A hundred pairs of gumboots

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”

“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

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

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

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

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

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.