Update from Dave in Uganda #3

Day 5 & 6 – The Weekend

Weekends are a special time here in Uganda. The banks are closed, as are most of the schools. Fee payments grind to a halt and we are able to focus our attention on the children themselves. For the past nine years, Kiwatule EPC has hosted a Saturday school for all the kids in the project. Students begin arriving just after 8 am and things wrap up somewhere around noon. It’s a great time to hear the students sing, watch traditional Ugandan dance and have an hour or so for instruction. This week, I was the guest lecturer. I found out late Friday night that they wished for me to teach for an hour on the “perils and pitfalls of fornication.”

I had apparently volunteered for the task, albeit accidentally. I made a passing comment after visiting one of our students who has been chased from the project after her second pregnancy that we should do some group teaching on the subject of pre-marital sex. Next thing I know, I am before 75 teenage boys and girls teaching through some scriptural guidelines for proper sexual expression and then answering questions. Elder Jim spent the same time teaching the little children the story of David and Goliath. Who got the short stick on this one?

Sunday means church…all day. It’s hard to describe what a worship gathering is like. It’s part dance, part singing, part testimony and a whole lot of preaching. As the guest of honor, I was given the task of preaching. I spoke for just over an hour on “Forming and Fashioning God into Our Image.” As I was coming to the end of my message, I looked up at the clock and asked my interpreter if there was enough time for me to look at one more passage. Before he could reply, Jim spoke up from the front row and said, “That’s enough!” I took that as my cue to close in prayer. We returned to the guest house just after 2 pm and I slept soundly for nearly 4 hours. I guess I was more exhausted than I thought. Week two begins tomorrow.

Day 7 - August 30

After a restless night of sleep in which my lower legs were a buffet for a mosquito who got trapped inside my mosquito net, I headed out with Jim and the rest of the team for the long trek to Mokono. Mokono lies northeast of Kampala on the road to Jinja. We have several students in St. Joseph Secondary School. Most of these students are orphaned or from single-parent households and have been with the project since it’s beginning. It has been a joy to watch them grow as I have watched my own children grow. It’s hard to believe that many of them will soon sit for their O-Level exams (the equivalent of completing 10th grade). The results of those tests and their cumulative scores during their O-Levels will determine their future. Those who test high and have accumulated 12 or more credits are eligible to go on and study in A-Levels. Those who fail to meet those standards have come to the end of their sponsorship with the Project.

With the exception of three boys, these students have not been performing up to their potential. They have a long track record of good scores but somehow in the last year they have let their grades slip and they are now in danger of not passing their exit exams. We gathered the 12 together and tried to determine what the issues were that were causing their grades to plummet. After some serious barking at them mixed with expressions of loving concern, we were able to put together a strategy that can put them on the road to success in their upcoming exams. Chastising students for a lackadaisical approach to studies is not our favorite thing to do but a necessary one nonetheless.

In the process of talking with each of the kids about their struggles, I was called over by one of our team members to talk with a young girl about her recurring sickness. The head teacher was nearby and joined the conversation sharing that the young girl would often miss classes because she had “the demons.” As I investigated further, she told me that she would often stay in the dorms for the entire day in a “coma.” I’ve yet to determine exactly what she means but it was clear that the girl was very troubled. I asked her to tell me what was going on and she began to share how her nights were filled with bad dreams and that she would awake and be short of breath and feel pains in her heart. She went on to say that she would hear voices in her head telling her to do terrible things. She feared that an evil spirit was possessing her. I shared with her that with the Holy Spirit living within her that there was no need to fear Satan or his demons. I talked with her about how to speak boldly to these voice and tell them to leave in Jesus’ name. The team gathered around her and prayed for her. You could sense a powerful move of the spirit as we lifted her up. The peace that came over her as we hugged her and said our goodbyes was amazing. It is days like today that remind me of why I am a pastor and why a part of my heart will always be here in Africa.

Day 7 Recap: 1 bank 19 students and creeping closer to having all the fees paid!

Update from Dave in Uganda #2

August 27 - Day Four

The overnight rains have cooled the temperatures and helped keep the dust and the smog in the city down a bit this day. After a quiet breakfast of western omlettes and lovely ugandan coffee, we made our way into crowded downtown to exchange money and make a withdrawl from the bank. This is a nearly daily process here in Uganda as we do not like to carry more than a few million shillings at any one time. The exchange rate is 2200 Uganda Shillings per American dollar.

Our journey took us north today as we visited with and paid fees for 21 boarding students at one of my favorite schools. It is one of my favorites because of how well they treat us and how much they appreciate all that we do to have these kids sponsored. There are some schools that we visit where we feel as though we are annoying them by having our kids in their school. Perhaps we will one day be able to fulfill my personal dream of having our own school to educate our sponsored children.

All of the students at this school are performing very well. They are older children who have been with the project for upwards of 5 years. They understand the importance of taking maximum advantage of the gift of an education that they are being given. We dropped off three months

worth of school supplies and personal items to last them through the term. Things like laundry soap, toothpaste and sundry other personal items. We also load them up with a kilo of sugar and enough tea and biscuits for a few evening's enjoyment. We also stock them up with the Ugandan version of bug juice. You know, bug juice. That syrupy drink mix in strange colors that we drank as kids. They have a similar product here that the kids just love. We encouraged them in their work and then headed out to locate the one young girl who had not yet reported to school. We had learned from the head teacher that she has not returned to class because she has a punishment remaining from last term that she had, to quote him, "escaped." Now she must return and do a half-day of digging in the fields around the school as a sort of detention for skipping classes. We went to her home only to find out that she was away with friends attending a party. Needless to say, Jim was not happy. I felt badly for the mother because she is caring for a very small baby that has a very severe deformity that has made his head nearly three times normal size and has rendered his legs immobile. If he is not being monitored or held, he may try to drag himself to where he would like to go with his oversized head dragging the ground the entire way. It is a horrible situation and I couldn't help but have compassion on the mother who is trying to care for this boy and chase down an unruley teenager.

We stopped at a few smaller schools on our way back to town to pay fees for primary students whose classes begin on Monday. I even managed one quick trip into a bank to pay for one child after we had visited the school and the bursar refused to accept our payment. I know it sounds crazy but he said that he had no place to keep the 150,000 shillings until the bank opened on Monday. I got there just as they were closing. They were kind enough to take my payment after I played the poor, pitiful Muzunga card - that is, looking down, speaking very softly and begging their forgiveness for not following procedure because I do not understand all things about the fee-payment process. It has worked before and worked like a charm again! That and a 2000 shilling bonus payment for the bank usually does the trick.

The last stop of the day was to meet with a group of 17 students at a secondary school who have been placed on probation for their poor performance in school. In a nutshell, the students are graded on a scale of 1-100 just as in the states. Points are accumulated through classwork, homework, quizzes and exams. Students then receive credits for every class in which they score 50 or above. Those credits are then converted to a secondary point scale that places them in one of nine classes in their grade. Grade one is the best and grade nine is the worst. The more points you accumulate for each semester, the lower your class placement. The ideas is that the best students in each grade will have somewhere around 11 to 13 points for each semester. The lower classes may accumulate as many as 60. High numbers are not good and neither is placement in classes below 4. The UCP requires it's students to remain within the top two classes to retain their scholarships. To be on probation means that you have not performed to that level in your last semester and you are in danger of being chased (thrown out) from the project.

When we began to speak to the group of students, they began to give us all kinds of excuses about how the teachers were not teaching them the material and that they were missing some teachers in some classes. I went to the headmaster and asked about this and he went ballistic! He marched outside and immediately began to challenge the students on their stories. We soon found out that they were lying. In fact, the problem was that they were being lazy and not applying themselves to their studies. Some of the kids were smirking while Jim was speaking and when he saw it, he just about went nuts. He raised his voice and threaten to expell them on the spot if they did not think this was a serious matter. Keep in mind, in Uganda, to raise your voice much above a whisper is a very rare occasion. The eyes on these kids bugged like you could not believe. They still had a cavalier attitude about the whole thing but they quit smirking. After nearly an hour of tongue-lashing by Jim, myself and the headmaster, we believe the kids got the message - do your best and improve or be booted from the project.

We celebrated our success with our first meal outside of the guesthouse. We ate Chinese at one of our favorite places near the Embassy. We didn't return to the guest house until nearly ten, exhausted but feeling very satisfied with the day.

Day Four Totals - 1 bank. 42 students. I have no idea how many more to go! Got to get some sleep.

Update from Dave in Uganda

August 24 – Day One

I arrived safely in Uganda at 8 am after a grueling 42-hour trip that included a 12-hour layover in London. Blue skies, a gentle breeze and temperatures in the mid-eighties greeted me. What a wonderful change of pace from the 107-degree temperature in Dallas when I left on Sunday!

The very first thing I noticed that had changed since my last visit earlier this year was the increased police and military presence. The bombings that took place during the World Cup Finals last month have resulted in security stops and security screenings both on the roadside and before entering virtually any public building. We stopped at one public market area for bottled water and our van was searched inside and out and then each of us was scanned by a hand-held security device. All this to get a bottle of water!

After a quick breakfast of instant coffee in warm milk, I went to work immediately with Jim and the rest of the UCP team. We made several stops along the route back to Kampala from the airport at Entebbe. It was great to be reunited with the team on the ground and get to visit some of the kids that have been in the project from the beginning. One such young lady – Scovia – literally ran up to the van when she saw us pull up to her school and hugged everyone. Then she told me that I looked very “hard.” In response to my quizzical look she said, “you know, hard as in old!” Jim has had fun with that one! And then Robert, our driver, chimed in “Elder Jim now looks younger than you!” My retort of “Let’s see if you don’t look ‘hard’ after 42 hours of travel across 8 time zones” was drowned out by the laughter in the van. Keep in mind that Jim is 12 years older than me and walks with the aid of two crutches. The rest of the visits were fun but uneventful. I arrived at the guesthouse around 8 pm and sat down to a hot dinner of stewed fish with rice, Matoke, greens and potatoes. Jim tells me that I fell asleep within minutes of my shower.

Day One Recap: 1 bank. 4 schools. 7 students. (17 banks, 82 schools and 267 students to go!

August 25 – Day Two

After a restless night of jet-lagged sleep, Robert, Grace and I set out for the banks at 8 am. Jim had a rough night last night and decided he better stay back at the guesthouse and rest. I began the tedious job of filling out bank slips – in quadruplicate – for each of the students whose fees we would be paying at the banks. Uganda has begun circulation of the their new paper money so I had to learn the new denominations. The currency is beautiful now that it is new. It will not be long before the red dust that coats everything here in Uganda is ground into these beautiful bills. Each bill has original artwork depicting a period of Ugandan history. It’s really kind of cool!

After a quick stop at the bank where we keep the Project funds, it was off to the banks to pay fees. I was surprised at my first bank stop to be one of only three people in line. This is the same bank that had over 200 people in line the last time I paid bank fees in January. Robert barely had time to park the van before I was back having paid for four students in just under 15 minutes! I couldn’t believe my good fortune. I filled out another dozen bank slips and marched over to the next bank around the block. Once again, I was surprised to one of only six people in line for three tellers! This was awesome! Two banks and 16 student fees paid in just over 30 minutes!

The rest of the day went along just about like that. The longest queue in which I stood all day was only twelve people in length! We had all the fees scheduled to be paid today completed just before 1 pm. Incredible! I only hope that tomorrow will be as smooth. I spent the afternoon with Pastor Michael of the EPC church in Kiwatule preparing for the 3-day seminar I am leading later next week. I arrived back at the guest house just before the heavens opened and a monsoon fell upon Kampala heralding the beginning of rainy season (rainy season is from late August through mid October). The rain dropped the temps into the low 70s. It was awesome to need a jacked to sit out on the porch to watch the rain. My joy was short-lived for after the rain came the mosquitoes that chased me inside the guesthouse of the night.

Day Two Recap: 10 banks. 2 schools. 60 students. (7 banks, 80 schools and 207 students to go!)

August 26 -Day Three

Rainy season has arrived with a vengeance here in Kampala. The overnight rains rutted the roads even more deeply turning what is usually a bumpy ride into a bone-jarring, nightmare of a ride. Robert and Grace arrived as if on cue at 8 am for us to begin our day full of further bank payments. We had six banks on the schedule for today and I had visions of flying through fee payments like we did yesterday. The dream evaporated as we hit the outskirts of the business district in Kampala. The Archbishop of Canterbury has arrived in Kampala for a meeting with African Anglican Bishops. That meeting, along with the
assembly of Rotary Clubs International, jammed the streets with pedestrians and vehicles. By the time we arrived at our first bank, the lines were stretching out the doors.

Grace and I took the first big group of students and divided them into two and set off for different branches of the same bank. With nearly 70 student fee payments to make with this particular bank, we thought it wise not to arrive up at the teller with that many payments. I’ve received more than my share of evil-eyes from tellers when they see the number of fee payments I slide under the glass. It’s a big deal because each of the payments is done in quadruplicate and the teller must mark through each of the four pages individually – no carbon paper used here! Each fee payment takes around 3-4 minutes to enter the child’s name and ID number along with the school name and ID number. I arrived at the teller after a 90-minute wait with 17 such payments to make. She was not at all happy but she didn’t turn me away. I arrived back at the van a few minutes before Grace and we trundled off to the next bank.

This bank was located in the midst of Mykongo University. We pulled into the campus and made our way to the branch office and were greeted by a large tent outside the bank with dozens of people seated in plastic chairs. I took a number – 154 – and took a seat. A few moments later, I was summed along with everyone else with a number from 150 through 200 to actually join the queue inside the bank. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the days when I paid my university fees at the bursars office. At Mykongo there are 15000 students all paying their fees this week at this campus bank branch. Needless to say, I was the oldest one in line – old enough to be a parent to all of them! Being the only Mazunga (white man) in line, I garnered many a stare but no preferential treatment. I did my time in line, paid for our sponsored students and then stood in the shade for an hour waiting for Robert and the van to come collect me.

I repeated this basic process another two times before calling it quits for the day. I’m tired, sweaty but happy that we are progressing so nicely in the fee payment process. I’m looking forward to a nice dinner at the guest house and a few more chapters in the latest Bourne!

Day Three Recap: 7 banks. 72 students. (0 banks, 80 schools and 136 students to go!)

The process slows significantly now as we begin going school to school to pay fees.