Work Update

The structure of the Anglican Church in Uganda is like a pyramid. At the top is the Arch-Bishop and under him are the many Bishops and their dioceses. Each diocese is made up of Arch-deaconries, then down to parishes, then finally there are sub-parishes (typically without a priest and led by lay people). Currently the DPDO (the development branch of the Diocese) of the Lango Diocese is made of up of myself, Andrew, and Jacob. We are active in only two of the Diocese’s many Arch-deaconries. This is because, up until this year, the DPDO was primarily responding to the LRA insurgency with relief efforts more than development.

Arriving in Uganda and then in the Diocese of Lango, I thought I would be working with those affected by trauma from the LRA insurgency and those caring for the traumatized. I soon realized, however, that many of the more severely affected are very well cared for by well-funded NGOs and governments like that of Belgium and Norway. These formerly abducted children receive such an exceptional education and counseling, that some families will bemoan the fact that their children weren’t abducted or weren’t abducted long enough to qualify for any of those aid programs. Those children that “fall through the cracks” so to speak, are the ones who may have been somewhat traumatized, but were not necessarily abducted. When you talk to these individuals, they will much more readily identify their needs as economic before they recognize any emotional or spiritual need.

When I wanted to work with the parishes and their priests to sensitize and care for the needs of those who may have experienced trauma, what I largely found was that they were “not there yet”. What I mean is, many of the communities are so focused on daily economic survival, that the stress induced on their children by years of conflict doesn’t register with them nearly as much as the stress of not being able to consistently eat well or afford school fees. Rather than try to force my own agenda on the DPDO and on the parishes, I decided to join them in where they were working. I share this because some of you have asked about the inconsistency between what I said I was going to be doing here, and what I have been reporting on.

Speaking of reporting, a lot of time at the Diocese Planning and Development Office (D.P.D.O.) has been spent in planning and reporting these past couple of weeks. These routine office days and meetings hardly make for an exciting update. However, a few members of my home congregation, Madison Square Church, have been in Uganda over the past few weeks serving in various capacities. One of them was Dr. Richard Leep, a family friend and agronomist. He is working with a group of farmers in Mbale, in the east of Uganda. This part of the country is very mountainous and has suffered extensively from soil erosion. From Mbale you can look up and see Mt. Elgon, an area that has been affected by excessive rain, mudslides, and hail, and CRWRC is looking at how best to do food security/relief programs for the people living on the mountain.

Rich Leep is working with the group of farmers on the preventative side of relief, introducing zero-tillage farming in order to preserve the soil from erosion and nutrient depletion. He gave a presentation on this topic and Andrew (the agriculturalist I work with) and I decided to head down to Mbale to check out the training for ourselves. We enjoyed the two days we spent traveling there and back. The public transportation included its own adventures, including Andrew protecting a careless Matatu (taxi van) driver from my exhausted temper.

In order to understand zero-tillage and the training we received on it, perhaps it is important to know that Uganda has incredibly rich soil. Before the insecurity from the L.R.A., Northern Uganda was the “breadbasket” of Uganda, and Uganda was the breadbasket of East Africa. The extensive farming is largely done by hand with hoes, and it is very labor intensive. Recently, oxen and oxen-traction programs have gained popularity for plowing the soil, but these expensive tools are coveted assets, and the farmers who use them are still the minority.

The zero-tillage method that Rich Leep is introducing in Mbale would allow these local farmers to skip the developmental step of getting oxen to plow the soil, and go directly to more modern methods of farming where soil is preserved by not plowing at all! The method saves money, time, and labor. Andrew and I were quite excited about what this could do for our farmers in Lira, so we immediately made plans for a number of demonstration plots for us to test this new technology.

Because most farmers are poor, they do not take any risks. Doing something different than the way it has always been done is a risk that most farmers are wise not to take. If they changed their methods at every new idea, they would go hungry far more frequently than they do already. This way, the Diocese of Lango will absorb the risk by creating demonstration areas for the next planting season, which will be around July. If it is successful, we will begin encouraging some of our farmers to try it out.

Monday of this week brought the Planning Development & Rehabilitation (PDR) branch of the Church of Uganda to Lira to give some trainings to the D.P.D.O.s of the various dioceses operating in and around the north. I was asked to give a very brief presentation on one of the many topics of the week, “Gender Equity and Empowerment”. I led a very interesting dialogue, and as usual, I walked away unsure of who learned more from the presentation. The group was fairly diverse and made up of those who were poorly educated, and those who were educated in the U.K. and Canda; there were lay people and priests, both progressive and conservative and male and female. All told, I thought it went fairly well, and it only needed to be an introduction, because further trainings are coming later at the hands of PDR.

Tuesday brought me to a meeting with the Mothers’ Union of Otwal parish.

This is a parish that the DPDO is expanding its development programs to this coming fiscal year. We met with the mothers (some are shown above) to see what they saw as a priority, in what ways they were already working, and how we could help. Otwal is in one of the remaining large IDP camps in the Lango region. One of its sub-parishes was visited by Harry and Jenny Van Belle while they were here. I took this couple from Canada to this community, and now their church wants to establish a relationship with this church from Otwal. It is very exciting for the local parish and I get to help facilitate the beginnings of this relationship.

When I visited Otwal Tuesday, I brought them the news, making clear that it was not “free sponsors” but rather a prayer relationship between the communities, which had the potential to blossom in to something more. I didn’t mention the fact that the Canadian church eventually wants to do more exchange visits. That will come in time.

As for the rest of the week, it is back to the PDR workshops on topics like agro-forestry and sustainable agriculture. We’ll see how it goes. After that, Tim comes back from Ethiopia and is headed up to Lira. I’m super-excited about that, partially because he is so supportive but also due to the fact that he should have pictures of his new baby girl! Check out their blog if you’re interested. I’ll do my best to keep this one updated.

Balloons and Cotton Candy, Children and Puppies

In a break from recent tradition, I’ve decided to start this post on a light-hearted note. It probably won’t end up that way, but for now, enjoy it. My boss and friend, Rev. Jacob Ogwok, has a mutt that guards his compound at night. The dog is called “Puppy” but it is often pronounced “Poppy”, which I think is great. Anyway, Poppy got pregnant a while back, and about a month ago gave birth to a litter of seven! When I expressed interest, one of the puppies was immediately reserved for me, even prior to birth. Is that like predestination I wonder? Anyway, I’ve been having a lot of fun in my evenings playing with the puppies and with the Reverend’s kids. The pictures are posted here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jryskamp

The last week in April we had two CRWRC volunteers, Sid and Audrey Kramer, visiting Lira. They are in charge of the Amaranth program, and right now Lira has the biggest crop in all of East Africa. So the week was spent arranging how we can create a market to move the grain from the farmers to the market, so that the farmers don’t give up growing this incredible crop out of frustration.

It was a fairly productive week, especially because my co-worker at the Diocese was able to get a full-time job with the Diocese of Lango. Andrew had previously been a volunteer, at least on paper, but in reality had been the chief agricultural and field officer of the Diocese and was working at least five days a week. Since he is married now and expecting a honey-moon baby, he was beginning to get frustrated with this arrangement. I was able to alert Tim Dam to the situation, and Tim facilitated part of Andrew’s salary to be met by the Amaranth Program budget because of all the work that Andrew does with this program. So that was fairly exciting for him, and I was very glad for him.

After that week, Sid and Audrey were headed back to Kampala. It is written in to my contract that I should go to Kampala once a month to regain some semblance of sanity (I don’t actually think it is worded like that). I decided to take advantage of this and the free ride offered by the Kramers and head to Kampala. I spent a lovely long weekend at the Dam’s house before heading back to Lira. It is probably the last time I will see my friends and co-workers for a while, on May 11 they head to Ethiopia to pick up their newly adopted baby.

On Saturday, Jacob and I headed to one of the communities that the Diocese works with in order to have a meeting with the pastors of that region. Our hope was to be able to sensitize them a little bit to the roles they can have in facilitating development. You see, we’ve facilitated trainings in this region before, and the pastors have actually been quite an obstacle. Once, we gave one pastor some money in order to host some trainees at his parish. The money wasn’t a lot, but it was enough for their food and maybe a little extra for having to pick up after them. However, when we got to the site to begin the training, we found that the pastor hadn’t fed the trainees breakfast that morning, or dinner the night before. When we asked what the problem was, he said that we hadn’t given him money for sugar. If he couldn’t give his guests sugar, he couldn’t give them tea, if he couldn’t give them tea, then he couldn’t give them breakfast, and so on. It was quite ridiculous. Hence, it was decided that there was some extra work we needed to do in this community.

As Jacob and I were deciding how we would approach the meeting, Jacob said that he wanted to do a skit. He wanted one actor to be the community development worker, and another to be a pastor who misquotes the Bible and sends the development worker away because pastors should only be concerned with Spiritual health. To this idea I said something like, “Come on Jacob, give the pastors a little credit. What if he just allows the development worker to come and work, but does nothing else but look for how he can profit from the development worker coming? That seems like a more likely scenario, doesn’t it?” We discussed it, and decided to go with Jacob’s idea. It was a good thing we did.

When we got to the training site, only 2 of the 10 pastors were there. We waited around for a while and eventually got started. Eventually 7 out of 10 showed up. When we had two of the pastors act out the skit, I was shocked at the response. The pastor in the play said that he was only concerned with the Spiritual aspect of his constituents, and that by being involved in development work it would make him less holy. We had a dialogue about the play afterwards, and 6 out of the 7 pastors thought that the pastor in the play had acted correctly! There role was not to concern themselves with the physical struggles of their flock. I was shocked.

There was hope, however. The 7th pastor talked about how Jesus had fed the 5,000 while preaching to them, and that if Jesus could be concerned with the physical realm, then he should as well. This particular pastor managed to win over one or two of his colleagues. At this point, Jacob and I realized that the program we had put together for the meeting was going to be a little advanced for these pastors, so we prolonged the dialogue and introduced them to some other points of view. We looked at some scripture and talked about real life examples of when NGOs and Community Developers had come to their communities and the benefits and drawbacks they brought with them. We also talked about the most vulnerable members of their communities and what it would be like to care for them physically as well as spiritually.

Once again, I walked away from the training not sure about who learned more, me or them. Jacob reminded me once again that all we were doing was planting the seed and that God would provide the rain and the sun. We would come back and check on the seed and help to nourish it over the years. I’m not sure why I was so surprised at the response of the clergy. It certainly isn’t unheard of for people to interpret Jesus’ command to “feed my sheep” as purely spiritual in nature. Now that I think about it, there are tons of people, organizations, and churches in the states who overlook the “earthly” needs humans in favor of their perceived spiritual need.

Somehow I thought that it would be different in an area where I see the physical needs as so outstanding: amputation, widows, orphans, hunger…you know, the stuff that the Bible literally says to look after. I guess that my upbringing and education engrained in me the idea that the spiritual and physical natures of a person were grafted together so that one couldn’t flourish if the other failed. This is another reason I have to be grateful for everything that has gotten me to this place. It is also another reason to continue to pray for the people of Uganda and for the people of our own nations. Even though we may not literally have as many orphans, widows, and displaced people in our own homes in the West, we still have vulnerable populations that we are called as Christians to look after. I see the vulnerable populations more clearly here because I am not from Uganda, nor am I accustomed to flocks of widows, orphans, sick, and displaced people. I wonder what a Ugandan would see in the United States that we have become accustomed to and no longer perceive as an issue of justice?

Sorry, I lied about the balloons and cotton candy.