Today we have another guest post from a friend who came to visit us in Soroti. Here in Uganda, they say that if you have guests coming to your house, it is a blessing. Well, we certainly feel blessed for the visitors God has sent us! You may have seen Geoff before on the blog when we were living in Texas and also when we visited friends in Tanzania last year. So, here you have the opportunity to hear a different voice than ours.
By Geoff:
Hello all!
My name is Geoffrey Tam, and I am a friend of Sara and
Anthony's from their time at World Hunger Relief, Inc., in Waco,
TX. I recently finished a year of
volunteering with the organization, the 2Seeds
Network, Inc., in Tanzania
and could not resist the desire to drop by Soroti to visit the Sytsmas to see
what life is like in their shoes (or Chacos) before heading home to the States.
Much to my delight and edification, my brief time here in Uganda
has afforded me the chance to observe our friends in their element: shifting
unproductive paradigms through simple and practical teachings, touching the
lives of local people through genuine care and relationship-building, and fluttering
around the homestead playing video games and digging around in the garden.
A number of my days in Soroti were spent at a series of
trainings compiled by Anthony based on the book When Helping Hurts, by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. If you're
not familiar with this book, it is a fantastic resource for churches and
individuals in North America focused on the idea of
caring for the world's poor and needy in ways that are productive and helpful
for both the care-giver and receiver. This resource has been adapted by Anthony
into a multi-day training aimed at pastors and other community leaders in Uganda
to help them more effectively and comprehensively understand poverty and the
best ways to respond to it. Having just come from a year of volunteering in the
international development context, I was especially interested in hearing what
our Ugandan friends had to say about these issues and to be reminded of God's
Word on the subject, as well.
Overall, Sara and Anthony did an amazing job walking the
participants through a neat arrangement of lectures, discussions and activities
in a way that allowed for full participation and a methodical progression
through the subject matter. One of the first ideas to hit me upside the head
was the concept of God's kingdom here on Earth and its "already but not
yet" quality. While we experience some of the redemption that Jesus has
brought to Creation now, we know that all things will not be fully made right
until He comes again. When we look at the world, we can clearly see, for
example, that while God has provided material blessings for many people,
poverty persists. If we apply the already but not yet idea to our understanding
of poverty, we can see that, while the church cannot eliminate all poverty, it
is also not powerless against it! Brokenness remains in the world, but
redemption is also happening now. This idea formed a critical foundation of
hope for me in regards to the rest of the material.
Another interesting tidbit arose from a conversation on the
question of what we and our churches could to do to become more centered on
Jesus as well as his kingdom, which
caused a pastor in my group to pose this thought-nugget to us all: "Uganda
is a Christian nation yet we are notorious for our high levels of corruption. I
think that as believers we have no roots; we are just shallow. How can we move
from a theoretical faith to a practical one?"
His question made me reflect on two things:
1. the
discussion on faith vs. deeds in James 2 and
2. advice that I received from a
friend in college: "it's easier to act yourself into a feeling than to
feel yourself into an action."
In a way, our friend's question is kind of
the crux of the Christian walk: how do we get our faith to translate from our
head to our heart to our hands? While I'm currently the odd man out in the
Sytsma compound not having attended seminary, I hope it's not too trite
to suggest that maybe one way to approach the problem is to reverse the process
and to start with the hands. James writes, "show me your faith without
deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds." Maybe our actions will
lead to greater faith just as we expect our faith to lead to greater actions.
I'll just mention one last moment which occurred during an
activity on asset-based community development wherein participants were asked
to undermine the idea that they had no assets by making lists of all the
resources available to them. In response to the question of whether this
activity made them feel poor:
"No, I feel that I am somewhere very far," and
"[This activity] is re-opening our minds."
While there were many more sentiments expressing equal appreciation
for the training and for its facilitators ("the Anthony's" as I've
heard they are sometimes called), these were the ones which most resonated with
me; I'm sure the Anthony's can fill you in on the rest!
Betty, Lazarus and Eric present their illustration
of community development to the group
On the fifth day, God filled the oceans and the skies with
living things; on our fifth day together, however, we had the unique
opportunity of conducting a rapid disaster response assessment for World Renew
in conjunction with local partners from government and church organizations. The
disaster itself was a grisly one, although, despite two deaths, not many people
were physically harmed. The short version of the story is that one community
attacked another in response to the murder of one of its members, and the
result was that many houses were burned, food stores and possessions destroyed
or stolen, and more than 500 people affected. In response to its plight, the
Sytsmas traveled to the community itself, representing World Renew to work with
local government and church officials to assess the situation and begin
organizing assistance. (And I was there too!)
Examples of granaries that have been burned in the
incident
While it's always tricky to make a partnership between
organizations work in light of cultural and other differences, it is something
that I really appreciate about how World Renew operates. Instead of instantly
jettisoning off a stream of mosquito nets and sacks of grain to the site of the
incident, as some NGOs might be tempted to do, the process of working through
the already established local networks, while perhaps less efficient and
"messier" in the short term, ensures not only that the affected community
is served what it truly needs, but
also that the local network's presence and its abilities are reinforced and
even strengthened. Having the opportunity to see the response team gather
together, organize their resources and their plan of action and mobilize to
serve the affected community (packing into the Sytsma vehicle like so many
smiling, bubbly sardines) was as authentic a development experience as I could
have ever hoped to see! While relief is on its way, please remember to keep
this community in Kaberamaido in your thoughts and prayers!
Having had the privilege of witnessing Anthony's primary
work - the teaching of pastors and church leaders - in action, it was now time
for me to tune into what Sara was doing, consulting local organizations working
with farmers and to get a little taste of village life! After an hour and a
half of bumping and bumbling our way over muddy roads, we found ourselves in
one of the villages that works with a World Renew partner on agricultural
development. Sara's primary aim recently has been the introduction of certain
conservation agriculture principles, primarily soil cover and intercropping
maize with well-known green manure cover crops (gm/ccs) such as lablab, jack
bean, and velvet bean (otherwise known as mucuna).
Farmers there have implemented a number of demonstration
plots, which are observable below, to compare practices such as mulching and
applying manure with control treatments and early results have been dramatic.
While the recent drought has made conditions harsh for maize in general, it is
immediately clear that treatments which included mulch, manure or a combination
fared much better than control treatments. Furthermore, when asked whether the
demonstration had convinced her to implement the practices on a larger scale,
one farmer replied with an emphatic yes, citing her reason as mulching being
ultimately less labor intensive than multiple cycles of weeding. For someone
like me who has always wondered if farmers could get on board with new
agricultural technologies, especially ones that were labor-intensive in the early
stages, this was exciting news indeed!
The foreground represents maize that did not
receive mulch or manure. The background shows maize that received both mulch
and manure.
It is also evident in the pictures that, while the maize
suffered greatly in the water deficient conditions, the gm/ccs were able to
establish well almost 100% across the board. This is encouraging as the gm/ccs
are ultimately what will improve the soil fertility and structure and set up a
better environment for the maize to grow in for future cropping cycles.
Much like Anthony's model of teaching people who will then
go forth and teach others, the farmers that Sara has been working with have
operated on a similar principle, with certain "resource leaders"
serving as conductors of training, encouragement and support for farmer groups
in their area. Overall, I was very impressed and uplifted by what I saw and am
hopeful that Sara's agricultural work can continue to reap such fruit!
Resource Leader Joseph standing amidst a mulched maize
demo plot.
Far from being a week stacked with work from cover to cover,
my time here has also been marked by great rest and relaxation! Since Sara
first mentioned her successful construction of a clay oven, I have been itching
to see it in action, and you can bet that we put that thing to work while I
was here! Besides the cornucopia of baked goods that we called forth to spew from
the mouth of the oven, we also gathered our wits about us long enough to put
together a pair of delicious pizzas!
Also, something that you should know about the Sytsmas, if
you don't already, is that they are not afraid of sweets. Having come from a
year in a secluded rural village in Northeast Tanzania
with little access to sugary treats, the profusion of cookies, brownies, and
fudge that I experienced here was like a nourishing rain called down by the
prophet Elijah on the parched lands of my tummy.
Besides eating things and making things to eat at later
dates, we found time to be active as well (if perhaps only as an excuse to
later eat a ton of things for the sake of reconstituting our bodies), and I had
a particularly good time getting to know a new member of the family, Caleb, the
only Sytsma I am aware of whose love language is chewing.
Biking to church!
In the end, my visit here in Soroti has given me great
insight into what it is to live and work in the mission field and to serve
people's spiritual and material needs. I have observed the challenges and
rewards of partnering with local organizations as well as the importance of
teaching teachers. I have seen firsthand the daily struggles and been blessed
to witness the joys as well.
Many thanks to Anthony and Sara for accommodating me, making
me feel welcome and for encouraging me as I continue to make my way to God's
calling in my life. Hopefully we will be able to spend time together again
soon!
