Wednesday 18 September 2013

Lessons in grace, patience and humility.


The last few days have been rather impacting .. not because of anything out of the ordinary for life in Uganda, more so because God has been teaching me some things through the people here.

On Sunday I had promised to go visit a church that a friend here has started up in a poor area of Jinja. Honestly I had been avoiding going to this church for a while now (about a year) as I like going to my own church and sometimes it can feel like you are just going to be put on show. But I decided I would go this Sunday to get it out of the way.
From the very start I had a very sour attitude in my heart, and God was ready to give me a lesson in humility due to the pride that had started to sink in.
I really did not feel like going to this church, and as I said, I was just doing it to get it out of the way. Already I was a little frustrated at my companion as he told me I would be expected to say a word and preach, which I certainly didn’t feel like doing. I was very busy that day, so I was asking many questions about how long it was going to be, and all in all my heart was certainly not in the right place.
All of that changed when I reached our destination. Basically this was a small gathering of people (mostly women) who were extremely poor, and met under a tree in poor village to passionately worship, sing and pray. When I first arrived a very sick man in bare feet who had been working all night came up to me and asked me if I would please be so kind as to pray for him. Everyone who was there made me feel so welcome, and their faces lit up when I spoke to them. Afterwards the ones who were sick asked me to pray for them. My heart was totally melted .. the whole time leading up to this church service I had a hardened heart of pride, not really wanting to go, but it ended up being a very moving experience and God taught me a very strong lesson in humility and grace.

In the afternoon I got to trial a program I had developed during my diploma of youth work course. The program focuses on human rights when it comes to sex, as well as H.I.V education and looking at the stigma around H.I.V Aids. The program is developed for teenage boys, as mentalities towards women here are very worrying at times. There can be a large number of rapes, and H.I.V infections due to women not enjoying the same rights and equal standings to men, especially when it comes to sexual rights. It was a great time of discussing and debating with this group of boys (as usually is when talking about sex with a bunch of teenage guys) and they all said they came away learning a lot, and thinking about things from a different perspective then they normally would of before (mainly the perspective of how it would be, to be treated as women are). Again sometimes the views expressed can be very worrying, and it takes patience and grace to listen to these boys’ perspectives so hopefully down the track they may learn and understand about different values and morals.

At the end of the day I was on my way home to enjoy my dinner, as it was just starting to get dark, when an older women came up and approached me. This women has been asking me to visit her house for a while now, and I keep telling her that I would eventually get round to it. Honestly I just wanted to get home and eat some food, but I stopped and looked at this women, and was struck with the lessons I had already learnt that day, and just felt grace and love towards her. So I walked with her to her home to sit for a while and talk. She basically lived in a tiny mud hut and was looking after a large number of children (who slept in the small mud hut with her) as they had been abandoned by their parents. The women was also sick and had no work. I was waiting for her to ask for money as many people do (and really you cannot blame them) but all this women asked for was for my company and a prayer. After praying for her, she told me how blessed she was now.

I couldn’t help but feel that it was really her doing the blessing.
 
It was a beautiful, yet heartbreaking moment, that I realise I would of missed out on if I had simply gone about being busy and wanting to move on to go eat. It made me realise how important it is at times to slow down from our busy schedule and show grace … You just may miss out on an important lesson.

So I got home, sat in front of my food ready to eat, and my phone rings. It was farook. He wanted me to come to the hospital because Beatrice (farooks wife) was there in pain and they were suspecting she was going into labour. I thought about how I would not be enjoying my dinner and it was going to be a long night, although I was at peace with that, and rather excited. It felt like after everything today, why not a little more grace, humility and patience.
Luckily for me the doctor told Beatrice to go home and come in the morning as she was not ready yet. The whole next day was spent at an African hospital sitting with farook and giving him support. He was so scared and nervous, as this was his first child, and he felt terrible that Beatrice was in so much pain, even stating that “I don’t want another kid, I never want to put her through this again”.
In the culture here the men don’t go into the delivery room, but it is women friends of the one giving birth and the nurses who do it all, as this is women’s business. So the men sit around outside and wait until it is over (Not a bad way of doing it, if I do say so myself …. Just kidding ... kind of). At one stage farook was out buying basins, bed sheets and a mat for the birth (as the hospital does not have these things) and left me sitting on the bench. Beatrice came out for a walk and sat down next to me, and farook had asked me to keep an eye on her. She started having painful contractions while sitting next to me, and to be honest I was kind of freaking out, I didn’t know what to do, as I have never been around a woman in labour, let alone asked to keep an eye on one in an African hospital. Thankfully Beatrice helped me out and made it easier for me by turning to me and saying “Luke, pray for me now“. Righteo I thought! That I can do.
We ended up waiting around all day and she still didn’t give birth that night, so the next day we were back at the hospital waiting around. Just before Beatrice started going into heavy contractions, farook and her asked if we could pray together. Beatrice was sitting on the floor so Farook and I also joined her and sat in a circle on the floor holding hands. It was really special, to be invited into that intimate moment, I really look at Farook and Beatrice as family, and as we sat on the floor in a circle holding hands in a little African hospital, we prayed to God for a safe birth.
In the end she gave birth around 2 pm that day and everything went smooth and there was no problems (thank you to everyone who prayed for her, you know who you are). The catholic nun came out to tell the news to Farook that he was now the father to a little baby boy. Farooks face lit up and he was stunned, he grabbed my hand on the spot and said “let us now thank God for everything he has done” haha, again another great moment!
So they will now be starting their life together as a family, and I look forward to watching the baby grow over the years and being (as Beatrice and Farook say) “Uncle number one”.


                                 


Never a dull moment in Africa.

Tuesday 10 September 2013

Settling in


So it has been almost 2 weeks since touching down in Uganda, in a strange way it can often feel like things are moving both very fast .. and very slow.

 
So far there has been lots of meetings and ideas for projects, and organising bank accounts and setting myself up, and it feels like I have got a lot done within two weeks. But on the other hand there is a very slow pace to life here, where time must be taken to stop and talk with an old friend, perhaps share a meal with them, before moving on to what I was meant to be doing that day.
I also feel I am going to get very fat, very fast, if I don’t stop accepting all the free meals being thrown my way ( Ugandans love to pile on the food when feeding a guest ).


                                     

                                                                 Farook and Beatrice


I have been really excited to see my good friend, and brother from another mother, Farook. His wife is expecting their first baby any day now, and it’s great to see how in love they are with each other, and how excited they are to start raising a family. In a country where so many dads run away from responsibilities, it’s great to see that Farook is going to be a good father.
I have also been in plans with Farook and his wife Beatrice to start a small sewing group for vulnerable young women, from the ages of 18 to 24, who may be single mums and need a source of income. Beatrice is a sewing teaching, but they have recently been struggling as she works in town, and it costs them a lot of money for transport for her to go to work. By setting them up with their own sewing machine here in Wairaka, they would be able to save money, but also start on their dream of helping young women find a valuable skill. I would love to see YSU empowering and supporting their vision ( with some well organised structures to help guarantee something successful ). So me and Farook have been spending time visiting other organisations and seeing how they run sewing classes. The aim is to start small, maybe 3 machines and 5 girls, and build from there. It looks like this will be the first program of Youth Support Uganda.


                                     

                                                                        Acting group


I have also had the chance to help a group of young actors in filming and editing some skits they have put together to go on air for a local TV station. Rosco is the young man who has initiated this acting group, and he has a lot of drive for making short films and dramas. It’s been good to help this young group with a project they have been wanting to complete for a long time. Ultimately the best type of youth work is supporting and empowering Young people who already have ideas and initiatives to do things.

I have also been tutoring the secondary students at the village of hope with English, CRE and History every morning while they are on holidays. These older kids are amazing, and I always have such a great time teaching them, although the schooling system can be frustrating here. Often the material they get for their English classes, from their teaches, is full of terrible spelling and bad sentence structuring, yet this is the material they are given to learn English. Also CRE can be interesting, with a bit of a disturbing amount of religious type attitude towards the faith, and a real lack of teaching on grace, which leads to me learning when to hold my tongue, and when to gently challenge some things. But all in all, it has been a great experience for both me and the kids, and I think we both get a lot out of these lessons.

Even though there are problems with the church and the culture here, there are still great moments when the people here really teach me a lesson or two. The other day a young single mother was trying to understand why the time in Australia is different to Uganda, and I simply explained about the earth’s orbit around the sun and what makes a day, what makes a year, and why one side of the earth experiences night while the other experiences day. After explaining this, the mother, with a look of awe and amazement on her face, simply said “God is so good”. It took me off guard and really made me smile. When we are so used to scientific explanations of the universe leading to attitudes of discrediting the need for a god, it was beautiful to see this women connect the understanding of the earth’s orbit to thinking that God must be so amazing. I am sure it is this simple, humble type of faith from the poor that must make God smile.

So things have been moving on well, lots of joy and peace amongst the people here, I feel like I am always meeting with friends, and I am never lonely.
I look forward to the months to come, I think there will be a lot of work, and I will be keeping busy, but the joy of it all is really something special.