Settling in

So it has been almost 2 weeks since touching down in Uganda, in a strange way it can often feel like things are moving both very fast .. and very slow.

 

So far there has been lots of meetings and ideas for projects, and organising bank accounts and setting myself up, and it feels like I have got a lot done within two weeks. But on the other hand there is a very slow pace to life here, where time must be taken to stop and talk with an old friend, perhaps share a meal with them, before moving on to what I was meant to be doing that day.
I also feel I am going to get very fat, very fast, if I don’t stop accepting all the free meals being thrown my way ( Ugandans love to pile on the food when feeding a guest ).

                                     

                                                                 Farook and Beatrice


I have been really excited to see my good friend, and brother from another mother, Farook. His wife is expecting their first baby any day now, and it’s great to see how in love they are with each other, and how excited they are to start raising a family. In a country where so many dads run away from responsibilities, it’s great to see that Farook is going to be a good father.
I have also been in plans with Farook and his wife Beatrice to start a small sewing group for vulnerable young women, from the ages of 18 to 24, who may be single mums and need a source of income. Beatrice is a sewing teaching, but they have recently been struggling as she works in town, and it costs them a lot of money for transport for her to go to work. By setting them up with their own sewing machine here in Wairaka, they would be able to save money, but also start on their dream of helping young women find a valuable skill. I would love to see YSU empowering and supporting their vision ( with some well organised structures to help guarantee something successful ). So me and Farook have been spending time visiting other organisations and seeing how they run sewing classes. The aim is to start small, maybe 3 machines and 5 girls, and build from there. It looks like this will be the first program of Youth Support Uganda.


                                     

                                                                        Acting group

I have also had the chance to help a group of young actors in filming and editing some skits they have put together to go on air for a local TV station. Rosco is the young man who has initiated this acting group, and he has a lot of drive for making short films and dramas. It’s been good to help this young group with a project they have been wanting to complete for a long time. Ultimately the best type of youth work is supporting and empowering Young people who already have ideas and initiatives to do things.

I have also been tutoring the secondary students at the village of hope with English, CRE and History every morning while they are on holidays. These older kids are amazing, and I always have such a great time teaching them, although the schooling system can be frustrating here. Often the material they get for their English classes, from their teaches, is full of terrible spelling and bad sentence structuring, yet this is the material they are given to learn English. Also CRE can be interesting, with a bit of a disturbing amount of religious type attitude towards the faith, and a real lack of teaching on grace, which leads to me learning when to hold my tongue, and when to gently challenge some things. But all in all, it has been a great experience for both me and the kids, and I think we both get a lot out of these lessons.

Even though there are problems with the church and the culture here, there are still great moments when the people here really teach me a lesson or two. The other day a young single mother was trying to understand why the time in Australia is different to Uganda, and I simply explained about the earth’s orbit around the sun and what makes a day, what makes a year, and why one side of the earth experiences night while the other experiences day. After explaining this, the mother, with a look of awe and amazement on her face, simply said “God is so good”. It took me off guard and really made me smile. When we are so used to scientific explanations of the universe leading to attitudes of discrediting the need for a god, it was beautiful to see this women connect the understanding of the earth’s orbit to thinking that God must be so amazing. I am sure it is this simple, humble type of faith from the poor that must make God smile.

So things have been moving on well, lots of joy and peace amongst the people here, I feel like I am always meeting with friends, and I am never lonely.
I look forward to the months to come, I think there will be a lot of work, and I will be keeping busy, but the joy of it all is really something special.