The Prodigal Daughter

Heyyyyyy. Apologies on my slackness in keeping you all updated. So this morning we found out that Rose (one of our Jenga staff) had called to say that her daughter Grace had been missing since the night before. She had been seen around 6pm but then Rose had been at a burial and had come home later not feeling too well and only noticed that Grace wasn’t home a bit later. Rose’s husband is blind, but he walked around the streets all night in the hope of finding her. No luck. No one had seen her and it was not like Grace to just go off and not come back. As you can imagine, the family were extremely worried. There is a team of 12 young people from the UK visiting at the moment, so all of us went to Rose’s to pray and look around for her daughter. We spend some time praying in Rose’s living room and people had a sense that Grace was alright and that she would be reunited with her family soon. We then walked around the area, asking people if they’d seen her. It was about midday by now and we regrouped outside Rose’s church nearby. A kid walking past had been asked if he’d seen Grace and he said that he had been told by some people in the next ‘suburb’ along that if someone from their area was looking for a lost child, to send them over there. So Sam borrowed a motorbike and raced over there to check it out. Sam returned with Grace on the front of the motorbike and the large group of kids, youth and adults that had gathered in waiting let out a huge cheer! Rose arrived within seconds of Grace’s return and it was a very emotional moment when she was reunited with her parents. Apparently she had just wandered off early in the evening and had gotten lost somehow and some random family took her in for the night. She was very lucky! Everyone was so relieved that she was okay and happy to have her back and we sang and danced around in celebration! Such a cool moment. 

 So what else has happened this week? Well, as I already mentioned, there is a team from the UK currently here in Mbale. They’re from an organisation called Onelife near London, that seeks to raise up Christian leaders in all spheres of life from church to politics to education to sports etc etc. They’re a really cool bunch of teens and young adults and it’s encouraging to see people only just out of high school stepping out of their comfort zones, preaching, teaching, encouraging, serving and just being I Africa! They ran a two day conference called ‘The Fight’ earlier this week for a couple of hundred young leaders from all over Mbale, based on 1 Timothy 4:12 (“Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity”). It was a very inspiring couple of days and there seems to be momentum building in Mbale, particularly through young people in the church. Watch this space!

I’m not sure if I even introduced you to one of our volunteers, Joel, but everyone is leaving soon! Joel is Italian (from Sicily) but has lived in London for a few years. Zoe will fly out this Sunday with the Onelife team back to the UK, Robby goes on a 6 month sabbatical next Friday, Phil flies out on the following Monday, Rozzie & Joel leave the week after, Megan will leave Mbale around the 21^st August, leaving me here until the 23^rd when I will take a bus to Mombasa, Kenya. Wowsers. This is my final week living in my current house – as of Monday I will be living with my “sista” Leah. She is hilarious. I will be sure to introduce you to her soon. Here's Zoe with George:

 Last Sunday I was invited to visit the church Moses goes to out in Kachumbala, where he lives. It’s maybe half an hour out of Mbale in a matatu (taxi van). Joel was the only other person who came with me cause the others had already made plans for church, so the two of us set off around 8am on Sunday morning to catch a matatu from the taxi park. The right one wasn’t there yet, so we waited a bit and then it arrived. We got in and sat for a bit but we were the only passengers. They then took off and I figured we’d pick up more people on the way, but it turns out they were just filling the tyres with air at the petrol station, then we drove back to the park! We sat there for almost an hour and no one else got on…and generally, matatu’s don’t leave until they’re CRAMMED full of people! We asked the driver if it was going to leave soon and he said we’d be better off getting pickies to the clock tower where there is another taxi bay that would have more taxi’s going in our direction. Grr. So we set off and were soon squished into a van with a million other people…okay maybe more like 20…and we were finally on our way! 

   Moses met us on the road side and we walked to his church, which was in a smallish rectangular brick building crammed full of people singing with all the richness of an African choir. We were welcomed very warmly and given seats of honour near the front. As is custom, we had to stand up in front of the church and publicly greet everyone (which I’m pretty much used to by now) and Joel shared a mini sermon on the prayer of Jabez, found in 1 Chronicles 4:10, which they loved. The pastor spoke about love and loving your enemies and doing good to those who harm you and being careful of what you say about other people. It was one of the best sermons I have heard in Uganda to date. At the end of the service, they announced that they had a special dance prepared for their visitors and the choir all went outside and then reappeared to some African dance music (a few of the guys had grass skirts tied around their waists) and the boogied around for us in their traditional way! It was a lot of fun and I took a short video I will try to upload on Facebook soon.

  Moses kindly invited us to his place afterwards for lunch and we met his beautiful wife, Harriet. They have been married for 14 years and they are super cute. They have no children, but I get the feeling they would really love to. We feasted on chips, rice, matooke, beef stew, peas, carrots and…liver. Not a huge fan. It’s really not the idea of liver that I don’t like, it’s the taste and the texture in your mouth – it looks like it should feel like beef when you bite into but it doesn’t! I felt bad about only have a tiny bit cause liver is quite a treat for Ugandans and I know Harriet and the women had gone to a lot of trouble to prepare a special meal for us. A common problem for us mzungus eating around Mbale! 

 We went to look at the plot of land Moses had bought to build their own house on (they’re renting at the moment) and the next door neighbours invited us to come and sit with them. They had those traditional ‘banda’ huts that are round mud brick with a thatched roof and they had a beautiful view of Mount Elgon from their side garden. They were very excited to have some foreign guests (there’s no white people in Kachumbala!) and they kindly brought seats out for us to sit on under the tree where they were eating their lunch of millet porridge. I noticed they had massive pumpkins growing in their garden so I asked Moses to ask the lady if I could buy one from them (she doesn’t speak English) and she went and got one and gave it to me. She said through translation that I could have it for free and that she wanted to give us chicken also, but they didn’t have any chickens at that time (thankfully!). Her generosity was very humbling as it was obvious they were not particularly well off, even for Ugandan standards. I asked Harriet what the pumpkin would cost in the market and she said about 3,000 shillings, so I gave that amount to the lady, which she tried to refuse but I insisted she take it. By now it was close to 5pm, so we said goodbye to everyone and flagged down a matatu heading back to Mbale. A good day!

 We have our day 4 of food storage training tomorrow in Namabasa and today I am sourcing bulk sugar from the industrial area here that can be packaged in bags of 1kg and sold for a profit through the storehouse. This will hopefully give the people some practical training in buying and selling and how to keep proper records of what comes and what goes out. The profit will go back into the storehouse to either buy more sugar or whatever the managers decide is best. I have also come across some simple equipment for small scale irrigation (hooray for Google) that has been used around Africa that I think could be very useful in Mbale, where everyone suffers when there is insufficient rain. There is a Dutch development organisation that sells them in Kampala, so I’m looking into getting the smallest pump for a trial run in Namabasa. I’ll keep you posted with updates!

Well, that’s about it from me, but let me introduce you to a couple more Jenga peeps. First up, the ever lovely Rose. Rose is amazing. And I don’t say that flippantly. She truly is an amazing woman that continues to blow me away. She has six children of her own – five boys and one girl and four adopted children who have all been orphaned. She also looks after Max, her nephew, whose mother has died and the father (Rose’s brother) lives in Soroti, further north, as well as her niece from her husbands’ side, Kristy. Her two younger brothers are also in her care – they are 17 and 24. Her husband, James, is blind (as I already mentioned) and is her second husband. Her first husband was killed several years back when there was trouble in their village further north – I think it was to do with the LRA. Rose is 38 years old. So, in total, Rose lives with fifteen other people (sometimes more when family visit) and she is the only person earning a wage in her family. There are sixteen people living together and she is the only one with a paying job. Can you even begin to imagine how difficult that must be for her?! She works full time for Jenga Monday to Friday, spends her Saturdays washing clothes and cleaning the house, then Sundays she spends going to church (where she is a women’s leader!) and looking after 12 children. I feel tired just typing those sentences! Yet, Rose is one of the most joyful people I have ever met. She laughs often and always has a smile on her face. She is often thrown into challenging situations (children going missing, people demanding money from her, accidents and sickness in the family etc etc) but she always remains faithful and is not shaken. She just keeps going on. She remains grateful for the good things and pushes through the bad. She remains joyful. I have learnt a lot from Rose. Probably far more than she knows, or that I could ever communicate to her. I asked Rose if there was anything she wanted to say to people through my blog, and she humbly asked that you could pray for her and her situation, that God’s hand would be working in her life and in all the myriad of issues that continually arise for her and her family. For those of you who pray, please send up one for Rose next time you’re in that place.

The next person I’ll introduce you to is Deborah. Deborah is just gorgeous, inside and out. I often find myself staring at her and her high cheekbones. She is tall, slim and looks like a Ugandan model to me! But more impressive than her physical beauty is her inner loveliness that is also very obvious. The day after I arrived in Mbale, we went to a wedding at Bethel Baptist Church, where Deborah is a  member. As soon as I met her, she welcomed me warmly, made sure I had one of the best seats at the wedding along with the other mzungus and basically spent the day making sure we had food and drink and that we were okay! She is such a sweetheart. She lives in Mooni with her daughter Trissa. I’m not sure of her background, but she is currently a single mother, which is not an easy thing anywhere in the world, let alone in a poor community. Tiffany is a bit of a matchmaker and is always on the lookout for eligible men for Deborah to marry! I hope she finds a worthy man someday soon J Deborah has a great sense of humour and is always very complimentary – she regularly makes positive remarks on my clothes and if she thinks an outfit is particularly good, she shakes her head and tells me I’m “killing it”! I love Deborah! Not just because she makes you feel good about yourself, but because she is funny, gentle, smart and just a pleasure to be around. She is golden.

So there’s two more Jenga people – I’m not sure if I will get around to everyone and there’s definitely those I know better than others, but I will work my way through and see how far I get! Thanks again for reading and I hope that wherever you are reading this from, things are well for you. My next entry will be when I’m living with locals, so I should have some colourful stories for you all! Until then,

Lou :)