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!

Stories from HWHIA trainings

By Anthony:

I am leading many Helping Without Hurting in Africa trainings these days. In this post I'd like to share some highlights.

I can still get nervous even after all this time. Partly this is because many of our participants are very busy people with important positions - bishops, heads of organizations, development workers, denominational leaders, etc. Fears still come that people won't appreciate the training or that I am not capable enough. But the reality is that much of the learning comes from the discussions, and our material is excellent at generating important and deep discussions. There are new things I learn from participants every time.

I love seeing the impact made on organizations and churches, that they actually consider real practical changes to their ministry practices to better help materially poor people in Africa. I love inspiring people to have a deeper love for the poor. I love being able to teach the good news of the Gospel at every training, talking about justification by faith, the Kingdom of God, teaching against the prosperity gospel, and much more. I don't love the travel, but I love what God has given me to do right now! I am generally limiting myself to one international training per month, and my schedule is booked up about 9 months out. Below, see my coauthor Jonny teaching:

There was one new simple initiative that came about from another missionary, Debbie Nutzmann. She helped to organize a training for us in Jinja, Uganda. She came up with the idea of locally printing these stickers and giving them out to the participants for them to put on their phones or laptops. I thought it was awesome! So we took up the idea and now we give them out at each of our trainings. It is a great way to freely advertise the material. More importantly, I think it's a great conversation starter. When people ask about a sticker, it gives participants a chance to share what they learned about poverty alleviation.

One participant put it on his vehicle. Very cool.

My coauthor Jonny Kabiswa is the main person I lead trainings along with. But sometimes we divide and teach in different places with other facilitators. We are trying to raise up a team of facilitators and coach them well so that we have people we can recommend to interested organizations. This is a high level training and some of these facilitators have Master's Degrees or PHDs or else extensive experience in community development or church ministry. Here are three facilitators from Ghana and Togo who work for the Chalmers Center, or joined us to lead a training in Accra, Ghana:

David Fugoyo helped us lead a training in Kampala. He is from South Sudan but lives in Uganda. He is one of The Gospel Coalition Africa council members and also a contributor to the Africa Study Bible.

From the previously mentioned Jinja training, here is a photo with some of our co-facilitators and hosts. We actually had 8 other facilitators besides Jonny and me at this training.

The Jinja training group as a whole:

Monica, a co-facilitator in Jinja shared an interesting story. She was visiting Germany some years ago. A man asked her what country she was from and she told him she was from Uganda. He said, "Ohhhhhhh, you are from Amin's country!" And without losing a moment, she said back with a smile, "yessss and you are from Hitler's country."

I think this story is really illuminating. Most of us in the West would immediately and instinctively know that it would be seem rude and offensive to even mention Hitler to anyone from Germany, unless in a serious conversation about history. People don't want their country to be associated with that one time in history. Why don't we think the same way when it comes to African countries? Surely Ugandans don't want their country only to to be thought of and associated with one of their very worst times in history. Their country is more than that bad president. They have a beautiful country and are proud of it.

This is just a small example of a larger issue of the narrative in the West about Africa being so often just negative: lack of development, famine, bandits, violence. Of course, there are some famines and violence, but the negative narrative needs to be balanced with the true positive stories of Africa - beautiful joyful people, hard-working innovative people, hospitable cultures, thriving developed cities, passionate churches strong in faith, etc.

One of our recent trainings was in Malawi and it was very cold! I wished I had a winter coat. I got sick with fever, nausea, and digestive issues at the end of our time there and I could not get warm, even with all the blankets in the bed. Traveling back on the airplane while sick was a nightmare, but God sent me a Christian stewardess from Ethiopian Airlines who bumped me up to first class and took good care of me. Some photos from Malawi:

One thing that always comes up in our trainings is the importance of trust for development in a society, and the church's role in building trust in a society. But trust is a big problem in places like Uganda. You can read on the back of many taxis and buses the slogan, "never trust somebody." When I ask my Ugandan friends, most tell me they don't have a single person they fully trust in their life. I usually shock our training participants by talking about how I will send mobile money to people in Kampala I meet over social media, who I've never met in person before, paying them for a product to send it on the bus to me, trusting that they will actually do so and not just keep my money. Of course I have no possible way to track them down or figure out who they are. And yet I've never been cheated even once. It may happen someday, but I do this all the time and haven't been burned yet.

Here is a further reflection I have on trust. When someone warns you, "don't trust anyone" or sometimes, "you can't trust anyone in this country" or "anyone from this group,"  I think it is very likely that one of these things is true about that person:

1. They have been deeply wounded by someone breaking their trust and are now assuming all others are the same way.

2. They are not a trustworthy person themselves. They can't believe others would act in an honest way because they don't themselves.

3. They feel a deep sense of shame and hopelessness about the corruption of their own people.

For missionaries, it is often #1. They can take one bad experience in a relationship with someone in their host country, and then stereotype everyone else and never attempt to trust someone again. This has really hurt many relationships with Africans in particular who feel pre-judged by missionaries who won't give them a chance to be trusted.

However, unfortunately, it is often Ugandans who will warn missionaries not to trust anyone. It sometimes is from #2, but more often from #3. I wonder if it was foreigners in the past who made Ugandans to feel like everyone is corrupt and not to be trusted. But my experience now is that it is Ugandans themselves who are the ones perpetuating that lie. And they often cannot believe the trust I will place in people that they never would.

The lesson for all of us I think is to keep on building trust by giving people a chance. Trusting is an act of love, and every time you trust someone it's an opportunity for more trust to be built up.

The training in Ghana was really fun because they had great spicy food and a lot of seafood. I enjoyed trying a lot of new things.

This meal had cow skin, leg joints, fish, and crabs and was my favorite. With an okra sauce. This was the first time I ever ate crabs like this with the shell on. You just take a bite of them with the shell still on, very crunchy. You eat the whole shell. It was a lot of fun. I am adventurous when it comes to eating almost any type of animal. What is hard for me is eating fruits. Thankfully in Africa fruits are mostly served as dessert, so it's okay to pass on them. 

This was greens and tuna over rice.

There are a lot of criticisms today against sending missionaries to "reached" countries, rather than to unreached countries. I understand that criticism and agree with much of it. We are not sending enough missionaries to unreached tribes and places. It bothers my heart enough to make me feel guilty sometimes, am I in the right place? But I want to present another side that people don't often consider when it comes to missions today. 

In one of our trainings (I won't say which one), I was teaching a group of Christian leaders, educated leaders, who have been in church all their lives. As I was teaching them about justification by faith, I realized that for 90% of them, what I was teaching was basically new for them, that they are hearing it for the first time. Up to this point, they mainly were taught salvation through Christ but also by works. They fear God's judgment, never knowing if they have been good enough. Then some of the leaders also learned for the first time about the goodness of our bodies, and how we will be resurrected physically like Jesus was, not just living in Heaven forever as disembodied spirits. This was totally new for some of them.

On such days, when I get to spend hours teaching people how to understand the good news for the first time, in an overwhelmingly Christian country, I remember why we also need missionaries in such places.  Being "Christian" in name, does not mean that everyone in a country calling themselves "Christian" actually knows the Gospel.  In some countries the vast majority of people call themselves Christians because they believe that God exists, and because they call on him for help with food and finding a job, and because they know they are not Muslim. So they say they are Christian. 

I try to be the biggest proponent of what we can learn from African churches, but the other side of the coin is that there is still a great need for teaching and discipleship here. 

A participant said he thinks only 5% of churches in his country preach the true Gospel, the rest preach prosperity or salvation by works. He and several others told me later that if they preach the true Gospel they will be scolded or pushed out of their church. So they told me I need to stay in their country longer so that I could preach in their churches. I was of course so glad to see their excitement for the Gospel and wanting their churches to hear it! But I assured them that they could preach it themselves, and tried to encourage them to preach it despite the consequences.

Photos of a training group of all pastors in Moyo, Uganda near the South Sudan border.

Here are some random things that have come up in trainings - 

• An example of unintended hurting while trying to help that a participant shared. The UN or World Bank apparently shares weather predictions and shares about possible rain shortages or flooding. Apparently, farmers will often view those predictions as "what is going to happen" with the result that if they are told there will be floods or famines they won't even bother to plant at all.
• A participant said - "Fathers, give the girl child the gizzard!" Sometimes, mostly in the past, certain meats would not be served to women or girls, but saved for the father or boys.
• There is still belief in charms and witchcraft in many places in Africa. I learned that sometimes a person will pay a witchdoctor and they will scoop up soil underneath where another person has walked. Then they believe the witchdoctor will have power to do rituals against that person using the soil.
• Related to witchcraft, there is a lot of African traditional religion that has been syncretized into Christianity, especially in prosperity gospel churches. A participant's friend paid her pastor to come to her house to cleanse it of spirits. He did so by cutting in half an orange, then putting salt in it and sticking it to the window. Problem solved.
• One participant in Ghana shared his life story about struggling to develop himself. His father was not able to do much for him because he was the last child, child #50. His father has 8 wives and could not take care of all of the children adequately. 
• In one lesson, we discuss gleaning laws in the Old Testament concerning not completely harvesting your field, and leaving something for others to come and do the work of harvesting. One participant in Rwanda did gleaning as a child to get money for shoes and school fees. At that time people congratulated him and appreciated him for doing so. Neighbors welcomed him. But things have changed. They tell me no one allows people to do that anymore in Rwanda. People are more individualistic and life is generally more competitive. The same is true in Uganda.         
        Although people's standard of living is incredibly vastly improved from say the 1950s, the population has grown exponentially, education is prioritized much more and education is expensive. People are better off financially compared to 50 or 70 years ago, but school fees are so expensive that it seems everyone is constantly struggling with debts and poverty. This has resulted in people being more self-focused and sharing less with others.
  

Photos from Rwanda:

We have a lesson which looks at orphanages/children's homes and caring for vulnerable children. In most training groups, participants favor other approaches to care for children besides orphanages. In Rwanda, many orphanages have been shut down by the government.

But in one group in Northern Uganda, surprised me by being more in favor of orphanages. They say that communal culture has been eroded and spoiled through NGOs giving handouts and child sponsorship. They said that orphanages are better because when relatives take orphaned children into their homes, they often treat them as servants while treating their own children really well. When organizations try to support such families rather than orphanages, the parents will often use the money they receive for themselves rather than for the orphan. Or they will send their biological children to good and expensive schools and send the orphan to a bad school. 

Issues like this make an already complicated topic very complex to work through. I sympathize with the NGOs who are trying to help vulnerable children, getting criticized sometimes by people like me, but struggling to know the best approaches. I generally think that 90% of our energy should be in strengthening communities and families to support vulnerable children, and 10% in children's homes and orphanages. But I don't have all the answers either.

Last, here are a few testimonies from a training group in Liberia, a group I did not lead.

Sam - (in response to what is in our manual about caring for God's creation) "After the teaching I was taking some passengers in my taxi and I threw some plastic out the window. I said “Oh no I forgot" and I stopped the car and went back and picked it up. My passengers thought I was crazy at first but later after I explained I think they respected me."

Ab - (in response to what our manual teaches about culture and a biblical worldview) "Culture does not need to control us; we have God." 

Elvis - "I talked with my strong neighbor for 45 minutes the other evening. He has a problem with laziness and drinking but he came asking for money. So after we talked he left saying thank you for the help even though he never received any money. But he had many ideas to go and think on."