Visit to Milmil - Anthony's perspective

Sara and I both wanted to write about our last weekend in the village and talk about different things.  Please read her post first.

Here are some pictures of our drive from Soroti to Milmil village.  This time we drove ourselves.  We still don't want to drive in Kampala, and we still don't exactly relax while driving, but we feel much more confident and safe now.  We are more used to a manual transmission, used to driving on the left, and good at dodging cows and potholes on the road. 

At the end of our journey to get to their home, we had to leave the road and drive on the footpaths.  When we do this I always worry about driving over crops.

We drove with a staff member from KIDO, named Andrew Ben.  He is a pastor who now works full-time for KIDO managing the PEP program.  We are just learning about PEP, Participatory Evaluation Process.  If you go to the link, you can read more about PEP and read some testimonies of its results as used by PAG in Uganda.  Andrew explained the program to us in detail over the weekend and I am thoroughly impressed by what I heard.  It has very similar ideas and themes to the book When Helping Hurts.  Over the next weeks I will be teaching a couple hundred pastors the principles from this book with the semi-informal curriculum I've developed, and my training will coincide nicely with what they are already doing with PEP in Amuria and Katakwi. 

Andrew informed us that it takes three years to go through PEP with a single community.  He starts by training the PAG pastors in the PEP Bible studies.  Eventually the pastors take the rest of their church members (and members of other denominations in the community) through the same Bible studies.  Then they start thinking about what assets their community has and how to develop their community on their own.  The results have been amazing by the sounds of it.  One community broke down denominational barriers and all of the churches raised money together to build each others' church buildings one at a time, and started worshiping together regularly.  Another community started a nursery school.  People recognize what assets they have and start new projects like citrus orchards or producing bricks to sell.  Andrew reported to us that part of the program had them look at the amount of work husbands and wives did during the day.  Husbands broke down in confession before God and their wives at the lack of work they do compared to their wives, that it is not right to treat their wives as slaves.  They are now changing their work habits.  Andrew reported that people are realizing it is not good to depend financially on "the whites."  People are looking at their own resources and how they can multiply them as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes to feed the 5000 (one of the Bible studies).  Churches are now thinking about holistic ministry.  What KIDO is doing with PEP almost makes me wonder if my "When Helping Hurts" training will be redundant, but I hope it serves to deepen and reinforce what pastors have already learned through PEP.

Back to the village visit - We went on a two-hour walk on Friday afternoon while it was raining.  The temperature dropped considerably and we were moderately cold.  But the Ugandans were very cold!  Our host family had many children around and they joined us on our walk.  And then during our walk, every time we passed a new home we picked up a few more children.  This video shows about half the number of total children we had by the midpoint of the walk.  It was very fun, and I had fun joking around with the kids and at one point jumping and scaring them, which they thoroughly enjoyed.  Probably the first time a muzungu has ever roared at them!

At some point during the weekend, we talked about clothing styles.  Someone wondered if American boys, who sag their trousers so that their underwear is showing, are gay.  We have no idea how they got that idea, but we agreed that it was a strange fashion style.  One Ugandan described it as if they had defecated in their trousers and were walking around that way :)

The "mzee" (old man in Swahili), the patriarch of the home we stayed at, was a very funny man.  I enjoyed hanging out with him.  He even said we could come build a house on his land and he would share his land with us.  Here are some pictures of videos of him giving us some entertainment.  First, he showed us his spear he uses for hunting.  (He also has six dogs which he uses for hunting).



He hunts things like antelope and rabbit, but in the past he killed leopards with this spear.  He wished he could have shown us the skins but all of his animal skins were burned when Karamajong cattle raiders came some years back to violently raid this area of Teso.  Some of these armed groups were one hundred strong with AK-47s.  Iteso people were often murdered in addition to cattle being stolen.  These raids have become more rare, nearly obsolete, as the government is disarming the neighboring tribe of the Karamajong, but they happen once in a while still in small ways with only a couple cattle stolen.  Here is a video of him throwing his spear and his cry of victory at making a kill.

I got to try it out too!

Here he is with his daughter showing us a bit of traditional dancing.  They are saying "thank you" over and over again, and our names are thrown in there a bit too.

He also showed us his chameleon.  It's not really a pet, but unlike other Ugandans they do not superstitiously fear it, and do not wish to kill it.  So he lets it hang out in his banana tree and eat flies.  According to my reptile book (and confirmed by an expert over email), this is a "Slender Chameleon."

And his daughter made a traditional baby carrier out of a goat skin to show us.

This is the latrine we used for the weekend:

The Iteso people have been through a lot.  Between Joseph Kony's LRA, and the Karamajong, and droughts and floods, it seems to never get easier for them.  We were surprised to find out that many of the people we fellowshipped with from this community had only returned home from the IDP camps three years ago.  They were actually still living in the camps when we were in Uganda in 2009.  Things were safe already from the LRA in 2009, but it takes a while for people to be ready to return home and start all over from scratch, leaving the security of the camp, after being in the camp for ten years.  It's hard to imagine what life in a camp like that for ten years would be.  So much disease, squalor, boredom, and claustrophobia.  Here is a picture of where the camp was in this village.  We walked by it and the latrines were still there and are being used.

At church on Sunday I preached at Okuda PAG -the village we walked to on Saturday to meet groups KIDO works with.  Interestingly they had a woman pastor, not too common here, even though it is allowed in PAG.  Here is a picture and video of some of the singing.  

  

Here are a few more pictures around the home at the place we stayed.

How many of you let your baby play with a machete?  :)

Kids hiding from the rain.

On a long walk on Saturday we found this chameleon crossing the road.  It is a "Smooth Chameleon."  I decided to keep him for a pet.  This might seem odd and against good environmental practices but it is actually a great idea in East Africa.  People usually hate chameleons and view them as bad luck and have many other superstitious beliefs about them.  They usually kill them.  By having one as a pet, people will see there is nothing to fear and that they are good to keep around.  I built a cage for him outside, and eventually you'll get to see more pictures of him.

 During the weekend I needed some way to feed my new chameleon, and God provided a shower of "white ants" which are actually flying termites.  They were flying all over the place and they are easy to catch.  And my chameleon liked to eat them. You can just make them out in this picture as they catch the rays of the morning sun.  I had fun catching them before church.

 

But to my surprise, my chameleon was not going to be the only one eating them.  We were served them after lunch as a treat.  We both ate them, and I must say the taste is just fine!  But it is very difficult for me to pick them up, these small grub-like creatures, and put them in my mouth.  I'll leave them for Sara.  This morning they were swarming into our kitchen under the door and Sara was catching them to cook later.  I think I chose the right woman to go to Africa with.

The First Village Visit of 2014

To begin our work here in Uganda, we are going to have a bit of immersion the lives of people in villages where KIDO has projects going on.  Since Anthony will be interacting with pastors from these communities and I will be working directly with the farmers, it seemed to be a good idea for us to spend some time living with them.

This past Friday through Sunday we stayed with the family of Moses and Joyce in Otubet village, Amuria district.  As we drove up they ran out and welcomed us with waving flags and ululations.  (It turns out that I visited this same village when we were in Uganda in November 2012 so I recognized people at church on Sunday!)
The parents:

And the whole family (they have eight children):

To be honest, this visit was more difficult than the many village visits we did while living in Uganda before, but only because we were staying with people we did not know, while before we stayed with people who were our friends already.  It made it a bit more challenging to have conversations when none of us knew what to expect of the other.  This also caused some funny situations.

For example, we helped Moses and Joyce with clearing part of one of their fields in preparation for planting.  I don’t think they realized that we actually have experience with farming and have the endurance to work with a hoe for more than ten minutes.  We had to keep assuring them that we were fine and could keep working, but even then, they wouldn’t let us work for more than half an hour!  People on the road kept stopping to watch us.  It was surely a sight they've never seen before.

The first day, I had the interesting experience of being treated somewhat like a Ugandan woman. This had never happened to me before.  For example, I spent time in the kitchen hut with them, was offered a mat on the ground to sit on rather than a chair, and ate separately from the men.

I helped Carol, the oldest daughter, a little bit with the process of turning peanuts into peanut butter and watched the women cooking in their kitchen.

While Anthony sat with the men on chairs, I got to sit on a mat to eat with some of the ladies.

However, I learned more Ateso than Anthony did because all the young children came over after school and sat with me, teaching me one word at a time.

On Saturday, we walked to another nearby village and visited some of the people who have been assisted through KIDO’s programs.  It was good for me to meet people I'll work with and to have them meet me.  Everywhere we went, people fed us food.  We felt like all we did during the day was eat!  I also want to point out that if people in the US south think they have a monopoly on sweet tea, they have no idea.  When people served us tea that had sugar already added to it, we had trouble getting it down, it was so sweet - I finished off a cup of hot tea and there was still about a tablespoon of undissolved sugar left in the bottom of the mug!

Part of the walk took place on this old railroad.

We also learned a new game, called omwezo.  It is similar to mancala, but more complicated.

 
Later that afternoon Anthony and Geofrey (one of the KIDO field workers who came to spend the day with us and our hosts) enjoyed playing Ugandan traditional instruments together.  Here is a video of a little African beat that Geofrey taught Anthony on an instrument similar to a xylophone.

That evening, a group of musicians came to Moses’ house to practice for church.  They played and danced for at least two hours and it was the most amazing music!  It was one of the most enjoyable concerts we've ever been to and we had front row seats.

On Sunday, they played the music for the worship service too.  We love going to a church where these traditional instruments are played, rather than an electric keyboard, since the music is so beautiful and it is easier to hear the words to the songs.  Anthony preached as well which he will write about in another post.  Here are some videos of the worship songs at church:

We were surprised when Achiku Julius, who was a student at Pentecostal Bible College in Mbale while we taught there showed up at church as part of the band.  It is exciting to see all these people we know again and so often it is random and unexpected!

Some other pictures.  This is where we bathed:

Some of the buildings of the house and the rack for drying dishes:

Before we left, people from the church came to see us off.  I will be out in the fields with many of these women once the rains begin.  They were happy to hear that I love farming and am looking forward to working with them soon.

The community was incredibly generous, sending us home with matooke, bananas, oranges, peanuts, eggs, and two hens.  We hope that we can be as generous with what we have as they were to us! 

Anthony's Thoughts on the Village Weekend

If you know me well, you know that I, Anthony, am rather long-winded and write a lot.  I already made Sara add many of the videos to her blog post on our visit to Otubet village.  Read her post first.  But there's more interesting stuff I wanted to say below.

For much of Friday I was just sitting and talking to our host, Moses, and some other men from the community.  It was a difficult time because they were very limited in their English, and I was very limited in my Ateso.  In fact, it was too difficult most of the time for them to understand my question, "how do I say ____  in Ateso?"  One of the men sitting with us was deaf and mute and I think he understood more of what was going on than I did.  So that was difficult, but things improved steadily over the weekend as we got used to the way each other spoke.  While speaking to these men, I asked them how old they thought I was.  They thought I was probably eighteen, which they had thought seemed young to already be a reverend :)

It was beautiful each morning in the village as you can see in the picture below. Saturday morning we were actually quite cold (though I doubt it was colder than 65F).  It's amazing how much the temperature fluctuates.  By Saturday midday we were roasting in 95 or so degrees.  

It was interesting to see how the family brushed their teeth in the mornings.  Since they cannot always afford toothbrushes or toothpaste, they just use sticks on their teeth.  We still used our toothbrushes that we brought and we drank filtered or boiled water, but we did adapt to village life in other ways.  We used the squatty potties.  We ate with our hands instead of forks (which is difficult with things like rice and lots of broth).  And we slept on a very small single bed together with one pillow.  (Ugandans don't sleep with pillows out in the village, so we brought one of our own and a mosquito net).

One of the highlights of the weekend for the family and the community was definitely Sara's artwork.  Here is a picture she drew of part of the home, and you can see how happy Moses is about it.  Over the weekend she kept entertaining people, especially the children, as she drew portraits of family members and band members.

One of the KIDO staff, Geofrey, (pronounced Joffrey), was with us much of the time as he does agricultural work in this community for KIDO.  We enjoyed getting to know him.  He told of how during the years of the Lord's Resistance Army, he almost starved to death hiding in the bush as a child.  But Geofrey values God's grace.  He spoke of how he hopes Kony will return home and come to know Jesus so that God can use him in great ways in sharing his testimony to reach more people for Christ.  If you think about what Geofrey went through because of Kony, it's amazing that he has this spirit of forgiveness.

The weekend was very interesting theologically.  Firstly, it seems that many of the people are somewhat superstitious about reverends and about muzungus.  Being that I am both a reverend and a muzungu there was a lot of superstition about me.  People said that God would bless them with rain because of my visit.

Church on Sunday started late.  It was supposed to start at 8:30 but people didn't really show up until 9:30 or 10:00.  I had a fun time preaching in their small village church.  Geofrey translated for me and he did a great job.  I preached on the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19.  I talked about how our giving of money should be a response to God's grace and his acceptance of us because of Christ, such as was the case for Zacchaeus.  Zacchaeus was accepted by Christ and then was transformed, and then became exceedingly generous.  It was not that he was generous in order to obtain forgiveness or God's favor.  Geofrey told me he had never heard this concept before and was quite sure it was the first time the people there heard it as well.  The common idea in Uganda is that we give out of obedience to a law or to earn blessings from God, and nothing is mentioned about giving with joy out of gratitude for our salvation, or giving as part of our worship.   I hit home the good news of the free Gospel in this sermon and felt like it was a very worthwhile visit for this time of preaching alone.  Here is a picture of Geofrey and me preaching.

After the service, I prayed for people who came up to the front for prayer.  Every person that I prayed for had some kind of health problem, one diabetes, one was going blind gradually, and others had either malaria or other unknown sicknesses.  It was quite disturbing to see how very many people of the small church were sick and asking for prayer.  I hope in the goodness and power of our Lord Jesus, that he heard my prayers and is working to heal some of these people.

New Members of our Homestead

It's hard to blog about the so very many things happening here all the time, and we don't want to inundate you with every detail of our lives.  But it's time for a post about the new folks around our place.

First we have a new night guard. We are used to this as we had one last time in Uganda.  We are using Saracen guard company and so far we've mostly had one guard, Lawrence, except for when he has days off, and then the company sends someone else.  He is friendly and seems to be doing a good job.  He is usually all smiley but I think he wanted to look fierce for the photo below.  His family does not stay here in town, so he is away from them much of the time.  His three year old daughter, Mercy, has some kind of bad sickness so please pray for her.  Lawrence comes from 5:00pm to 7:00am each day.  We always feed him some kind of snack, like fruit and ground nuts (peanuts).

One thing that is new for us this year is that we have people who are at our house for security during the day as well.  This is necessary because we are muzungus (white people) and people think we are rich, and might watch the place to steal things while we are away.  It's not anything to be afraid about, but it's good to have someone around just to watch the place as we will be often away for week-long evaluations or trainings.  This is also helpful in that it provides someone to watch our animals while we are away.  They also help with cleaning the compound, cutting the grass, and other similar outside the house chores.  It's a bit uncomfortable for us as it makes us feel like rich, lazy muzungus, but we make sure to treat them as people rather than servants.  And sometimes we insist on doing chores ourselves even though it can be hard for them to let us do so :)   We felt better upon learning that even Ugandans often have people like this to watch their places and take care of their compounds while they are at their jobs.

Even though it's somewhat uncomfortable, it's proven to be a very helpful system already, freeing up some time in our busy schedules and having good people around to ask questions to.  We also can practice Ateso with them.   We have two men, Herbert and Paul, who take alternate weeks, so that each ends up working two weeks a month.  Someone is always around, either one of these workers, or the night guard, at all times.  It's not best for us both being introverts, but our compound is big enough that it is not so bad.  Here is a photo of Herbert below.  He used to work for Jim Zylstra years ago, so he came with good recommendation.  He is very skilled and though not a carpenter, built an excellent chicken coop for us which is housing a couple hens already.  These pictures show the work while still in progress.

Here is a picture of our other day person, Paul.  He has been mentored by one of our pastor friends from the Pentecostal Theological College and so came with our friend's recommendation.  It turns out he also was one of the cooks at Pentecostal Theological College while we were there!  This week is his first week at our place.

Last week, I sent Herbert around to ask about puppies, so that we could get one.  He found a home that had one last puppy, the last to go of his siblings.  I drove there with Herbert and we bought him for 5,000 shillings, about $2.00.  He was quite filthy and it was hard to even touch him at first because he was infested with fleas and who knows what kinds of little biting things.  He was all covered in scabs.  But we cleaned him well.  I haven't had much time with him yet because we were away this weekend at the village, but I named him "Caleb" before we left, which means "dog" in Hebrew.  I'll start training him this week now that he is comfortable with me and the place.  Dogs here eat posho (kind of like mashed potatoes consistency but made of corn meal) and small fish, and as puppies, some milk.  He is very playful and fun.  Enjoy these pictures and a video.  (Now you have even more incentive to visit us).