Reflections from Arua

Christmas Surprises and New Year 2012

Cows and goats were grazing outside our gate as we left to go to the Cathedral Carol Service on Sunday in afternoon temperatures of 30 degrees C. Further along the track several chickens and cocks, blissfully unaware of the fate shortly awaiting them, squawked and scattered as we drove past. 

Over the few weeks running up to the service Anne and I had been teaching the cathedral choir some carols including Come and join the celebration, This Child and The Candle Song - old to us, but new to most of them.  We would arrive at choir practices on Wednesday evening feeling hot and jaded after a day’s work, but the choir’s enthusiasm and delight at being together, singing and worshipping (yes worshipping, even in a choir practice), would revive us and help us go home smiling. It’s true that each week we appeared to have a different group of singers and the improvised harmonies were constantly in a state of flux, but this added to the sense of excitement and fun. In the UK it would have driven me to distraction.

In previous years the Carol Service had consisted of a form of Morning Prayer, several hymns (not necessarily carols) and a long sermon. This had not proved to be very popular. This year they wanted something a bit different – more ‘Christmassy’. Having accumulated many Christmas resources over the years in the UK, the Cathedral team and I devised a service based on the theme of Light. Not very original, you might think, but a particularly powerful image in Uganda. The contrast between day and night can be very dramatic – especially when the local generator is out of commission. Unfortunately because the service was at 2.00 in the afternoon the use of candles (my liturgical delight at home) was not really an option.

The service began in a low gear. It started about 25 minutes late (not bad) with only 30 people in the congregation (not good). The member of the cathedral clergy who led the first part of the service was clearly unprepared, got a little confused and missed bits out whilst the second reader didn’t even appear. But as time went on, the pace improved. More people arrived, the choir was animated as usual, and everything we had planned went well. Even the things we hadn’t planned went well – like the young woman who came forward to perform a memory ‘verse’ of Luke 2.1-20. Sadly her memory wasn’t too good on the occasion – but since we had already heard the reading that didn’t really matter and everyone applauded her enthusiastically as she returned to her place, totally unembarrassed.

But most unexpected was the Lugbara Nativity Play complete with a broad bosomed Joseph (the cast was entirely female). I was informed that the cast was waiting outside the cathedral to make their entrance in the middle of the service. Where would I like them to go? (In the service, that is!). A rapid decision was made and they made their appearance complete with their live (and remarkably Palestinian-looking) sheep and some very scary angels.

At the end of the service there were between 250-300 people in the service. In a building designed for over 800 it didn’t look that many, but as the Diocesan Secretary said to us afterwards, “When people hear what they missed this year, next year the cathedral will be full.”

As we have read through the Christmas story in the Bible again this year, we have been impressed by the constant sense of surprise, amazement and joy experienced by those touched by these amazing events: Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, Joseph, Shepherds, Simeon and even the angels. This year we too have had the privilege of experiencing these things as we’ve travelled through the period of Advent leading up to Christmas. In the UK we often want every ‘i’ dotted and every ‘t’ crossed in our preparations for Christmas.  But here spontaneity and unpredictability creates a sense of immediacy we sometimes miss at home. And no one was rehearsed for the first Christmas!

Listening to what we can of the BBC News from here, the West seems to be overshadowed by the prospect of impending financial doom, uncertainty and powerlessness. All this will, doubtless, spill over into the New Year. Probably the best our government can do to try to alleviate this gloom will be to promote the Olympic Games and celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Both are good reasons to celebrate and will help the ‘feel-good’ factor but sadly they cannot last.

In stark contrast, at Christmas Christians celebrate the Light which came into the world 2,000 years ago and which the darkness has never snuffed out. Jesus said “I am the Light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. As we step out into the unknown territory which is 2012 with all its uncertainty and surprises awaiting us, may God help us to live by that light, and in the security that Christ alone can offer. 

Anne and I wish you all very happy New Year.

 

A Walk to Work

Walking to work in Kampala as part of the Opposition’s protest against Government policy in Uganda is a dangerous business. For some it has even led to arrest on the charge of treason. But in Arua and Mvara a walk to work is an altogether less risky experience.

The journey from our house to the office at Diocesan HQ takes 10-12 minutes. In Britain a similar distance would take more like 7-8 minutes, but ‘there is no hurry in Africa’ and when you’re here in the heat of the day you understand why. To tell the truth I don’t walk to work very often because I’m normally carrying too many things with me. Nevertheless I do walk from time to time, especially when Anne has taken the car to Kuluva. And my recently acquired mini laptop has reduced my load so the walk beckons more frequently in the future.

Leaving the compound of our house used to be quite a tricky procedure. When we first moved to Mvara the manual dexterity required for shooting the bolt on our main gate and locking it with a padlock from the outside was a challenge. But despite advancing age both Anne and I have developed the knack and we can now do it in less than 20 seconds. 

The moment you get outside our compound you are walking beside luxuriant growth which is Grace, our neighbour’s garden. Banana palms, ground nuts, sweet corn and other crops grow almost the whole year round and you can easily forget that this is actually a suburb; it feels much more rural than that. Grace has recently built a pukka incinerator by the path just outside the gate of our other neighbour, Hannah. This may not be accidental as Grace and Hannah had a recent disagreement (involving Hannah’s dog and one of Grace’s children). The lesson to learn is that it is best to remain on good terms with your neighbours if at all possible. And to have a little cat rather than a hulking great alsatian.

Walking along the earth and murram tracks takes you between many houses. A few, like ours have boundary walls and gardens, but most are smaller buildings, some with iron roofs, others with grass thatch, but each with their own piece of land where they grow their crops. Goats, sheep, chickens and occasionally cows wander about on the lanes almost at will and can present a threat to a neighbour’s unprotected crops. Goats and sheep are usually tied to something which is supposed to prevent them from wandering. But you often see animals walking around trailing a rope attached to a twig which clearly proved inadequate to its task.   

En route we pass a borehole where women pump on the handle, mostly earlier in the day, filling 25 litre plastic jerry cans which they then have to carry back home, usually on  their heads. Children are also used as water carriers, but they usually manage the 10 litre jerry cans. But even this is more than most of us would want to carry very far in this environment. 

It is a fairly straight route through to the office apart from one little detour around the Vocational Training College (VTC) which recently blocked the direct route by erecting a boundary fence around their land. Establishing boundaries and registering land have become extremely important issues in Uganda in recent times and may well feature in a later blog. But the net effect of the VTC’s boundar y fence is that it adds 2-3 minutes to the journey.

The detour takes you across a football pitch (or around it if a match is in progress) to the main Arua-Mvara road and the Mvara Trading Centre. Here you can buy basic necessities like matches, bottled water, eggs, bread, biscuits and cassava, get a boda boda (bicycle or motor cycle taxi), buy airtime (for the phone) and even get your bicycle tyre repaired on the spot.

Big new signs at the road junction by the Trading Centre direct you to the Uganda Christian University Arua Campus Evening Programme, Emmanuel Cathedral and to Madi/West Nile Diocese. You can’t miss it. The final hundred metres of walking past the new Mothers’ Union Guest House brings you to the main office compound and to my own office in the Reprographics Unit. 

The walk to work passes through the suburb of one of the most remote towns in Uganda, and I still sometimes have to pinch myself to remember with some amazement that we are living in the heart of Africa. The 20th century (& little bits of the 21st century) has influenced this place. Signs which advertise the evening entertainment, Manchester United v. Arsenal, testify to that. But much of what we see around us hasn’t changed in very many years. Perhaps it should change. But then again perhaps it shouldn’t......   But something which I do realise is that living here is a huge privilege and actually something I wouldn’t have missed for anything.

 

Changing Attitudes

David Cameron’s recently reported remarks threatening to withhold UK aid from governments that did not reform legislation banning homosexuality have created a bit of a stir over here. Many African countries have reacted strongly to the Prime Minister’s comments. A Ugandan spokesman referred to the UK’s ‘bullying mentality’, saying that Ugandans were ‘tired of these lectures’ and should not be treated like ‘children’.

Witnessing these exchanges as a British expatriate living in Uganda is interesting. From a western perspective it is easy to see where David Cameron is coming from. A UK spokesperson sought to clarify Britain’s position by saying that aid would be given directly to governments only when satisfied “that they share our commitments to reduce poverty; respect human rights; improve public financial management; fight corruption; and promote good governance and transparency," She added that Britain’s efforts included working to end religious intolerance and persecution, as well as discrimination against individuals on the basis of their sexuality. I would endorse this aim.

But seen from an African perspective it all looks very different. The Diocesan Secretary here in Ma’di & West Nile is one of the most reasonable people you could wish to find anywhere. But asked what were the greatest challenges facing the Church of Uganda today, he put homosexuality as the number one threat. Personally I believe there are many more important issues the church needs to address, but most Ugandan Christians would agree with him. David Cameron’s intervention does smack of neo-colonialism, and in any case, believing it is possible to change attitudes in this way seems a little naive at best.

One of the many reasons why Ugandans are vehemently opposed to gay rights would be their perception of the way the gay rights issue has advanced in the west. In Europe and the US, the gay lobby has been extremely successful not only in removing discrimination against people on the basis of their sexual orientation, and giving them equality under the law (which is to do with justice), but in promoting homosexual relationships as equivalent to and as valid as heterosexual relationships (which is possibly more to do with mischief and at the least a physiological absurdity).

Perhaps the most significant current expression of this attempt to argue equivalence is the debate on the issue of gay ‘marriage’. It is unfortunate that the English language has been deprived of the adjective ‘gay’ as a description of someone who is lighthearted and carefree. But it would be a tragedy if the noun ‘marriage’ were to suffer the same fate. Marriage by definition is the union of a man and a woman and this concept has held true for millennia. It really should be non-negotiable in the present debate about gay rights. Civil Partnerships meet the need of those wishing to enter into a formal, legally recognised homosexual relationship; gay marriage is an ontological impossibility.

Both in Britain and Africa promoting marriage as God intended should be the foundation for the Christian response to the homosexual issue. Whilst we have been focusing on gay rights, promoting marriage as the faithful and lifelong union between one man and one woman seems to have dropped off the agenda. Serial polygamy in Britain and infidelity in Africa, even amongst Christians, is at least as great a moral challenge as the promotion of so-called gay marriage.

David Cameron has acknowledged that countries will not change overnight, but we in the West should be more careful how we deal with our African brothers and sisters, especially on issues as sensitive as this. Changing attitudes does indeed take a lot of time, especially in cultures as deep rooted as here in Africa. We in Britain have a great deal to do to get our own house in order as well. But the African Church should also reflect on the impression created in the world at large by the hostile rhetoric that has accompanied much of its teaching and stand against homosexuality. In particular its very slow response to the bill presented to the Ugandan Parliament by MP David Bahati proposing the death penalty for some homosexual acts was regrettable to say the least.

God grant us grace as Christians as we interact with one another on this particular issue, and give wisdom and compassion to those who have a public role in the debate.

[The next blog will be on a rather lighter note!]

 

Family Matters

 

I come from a relatively small family – just two older brothers. I had two aunts, two uncles and four cousins. We met from time to time but never all together except at weddings. Some families are much larger than ours, but they don’t compare with the size or complexity of families in West Nile.

Polygamy is not uncommon here, although, of course, it is very much discouraged by the Church of Uganda! But even in monogamous relationships 7 children in a family is about average. In 2007 the population of Uganda was estimated at 29 million, but by 2037 it is projected to rise to between 62 and 90 million. To support this population growth it is estimated that the number of teachers will have to rise from 152,000 to between 254,000 and 560,000 whilst the number of nurses will need to rise by a massive 1050% to 89,000 by 2037! Uganda has its challenges! But these problems work themselves out at an individual level as well. Take our night-watchman.

Lino’s home is in Maracha, an administrative district of West Nile based about 40 km NW of Arua. He has had children by at least two relationships, although how many we are not sure.  But when his brother died Lino had to assume responsibility for his brother’s dependents as is the custom in Uganda. Some parents can end up having to feed and clothe more ‘adopted’ children than their own.  They also have to provide for their education. In Uganda primary education is theoretically free but secondary education is not.

Lino had to leave his home in Maracha to find work so came to Arua several years ago where he lives in a small thatched home about 15 minutes walk from our house. But he still has responsibilities and a small house in his home village in Maracha. When his brother’s widow died recently, he was responsible for the funeral arrangements. During her illness and around the time of the funeral Lino often had to cycle back and forth over the 40 km to visit and make necessary arrangements.

About three weeks ago Lino told us he was building a new brick house where he lived in Arua. It had been in progress for several years but now he needed money for the corrugated iron roof. We pay Lino the going rate of 130,000 Uganda Shillings (UGX) per month (just over £30) and as inflation is running at about 27% in Uganda he was anxious to buy the sheets because of rising prices. He wanted to borrow 500,000 UGX, so we asked if he would take us to his home so we could assess the situation for ourselves.

On Wednesday morning this week after his night shift we walked with him down the hill over the stream and up the hill on the other side to where he lived. His ‘wife’ greeted us as we arrived as did a young man about 20 years old. He was friendly but didn’t say very much.

The compound which had a good feel about it, consisted of his small round thatched mud house, just below a wooden fenced enclosure housing his three cows and two others belonging to a neighbour. Lino explained that the cows could graze on the local golf course, and he would often take them there after a night shift with us and stay with the cows during the day, sleeping when he could.

Just above the cow enclosure were four brick buildings. One of them, quite small, served as a kitchen. But prominent, and without a roof, was Lino’s ‘home-in-progress’. It was a distinct improvement on his thatched home, and we could see why he needed his iron sheets.

The other two buildings were at least as big as Lino’s new home. One in particular was very well appointed. We asked who they belonged to. The first, he told us belonged to his late brother’s daughter who used it at weekends. She stayed with her husband during the week. The second opposite Lino’s own, and the best of all, belonged to his son. Lino had paid for his son through secondary school and university and he now had a good job in town with Toyota. Had Lino’s son offered to help with money for the roof? After all he had managed to provide himself with a very nice home. Lino laughed. Africans always laugh when they’re embarrassed.

The young man we had met when we arrived continued silently watching us with interest. This, it transpired, was his late brother’s son, now in the second year of his secondary education. Lino showed us his results sheet from Arua Secondary School. One mark in Fine Art was 60%, all the others were below 40%.  We reflected on the likelihood of this young man completing his secondary education successfully with at least another 2-3 years at around 600,000 UGX pa for Arua Secondary. On the other hand he might possibly make a good cow-hand.........

We now have to decide how to respond to Lino’s request for help with his roof. What would you advise?

 

Of Roads, Politics and Power

Just over a week ago I travelled with a senior member of the diocese to the remote Archdeaconry of Ma’di Moyo in the far NE of the diocese. It is a round trip of about 320 km, not far by western standards. But here in West Nile, once you travel north a couple of kilometres outside of Arua, you are on murram roads.

When it’s been recently ‘graded’ (levelled and made smooth for vehicles), a murram road is really very good. You can maintain a reasonable speed and it’s pretty safe. After 2-3 months however any murram road will begin to deteriorate. Some of the deterioration will be due to wear. Heavy lorries and buses develop massive ruts in the road, and in the rainy season miniature river valleys also start to appear which criss-cross the road, or create a corrugated surface much like a sandy beach after the tide has gone out. In the end driving on such a road is sometimes like travelling over a huge sheet of corrugated iron. Elsewhere, finding a track to follow between merging potholes of indeterminate depth and bedrock which begins to appear where the murram has been washed away becomes a work of art. One additional problem is that if there has been recent rain the mud which is produced is at least as slippery as ice and just as lethal.

It had rained the previous night, and the first 80 km of our journey to Moyo was over such a road through the Terego district of West Nile. As I negotiated the obstacle course I learned from my passenger that the Ugandan National Roads Authority (UNRA) was responsible for maintaining the road. Because the road gave the impression of not having been graded in living memory I asked why it was so much like the lunar surface. My colleague replied that the problem was the local MP. The constituency generally elected a member of the opposition to be their MP. Not maintaining the road was a kind of ‘punishment’ to reform the electorate so that they would do better next time!

For the remainder of the journey to Moyo, the road was of a much more superior quality; “I suppose the MP here is a member of the NRM?” I mused (The NRM is the ruling party). My colleague smiled a knowing smile.

And here is another angle on that other little gem of the Ugandan infrastructure - electricity. In our last blog ‘Powerless’ I referred to the new hydro scheme currently under construction in Nebbi. In fact most of the country is on the National Grid, but not West Nile. We are dependent on the West Nile Region Electricity Company (WENRECO). As we said in our previous blog, the latest prediction is that the Nebbi generator will be on line by December. But no one really knows. The new hydro scheme is also a private venture, now being salvaged by some Italian investment. The government washed their hands of the project it seems, some time ago.

It is little wonder that much of West Nile feels marginalised and uncared for. Perhaps that’s one of the really important reasons for us to be here.

 

P.S.  As I was preparing to write this blog, we were listening to the 6-o-clock news from BBC Radio 4. Along with details of the Lib Dem Conference, this national news bulletin included a report that nine thousand homes in Wolverhampton had been without electricity for two whole hours. We didn’t feel too sorry for them. The whole of Arua has now been without power for over 7 days and we have no idea when it will be restored. There has been nothing on our national news about that!

 

 

 

Powerless

It’s been cold in Arua (cold, that is, for Arua), with temperatures struggling up to 77⁰F during the day and falling as low as 67⁰F at night. There have been many grey days (like today), and following an extremely dry start to the wet season, we are now being deluged for hours at a time. Last night we had five hours of often torrential rain. Crops that were struggling through lack of rain a few weeks ago are having now to be harvested before they become waterlogged and ruined.

Things are not so bad for us. Admittedly my early vegetable-growing exploits have been affected (more about that in another blog), but we don’t have to live in a leaky grass thatched house and walk a hundred metres to the latrine in the pouring rain. Nevertheless we have had our own particular muzunguesque challenges.

Power is the most interesting challenge at the moment. The Arua generator is feeling its age, and awaiting its younger hydro relative in Nebbi to come on line, hopefully in December. The Arua generator has suffered from multiple organ failure in recent times leading to power ‘outages’ and load shedding following a somewhat random and indeterminate pattern. An additional problem has been the lack of heavy diesel on which the generator runs. Mvara (where we live) has suffered more than most because of the suppliers’ not entirely accurate assertion that there is very little business in Mvara which depends on electricity.

The upshot of all this is that a good pattern of power supply for us is 6-8 am then 7-12 pm. An exceptional pattern is 6 am – 12 pm (just 2 days in the last month or so). But a common pattern is.....no pattern, with several days without power at all or just the odd hour or so.

This situation has had a bad effect on the Diocesan Office (also in Mvara) where more and more people are dependent on computers for their work. We do have a generator, which although it is very expensive to run (about £10 per day) does keep things going – if there is fuel. It’s not that there’s a shortage of fuel in Arua (except heavy diesel), but there is sometimes a shortage of money in the diocesan office. And they only ever buy enough fuel for one day because they worry it might get used inappropriately. But as soon as the money, a motorcycle, the container and a driver are brought together at the same time, then fuel can be bought; but it’s not easy. This happens each day. Yesterday it took some time for these various components to coincide. But finally at around 11.30 am they did, and the driver set off. Half way to town he had a puncture........

Back at home we have managed to get our fridge working on kerosene. This unfortunately has the down side that it makes the whole house smell like a paraffin lamp. But we can’t grumble. At least our food is kept reasonably cold – and we have to remember that some members of CMS did say before we came that ‘you don’t need a fridge – we never had them!’ It’s hard to argue with that one.

However, the good news as you may remember from the ‘blogette’, is that we do now have a solar panel. The less good news is that solar panels need sunshine!

It’s been cold in Arua!

P.S. Heavy diesel is due to arrive in Arua today......maybe 
 

Still No Blog.....?

We had a really good time with Ben and Bethan during their visit to us earlier this month and were able to take pleasure in many of the glorious delights that Uganda has to offer such as the atmospheric Lake Bunyonyi in SW Uganda (picture above). But it was hard to say goodbye to them.

Our second term feels very different from the first. As I mentioned in the (non)posted blogette a few weeks ago, culture shock and home-sickness came as a bit of a surprise. I certainly thought it would be an easier adjustment second time round, but it hasn’t been so.

Anne and I have discussed this between ourselves and with some other expatriates. I have also thought long and hard about it – but have come to no clear conclusions.

The best explanation so far is that at the beginning, differences in life and culture are new and often interesting or even exciting. For example:

• arriving on time for meetings or services which rarely start on schedule and then seem to go on for days without seemingly getting anywhere, are a source of amusement;
• having to ‘mend and make do’, or simply do without when things break down is a real challenge, and stretches one’s powers of invention and improvisation;
• believing what people tell you, because you don’t realise they’re telling you what they think you want to hear instead of giving you the information you are seeking and really need. (This is not really a problem at first because ignorance is bliss.)
• avoiding other motorists, cyclists and pedestrians on the road can be quite exciting for a while, so long as you actually miss them (and they miss you!). It's also enjoyable driving a 4x4 over some of the less well-maintained Ugandan 'roads' where you actually need a 4x4.

To begin with such things are curious and fascinating. You can handle them just as a tourist would – they all add to the experience. As time goes by these things begin to pall a little, of course, but you believe that somehow you will overcome or get used to them – and they are very good blog material.

 Then you return home for 6 months and rediscover your own culture with a mixture of delight and disappointment.

At the end of UK leave you go back to your posting for a second term and at first you are glad to be back. It’s really good to meet friends again. But then reality begins to dawn, the late meetings, things not working, and being completely unaware of things you should know because no one informs you of them, the 50th km of more pothole than road, and so on. Suddenly you discover that the frustrations you experienced before and thought you were coming to terms with are still there and you haven’t. In situations like this, these cultural oddities cease to be funny and become profoundly annoying. And they don’t seem to be such good blog material any more. You really want your blogs to sound positive and show how resilient and adaptable you are. But you realise you aren’t. After all, you discover you are human.

Nevertheless some funny and curious things do still happen.

This week Cindy (Anne’s assistant at Diocesan HQ) and Gift (who helps run the Reprographics Unit) came to our house for a meal. It was the first time either of them had ever been into a Muzungu house to eat. Amongst other things we talked about our different experiences. Cindy comes from Lira, a long way from Arua in the central part of Uganda. She talked about her home and her time in Kampala when she was at Makerere University. Gift told us that the furthest he had been was about 50 km south of Arua to Nebbi. He’s now in the middle of a Business Administration degree, but that is in Arua.

We talked a little about the places we had visited in Uganda with our various visitors and said that we were planning a trip for Anne’s ‘big’ birthday next year (don’t ask!). We asked Cindy and Gift how they celebrated birthdays. Cindy said that they didn’t usually celebrate them. Gift said he didn’t even know his exact date of birth, just the year. He’s got a birth certificate, but has never looked at it. So when he enrolled at university he didn’t know what to put down for his DOB, so he made it up. We asked him what he had written down. “I don’t remember.” he replied.

It was a good evening, and acted as an antidote to the other frustrations. But I still think that second term blogs are likely to be different, and probably more challenging to write, and probably to read as well!