Family Planning in Irundu

By Sara:

In July, my friend Jane and I spent a fun and interesting few days in Irundu, where we were invited to teach at a 2-day conference about parenting and family planning.  Reverend Silas, who was one of Anthony and my students at the Pentecostal Bible College in 2009, invited us to come and he organized his church members for the event.

The church has a guest room in their church office, where Jane and I stayed.  They took really good care of us and were very generous with plenty of food and tea the whole time we were there.

In our guest room:

Silas and many families in his church are struggling to care for their children and many families in the community are unable to feed, clothe, and educate their children well.  He wanted us to share with the church about how they can prepare and plan for their families in order to be able to be better parents.  The issue is not about population control or telling people not to have children.  Rather, it is the church's concern for parents to be able to be good parents - providing for, teaching, and guiding children; understanding the difference between for example, using a condom and having an abortion; and wanting to have space between pregnancies for the mother to recover and have quality time with the baby.  

Here is Silas introducing us on the first day:

 

 

The teaching went extremely well.  People in Uganda use the phrase "family planning" to refer to what Americans would call "birth control methods".  But Jane and I wanted to explain how "family planning" is not about preventing pregnancy, but about more general planning and preparing for and caring for a family, even beginning to think about it before getting married.  

 

So Jane started out by talking about the purpose of parenting, using God - our Father - as an example.  God created the whole world, including everything Adam and Eve would need before making them - he planned ahead.  He provided for their needs, spent time with them in the Garden of Eden, gave them instructions, and disciplined them when they sinned.  And even in his punishment he was merciful - he went to them, made them clothes, and went on with his work of redemption.  Likewise, parents have a responsibility to not only take care of their children physically, but to also talk to them, instruct them, teach them about God, discipline them, and seek their children out for reconciliation when the children misbehave.  Since children are such a blessing from God, parents are stewards of the children God has gifted them and therefore parenting should not be taken lightly.  Jane also emphasized how even unmarried people and those who cannot have children can and should take part in parenting through their relationships with other peoples' children.

After Jane had established the responsibilities of parents, I gave a session on the basic biology of how the human reproductive system works.  It was similar to when I taught high school biology in Minnesota.  I also listed and explained what kinds of birth control methods there are, how various types work, and the difference between abortion and methods that prevent fertilization.  Many people did not know what happens during the menstrual cycle and had no idea why a woman might get pregnant at a certain time, but not at another.  They also didn't understand how different birth control methods work or what they even are and therefore only knew about them based on rumors and myths they had heard before.  But they appreciated getting a better understanding of how their bodies work so they can plan their families better and use that knowledge to teach their own children about sex, rather than leaving it as a mystery for the children to find out on their own.  

 

At the end, Jane brought it all together, talking about how parents can use those methods to plan for and space their children, in order to parent their children better.  In Uganda, school is not free, not even the government schools and because of an increasing desire for education, this has resulted in peoples' expenses shooting up in recent decades.  Many schools are very expensive - imagine if each year of elementary or high school cost more than a year of college (college is way less expensive in Uganda than in the US, but proportionally here it is cheaper than grades 1-12 at certain schools).  This creates a huge challenge for parents who want to educate their children, but have to come up with the money for all the school fees.  Even if a family raises more than enough food to feed themselves for a year, many of those people sell it all off to pay for school fees.  So, Jane pointed out that it is good to be preparing for children, even before getting married, so you are not taken by surprise by school fees when the children are born.  Maybe buy a goat when you get pregnant and raise it as an investment for the child - let it multiply and be a source of income for school fees or medical fees for them as they grow up.

One evening, we went to Silas' home for dinner.  He lives in a very beautiful area of the country, very close to Lake Kyoga, but on the other side from Soroti.

Our last day was a Sunday, when I had the opportunity to teach the church a Bible study method they can use to study the Bible with their families.  It was a good application of the things we had been teaching - giving parents a tool they can use to help them raise their children to know the Lord and to be able to talk to their children about meaningful topics.

Kalaki Testimonies

 By Sara:

Recently, I had a great visit back to Kalaki, to a place where I did a variety of nutrition trainings over several years.  We talked about the basics of nutrition, vegetable gardening, moringa, chaya, and how to improve the food value of what we serve to our children.  

I wanted to know if there had been any impact on the lives of the people I taught there, so Tom, our friend who coordinated the group, helped me organize visits to some of the group members' homes.  We visited six different homes and talked to the families we met there, learning about the ways they put what they learned into practice and what they found most helpful from the trainings.

Everyone had chaya growing at their home and we even met a man, Omena, who received chaya cuttings from his neighbor, even though no one in his family had ever come to a training.  Omena's son has anemia and the family had been struggling to buy him leafy greens to eat every day, especially during the dry season, after a doctor told them they needed to have greens be a central part of his diet.  Now that they have chaya, however, they don't need to buy greens during the dry season anymore.  Instead, they always have chaya, even when it is too dry to grow other types of greens.  This helps them take care of the health of their son and has saved their family money.  Now, they are sharing chaya with many other people since it is planted in a prominent place in their yard.  Every time a visitor comes to their home, they notice the strange plant and ask about it.  Omena and his family teach them what it is and give out cuttings so their visitors can go home and plant it too!

Two of the ladies we visited from the group gave testimonies about how they have added moringa to their diets.  They told us that they (the group members) are the only ones in the community who know the value of moringa and know how to eat it.  I had to encourage them to share with their neighbors what they know, rather than keeping it to themselves, but I suspect they just don't want to compete with other people in harvesting the moringa growing around the village!  In all seriousness, though, they both enjoy eating moringa.  One of them, Aleso, has also added more variety to her family's diet by planting a kitchen garden of tomatoes, eggplants, and onions.  She also planted more fruits around her home, including avocado trees, oranges, and bananas.  This was a result of learning the importance of eating many different foods and including fruits and vegetables in your everyday diet.

We also had a fun time visiting the wife of Bishop Martin, the Pentecostal bishop of that area.  He attended my training on chaya back in 2018 and his family has been promoting chaya to the community ever since.  All the people we visited told us that the bishop and his wife are the main suppliers of chaya to everyone who wants it.  When we went to their home, his wife also shared about how she is using the knowledge I taught the group about using local plants to protect your harvested crops.  She uses plants like lantana, neem, and eucalyptus to protect her green gram, sorghum, cassava, and sweet potatoes from weevils during storage.  She told us that she has successfully kept those harvested crops for over a year without them getting affected by pests.

It is always encouraging to know that what I am doing made a difference.  But it is even more exciting to see the people I taught passing their knowledge on to others around them.  

Chameleons and Fish

 By Anthony:

The last 4-5 months have included a lot of fun watching and holding chameleons. Most Ugandans think chameleons are poisonous and kill them. Or they dislike them because of the funny way that they move and their ability to change color. We told friends and neighbors that we would love it if they would take the chameleons to our garden rather than killing them. People started bringing them over. One week we had someone bring us a chameleon every day. Thankfully it has stopped, because it was getting to be a bit much after 20-30 chameleons! I'm encouraged to know that they are not endangered in our area even with people killing them.

Our yard is about 1/2 acre, and we have a brick wall, so it's possible most of them are still here, but we think some of them have probably moved off, which is fine. They are really hard to find even though there are many. They blend into the garden plants and trees so well. But so far for almost every visitor we have had, we have been able to go around looking for them and find at least one chameleon for the visitor to hold. 

These two were angry at each other:

My fish pond has been a big project and has nothing at all to do with ministry here. It is just something fun I wanted to do. Since my childhood, I always wished to have a fish pond. Now, I will be able to fish for some of our suppers, and I also look forward to giving fish to a lot of friends, visitors, and neighbors. Some people rarely buy meat or fish because of the expense, so I expect it will be a great gift to people.

The last time I shared photos of the pond it was only of the beginning stages of digging. Here are photos from the digging being completed. I wanted it to be 2 meters deep, but we could not do so. It was far too rocky in the ground to go that deep. After a few inches of soil, it was all just rock, clay, and stone. It was incredibly difficult to dig. Therefore, we stopped at 1.5 meters deep. Then we heaped a hill around the sides for the last 1/2 meter. So overall it will be two meters deep, but you climb a slight rise to get to the edge of the pond.

The small stones / clay stuff is called "marram" here and it is what they use on roads. Those roads are much better than roads that are just dirt or sand. We are in the process still of giving away all of the excess that we dug out of the ground.

We added some clay to the edges to make the edges less rocky and more smooth. I tried to think of ways to not have the plastic get pierced on the edges of the rise. The company I bought the plastic from installed it. 

The installation was included with the price of the plastic lining. They had to lay down strips of the heavy plastic and use a special melting tool to merge the sheets of plastic together. It's very thick and sturdy plastic. We are in such a hot and dry area that plastic is required or the water would not stay.

After the installation I still got worried about rocks piercing the plastic, so we removed it and put cardboard boxes under it on the edges. And then put back the plastic.

We are filling it so far with just rain water. During dry seasons I may top it off with tap water. There is a tap near the pond and we have a hose. Hopefully I will never have to do that, though. Rain water is working well so far.

My guard helped to find some water plants for the pond. We have water lilies, water hyacinth, and papyrus. Somehow nature found a way, and without our intentional introduction, there are some other tiny fish (not sure what species yet), frogs, snails, and lots of insects. At one point there were many thousands of tadpoles. I had an electrician help me set up a solar panel to run a water pump I bought. We just run it at night and charge it during the day. This way water from lower down that has less oxygen is pumped out and falls back down into the pond, pushing more air back into the water again. This is really important for fish who don't do well in standing water. I'm hoping this will be enough.

The number of snails concerned me, especially since snails here can carry schistosomiasis (bilharzia), which is a nasty parasite that can come out into the water from snails, and then enter your skin, and cause you massive health problems. I did some tests that a doctor in Kampala told me to try, and it seems my snails do not carry this parasite, for which I am very thankful. And because no humans will be pooping in the water who are already infected (nor pooping in it at all!), my pond will never get infected. I may do some more tests later again just to be sure we didn't transport bad snails with the water plants.

We collect rain water from the house which the guards use. It goes from the gutters through pipes. 

The pipes may look like an eyesore right now, but we planted grape vines and other climbing flowers to go up all the poles. It will look really nice later.

We also collect rain water from our house and can get it to the pond with a hose.

Sometimes the rain in the rainy season is intense:

Some months ago, I ordered 200 Nile tilapia fingerlings. I paid with mobile money, and then a young man brought this bag on a bus from the Kampala area. He reached Soroti at like 3am because of the bus breaking down. I met him in the morning.

Some weeks later they looked like this

I feed them once a day some fish food, but they can also eat insects, microorganisms in the water, and plant particles from the water plants. It's a nice thing to do every evening when I'm home, to get outside and enjoy the fish. I read somewhere that pastors need a practical project to work on with their hands. This has become mine recently.

The tilapia are now about 4-5 inches long. Not near big enough to eat, still small, but much bigger than in the video above. Now that the tilapia are big enough not to be eaten by small catfish, I added about 30 catfish. The goal is that when the tilapia start reproducing, the catfish should keep their numbers down.

We also connected some lights to the solar panel so that insects will come at night and hopefully the fish can eat them. This is more or less what it looks like now, but we have gotten a lot of rain lately, so it's now higher than this.

Upcoming Projects which I will keep you updated on:
- Adding more plants to keep the algae in the water down
- Building a duck dock, so that the ducks can be invited to the pond. They need an easier way to get in and out so they don't get stuck.

- Making sure our drainage pipe is aligned properly, so the pond doesn't overflow.

- Fishing for my first fish when they get big enough! The first fruits might go to a pastor at church :) 

Magoro Farmer Group

 By Sara:

I am enjoying my farmer group in Magoro.  It isn't a huge group of people, but the ones who attend are enthusiastic and invested in learning and growing together.  I always enjoy the Bible studies we do together because they take it very seriously and make sure everyone understands the meaning of all the words in each passage.  Sometimes the Ateso translation uses "old" Ateso words people don't use in common speech today, so they have to make sure they define those for everyone.  They also do a great job coming up with action plans based on what they learn, to put the Bible study into practice.

 

We had a fun lesson together studying soil.  Everyone brought a sample from their garden at home and we compared and contrasted the samples.  It was interesting to see how different they could be from within a small community.

We also dug a hole together to demonstrate how you can see different layers of soil in the ground.

One of the more unusual lessons was on specific ways to take care of the types of animals people most commonly have.  I taught the group how to make salt blocks for cows/goats/sheep using locally available resources.  The cost of making one is about 40x cheaper than buying one from a shop.  I also taught them how to trim goat/sheep feet, something not commonly done in Uganda.  As a result, a lot of animals have deformed feet, like having super overgrown toenails.  The group borrowed a neighbor's animals and practiced on them. They might not look happy in these pictures, but they ran away with more comfortable feet after we were done!