiastic welcomes by so many of our friends and colleagues at Kuluva Hospital, the Diocesan HQ in Mvara and staff at Ringili. It has been hugely encouraging, and we are glad to be able to settle down for the next two years in what we are pleased to be able to call home.

Of course, we do have another home which we were able to enjoy during our holiday. It was so good to see our little house in Leicester again, and to be able to visit family and friends all over the UK. All in all we can look back on a busy, but very successful and enjoyable trip.

It began with a trip to Sheffield with Jo, where we stayed with our son, Ben and daughter-in-law, Bethan in their new home. Joining them in a cold and windy walk up Mam Tor reminded us of one of the things we missed about Britain. We were reminded of other things too as we, first, joined with the congregation accompanied by the splendid organ in Sheffield Cathedral, spiritedly singing “And can it be”, and later visited The Strines Inn (real ale!) in Derbyshire.

St Mary’s, Andover was a late link church for us before we came to Uganda, so we took the opportunity of a trip to the West Country for a short holiday in Exeter and Lynmouth to visit them en route. It was good to be able to put some faces to names and to have a chance to thank them for their support of us and the ATC Library Project in Madi/West Nile. We also managed to sell the Vicar some stoles made by one of the pastors at Ringili – anyone else interested in buying some? They’re excellent value and much cheaper than anything you’ll find in the UK!

We had a great welcome in our home church at St Denys in Leicester. It was wonderful to be made to feel so much at home there, after all we’d only had a few weeks at the church before we left for Uganda. We were encouraged by their enthusiasm and prayers for us, and their desire to establish a link with our home church here in Kuluva Parish.

London next, staying with Allan's brother David and his wife Muriel, and meeting up with Anne's sister Cathy. Two Promenade Concerts provided some cultural nourishment for us, as well as providing an excuse to spend a day in London with the myriad tourists. We walked around Westminster, past the Abbey and Houses of Parliament, over the Thames and along the South Bank, later having an hour in Hyde Park. After a year in Africa all of this, and in particular the extraordinary Albert Memorial provide a bit of a contrast!

But of course, the great highlight was Jo’s graduation back in Leicester – the result of five years’ hard work. It was a splendid day of celebration with Jo together with her friends and their families, enhanced by a short, pithy and very amusing speech by Bill Bryson in response to the honorary DLitt he received at the graduation ceremony.

A short time in North Wales (cold and damp weather, but warm welcome from Allan's other brother, Keith), made us ready for the journey back to Uganda where we engaged in our first exercise as travel guides, accompanying our friends David and Di in Kampala, Murchison Park and Arua. David is Head of the secondary school in Allan’s last parish and whilst in the UK we had been able to see the progress on their new school building. It was a good way to return to Arua and we enjoyed their visit immensely.

But now the work begins. There is much to do and as we settle here again we hope to be able to share with you more of our experiences here in NW Uganda, more of its sights and sounds, as well of its delights and frustrations. We look forward to the future whatever it holds.

Meet Kirit

2008-07-03T06:03:00.005Z

Kirit is a key person in our Ugandan lifestyle. He’s calm, efficient, knowledgeable and very reliable, and we’ve been depending on him for most of the time we’ve been in Uganda. The only problem is that Kirit is based in Kampala, and so on occasions we’ve had to find Aruan substitutes. Fedele and Enoch have filled that role in Kuluva, but there are some things that even they can’t do, and so we have to make an appointment with Kirit. For example, Fedele was excellent when it came to shock absorbers, but as far as the on-board computer was concerned neither Fedele nor Enoch could handle it.

Kirit (he's the one on the right) is our car mechanic/advisor. He gave our Land Cruiser the once-over before we bought it, and has done a service on it every time we’ve visited Kampala. We got his name from an AIM contact, and he’s been great – a God-send.

For some time before travelling to Kampala to collect Jo from Entebbe in April, the car had been misbehaving badly. It’s an automatic (not what we’d normally choose), but in Kampala traffic it’s ideal. But the gears had started changing somewhat idiosyncratically. The problem had begun on a trip back from Kampala on a very hot day when the car was packed with goods and people. For two months we nursed the poor beast about the place, not knowing whether it would survive. Both Enoch and Fedele shook their heads sagely, rather in the manner of a doctor with bad news to deliver. Ringing Kirit though, gave birth to some small rays of hope. “Bring her in when you’re in Kampala. But treat her gently on the way”, he advised. So, a short while later when we travelled to Kampala to meet Jo, we travelled gently – not the way Anne normally drives(!!) – Ouch!

We took the car straight to Kirit who diagnosed a computer fault and assured us that it should be easy to fix. Later that day, sure enough, the problem was solved. It had been the computer, and we felt confident driving to Entebbe a couple of days later for our rendezvous with Jo.

The same day we collected Jo, in the late afternoon (rush hour), we decided to go out for a meal. Travelling down a busy dual carriageway in Kampala, we hit a bit of a traffic jam, slowed down – and the engine died. Try as we might, the engine simply wouldn’t start again. The rest of the traffic moved – except us, and the traffic queued up behind us. But Ugandans are very forgiving people, not a single car horn was heard. Fortunately, where we had stopped the road went slightly downhill. We freewheeled a few hundred yards down the hill – struggling with the power steering which wasn’t, and finally having to stand on the power brakes which weren’t – and managed to steer into a sort of lay-by.

It was 6.05 pm. Five minutes after Kirit’s garage usually closed. We tried his number and held our breath – and much to our relief and delight he answered. Yes he was still there and would send out a low-loader to collect us. Fifteen minutes later we spotted the low-loader and enjoyed watching it having to manoeuvre the wrong way through voluminous traffic before reaching us to start the painstaking process of hauling us up on the vehicle. Sadly we had no camera to take pictures of either the process or the entertainment our predicament provided for passers-by!

We travelled to Kirit’s garage in the car on the back of the low-loader. It was a little like a royal progress, and many people waved as we passed. Kirit waited until we arrived. He couldn’t understand what was wrong, but promised to discover the problem and sort it for us.

The following lunchtime he rang. Problem solved. It was the fuel pump. Everything was now in order. We returned the car he'd kindly let us borrow (dodgy brakes, but otherwise functional), and collected ours. He felt so sorry for us he only charged for the pump – no labour. Since then our fuel consumption has reduced by about 20%. What a man!

We’re now returning to the UK for a month and giving the car a rest. It’s unlikely that we’ll post another blog until mid-August, but hope you’ll be patient. To all, thanks for being interested in what we’re doing. To those who pray – it works!

Three Days at Moyo

2008-06-15T13:12:00.008Z

Early morning at the archdeacon’s compound in Moyo was a magical experience. The peace was palpable. Never mind that there was no electricity, no running water, no tasty food for a western palate. Never mind that we had gone to bed the night before with a headache from the day’s driving on terrible roads and the dehydration of a day spent in the heat. Never mind the rock-like pillows and the need to venture out under the stars (with who knows how many beasties lying in wait) when, despite the dehydration, the need to empty the bladder became irresistible. Stepping out of our grass thatched guest room at 7am and into the morning air was a tonic that lasted all day.

Moyo is in the north eastern corner of the Diocese, 180km from Arua along roads that hardly deserve the name. At one point on the journey we got stuck in cloying mud and were dug out by two local farmers who, barefoot and armed only with hoes, cheerfully rescued us by digging away the mud around the wheels and laying down straw to provide some friction. They were delighted with the UGX1000 (about 30p) we gave them each for their trouble, but they would have done it anyway. For several onlookers we provided the entertainment of the day. But the last few kilometres of the journey reward the persistent traveller with views of rocky mountains and green valleys that in any other country would be a hub of the tourist industry. Here are no tourists, but many humble families living in simple huts growing maize, peanuts, mangoes, cassava, keeping goats and chickens, and bringing up their children as best they can.

We were there to visit Church of Uganda health centres and Archdeaconry Training Centres for pastors and lay readers. Allan had brought along some copies of the ‘Africa Bible Commentary’ donated by supporting churches in UK to hand over to representatives from two of the archdeaconries. Anne was making a first visit to the two remotest health centres in the Diocese. We met with church leaders and health workers who spend their lives in this place with almost no resources to work with. Buildings are basic and sometimes crumbling, equipment is minimal and often not functioning, communication is (to western ideas) impossibly slow and uncertain. Mobile phones are a godsend, when you can afford the airtime. The archdeacon himself lives in a house that might pass for a barn in England, but which was amazingly welcoming. We sat up till past 11pm one night (we are usually tucked up before 10) discussing the nature of evil spirits and related theology with the archdeacon and several local pastors by the light of a solar powered lamp and sitting on chairs that left you with the impression of the slats they were made from on your nether regions. But no matter – who needs comfortable chairs and TV? This was much more stimulating!

Three full days during which we drove 500km and were able to do such a rich diversity of things. We visited a bee project in Yumbe and a luxurious fishing lodge in the middle of nowhere (where we were able to make the most of the western loo it offered!) We crossed the Nile on a ferry that looked ready for the scrap heap and bought a huge, freshly caught catfish which had to be transported back in our vehicle complete with smells, to be eaten that evening. On one journey, dried prunes accompanied by digestive biscuits and water became a surprisingly delicious feast when other food seemed unlikely to materialise. We held impromptu teaching sessions under a tree and in a church, and we prayed with our Ugandan colleagues on every conceivable occasion - at mealtimes, on meeting people, on saying goodbye to people (and in between), on beginning the day and before retiring to bed.

After such a trip we returned to our (seemingly) luxurious home here in Arua feeling amazingly refreshed and encouraged, still with many questions, but more aware of God’s goodness, care and calling than for many weeks.

A Visit from Dr Jo

2008-06-01T15:08:00.005Z

We had been looking forward to the visit of our daughter, Jo, for some time. We’d not seen her since we left the UK in August, so it was going to be a great reunion. But we also wanted to celebrate her success in her medical finals. In fact, apart from coming to Uganda for 7 weeks to visit her APs (Aged Parents), she was also coming for her medical elective at Hospice Uganda in Kampala, followed by a visit to our home in Kuluva, and to Kuluva Hospital.

It was great to see Jo’s flight land at Entebbe Airport and to greet her in Arrivals. We met her with our welcome notice – ‘Parentius’ Travel Services (a subsidiary of Famile Enterprises) welcome Dr Jo Lacey’. It looked fine and very professional beside all the other hotel and taxi welcome notice-holders. They looked at us slightly warily, wondering perhaps whether Parentius’ Travel Services represented a threat to their continuing business.

A few months earlier, Anne and I had spent a wonderful, peaceful and unwinding couple of days at the Kingfisher Safari Lodge in Jinja, near the Source of the Nile. So we had planned a similar relaxing weekend there at the start of Jo’s visit to us.

As we drove the 80 km from Kampala to Jinja we felt our spirits lightening. It was going to be a good weekend we knew, and certainly Anne and I needed a break. Arriving thus, full of expectation, we discovered to our horror that the Lodge had, to all intents and purposes, been taken over by the Kampala International Church for a Parish Weekend, replete with oodles of children who filled the swimming pool and watched noisy videos late into the evening.

The weekend became a prelude (in the Wagnerian sense) to the next seven weeks as poor Jo witnessed some of her parents’ anxieties and frustrations, and was given the opportunity to practice her counselling skills on them!

Jo had, in any case arrived at a slightly difficult time for us (ref. “Be Prepared for Culture Shock” blog), although we did feel we were now emerging from the truly low point. But whether Jo’s arrival simply reminded us of the life we had left behind (CMS do say that it is inadvisable to have visitors from home in the first year), or we had been overly optimistic in our earlier self-assessment we do not know.

During Jo’s four weeks in Kampala which she enjoyed immensely, Anne and I back in the north, were experiencing increasing frustrations. Most of all, since it transpired that Ringili had no theology students in the new semester, I had no students for the Hermeneutics Module I had been spending long hours re-writing. I wasn’t aware of this until the morning teaching was to begin, and even then nobody at Ringili was able to confirm whether anyone had registered or not. To say I wasn’t happy would be an understatement of cosmic proportions! Anne, too, was experiencing significant stresses and strains at the School of Nursing. These particular events coincided with Jo’s arrival in Kuluva.

In fact, Jo had a really good time at Kuluva Hospital, and was warmly welcomed. She was able to assist in the Theatre, work in the Outpatients Department and in the Nutrition and Medical Wards. She even did some teaching for Anne’s nursing students. But one thing is certain, and that is that she now has no romantic illusions about what it means to work overseas as a Mission Partner.

Together we were able to work through many issues, and Jo proved an able catalyst, facilitator and counsellor in all of this. At the end we went to the Murchison Falls National Park and finally found the rest and refreshment we had been longing for, as well as something of the experience recounted in the later chapters of Job. The challenges remain, but things are moving on, and God remains faithful. Often we don’t understand what he is doing, but listening today online to an ancient sermon on 2 Cor 1.3-11 by Michael Baughen has proved hugely helpful, and without doubt Jo has been part of the ‘comfort’ God has provided for Anne and I over the past few weeks. We thank God for our family and can’t wait to see them all when we return to UK for Jo’s graduation in July.

A hundred pairs of gumboots

2008-05-12T17:10:00.007Z

Back in February, our community health workers’ (CHWs) regular monthly meeting had a talk from Gloria, a visitor from Kampala. Gloria works for Uganda Protestant Medical Bureau (UPMB), an umbrella organisation that acts as advocate, fundraiser, advisor and much more to mission hospitals and health centres all over Uganda. UPMB also provides essential services to green Mission Partners needing to get their air freight through customs, Ugandan nurse registration, and other bureaucratic nightmares. (For those of you with long memories of our blog, Anne’s nurse registration is still not confirmed, though we are promised the precious piece of paper in the next month or so….)

Gloria had come to ask us to evaluate some health education posters that have been produced for this region, in the local language. Their message was about family planning, and the whole thing was part of a project on sexual and reproductive health financed, in part, by the UK Big Lottery (no comment!). But the highlight of Gloria’s visit was some freebies for the CHWs – tee shirts and caps, all bearing a suitable message about empowering women, wearing condoms, accompanying your wife to the labour ward or other such worthy sentiment. There was only one problem – Gloria had expected twenty CHWs, but there were actually nearly one hundred people in the room. This was a major disaster.

CHWs are essentially volunteers – they receive no remuneration for their work, but after two weeks’ training deliver all manner of health advice in their own villages, hand out free malaria tablets for children, mobilise communities to take part in immunization campaigns, perform drama shows about HIV/AIDS, organise video shows … the list is endless. Their only reward is the occasional tee shirt. Twenty tee shirts and twenty caps does not divide at all well between a hundred poor people, for whom these were relative riches. But Gloria said no problem, there were more supplies at UPMB if only someone could come to Kampala and collect them (just 500km away…). The CHWs refused to take any of the goods until everyone could have them – and nobody was willing to take the responsibility of looking after them in the meantime for fear of being accused of allowing ‘leakage’ – the euphemism for corruption. So the muzungu (that’s me) was asked to take care of the goods until there were enough to go around, as well as being charged with collecting the additional ones.

However when I went to UPMB a couple of weeks later it became clear that the extra tee shirts and caps were still at the factory – in fact they might not be ready till April! So March’s meeting found me apologising for my failure to collect the goods. April’s meeting was similarly unrewarded but the next time we were in Kampala, at the end of April, a phonecall from Gloria told me the much awaited goods were available at last. Oh, and by the way – there were also one hundred pairs of gumboots (wellingtons to you and me)!

Knowing the delight they would cause back at Kuluva, we went to pick up the said tee-shirts, caps and gumboots. But our courage failed us when we saw the size and felt the weight of the four huge sacks they were packed in. We already had a car full of various workbooks and other goods for Ringili, and some essential foodstuffs for ourselves that are only available in the fleshpots of Kampala. But for Allan it was a challenge not to be shirked. Despite pouring rain, and helped by a couple of porters from UPMB who were a bit cynical, he packed, re-packed, pushed and shoved until finally emerging victorious with the doors shut, but only just!

So last Monday the glorious day came – one hundred CHWs received their new clothes and immediately donned them all – the photos tell the rest of the story.

“Be Prepared For Culture Shock”

2008-05-03T15:20:00.004Z

“Depression – The excitement and newness wears off. It gets replaced by irritation at the hassles and inefficiency, and annoyance with your companions.......” (Dr Ted Lankester, ‘The Traveller’s Good Health Guide’, 2nd Edition 2002, Sheldon Press)

Soon after arriving in Uganda we wrote on this blog about a ‘Cultural Incident’. Despite leaving us tired after the loss of a night’s sleep, the incident had its amusing side, we could laugh it off. If that was what culture shock meant, then we were confident we could handle it. So when a colleague in Kampala asked towards the end of the year if we had experienced the ‘Six Month Low’ we wondered what she might mean – we hadn’t registered Ted Lankester at that stage.

Of course, six months is a bit of a generalisation, but nevertheless when we passed five.....six....seven months, we began to relax, until......... Until the car started to go (expensively) wrong, important planned meetings were cancelled (and those that actually happened started hours late)....... Until our hard-won job descriptions didn’t match the work we had started to do whilst waiting for the job descriptions, and we realised that there were no resources to fund the work we had to do...... Until we found that local expressions of worship didn’t meet our spiritual needs, and that we left Sunday services feeling more frustrated than when we arrived....... Until it seemed that most callers at our house wanted us to pay their school fees, or to borrow money for some reason........ Until the culture shock we experienced interacting with transatlantic muzungus began to create additional tensions we had never expected.......... Until it became clear that the ethos of other mission agencies conflicted with our own, and we found ourselves with no Regional Manager to talk to........ Until......

Of course, little of this was new. We had been experiencing what we perceived as inefficiency in the Ugandan system for months – late, long and cancelled meetings. We had resigned ourselves to the unprepared style of worship and preaching in the Church of Uganda – wasn’t that one of the issues Allan had been asked to come to help address? The roads had taken their toll on our car since we had bought it, and the rise in fuel costs (as well as the rise in value of the Ugandan Shilling against Sterling) had been increasing our motoring costs, and we knew we had a lot more money and material resources that most of the people we lived with......... Indeed the only new difficulties were with other muzungus, CMS re-organisation, and.........ourselves, most of all, ourselves.

Ted Lankester writes in his book about four phases of adapting to a new culture, Elation, Depression, Recovery and Acculturation. He says, “just being prepared for them can be helpful. You then realize it’s probably normal to be feeling the way you are, rather than wonder what on earth is happening to you.” We read these words in the midst of Phase Two and wanted to throw the book through the window; I suspect that was all part of the Depression Phase.

Another part is the inability to write blogs, or at least the inability to write blogs that don’t end up in the depths of despair; which is why we didn't write then, but can now write this. It feels as though we’re moving out into Phase Three: 'Recovery'. Praise the Lord! And we know that it’s only because of the faithful prayers of our partners and friends back in the UK that we didn’t buy a one-way ticket home.

“Of course.....you still have bad days”, writes Ted. Maybe so, but God hasn’t abandoned us over the last five weeks or so – nor over the past 50-60 years, so despite the bad days we’ll probably be fine!

Minutes of Meetings

2008-03-17T16:39:00.004Z

It is very easy to become frustrated with the way meetings are organised here in Arua. On occasions a meeting announcement will contain no time at all, which at least offers a degree of flexibility in interpretation. More often, however, the advertised starting time ends up by being wildly optimistic. Certainly half-an-hour’s divergence is not unusual, and on occasions the variance can be an hour or more. At its best this arrangement offers the opportunity to chat with anyone else who happens to arrive on time. At worst you can spend long periods of time standing outside a locked door in the sun waiting for someone to appear and wondering if you’ve got the right day.

Another feature of meetings is their length which, if they begin in the morning always includes lunch. Lunch too can be a moveable feast as with the clergy chapter meeting which began at 10.15am (it had been scheduled for 10.00, so this was not too bad). It was programmed to finish by 1.00 pm in time for lunch. In practice, lunch was taken at 5.00 pm, 15 minutes after the meeting actually finished.

As I said, this can be very frustrating, and you are driven to wondering how it is possible for things to be so inefficient.

A couple of weekends ago things became much clearer to me, and I found myself having to repent of my earlier very intolerant attitude. A meeting at the diocesan office, due to begin at 10.00 am, finally began at 11.00. We agreed that the meeting should, if possible, last no longer than 90 minutes. By midday we had managed to read the minutes of the previous meeting, at which time a late-comer arrived (people had actually been drifting in for much of the morning). I thought the usual muzungu thoughts about people who couldn’t arrive at meetings on time.

The meeting finally concluded at around 2.00 and, of course, lunch was served. I fell into conversation with the midday-latecomer and discovered that he had come from Yumbe, a distance of some 90-100km from Arua, and a very bad road which we had driven on our tour of the diocese. He had set off at 4.00 am by bicycle and it had taken him rather longer to arrive than he expected. He was cheerful, made a full contribution to the meeting and had two helpings of food.

I felt chastised and rather humbled by this commitment which made me realise just how ignorant and petty was my intolerance. It doesn’t necessarily make the waiting any easier, but so far as that meeting was concerned I know why it was so important to start late, and for it to last so long.

There’s so much here that makes you think twice, thrice or............

P.S. Pictures show the Diocesan Office and the road to Yumbe (a good stretch).

A day in the life

2008-03-11T15:29:00.008Z

Let me introduce you to Lucy. She is our house help and works here each day from 9.30am till about 2pm. She has six children of whom the oldest is married and the youngest, Henry, is four and joins her here at our house after a morning at the hospital kindergarten. Lucy never fails to smile and say ‘Yes, I can do’ to any requests we might make. Mostly she washes clothes, irons them, shops, cleans the house and generally tidies up after us. Washing is done by hand outside in a big bowl, with hot water boiled on a charcoal stove, and a jar of ‘Omo’. The drying is no problem at all in this hot season. Then the ironing is done on the dining room table with a rather eccentric electric iron that frightens Henry with its hissing and spluttering. Even the socks get ironed.

Cleaning involves much brushing and shaking of mats, and once a week a wash of all the cement floors – bent double and using a floor cloth, Lucy spurns any sort of labour saving devices.
She has not spurned our electric breadmaker, however. After only a couple of lessons she had mastered this device, despite never having encountered such a thing before. She has also learned to make very respectable flapjack, currant buns and ginger biscuits in our somewhat temperamental electric oven.

At lunchtime she makes a meal for herself and Henry, if he is here, and on Fridays for us too. She is an expert at ‘enya’ – the local staple food made from cassava flour which will never capture the hearts of expatriates here. The photo shows her in full flow, stirring the sticky paste over the charcoal stove in temperatures somewhere above 30 degrees. She also makes excellent beans, rice, fish stew, and, our favourite, chapattis.

Then there is Michael – he comes once a week on a Friday to help us with the garden. At the moment he is sowing seeds which will, we hope, supply us with vegetables from our own back yard. In the full sun, and barefoot, he has dug the plot, made trenches, sown seeds and then made custom built rush mats with which to protect them from the sun until they germinate once the rains begin. Michael speaks little English but Lucy acts as an able translator. He also has a ready smile and never complains.

Occasionally Lucy collects the proceeds of any tree chopping that has been going on – and then carries the booty home on her head for firewood. Home is one hour’s walk away.

We think that, given different circumstances, Lucy would have made a pretty good president of Uganda.

Music Matters

2008-02-10T19:04:00.001Z

Moving to Leicester before coming to Uganda one thing I knew I would really miss was singing with the Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus. The privilege and excitement of sharing in performances of some of the greatest music ever written with such a great bunch of people was something I will always treasure. Leaving them behind was very difficult, but I knew Uganda would have its own musical tradition which I looked forward to experiencing.

And indeed Uganda does have its own musical traditions. Pictured is a band playing some traditional African instruments at a wedding we sneaked into on our present visit to Kampala. All the instruments are home-made and it was of fascinating to see the ‘xylophone’ type instrument being tuned before the performance by hacking bits of wood off the blocks with a machete!

In terms of tuning, the sounds these instruments produce is much closer to medieval music, nowhere near as precise as our Chorus Master, Darius, expected (and presumably still expects) from the Sheffield Phil. But the music was full of colour, drive and energy and sounded great. The bottom-waggling dancing of the ladies also added a further dramatic dimension to the performance, from which members of the Sheffield Phil. could, I am sure, learn a great deal!

We’ve met the stringed instruments (adungua) as well as the drums (ari) in the North West at weddings, fund-raising events, and in the occasional service. But sadly we have heard very little traditional African music since coming to Uganda, and in particular it isn’t generally in evidence in Anglican Church worship. Drums are used to add a beat, but little more. In worship, mostly keyboards and guitars are used to accompany western hymns, songs and choruses from old revival traditions. Sometimes these are translated into the local language (Lugbara), but poor Ugandans often have to grapple with lines like, “Perfect submission, perfect delight, visions of rapture burst on my sight.” Hard enough if English is your native language, but if it’s your second language........

The other problem is that most western hymn tunes are rhythmically not very adventurous and depend for interest on their harmony, but most guitarists and keyboard players in Arua play by ear and have a relatively small repertoire of chords. Combine with this the likelihood that that guitar is not necessarily in tune with itself, let alone the keyboard, and the results can be hard for us to live with. We feel it would be so good if the African Christians where we live, could let go some of the alien western culture they have received, and learn to worship God through their own musical traditions – like the wedding band we heard only a few days ago.

Having said all that I did end up training and conducting a small singing group in some Christmas carols at a muzungus’ Christmas Eve party at the local Catholic Radio Station in Arua – followed by 20 flavours of ice cream! But I still missed the Sheffield Phil and their sherry and mince pies!

P.S. For any Sheffield Phil readers, Anne and I will sing our way through St John’s Passion on Good Friday, albeit a few thousand miles from where you’ll be singing it.

Praise God for the European Union

2008-02-08T15:02:00.000Z

The European Union is frequently the organisation we love to hate. It spends our taxes on dubious projects and perks for the people in Brussels and Strasbourg. It is about endless bureaucracy, euro-sausages (for Yes Minister fans out there) and interminable wrangles about constitutions.

But here in Kuluva, the European Union is a source of thanksgiving and delight. Because an EU grant worth millions of euros gave nine Schools of Nursing in Uganda a chance to upgrade their decaying and unsuitable buildings significantly. Kuluva was one of the chosen few.

So at present we are working in buildings which look rather like they belong in a war zone. Our lectures are interrupted by bangs and crashes, and we have had to vacate our staff offices for a room which we share with bicycles, a oil-leaking motor bike, and sheets of corrugated iron roofing sheets. But its all in a good cause.

At the end of the next few months, we will have refurbished classrooms with higher walls and new roofs which overhang to protect against the afternoon heat. They will be redecorated and equipped with better facilities. We are already enjoying the first computers for student use that Kuluva has ever had. We will also have brand new hostels for both male and female students – at present they are patiently sharing four students to each room designed for two.

So when we meet for morning devotions we thank God, among other things, for the EU. When you next have the privilege of paying taxes, remember where some of the money is going!

Living with your Neighbours

2008-01-27T16:44:00.001Z

The riots and killings following the Kenyan elections in December were reported around the world. It had been hoped that this flagship of East African democracy would not fall into the trap of the corruption and rigged elections of which Mwai Kibaki has been accused by Raila Odinga. A month later and we are still waiting to see what the outcome will be and praying for the success of Kofi Annan’s present diplomatic efforts.

We remember well reading of similar crises in other countries when we were living in the UK. They seemed very distant, and although we knew they were serious for the country involved, we hardly gave a thought to any knock-on effects in other countries.

As an island, the British Isles has always enjoyed a certain measure of security from the effects of uncertainty and instability in other countries. Even during the 2nd World War, whilst Belgium, France and other countries experienced invasion the buffer of the English Channel helped to protect us from the same fate.

Living now in Uganda we find just how different life can be for a country that not only has land borders with its neighbours, but is totally landlocked. Whereas Britain can, when it chooses, enjoy a sense of splendid isolation, Uganda has no choice. Its present and future is tied up inextricably with the lives of its neighbours.

Whilst we have not personally experienced much disturbance, the fragile economy of Uganda has been considerably disrupted by the events in Kenya. Until the present crisis almost all of Uganda’s imports came through the port at Mombasa. The riots following Kenya’s elections closed that port and the road between Mombasa and Uganda. In particular, oil is an essential import, and the sudden loss of supplies drove up the price of petrol and diesel, for a while by 100%. In Arua, the supply of heavy diesel for the power station has been significantly reduced, and the town now has only 8 hours of electricity each day with the consequent effects on businesses in and around the town. Oil is now getting through from Tanzania, albeit not in the previous quantities, but the price is still very high. Whether it likes it or not Uganda is dependent on its neighbours for most of its imported commodities.

All this is, of course, exacerbated by the influx of frightened Kenyans in eastern Uganda, which are additional stresses for the Ugandan economy on top of refugees in the south-west from DR Congo and Rwanda, and in the north from southern Sudan. For a landlocked country like Uganda to thrive the keyword must be not independence, but interdependence.

This is, perhaps, a characteristic the economically powerful western nations, including our own island race, would do well to foster. It is also, perhaps a quality which we as individuals should seek to nurture in our own communities.

When is a Library not a Library?

2008-01-13T16:13:00.000Z

Before coming to Uganda, we made sure we included a reasonable collection of books in the air freight. Some books were for our leisure, others for our work. We had to be selective because of weight restrictions, but managed to augment our collection with several weightless ‘e-books’ and ended up with a reasonable library at home.

Books are things we take for granted, and especially if we’re teachers or students. Can you imagine a world without books? Even if you don’t have the particular book you want, it can usually be found at Waterstone’s, on the Amazon website (what a wonderful institution!), or in the local library.

So, in our recent tour of the diocesan Archdeaconry Training Centres (ATCs) it seemed reasonable to look at their libraries. ATCs are responsible for training the majority of lay church teachers to lead local congregations. Students are mostly full-time and live in thatched mud huts (pictured above), often with their families. They are taught in classrooms, such as that pictured. Their training lasts up to three years, but separated by periods of time ‘in the field’. These lay leaders represent the grass roots of church leadership, and may go on to ordination. Their ministry is crucial for the health of the church in Uganda.

We were shown several ATC libraries, and the photographs speak for themselves. The largest library had around 200 books. Some books were new, but the majority were old, and few were suited to students whose first language was not English. Many I would have found heavy-going and most I would have cleared from my bookshelves a long time ago. Indeed, many of them probably came from a similar source! But the custodians of the ATCs cared for these books as best they could, after all they were theirs in trust. In one library I found one book two-thirds consumed by termites. It had been retrieved, and carefully stored with all the other books now kept in a termite-free environment. The smallest library we saw had just 12 books and a few dog-eared booklets. Its most recent book was dated 1927.

I was close to tears as I thought of the resources I had brought with me and the books I had left in the UK. Many pastors in dioceses like Madi/West-Nile have few books of their own, and most lay leaders will have none. If there are no books in the ATCs, how will these church leaders be fed? And yet we found amazing faith and resilience amongst the ministers we met, a sacrificial commitment to ministry that put me to shame, and all of it pursued against a most challenging social background and with staggeringly limited resources.

It is impossible to come to a country like Uganda without becoming acutely aware of the inequality of distribution of the world’s goods. It is truly heartbreaking when you realise how much it extends to the world-wide church as well. It will take some time to process this experience.

Christmas 2007 to New Year 2008

2007-12-31T18:37:00.000Z

It's 21.40 on 31st December 2007 after the strangest Christmas we've ever known. Even now it's just struck me that this will be the first New Year we've known that won't be ushered in with the chimes of Big Ben and the strains of Auld Lang Syne on the radio or TV.

Christmas morning dawned sunny and hot after the first Advent-less approach to Christmas and Christmas Eve without a Midnight Christmas Communion in 38 years. We awoke to a house without electricity or running water as the power cable from the hydro-scheme had been severed by termites, and the water is dependent on an electric water pump. We were very grateful to have a cooker running on bottled gas as this meant we could still entertain the guests we had invited to share our frozen chicken from Kampala.

The Christmas morning service began at around 10.00 am. Two-and-a-half hours later it was still going strong, although by that time the spirit of Christmas joy had been somewhat stifled by prayers against 'the spirit of disco-dancing' and a condemnation of condoms! We, very wickedly, left the service before the results of the competitive Christmas collection (don't ask) had been announced!

This service at Kuluva was a far cry from the 3-hour Carol Service we attended at St Philip's in Arua the previous Sunday - a service of 11 Lessons and Carols with added contributions from the children and a hilarious Nativity Play by the Young People. The blond-haired, blue-eyed female baby doll which took the part of the baby Jesus was an entirely new interpretation of the Christmas story for us, and one of Herod's guards was truly terrifying. I had been invited to preach at the service by a colleague from Ringili, and finally got up to preach after two-and-a-half hours of the service in a highly excited atmosphere following this performance and a truly lively rendering of Joy to the World. I really enjoyed the service, and the opportunity to preach a Christmas message made me feel it really was Christmas. Unfortunately Anne's experience was less good because she didn't have such a good view as me, and was also sitting in front of the PA loudspeakers. The average age of the 200+ strong congregation was probably less than 30. It was an encouraging celebration and a good start to Christmas.

Christmas Eve was spent muzungu-style in the grounds of Radio Pacis - the Roman Catholic local radio station. A group of some 50 ex-patriates sang Christmas Carols in candlelight around an absolutely enormous Christmas tree growing there, festooned in literally thousands of lights. Singing was followed by food accompanied by 20 different flavours of ice cream produced by our American host who runs the radio station. It was a good 'do', but it was a universe away from Uganda.

The start of Christmas Day we've already described - but it did improve. We spoke to our children on the phone before we ate, then had a truly scrumptious Christmas dinner with our 3 German and 2 Scottish guests from Kuluva. We all wore silly paper hats and sang around the dinner table before they left us to a quiet end of the day with an hour's worth of Christmas Carols on the remaining battery in our laptops, and (but don't tell anyone) a couple of glasses of wine from a bottle we'd smuggled in from Kampala.

So now we await the New Year. We can hear strains of a Lugbara knees-up drifting up to us from Kuluva Chapel. We'll probably go down there later. But then tomorrow morning a service at which I am preaching. New Year is at least as big as Christmas here. And the only real negative on the horizon is having to have our rear shock-absorbers renewed. They were finished off on our 1000 km tour of the diocese before Christmas.

We are quite looking forward to a period with slightly fewer new experiences than we've had over the past 2-3 weeks, just to re-group. But the New Year promises to be challenging and stimulating.

We pray that you will all know God's blessing in the year ahead.

Cathedral Consecration Part 2 - Emmanuel

2007-12-10T18:54:00.000Z

I was not the last member of the clergy to arrive for the procession, and so had the company of others who also had to robe in record time before moving swiftly to catch up with the procession which was by now nearing the entrance to the old cathedral.

The old cathedral has seen much better days and for some time the diocese has been advised to vacate the building for safety reasons. But that didn’t prevent one final act of worship in the crowded building for its de-consecration. The bishop acknowledged that some would be sad to see the end of the old cathedral, but the dominant mood was one of celebration. The singing was energetic, and thankfully the roof remained intact!

A final procession from the old cathedral led us out into bright sunlight. There were crowds of people, and accompanied by the sound of a brass band, drums and singing, the procession (by now more of a dance) passed between a guard of honour made up of the Mothers’ Union, members of the Boys’ and Girls’ Brigade, Guides and other uniformed organizations. We were headed for the new Cathedral about a quarter of a mile down the road past the Diocesan Office.

The West Door of the Cathedral was festooned with balloons and ribbons, but we didn’t enter. Instead, continuing to sing To God be the Glory, the procession was directed to ‘dance’ its way around the perimeter of the building - once only, not seven times - although the trumpets continued to sound in bravura fashion.

Arriving at the West Door for a second time we came to a halt. Bishop Joel knocked on the door three times with his staff - “The peace of God be in this house”. The crowd responded enthusiastically “Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!” and we entered the Cathedral, singing a Lugbara hymn – which some of us had to make up – or sing in tongues.

It took some time for the members of the congregation to take their places, but finally the service to consecrate the new cathedral began in earnest. If the service had been happening in a British cathedral, every move would have been worked out in minute detail and, probably, the printed orders of service would have been ready to be used in the service. But here there was a delightful spontaneity, aided by the fact that the Orders of Service didn’t appear until they were no longer needed

Up to two years ago Madi and West-Nile Diocese had been in some turmoil and in need of much love and healing. On this Advent Sunday in a new cathedral, a new beginning was made. Bishop Joel’s predecessor was present and God’s grace was apparent as Bishop Joel and he embraced one another. The Archbishop preached on the Parable of the Talents, congratulating the diocese on the work they had done to bring the cathedral to its present state of readiness. In fact the floor isn’t yet complete, and some windows and doors remain to be put in place, but in this condition it was a good parable in itself of a work in progress. I was reminded of Philippians 1.6 “......being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Emmanuel Cathedral – that is the name it shares with its predecessor – and a good one for an Advent celebration. The forgiveness and reconciliation evident in the service, the fellowship shared over Ugandan food and bottles of soda afterwards, and the spirit of worship and celebration; all were testimony to God’s presence in this place and a genuine readiness in his people to listen and to follow. There is still so much to do, so much spiritual growth needed in clergy and congregation alike for us to be equipped to face the future, but ‘Emmanuel’ – God is with us. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Cathedral Consecration Part 1 - African Time

2007-12-07T16:20:00.000Z

We returned from Kampala relieved to be back home, away from CHOGM and the dust of the city.

We were also glad to be back in time for the consecration of Madi/West Nile’s new Cathedral in Mvarra, which was due to take place the following weekend on 2nd December. The consecration was to be the centrepiece of a 12-day visit the Archbishop of Uganda was making to the diocese.

We went to church our first Sunday back, hoping to learn about arrangements for the consecration. Notices are a significant part of many Ugandan church services (sometimes taking at least as long as the sermon), and usually include a “welcome” to visitors and a “welcome back” to anyone who has been away for more than a few days. We were duly welcomed back after our month in Kampala, but there was no mention of the cathedral consecration.

After the service we asked whether the consecration was still taking place the following Sunday. We were assured that it was. But when? Possibly 9.00 am, or maybe 10.00 am............although it could conceivably be later......or earlier.

Enquiries on Monday at the college in Ringili yielded no more reliable information. It hadn’t been announced on Sunday at St Philip’s, a church in Arua just down the road from the new cathedral. Various attempts to find out what was happening during the week proved no more successful.

On Friday, the Hospital Chaplain said that the service was definitely starting at 10.00 am, and that we should leave Kuluva at 9.30. To make sure I thought it would be a good idea to go to the Diocesan Office to ask the Diocesan Secretary. No, the service wasn’t starting at 10.00 am but 9.30. Be there for 9.00 am to robe.

Returning to Kuluva we met the Hospital Administrator, who told us that he had received four invitations to the consecration. We should have one of them. Taking the precious invitation we were glad to see that the invitation said 9.30 am. We arranged to take the Hospital Administrator, the Chaplain and one or two others in the car. Meet at 8.40 on Sunday morning we said.

Sunday morning at 8.45 we had just one of our passengers. It took a further 10 minutes to collect the others – a different group than the one we had first arranged.

We arrived at the cathedral at 9.10 am just as the bishop was praying at the start of the procession. For once, African time had been replaced by European time - and I was late! One mortified muzungu!

A few days later we discovered that the bishop of Nebbi, the neighbouring diocese, had received his invitation by text on Friday evening. He was otherwise engaged.

Healthcare Uganda Style

2007-11-20T13:11:00.000Z

Ugandans are good at improvisation. They have to be. If you haven’t got a drip stand in the mission hospital, you hang the infusion bottle on the slats of the louvre window. There are no 20 ml syringes today – no matter, just draw up 5 mls four times from the bottle of intravenous glucose, using the same needle each time to pierce the (non-sterile) rubber bung. The drug of choice for meningitis is out of stock? Well, we have a couple of other antibiotics in stock, so we will try one of those. If that doesn’t work, we’ll try the other one.

But improvisation really comes into its own in community healthcare. A child health clinic can be set up anywhere, provided there are a few shady trees, a wobbly table and chair or two, and a handy branch from which to hang the weighing scales. During the long wait for immunisation or treatment, mothers dress and undress the babies in the shade of the 4x4 in which the team came – underneath the chassis. Well, it’s cool and dry, and the babies don’t seem to mind looking at the grimy underside of a very old Toyota.

The old woman in the picture is in her 80s – although average life expectancy in Uganda is 50 years, there are some who live to old age. And she can still sit comfortably on the floor to have her blood pressure taken! After this clinic for old people, which was held in her house, she produced a meal for the healthcare team of matoke (plantains steamed in a parcel of banana leaves) outside the house on a charcoal stove. Kitchen gadgets, even pots and pans, are redundant here.

But sometimes improvisation is not enough. A mother turned up towards the end of a rural outreach clinic carrying a small child, very sick with malaria, in her arms. She had gone to her local health centre, and been told the child needed to get to hospital quickly. The health centre had neither drugs to treat the baby nor transport. She heard our team was doing an immunisation clinic under a tree in a nearby village, and that we had a vehicle. She walked with the child for an hour or so to find us.

We packed up the clinic early and put mother and child in the vehicle with us for the 20km drive back to the hospital. The child was unconscious, with laboured breathing. There were no blue flashing lights as we drove back at normal speed, the team chatting among themselves. The mother was silent, with an expression on her face that suggested little hope and a familiarity with loss. Just as we drew into the hospital gates, the baby died.

Some transport was found to return the mother and dead child to her village.

Malaria is largely preventable, and deaths from the disease almost always avoidable. If the mother had used a mosquito net, if stagnant water near her home had been drained, if she had given effective medicine at the first sign of fever, if she had got help as soon as the baby deteriorated ……if……if……….

Living Out Of A Suitcase

2007-11-18T15:28:00.000Z

The Guest House at the Ugandan Protestant Medical Bureau (UPMB) in Kampala is comfortable enough, but still the prospect of living out of a suitcase for four weeks in one of its rooms didn’t fill us with delight. Nevertheless, the Ugandan Nurses Council decision that Anne should complete one month working in a Kampala hospital to receive her nurse registration meant that we had little option.

UPMB is situated in the Mengo district of Kampala on the Balintuma Road. Walking from Albert Cook Road past Mengo Hospital and down Balintuma Road after dark can be an exciting business. There are no street lights, so avoiding the open manholes and stray pieces of reinforcing rods emerging from the pavement is an art, not least because headlights on full beam from oncoming traffic tends to blind the poor pedestrian. Then closer to the Guest House there is no pavement at all and recent ‘slashing’ of foliage along the side of the road has resulted in a tangle of branches and other sharp objects for the unsuspecting walker to trip over, possibly into the path of oncoming boda-bodas (motor-cycles) with no lights at all or, veering off course, falling into a storm drain.

The main reason we stayed at UPMB was the cost of its rooms - a very reasonable 37,000 Ush per night (c.£10.60). But there is no lounge, you have to pass an Advanced Driving Test in order to park your vehicle in its restricted parking area, and meals are served in a large and cheerless room often with empty tables because people who stay here frequently eat out.

We ate out on our first evening, and walking back along the Albert Cook Road past a petrol station, saw a small crowd gathered there. There, in the forecourt, was the body of a man who had been shot by the petrol station’s security guard shortly before. The story appeared in The New Vision two days later.

But there are benefits living here. For Anne, Mengo Hospital, where she is based for the month, is only five minutes’ walk away, as is the Church of Uganda Provincial Office (for Allan’s benefit) and Namirembe Cathedral. But there is a much more significant benefit, to meet other people who stay at the Guest House.

This is the reason we eat here every other day, simply to meet people like Ernest Sempebwa. Ernest is a Ugandan, easily well into his ‘70s, who for many years lived and studied in the UK, at one time looking after all the Ugandan students who came to London University. He is very well educated, and his thinking and conversation are razor-sharp (even first thing in the morning), but seasoned with a wonderful sense of humour, genuine humility and a lively Christian faith. He comes to UPMB with a team of others (old and young) who are in the process of producing a new translation of the Bible into Lugandan (the local language of this region). They have been working on it for 18 years! A teacher by profession, Ernest, and those he is working with, can transform the dining room with their sheer energy and enthusiasm.

The same is true for cosmopolitan conversation and Christian fellowship with other Ugandans, Germans, Canadians, Kenyans, Americans, South Africans, South Koreans, and so many others. The picture above is of a group of health workers from Rwanda, Judy, Michel and Jean who were on a course in Kampala. We had a great evening with them and this picture is just a token of the rich experiences we have enjoyed even in our four weeks living out of a suitcase in a single room at the UPMB Guest House in Kampala.

Perhaps it’s not so bad after all.

Defining Rubbish

2007-11-06T13:13:00.000Z

Coming from a society in which disposing of rubbish is an increasingly complex and costly business, and a visit to the dumpit site has become almost a form of recreation, it is delightful to find ourselves in a community where, it seems, very little is counted as rubbish and obsolescence is practically unheard-of.

When we bought our 1993 Toyota Prado Landcruiser, it was hailed as a ‘new’ car, and in truth it is relatively new by Ugandan standards. Most cars on the road in Uganda start their life as 10-year-old used-car imports from countries like Japan. They are then subjected to the most severe road conditions imaginable and many are kept going long after they should have been written-off.

But this is true of so many things. Many of the items we dispose of are gratefully retrieved by Lucy (our home-help) for her own use: old plastic squash bottles can be used for storing kerosene, cooking oil or other liquids (and yes, we know of the dangers to children); old saucepans and casseroles with loose handles, or no handles at all are still perfectly serviceable for Lucy; and an old, not very attractive, battery-driven clock which had given up the ghost, she retrieved saying she knew someone who could mend it.

Which brings me to the bowl and the flip-flops in the pictures.

A plastic bowl might cost around 3,000 USh (80p) in a hardware store in Arua, but if your monthly income is, 40,000 Ush (£12) or less that’s a great deal of money. So, when it suffers from plastic fatigue, you mend it.

The same with flip-flops. Anne bought these for 1,400 Ush (c.40p). It’s her second pair. The strap on the first pair became detached from the sole. She was going to throw them away, but Lucy wouldn’t hear of it. They can be mended for 100 Ush (you work it out!). Anne is looking forward to taking delivery of the repaired pair very soon.

Good Food Costs Less At ...........

2007-11-02T09:59:00.000Z

At first sight, Arua’s fruit and vegetable market seems to offer little to the Sainsbury-trained eye. Familiar with the vast choice available in the average British Supermarket (next time you go shopping count how many varieties of lettuce, potato, tomato or carrot you can find), the limited options in Arua come as a bit of a shock.

What tomatoes shall we buy? Well, there are lots of them, but there’s only one variety, and none of them looks too good. Certainly they’d not find their way into an Asda store or on to a British market stall, and if they did nobody would buy them because they’ve got so many black marks on them.

Are carrots on sale today? Perhaps not in the market, but you might just be fortunate enough to see a woman (always a woman) on the road, carrying a bowl full of carrots, bananas or avocados, probably the produce of her own piece of land, grown to earn a few shillings to help the family income.

Potatoes, though, are here in plenty; two varieties: sweet (not the sort we’re used to) and Irish (that’s the sort we are used to). You can buy a regular bowlful, or a large bowlful, but none of them round and all impossibly difficult to peel.

But in reality you can usually get everything you need in Arua Market: onions, cabbage, lettuce, peas (sometimes) green and chilli peppers, cucumbers, courgettes (occasionally), and plenty of fruit – pineapples to die for, oranges (green), lemons (also green), passion fruit, bananas, and the most amazing avocados for 500 shillings each (that’s about 20p). Unfortunately mangoes are out of season at the moment, but only about a month to go!

There are other benefits too of shopping in the market here. Although you don’t have much choice in what to buy, there is a great deal of choice in who to buy from. The sellers are generally all very good humoured and don’t really know the meaning of the word ‘competition’ or time. This means they won’t hold it against you if you buy from someone else. That can spell problems for developing the local economy, but it does make shopping a wonderfully social activity as you meet so many different people selling their produce who like to ask where you come from and how many children you have. It also gives you a chance to practice your Lugbara (the local language) – and they love it when you try. Gales of laughter and delight greet even the most simple expression or phrase you attempt. But possibly that’s because you’ve got it wrong and are saying something truly ridiculous (or rude) without realising it!

The other great benefit of Arua Market is that everything tastes really good, and the last thing you would ever want to do is to waste any of it.

On Line!

2007-10-30T10:38:00.000Z

On our arrival in Uganda on 18th August there were two issues we knew we needed to address as soon as possible. First, we had to find a vehicle, then we needed to establish reliable internet communications with home. Seventy-three days later we can announce that both of these issues have now been resolved.

A full account of the Ugandan-Process-for-Transferring-Vehicle-Log-Books saga must wait for a later blog - or it might be more appropriate to serialise the story. We would have told it sooner, but were prevented by a lack of success with our other ambition - to establish a reliable internet connection.

Some of you may well have noticed a smidgen (if that's how you spell it) of frustration in our last blog. This was due to the snail-like quality of the computer we were working on at the time. Since then, however, our levels of frustration with the internet have had occasion to rise to stratospheric levels.

We arrived in Arua to find that we had possible internet access in to two locations -the one computer with internet access located in the office of the Medical Superintendant's Secretary's office in Kuluva Hospital, and the Arua Internet Cafe 'Click 'n Surf'.

Frustration has been fed by 'Internet Incidents' (cf. Culture and Country Incidents) of which the following is a typical example.

Much time had been spent composing some deathless prose for onward transmission via blog or e-mail. The final results were duly transferred to a memory stick and we hastened to the hospital administration block only to discover it was locked. After the odd phone call and a little searching, a key was obtained and we gained access to the inner sanctum whence connections with the wider world may be made. There was much rejoicing......until, that is, we discovered the computer (being a prima donna of a computer) refused to read our memory stick.

We reverted to our own laptop to produce a CD replete with aforesaid deathless prose before returning to the administration block. Having been made privvy to the internet password, we attempted a connection - which failed, as did a second and a third. "Why is this?" (we wondered). "Perhaps the UTL network is down. We must fall back on plan 'B'."

Thus, some 30 minutes later found us at the Click 'n Surf clutching both memory stick and CD. We greeted the owner of the Cafe cheerily (we have seen him often), enquiring which computer we could use, but failing to notice that all the shops in Arua were strangely dark. The Internet Cafe owner hesitated, and looked at us with a expression which managed to both question our level of intelligence, and contain an element of sympathy. "Are they all being used?" we enquired. A rather stupid question considering that when we looked, most of them were clearly unoccupied and all of the screens were black. "No power," came the response, with remarkably Yorkshire-like succinctness. We retired to the street trying to maintain some dignity, but conscious of the barely stifled mirth of those who had been eavesdropping our conversation.

We returned to Kuluva - Mission Unaccomplished - discovering the following day that the reason the hospital internet hadn't worked was because the bill hadn't been paid!

But as from yesterday, everything has changed - we hope. After many phone calls and trips into Arua, and conversations with internet providers, and broken promises and more trips into Arua, and increasingly annoyed phone calls, and second, third, fourth and fifth chances to deliver, an air-lift, a trip to Kampala, and - and a little yellow box which didn't work at first because it was in love with XP and not Vista - we now have our very own internet access which we can carry around Uganda and use almost anywhere (at least that's what they say!). It's not fast (it's dial-up), but it's ours - and patience has won the day!

P.S. Thanks to our faithful blog readers who have continued steadfastly to search our blog for further postings. We'll reward your commitment in the weeks to come - little yellow box permitting!

P.P.S. This is the second version of this blog. I lost the first version when the computer crashed!

2007-10-30T10:35:00.001Z

Learning the Art of Being Flexible

2007-10-03T07:02:00.000Z

In Kampala - Realised this morning we hadn't blogged for a week. "The best laid plans.....", etc. That's the shape of life in Uganda. We were told early on that if you have a 'to do' list for the day, if you manage to get one-third completed that's good going.

Same is true of this computer and internet connection. So far it has taken about 15 minutes to get this far! Each letter takes at least 2 seconds to appear on screen. It's a metaphor for what we've been sorting out this past 7 days. As our new motor mechanic said to us this morning, it teaches you the art of patience or, as I would prefer to put it, it gives the fruit time and space to grow.

Still, we will update on other recent experiences when we have a better computer to work on. My patience still has a way to go!

Home, Sweet Home

2007-09-25T12:57:00.000Z

The verandah of our home in Kuluva looks across a valley dotted with small settlements of round grass roofed mud houses. Beyond, the land rises to a tree-edged skyline marking the border of Uganda with DR Congo. Our vantage point means that we often have the benefit of breezes which blow up quite suddenly, cooling the midday heat and, quite often, heralding a thunderstorm - as today. In the evening the wind can be more of a nuisance, blowing the curtains such that they wrap themselves around the head of anyone unfortunate enough to be sitting on the chair next to the window. Clipping the curtains to the louvered glass windows with bulldog clips is quite effective at controlling them - and keeping our friends.

We are delighted with our little house which gradually we’re making more homely. We’ve decorated the walls with photographs of family and friends, batiks, maps, ‘welcome to your new home’ cards and a poster we’ve constructed of our link churches to remind us regularly to thank God for their support and to pray for them.

Some of the furniture was already at the house when we arrived, including the ‘easy’ chairs which leave marks on your bottom if you sit on them for too long. (We really must get some new foam for them – soon!) In addition we have bought a second-hand dresser and even had some ‘bespoke’ furniture we designed made for us in Arua – more about that in a later blog, perhaps.

We have pretty reliable electricity from a hydro scheme, running (cold) water (most of the time) and an inside toilet and ‘shower room’. Actually it’s a ‘pour’ room as showers consist of standing in a bowl and pouring water over oneself from another bowl using a redundant margarine container (Allan is thinking through some more advanced technology). But really, we do feel blessed. An AIM missionary couple we’ve got to know who live half-an-hour’s walk away have to depend on inadequate solar power, a pump for water which they have to collect and an outside toilet whose dimensions suggest it was designed for someone with extremely long legs (not to mention every other part of the anatomy!).

Loneliness isn’t something we experience here. Monkeys continue to visit and entertain us, whilst goats and hens are also prepared to climb the hill to greet us; cockerels too, but they come much too early. We have had a frog in the house, several geckos, a one-legged grasshopper (not hopping very well), and a few nights ago we were awoken by scrabbling noises in the ceiling. We can’t be certain of the provenance of the scrabbling, but the best suggestion to date is a galago (a sort of bush baby) – Anne thinks she got a sighting the other day.

Incidentally, we are still waging war on the ants, so Doom shares continue to be a good investment tip!

Close to the Margins - Update

2007-09-25T10:07:00.000Z

Hear on the World Service this morning that the Ugandan Government estimates that as a result of the flood, around a quarter of the Ugandan population will be in need of extra food. An appeal has been made to the UN World Food Programme.

Another measure of the impact events like this can have close to the margins.

Close to the Margins

2007-09-24T11:42:00.000Z

Shortly before leaving the UK for Uganda, significant areas of Britain experienced serious flooding. Thousands of householders found their homes inundated by floodwater, farmers’ crops were ruined, and we all woke up to the vulnerability of water and electricity supplies in the face of the forces of nature, even in the so-called developed world.

Arriving here in Uganda towards the end of the dry season, we were fully expecting to be basking in sunshine. Instead we were greeted by unseasonably heavy rain and thunderstorms, and discovered to our amazement that we needed to use our duvet to keep warm in bed at night. We’d really only included the duvet in our air freight (which, incidentally, all arrived intact) to provide packing for more vulnerable items of luggage.

In fact, apart from making some of the roads extremely muddy, the weather hasn’t been so bad here in the Arua district. But over the past few weeks much of Africa, including northern and eastern Uganda, has experienced its heaviest rain for a generation. The consequences have been devastating. Mud and wattle huts have collapsed in the face of the torrential waters making over 50,000 people homeless. Twenty-five districts have been cut off from the rest of the country, and the crops that haven’t been washed away are now rotting in gardens. More than 47 people have died and a state of emergency has been declared in the flooded regions.

The consequences of flooding in Britain are terrible for those involved, but when you live so close to the margins, as many do in Uganda, the consequences are so much worse; no clean water to drink (no bowsers here); the growing danger of water-borne diseases threatening the hungry and homeless; no insurance and no social security.

But the challenges go wider than that. In south west Congo there has been an outbreak of the deadly ebola virus. We are all hoping and praying that it will be contained and limited, but naturally there is deep anxiety in neighbouring south-east Uganda. Closer to home, following an outbreak earlier in the year, there has been a further outbreak of meningitis in the Arua district, a cause of great concern at the hospital here at Kuluva where there has been at least one fatality so far. Back in the UK, such an outbreak would be accompanied by the vaccination of vulnerable groups, but here, vaccination is not routinely available, even to student nurses working in the hospital.

In our living and our praying don’t let us forget the millions of people who constantly live their lives ‘close to the margins’.

An Appointment with the Nurses Council

2007-09-17T14:35:00.000Z

To work as a nurse tutor in Uganda you must register with the Nurses Council. Fair enough. Shouldn’t be a problem, I thought. I have more years than I care to mention of experience working in nurse education, pieces of paper from various universities, proof of my UK registration, and a recommendation from Kuluva School of Enrolled Comprehensive Nursing where I am expecting to work.

The necessary documentation duly delivered whilst in Kampala, we departed for Arua, 250 miles to the north. After all, nothing happens quickly in Africa.
But one week later, a phonecall. ‘You have an interview with the Nurses Council in Kampala. In two days time’ Ridiculous – £100 return by air, and the bus takes too long. But wise Ugandans said I should jump when they said jump.

Arrived in Kampala, the interview was not in two days time, but in three. They would need $10 to cover the cost of the interview – in dollars, not local currency. The Nurses Council had no physical address. No taxi driver was likely to be able to find it ……. The Uganda Protestant Medical Bureau arranged me a driver, eventually.

Arriving at the Council at 10am, none of the interviewing panel (how many were there to be??) had yet arrived. Ten or so other candidates gradually arrived. Those (most) who didn’t know about the $10 fee, had to go back into Kampala and change Ugandan shillings into US dollars – a traffic-laden journey that took about an hour. Benefiting from their unpreparedness, I was ushered into the first interview. The secretary indicated I should go outside and in again at the next door. She went through a connecting internal door. This is Uganda!

Seated behind a vast desk, I dimly saw the chairwoman of the panel at the far end of the room, the secretary at her left. One other member of the panel arrived halfway through my interview. They noted that I had failed to provide a transcript of the subjects I had studied in my initial nurse training (completed 1975). I was congratulated on my achievements since. It was ‘beautiful’ that I was coming to Uganda for three years. However, I must complete one month’s observation at a hospital in Kampala before being fully registered. Argument on my part that I could do this in Arua was met with passive resistance.

My British pride a little wounded, I reminded myself that I am a guest in a country that may seem to be slow and inefficient, but does have some appropriate regulation of nursing, with which I need to comply.

Travel Instructions

2007-09-05T10:36:00.000Z

“If you want to vomit please make use of a newspaper or bag which we can provide. Please do not remain quiet if you want to relieve yourselves. We can help you. Animals are not permitted on the bus, so when we get to Kigumba chickens cannot be brought on board, and you are not allowed to buy fish at Pachwach.

Our lives are given to us so that we can glorify God, and so would someone offer to pray for travelling mercies?”

It was a heartfelt, practical and altogether sincere start to our journey with the excellent GaaGaa Bus Company, from Kampala to Arua. The journey is about 250 miles, but whilst the final stretch is on well-made and well-marked roads, the first part is seriously pot-holed, bone-shaking and, if you’re that way inclined, vomit-inducing. Nevertheless, 6¼ hours later at 12.45 pm, our prayers answered - God is faithful - we were safely off-loaded at Kuluva, together with five of our six items of luggage where we were met by Paul, the the Kuluva School of Nursing driver. Two of our three cases were coated with a slightly damp white fluid which had clearly oozed from some companion baggage. We still don’t know what it is, but the cases now look truly well-travelled and I think that, in time, we could become quite fond of their unique markings. It’ll certainly make them more identifiable on airport carousels and ensure that no-one wants to steal them.

Kuluva Hospital is 9km outside Arua, and we have been given a little 2-bedroom house where we’ll be living for the next three years. Wildlife is in evidence, with Tantalus Monkeys to entertain us on our veranda, stunningly beautiful butterflies, but all accompanied by a constant battle against armies of ants which besiege the house. We are waging war on them with Doom Fast-Kill Insect Killer. At present we seem to be winning, but somehow I doubt whether we will in the long run!

“Look to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!” (Proverbs 6.6)

Farewell Kampala (2)

2007-09-05T10:31:00.001Z

Travelling is one of the most fascinating and stimulating aspects of living in a foreign country, and Uganda doesn’t disappoint. The GaaGaa Bus Company terminus in Kampala is located on the opposite side of the road to the lorry ‘park’ where lorries are loaded for journeys east to Kenya, north to Sudan as well as through the length and breadth of Uganda. At 5.00 pm, the atmosphere there is thick with dust, diesel and petrol fumes. Chaos reigns. On the roadside are piled boxes of every shape and size, crates of bottles, hundreds of rolled up foam mattresses, steel rods for reinforced concrete, sacks bulging with goodness-knows what, and much other totally unidentifiable baggage.

Soon after 5.30 pm our 3 cardboard boxes and 3 cases were taking their full and unscripted part in the chaos - 5,000Ush* for the boxes and 8,000Ush for each of the cases to go on the bus with us the following morning. But the three air-freight barrels wouldn’t fit into the bus so, over the road into the melee of the lorry park. Richard, our Ugandan transport advisor negotiated the lorry driver down from 100,000Ush for each barrel to 200,000Ush the lot. Allan was outraged ‘It’s only 20,000Ush for a bus to carry me to Arua!’ He managed to negotiate down to 120,000Ush for all 3 barrels. It felt like a bit of a triumph, but it’s salutary to discover a barrel is worth 6x more than you are! But the most important issue of all – will they actually get to their rightful destination?

*about £1.50

'Are You Ready For CHOGM?' - Farewell Kampala

2007-08-28T07:22:00.000Z

As soon as you leave the airport at Entebbe you are greeted every few hundred yards by a face smiling down on you from a poster with the caption 'I'm ready for CHOGM'. At first we wondered whether this was a word in the Lugandan language, but soon realised that it was part of Kampala's preparations for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting here in November.

In anticipation of CHOGM new hotels are being built and roads improved - and believe me, they need it. Driving through Kampala, you are soon aware that the road system and traffic jams are a major issue. Road signs are few and far between, road markings are even more scarce, and who has the right of way in any given situation is an enigma.

To avoid a traffic jam involves venturing on to the back streets, introducing a new hazard - a legion of potholes. Sometimes these can be avoided, but then only by driving on the wrong side of the road. Often you can't. If it's been raining potholes become invisible or of indeterminate depth, so you mustn't be too possessive about your exhaust pipe. 'Be prepared' is the watchword on Kampala's roads as, indeed, it is for CHOGM. The Queen will doubtless find her way pothole-free when she comes, but doubtless too, 99% of the potholes will remain. I think that maybe there's a parable about our Christian lives here somewhere.

Tomorrow morning we leave Kampala on the 6.30 bus, together with all our freight and luggage. Finally in Arua we will have to sort out internet access, so this might be the last blog for a while.

A Cultural Incident

2007-08-24T09:52:00.000Z

We've a lovely en-suite room at the Guest House including a patio and, about 10 metres away, a terraced garden with a large area of grass.

Yesterday evening we had a special treat – a wedding reception in the garden. Adorned with an amazing array of flowers which would have been the envy of any wedding I’ve taken, the reception was a real spectacle. Whilst some ceremony was unfamiliar to us, it also included the usual beautifully dressed guests, food, speeches, cake and............music. The bass response of the speakers was exceptional, and much of the music hit the resonant frequency of our doorframe perfectly! Surprisingly it was a good experience and by 11.00 pm the clearing-up was completed. And so to bed.

In addition to the wonderful view, our room (44) also has a connecting door to the adjacent room (43). On several occasions this week new occupants of Room 43 have tried with some determination to get into our room, but fortunately the bolt is on our side! But the door is not the most substantial, which ensures that, with a little imagination, the occupants of both rooms can be fully conversant with what’s going on next door.

Having dropped off to sleep after the wedding, we were both awoken around 1.45 am by the sound of zips being zipped, locks being unlocked and then locked again, doors opening and closing. It was a bit like the arrival of Marley’s Ghost, but the coughing and the dim sound of a TV assured us that this was not so. It was our neighbour arriving in rather late. By about 2.45 am things had fallen quiet again, save for the continuing sound of the TV and a semi-rhythmic, mezzo-forte, snoring. Allan reached for his ear-plugs - and so to sleep, again.

Around 5.30 am, before the call to prayer from the local mosque, Anne (who had no ear-plugs) started awake with the loud blowing of a nose next door, followed by animated African conversation between a group of men who seemed to have no conception of what sotto voce might mean. By 6.00 am – even with ear-plugs, Allan too had woken up. Finally, our neighbour’s visitors left, and the TV (tuned to a Christian channel) was turned up forte, presumably to enable our neighbour to hear it whilst continuing to blow his nose at regular intervals. One of the songs being sung was ‘Thank you Jesus’, which wasn’t entirely the sentiment Anne and I were feeling. Complete silence descended some half-hour later as our neighbour left his room.

Blessed sleep embraced us both again, until at 7.30, we were both woken up again with a loud knocking on our patio door – our laundry was being returned.

A few hours earlier we had been reading Craig Storti’s book The Art of Crossing Cultures. In it he talks about ‘cultural incidents’ arising out of the fact that we expect other people to behave like we do, but they don’t. Our conclusion? Last night was a gift from God and a ‘cultural incident’ to reflect on. But we’re still tired.

What's your phone number?

2007-08-22T08:32:00.000Z

Day 5 in Uganda. Landed at Entebbe in torrential rain on Saturday, the plane behaving more a speedboat than an aircraft. Then here to Namirembe Guest House in Kampala (Allan outside our room pictured above).

Since then we’ve had a productive few days, and met numerous interesting and useful people (including good friends from CMS we’d met in training) who all asked us for our ‘phone number. Sadly couldn’t oblige with Ugandan numbers. So we’ve bought new mobile phones (haven’t had a new one for 4 years anyway). Real excitement! But still learning how to use advanced technology.

Discovered we’d only been let into Uganda for 1 month despite having a 3 month visa. But a really helpful man at the Church of Uganda Provincial Office is sorting out the bureaucracy for us. Still might involve a delay, but we’re hoping to clarify the next move when we meet Bishop Joel this afternoon.

Air freight currently in transit from Amsterdam to Entebbe - should arrive tomorrow. Thence to a friend’s garage awaiting the next move.

We’re both well, glad to be here and excited about what God has got in store for us.

Incidentally, weather’s improved from Saturday.

All Packed And Ready to Go!?

2007-08-17T10:11:00.000Z

It all started with an e-mail to CMS and a walk down Waterloo Road - which all seems a very long time ago. Two and a half years on, 4 cases packed, airfreight somewhere near Heathrow and the taxi's coming in 4 hours. Scary and exciting all at the same time - but at least we think we know where we're going (unlike Abraham).

Awoke to the postman with malaria test kits (last minute delivery), the builder arriving to do some work on the outside of the house (given instructions by Allan in pyjamas and dressing gown at the front of the house - at just after 8.00 am!). Then Anne was greeted with water pouring through the kitchen ceiling whilst Jo was having a shower. Diagnosis not good, but manageable, we hope.

Off to the pub soon for a last lunch (with beer!) with Jo (who else when there's free beer around!?) who's getting her exam results as we write. We hope it will be a happy lunch. Said goodbye to Ben and Bethan a couple of weeks ago - picture from last family weekend above (Bethan was taking the picture - a good lass). Next posting from Uganda, we hope.

2007-08-11T20:20:00.001Z

Just a week before we leave for Uganda. The last few days have been spent getting the barrels packed for our 250 kgs airfreight (picture shows Anne relaxing on the barrels after Allan had finished packing them). They were collected 3 days ago.

We've also been finishing off some decoration in our house here in Leicester - so that all is left in good order here - and trying to sell the car. No takers yet, but we'll see what happens over the weekend.

The prospect of leaving here for Arua still seems a bit unreal, but after a few jitters last week, we're now both feeling much more excited about what lies ahead. We've been so encouraged over the past few days with e-mails and cards from friends and link churches, and are very conscious of their prayers.

Just a few things left to organise before we go, but I think we're less bothered now about whether we get them done or not. Bishop Joel e-mailed this week and reminded us that it's the Holy Spirit we must depend on. Perhaps we're beginning to learn the lesson.

Resurrecting the blog

2007-07-05T13:38:00.000Z

Been sleeping for a while - other things to do. But we're waking up again to learn how to do this properly before we go away.

Lots of water under many bridges since our last posting - Anne and Allan have both left their day jobs to, first, move from Doncaster to Leicester, then to begin training in preparation to go to Arua.

Anne - Now competent (maybe) in all sorts of weird and wonderful tropical diseases, ready for the fray in Africa, after a three month course in Liverpool. How well it has prepared me for what I shall be doing only time will tell.
Allan - African Studies and anthropology were on the menu at All Nations for me when I spent 10 weeks until end June. Another useful addition to my skills was croquet which filled a number of sun-filled hours and will be a useful adjunct to my toolbox for Arua.

Our Link Church visits are almost complete, only two to go including our home church in Leicester. Then we're all set to leave the UK on 17th August, first to Arua for a couple of weeks before spending a term in Nairobi at Carlile College.

If you want more details of the past few months, leave us a message and we'll contact you.

Photo

2007-01-20T22:29:00.000Z

The photo below is us. It went there by mistake - but at least you can see what we look like (sorry about that!)

Blagging at Blogging

2007-01-20T22:19:00.000Z

This is our first attempt at a blog and will look a bit peculiar until we've sorted it out.
We're starting a blog because we're going to live and work as CMS Mission Partners in Uganda starting this year, and we're told this will be a great way to keep in touch with our friends, supporters and anyone else who happens upon this site. This way everyone can find out what we're up to, see photos (if we can work out how to do it!) and send messages to us.
Our first official meeting with supporters is coming up this week in West Yorkshire at a Church and Primary School in Ledsham. We're looking forward to meeting the children at the school and some of the folk from the church on Wednesday.
So - we're learning how to blog - please be patient with us.

2007-01-20T21:59:00.000Z