Making Cloth Menstrual Pads With Baker

In Uganda, a lot of girls drop out of school once they start to menstruate.  They sometimes can't afford to buy pads at the store or aren't able to go to the latrine frequently enough to keep from getting blood on their clothes and being embarrassed or teased by other children.  Some girls even use dirty rags or banana fibers if they can't buy pads.

Baker, one of the graduates of TLT from Soroti, noticed this problem and wanted to do something about it.  As one of his TLT action plans, he decided to come up with a way to make re-usable pads out of cloth so more girls would stay in school.  This is Baker:

He went with me to Kaberamaido, where he taught the staff of our partner organization (KMDP) how he makes these pads.  He came up with the idea and the pattern on his own - he didn't even know that there are patterns for these online.  He just traces a store-bought pad on fabric and then sews the whole thing by hand.

He uses nice cotton fabric for the outer lining and then makes an insert out of cotton gauze and surgical paper.

After demonstrating, he made sure that all of the staff made one too.

Here is the one that I made:

Since there is no adhesive on these pads and snaps or velcro would make it cost more, he makes two little straps that can be tied together to hold the pad onto underwear.

I missed the day of training women in the community because I had something else to do the next day, but I am sure it was a great time.  Baker is very comfortable sharing about reproductive health to both men and women and is making a big difference in the lives of people he meets.

A New Home Project

Rabbits.  I've decided to try learning about raising rabbits.  So I got a pair from some other missionaries in town.  The female is the dark brown one and the male is the white one.

Caleb has been quite alarmed by these new creatures in his yard.  In fact, I think he is more scared of them than they are of him!

We didn't realize it when we got them, but the female, the one above, was pregnant when we got her!  So one day I was surprised to go outside in the morning to find a bunch of baby rabbits lying around in the hutch.  Unfortunately (possibly because they weren't born in a nest and I had to handle them a lot in their first day of life, they all died within a couple days.  It makes me feel like a bad rabbit-raiser.  But hopefully I will have better luck next time. 

The good news is that at least I am good at raising goats and chickens.  We had some new baby chicks hatch - eight of them - and they are doing well.  At three weeks old, they've survived a lot longer than the baby rabbits so far...

On a separate note, I have a bunch of chickens who all want to sit on eggs right now (even though I collect the eggs every day, they'll sit there anyway).  These four keep fighting over the nests.

TLT Amuria - Family Violence

Last week I went to Amuria to teach the third manual of Timothy Leadership Training – Overcoming Violence in the Family.  Before I explain what we learned in this manual, I want to give you some good news about the pastors’ reports from their action plans from manual two about stewardship. 

As usual a few plans were not successful due to challenges.  However, most of the pastors at least taught their families what they had learned, and some also taught their churches.  Between the group members, hundreds of trees were planted.  The pastor who started a poultry project to increase his family’s ability to give is now giving 25% of his income from the project to the church.  The mother below taught her children about caring for God's creation, and on their own initiative, they said, "mommy, we need to start cleaning up the rubbish in our yard, and we should probably get our own hen to take care of."  So she bought them a hen which has now produced 15-20 chicks.

Pastor Peter was successful in visiting the prison and giving soap to the prisoners, teaching them to care for their bodies.  In the process, twenty prisoners got saved!  Another pastor was falsely accused of stealing and was sent to prison for a month before he was released.  Because of this he failed to complete his action plan, but God used him while in prison and two fellow prisoners got saved!  The Mayor’s plan to clean up all the rubbish in Amuria town is not complete yet.  There has been some progress but he plans to do much more.  He has already written a draft of a law to make littering illegal. 

Remember the pastor from my last Amuria blog report who because of bad experience with a previous wife, did not trust his new wife at all and would not let her handle money or make decisions?  We had counseled him to try to trust again and that not all women are the same.  Now he reports to us that they are discussing everything about money together as a team.  They are sharing and budgeting, and everything is going great, and they even decided to build a new house by making bricks together!

We had a great time learning the new manual together.  We discussed family violence - physical, verbal, and sexual.  We looked at what the Bible says about honoring other people who are made in God's image.  We were challenged to honor people in society that are not normally honored, following the example of Jesus (people like widows, children, those with mental disabilities, those with physical disabilities).

We had difficult but powerful discussions about how to love and serve well in marriage.  Many of the pastors stood up proclaiming that we need to follow God’s commands to love and serve our wives even if that means going against the culture.  They advocated serving their wives by washing dishes, carrying water, and taking care of the children. 

While talking about marriage, the biggest issue was domestic abuse.  Many Ugandans think it’s normal and also think that wives need to be disciplined just like children.  As an outsider like me, sometimes I am surprised by Ugandan women who think that such behavior is normal and good and they even resist changing the culture.  They tend to resist men doing cooking, but I even heard stories of women insisting that real husbands know the importance of slapping their wives from time to time (but not the women of my group!).

We talked for a long time about this issue and I even did a demonstration.  We talked about how we are to love our wives as we love ourselves, so I stood up and started beating myself in front of everyone.  They got the point and will remember it well (and remember how idiotic I must have looked).  I seem to have lost almost all of my shyness I grew up with!  My favorite part of the training, without a doubt, was when some pastors emphatically declared that they had never laid a hand on their wives, and encouraged the rest of the group to do the same. 

Here are pictures of a late breakfast of maize porridge.

We spent a great deal of time talking about pornography.  It is becoming a big problem in Uganda.  In Uganda people commonly have access to it on their phones and video halls.  I was greatly disturbed to find out that many men from the village go into town, watch porn, and then go home to their wives, demand that they do the strange sexual styles they saw in the videos, and if their wives refuse, they are beaten.  These are people in rural areas, who don't speak English, being infected by American porn.  I was sad to hear that the group thought pornography made in the USA represents what Americans really do in their marriages.  People want to "play sex like the whites."  It is such a pervasive evil.  People in my group said that this is a new problem that they don't have much experience dealing with because technology is advancing so quickly.  Thankfully, after this training, these pastors are more equipped to address this topic in church and help those who are struggling.

A women's leader giving her report -

We talked about sexual abuse as well.  Of course, it happens in Uganda just like it does in the US.  We also talked about how to counsel and help victims of abuse to heal.  Some of the members opened up about their own experiences.  These trainings are very sensitive and touching, and can involve very heavy discussions.

Because many, if not most, cases of family violence have a connection to alcohol, I prepared a separate handout on alcoholism to discuss.  When I asked the group who had had a parent who was a drunkard, at least 30% raised their hands.  In fact, about 30% also confessed that they were drunkards themselves until they got saved.  I'm not sure what the issue is, but there is much drunkenness and it is causing dire poverty in addition to abuse in families.  It is very easy for me to not drink alcohol at all living in Uganda because of the pain I see around me due to alcohol abuse.

I have learned that it is very "cold" in Uganda in the mornings during the dry season.  On the first day of the training, I was in my fleece (lucky I had it), and still was cold! (It was probably 68F)

This TLT I felt more than usual that we were being spiritually attacked, that Satan really did not want us there training.  The student who had been in prison was called to court on one day of the training.  Several of the students were sick with the flu but remained in the training.  Another student had typhoid during the training but stayed.  Another student had one of his huts burn down the day before the training started and lost all his family’s food for the year and much of his clothing.  But he still came.  Others overcame great financial challenges to come.  These men and women value TLT!

Here is a brief video of Rose preaching for devotions one morning.

I am very excited about their action plans for the next three months.  Most of the plans involved training their own families or their churches in honoring God's image in others, serving others, and overcoming violence in families.

A couple of the pastors have an action plan to transform their families through their own example.  They plan to carry water for their wives, make their wives and children sit as they serve them food, give them water for washing, and do the clean up afterwards.  I said, "are you doing these things just one time?"  Their answer was clearly, "no, we are going to do it many times!"

A couple men together are going to contact the police to find out which families in Amuria town have had reports of family violence.  They are going to get permission from the police to visit and counsel these families on behalf of the police.  This is something I could never see happening in the US, but here it is apparently very doable.

Another exciting plan is that a couple of other pastors are going to try to reach out to the alcoholics in town, and hope to see at least 20 of them give up their alcohol addiction, and of course hope that they turn to Christ as well.  They have a plan to set up a type of support group (similar to AA), for those who quit, so that they can get encouragement and accountability.

Thank you for praying for me concerning these trainings!  As you can see, God is using these trainings, but there are many challenges yet to overcome.  But with our powerful God and your continued prayers, we can continue to see transformation!

Field Work in Kaberamaido

I have had the privilege to participate in some trainings on Farming God's Way (FGW) with the people from KMDP (the Kaberamaido Pentecostal church development organization).  Moses, KMDP's program manager, went to the FGW training in Kenya with me and one of the other KMDP staff members, Joy, had attended a shorter training in Uganda.  They wanted to set up some demonstration gardens with a couple communities that they work with and asked me to come do the training with them.  The hope is that this technique will help farmers to protect and improve their soil and as a result, ultimately improve their crop yields.

We enjoyed giving a demonstration of how mulching helps to prevent erosion during the rains.

Comparing the water washed off the un-mulched and mulched "fields".

Marking spacing on the ropes they would use for measuring out locations of planting holes:

Clearing the garden space ("weeding like you're never going to weed again")

Digging holes:

Mulching the field:

Checking on the garden a few weeks later, after the plants have germinated.

The participants were a little bit dismayed that their crops have been chewed on by the neighbor's goats and turkeys (since the dry season is about to start, people have released their animals, assuming that no one is growing crops anymore).  Nevertheless, they could see that the plants that were mulched are bigger and there are far fewer weeds growing amongst them.  One man also said how much he appreciated the emphasis on weeding every 10-14 days, before the weeds get a chance to grow too big.

Building Things

One of the fun benefits of having friends come to visit us is learning new things from their unique skills.  When Ben came to stay with us, he helped me to build a small chicken tractor out of PVC and chicken wire.  My intention is to use this when I try raising chicks or guinea fowl again - I can keep the hen and her babies safe inside here where they can't get attacked by Caleb!

It has really come in handy because I've been able to imprison hens inside the tractor when they are chasing other hens away from the place where they like to lay eggs.  It is also useful when someone gives me a rooster.  I can't keep too many roosters in our yard because they'll fight each other.  With the chicken tractor, I can keep one rooster in there until we eat or sell him.

Then, Emily helped me to build a clay oven!  I started the process without her, following her instructions.  First, I built a base for the oven out of bricks cemented together.  (I also put up a "tent" to be able to work in the shade)

Filled the base with gravel.

Then made insulation with the random glass bottles I was able to collect set in a clay/sand mixture.

 Mixing the building material "by hand" (feet).

We put a cement slab on top of the insulation - it's the oven floor.

Then came the arch around the oven opening and a mound of sand that holds up the walls of the oven while they dry - it gets removed.

Building the walls.

And the final step - putting on a layer of "cob" - clay/sand mixed with grass.  I shaped it into a snail shell.

Unfortunately, Emily didn't get to hang around to enjoy the fruits of her labor.  The oven had to dry before being used, so she left us before that happened.  But Marissa, another friend, got to be here for the inaugural baking.

Our first attempt was pretty disappointing.  We were too impatient to wait for the oven to heat up enough, so we got some kind of pitiful, wimpy pita breads. 

The second time, we let the oven heat up longer.  We easily made pita bread plus two loaves of whole wheat bread.  If we had had more things to bake, we could have kept going - the oven was still hot - but we already had too much bread lying around (and the flour was pretty much used up!).