"When Helping Hurts" Teaching in Amuria

This last week I led a training in Amuria using the curriculum I developed during our time in Texas.  It is based on the book "When Helping Hurts" and other books on the poor and community development I have read.  Sara joined for the whole training, as she did not have any farming activities yet this week and she is very familiar with the "When Helping Hurts" material.  She helped me especially in answering questions as groups discussed together.  About half the time was lecture and half group discussion.  The pastors came from all over the district and stayed the nights at the church for the week.  During break times there was a lot of worship through singing as you can see in the videos below.

The training was not without a few challenges.  There were only about 60 pastors that showed up rather than the 100 I expected.  And some pastors missed the first day, and others missed a day in the middle.  English was a big challenge.  My manual needs major editing.  I had tried to use simple English when I wrote it, but now I see that I didn't do near enough simplifying.  And I'm not sure how much was lost in translation during my lecturing, though I have to give a hearty thanks to my pastor friends who labored so long with me in translating.  A last challenge was that the pastors could not afford the financial cost to pay for their food for the whole week, thus the training had to end early on Thursday at noon.  But we still made it through most of the material.  And even with all of those challenges, I would say the training was a big success and people appreciated it very much.  There was also a lot of laughter and fellowship.

Here is a picture below of the portion size at lunches.  (We thought maybe they could have stretched the food out with smaller portion sizes; I ate about half of this after being really hungry, but I believe they were eating much less at other meals of the day.)

The pastors, and some KIDO staff who attended learned very much.  They learned more about Jesus' kingdom, that he came to save not only people, but the whole creation, and cares about the physical needs of people as well as their eternal salvation.  They learned about the emotional, social, and spiritual aspects of poverty.  They learned about how to give more wisely and appropriately.  They learned more more about the grand story of Scripture in general.  They learned about the pride and disdain we and they often have for the poor.  They learned about many of the mistakes missionaries and NGO's have made in places like Uganda.  They learned about how to better plan their missions to the poor, and how to work on development in their communities.  It was a tiring week for us but we definitely feel that the pastors are not returning home the same and God blessed us all during the week!

On this day Sara got so cold her lips started to turn blue.  (It was probably 65-70 degrees or so).  They had to provide her with a blanket that you can see in the photo below.

 Here are some paraphrased testimonies from the pastors about what they learned:
- "Poverty brings shame because you feel powerless."
- "If I look down on the poor, I will have problems with God."
- "I used to give people things without identifying the need, but now I will learn to address the problem."
- "I used to not care about God's creation, but now I see that not caring about it is even a cause of poverty."
- "I am going to sit with my branch church leaders and teach them what we learned in this manual and encourage them to teach their branch churches.  Then we will plan together how to make a change."
- "Now we aren't going to plan programs for the people we are trying to help without talking to them first and building a relationship with them and hearing their ideas."
- "I used to think muzungus are rich and I am poor but now I see that I am rich in other ways that they might not be."



And they gained new hope in their own situations of poverty.  They recognized that we all have resources and skills and there is no one that truly has "nothing."  They went away with new confidence that God could give them ideas to use their own resources well.
- "I thought I was poor, but now I know I am rich."
- "Now I know that I have resources that I can use to cause change.  I am going to utilize the resources I have instead of begging."



I also learned a lot from them.  Much of the training was group discussion, either as a large group, or as small groups.  But maybe most importantly I learned more about what they thought about short term and long term missionaries, and they gave me some food for thought.  Here are some things they said below.  Please keep these things in mind as your churches plan mission trips.
- "Short training can be good but it leaves you without the relationship."
- "A visitor should share something, like speaking at church."
- "We don't like it when visitors surprise us.  We want to plan and prepare for their visit and be prepared for their program."
- "Long term missionaries are much better than short term."
- "It depends on the individual person for whether a long term or short term missionary is a better idea."
- "We want the teacher to stay around to mentor us, and not just leave after a week of training."
- "We don't just want programs, we want to get to know the person over a long time."
- "Some missionaries that came for only a short time, didn't get to know the people, and they ended up causing more division in our area."
- "When a missionary starts trainings but does not finish, and disappears, it really hurts us. Where did they go?"
- "When the missionaries only taught for a week and then went back home, others that had questions about the training ended up blaming us as pastors for the lack of follow-up."
- "Some missionaries in the past came only briefly and made false promises that they never fulfilled."
- "Just observing and sharing on a visit is okay."
- "We really appreciate missionaries that stay a long time and live with the people and learn the language and visit our homes."

Food We've Been Eating

In case you missed Sara's post on her cooking blog, check this post out on how fun it is to buy food here from the market and how inexpensive it is.  The picture below is something else funny from the town.  Want to buy this good brand name clothing?

Here are some other photos of food we've been eating at home and with others.
Matooke:

Smoked fish:

Baingan bharta and naan:

Aloo matar and parathas:

Soursop (guyabano):

Beans, sweet potatoes, and cabbage:

New Pet and more animal photos

While at the training this last week one of the pastors came up to me and asked if I would like another chameleon.  I said "sure!"  And he gave me one!  Later I asked a friend how he heard that I like them, and I was told, "he had heard that you keep them."   I think the word has spread around Teso that there is a crazy muzungu who breeds chameleons.  From the conversation it seems they think I want a lot of them.  They probably think I'm a witchdoctor with their superstitious beliefs about chameleons.

Here is my other original chameleon.  It hides very easily in the cage I made for them.  I hope they get along.

Sara's goats, softer than chameleons but less exciting.
Romulus (the buck):

And the ladies - Lokey:

And Bendita:

Here is a video of Caleb.  I have now taught him to sit, stay, and shake.

Village Savings and Loans Associations

This week, I had the opportunity to go with Geofrey, one of KIDO's field staff, when he did a training in a village (Olusai) about VSLAs (Village Savings and Loans Associations).  I enjoyed seeing Geofrey in action; he got the participants involved and was very enthusiastic in his teaching. 

There are thirteen farmer groups in this village and seven of them already have been trained in VSLA and have savings boxes.  The other groups are just starting.

In the training, the groups who have already started saving were asked to teach the principles to the others.  They also shared the ways that they have benefited through the savings groups.

Each week, the group meets together.  They sit in a circle with the box in the middle, open it together and get out the record books.  They count the money in front of everyone, record each individual's deposits from the day, then give out loans.  People talked about how these savings allowed them to pay for school for their children, get money for emergency medical care, and buy nutritious food for their families.

The one unfortunate part of my visiting this training was that it was entirely in Ateso.  Basically, unless Geofrey translated what he was saying for me, I had to just listen for the few words that I recognized.  But when other people shared, Geofrey told me what they were saying - this is why I know as much as I wrote above!  So, I was challenged to make a big effort to learn Ateso better.

Day Trip to Mbale

Last week we took a day trip to Mbale, our old home city to visit some friends.  Unfortunately I had some bad GI issues from restaurant food the day before.  That made the day quite uncomfortable and I was wrestling with car sickness on the taxi, even though I was on pepto bismol and Dramamine.  Probably a lot more information than you wanted to know, yet it's part of life here.  We took a taxi instead of our vehicle as it is so much cheaper than paying for our own fuel.

On the way there, we stopped in Atutur to see our friend Charles.  He was a student at the Pentecostal Theological College.  I even preached at his church in Atutur in 2009.  Since that time he and some friends started a local development organization called Keep Alive Missionary Ministries.  We had just planned to visit him as our friend and hear about what he has been doing with the organization.  But when we got there, we met board members and most of the staff of his organization, as well as 100 or so leaders from the communities they are working with!  We had only planned for a short visit, so it was tough to leave so quickly knowing all these people had come out to see us.  They even had the children of the communities they are working with sing for us.  They sang us about five songs complete with dances.  They must have practiced very hard.  Here are just a couple clips.

In this next video the girl in front on her knees is singing about backsliding.  We didn't catch all of the words but apparently she is supposed to be crying in mourning about life apart from God.  By the end of the song she had real tears streaming down her face which really surprised me.  That girl should be an actress.

In this photo we are giving Charles' organization the digital camera that one of our supporters contributed to us.  They were very grateful!  They will use it to document their work and help raise support.  If you want to see the kinds of trainings they do with the community (HIV awareness, agriculture, income generating skills, etc.), you can follow them on facebook.  Just look up Keep Alive Missionary Ministries.

 Here is the gathering of community leaders that we briefly spoke to and encouraged.

After this visit to Atutur we went on to Mbale and visited our old place of work, Pentecostal Theological College.  It was fun to see all of our old friends once again - the other teachers and staff at the school.  Because our supporters gave us more than one digital camera when we asked, we also gave one to the college to use.  They were very appreciative as well.

We then briefly visited some missionary friends that are moving back to the US soon.  I bought some board games from them which look very fun.  Now I just have to find some friends to play with.

After that we headed back home.  But it turned out to be one of the worst taxi rides of our lives.  Not only was I sick, but we waited in the parking lot for two hours before the taxi left.  It was not a normal taxi, it was almost like a bus, so we thought we would each get our own seat.  Well that didn't happen either.  They crammed a ridiculous amount of people in, and we each got about half of a seat.  On the drive I and a few others in the taxi loudly joked about how the taxi conductor should give me half my money back because I only got half a seat.  No response from the conductor, so then we went on to have a loud theological discussion about how as Christians we are supposed to follow the laws of our country (including taxis not having too many people).   I was informed that there is "no law in Uganda," that there is too much corruption and laws aren't regularly enforced.  One of the other passengers was a pastor so he enjoyed the discussion.  No response still from the conductor.  Then the taxi broke down a couple times on the way back, so we didn't get home until very late.  Maybe next time we'll just take our own vehicle...

Village Visit #2 - Milmil

This past weekend, we visited the village of Milmil, in Katakwi district.  It was about a two and a half hour drive to get there, but the area that we drove through was beautiful (Anthony will share some pictures).  And as we got further out into rural areas, there was not much traffic, so it wasn't too challenging to do the driving, other than dodging potholes!

                               

We stayed at the home of Vincent and Amelenia.  They have six children - five girls and one boy; the children are older so they have only three of them staying at their home, but nine grandchildren live there too.  So it was a pretty big place and full of people.

 

We were accompanied on our visit by two people who work for KIDO: Andrew Ben and Emmanuel (Emma).  They helped to translate for us since Vincent and Amelenia don't speak English.  This is Emma:

He was with us most of the time, so we got to hear about the agricultural work that he does in these rural communities.  He is one of the people from KIDO who I will be working with over the next two years.

Unlike last weekend, this family took our offer to work with them seriously.  In fact, they had more confidence in Anthony's endurance than he did himself!  They let us plough their field with bulls. 

We thought maybe we would help for about half an hour and then they would continue without us (presumably it would go more quickly when we were not the ones doing it...)  However, we ended up helping for the entire time - two hours!  Anthony did half and I did the other half. 

Anthony kept trying to stop to take a break, but they made him keep going.  You can see how much fun the kids were having watching the plowing and rolling around in the dirt.

We also were allowed to help milk their cows, but only for a little while.  At that point, we needed to get going to another village where we were going to visit some people with whom KIDO works, so they rushed us through the milking.  It was different from milking goats - the teats are higher off the ground, so it was a bit harder to aim the milk into the buckets.  Vincent demonstrated for us before they gave us a bucket and stool.

Here are a couple other activities that I got to participate in.  First, pounding ecomai, the leaves of a local tree that people eat as a vegetable during the dry season:

This was a rather funny situation because they had me sit and pound it while everyone watched with great amusement!  Then, this is how they churn milk.  I also got to try it, but there is no picture of me doing it.

The people from Milmil had received cassava cuttings and they walked us out to the garden that the community group planted and cares for together.  They dug up this cassava plant so we could see how big the tubers already are:

Most of Saturday was spent walking and visiting other communities where there are groups who have benefited from KIDO's work.  We walked two hours to get to these people and then walked even more to get from one group to another!  It was lots of good exercise.  On the way back, we watched a beautiful sunset. 

People were really surprised to see white people walking and the groups that we visited were happy to know that we were willing to walk so far to see them.



The groups that we visited were ones who had benefited from receiving goats, groundnuts (peanuts), and cassava cuttings for planting.  I especially liked hearing from people in the groups who were the secondary recipients of goats.  One woman had received a goat and passed on the first female kid to another woman who was there to tell us about it.  They also told stories of how they were able to sell the groundnuts and cassava that they harvested to buy goats, then sold the kids from those goats to buy cows.  Then, they were able to sell the calves and milk in order to pay to send their children to school.  Another interesting reason that they were thankful for the cows was that they were able to have cow dung for their gardens and for repairing the floors and walls of their houses. 

Once again, we were blown away by the generosity of the people we met.  We were given a chicken by at least one person in every group that we visited (we left the village with six), some small bags of groundnuts, a giant bag of beautiful beans, some eggs, chapatti, sodas, and a goat(!) from Vincent and Amelenia.  Honestly, it was REALLY hard to accept these gifts because we are so undeserving and we already have so much more than we can ever need.  However, we do know that there is dignity in having the ability to give to others and also great joy in sharing what we have.  We need to continue to learn how to accept the generosity of people who are grateful for the way that God has provided for them.  And we also need to learn how to be joyfully generous with what we have.

We did bring an Ateso Bible for our hosts, Vincent and Amelenia (as a very small note of thanks for their hospitality to us).  They already had one Bible, which was well-read and worn, but they were very happy to have a second one for their family. 

One other really cool thing to note is that their family is Catholic.  In fact, most of the people we met in the villages we visited this weekend are Catholic.  But they are working together with KIDO, which is part of Pentecostal Assemblies of God (PAG) and there are members in the groups from the Catholic church, PAG, and Church of Uganda.  We were happy to see this unity among Christians of different denominations.