Community Development in Uganda

One of the main reasons I was in Uganda was to co-lead a trip with my friend Keneth to his grandmother’s village. In the process, I also had the opportunity to support my friend Charles who is doing similar work.

Background
I met Keneth and Charles in Uganda last summer during my internship in Kampala at a microfinance finance company. About four years ago, Keneth went to his grandmother’s village, saw kids sleeping without mattresses, sold just about everything he owned (which as the time was eight ducks), bought toothbrushes, and went around teaching kids in the village about dental hygiene. Since then, he has formed a community organization to arrange sponsorships for children in the village. The sponsorships provide school fees, uniforms, shoes, books, pencils, and mattresses to the kids. Keneth also organizes soccer tournaments that attract hundreds of kids from around the community and teaches them about HIV/AIDs during halftime. The organization is called “Hope for African Children’s Ministry.” (http://hfacm.blogspot.com/) Charles’ does similar work because he was influenced by his father, who started providing school fees for one child in his village in 1998. Five years ago, at the time of his father’s death, his father was responsible for helping over forty children. Charles is committed to keeping the spirit of his father alive by continuing to help the children.


Yale students at Masaka


The Trip
Last weekend Keneth and I co-lead a trip of 10 Yale students, who were living in Uganda for the summer, and 3 Ugandans to see the children in his grandmother’s village. Afterwards, I spent an additional day with Charles in his village. During the first part of the trip, we had the opportunity to visit Hope for African Children’s Ministries Office, walk to the community water well, enter children’s home, attend the Sunday church service, and play soccer with the kids. The trip was incredible. I was so overwhelmed by the hospitality. I received three chickens as gifts, which literally was the source of some family’s livelihood. Here I was worried about getting my tennis shoes dirty and people were giving me an animal that provided their daily source of income. And families just kept giving – preparing us meals and giving us fruit, baskets, mats, sugar cane.

It’s difficult. I don’t know how to talk about my trip without sounding trite or playing into Save the Children advertisements that I see as I’m watching late TV – the ones with kids who have descended bellies and flies crawling on their eyes balls as they sit on garbage somewhere in Africa (they never tell you exactly where). And of course, while I was in the village I saw need. But for me, motivation doesn’t come from a guilt trip, but from the relationships I built with the children there and the people who were helping in the village. So to prevent myself from falling into platitudes, I’m going to tell you two stories.


Richard
Richard lives in a village outside of Masaka – the same part of Western Uganda where AIDs was first discovered in humans. The AIDS crisis severely impacted Uganda. At one time, in areas such as this village, the infection rate was about 30%. Richard and his three siblings lives with his grandfather because his parents both died. His grandfather was a coffee farmer, but is now can barely walk. Nevertheless, when he heard I was visiting, he hobbled down the road after me, half naked, to discuss how he could get schools fees for his four children.


Richard, second from the right, with his siblings and grandfather

His grandfather does his best to support his grandkids – but it’s incredibly difficult without a stable source of income. At first Richard was shy, hiding behind his sisters. But by the end of the visit a smile had crept onto his face. He showed me around his house – a house with holes in the roof and part of the front side missing.


Richard's bed

Since his grandfather doesn’t have a job, Richard sleeps next to his sister Jenny on some shirts. His grandfather didn’t ask me for medicine for his own health problems health or shoes or wood to patch up the holes in his house. Instead, he asked me to pay school fees for his grandson, about $20/month, so that his grandson would have the opportunity one day to go to university, and then to work in an occupation besides coffee farming to be able to care for his siblings when his grandfather died.


Juliet
One of the highlights of this trip was getting to meet Juliet, the girl that the group Christians for Social Justice at Yale sponsors. She’s six years old. When she was two, her dad died of AIDS. Her mom is doesn’t have money to afford ARVs, and can’t take care of her children so Juliet lives with her grandmother. Juliet walks about an hour each morning to the well to get water before school. Her grandmother told me that if she could have anything in the world she would get a rain receptor (about $20) so she could be guaranteed to have water for her kids during the dry season and ensure they have more time to spend on schoolwork.



Juliet’s fairly shy, but when she smiles it takes over her whole face. She loves playing netball and singing – she even performed the song “head and shoulders, knees and toes” for me. Because of the sponsorship Juliet now has shoes, clean clothes, and regularly attends school.



When she grows up, she wants to be a doctor.



Future plans
Since the program is new, Juliet is one of only 10 kids who are sponsored. Keneth has 30 addition kids that need sponsors – and he’s constantly turning people away. But Keneth & Charles both of have big plans to expand their organizations – like starting sustainable programs to make the communities self-sufficient. One example of such a program involves buying a male and female pig for a family, which will, in time, give birth to piglets and generates income. As part of the program, families that receive pigs from the organization also help the community in turn by giving some of the piglets to another family, and the cycle continues.

I love that model because it captures some of the most memorial parts of the trip. Being in the village was certainly overwhelming – but the hope was undeniable. Hope that motivates Charles to have a full time job and run a community based organization. Hope that prompts community leaders to donate their crops, share their time, and open their homes to support children in their village. Hope that makes adults committed to ensuring that their kids finish school so they could have a better future – so committed that a grandfather that could barely walk chased me down the road half naked to discuss how he could get schools fees for his four children. I can only imagine what the community would be able to do if there were given resources to enhance income-generating activities.





A Continued Relationship
Keneth & Charles told me that one of his biggest needs is for people to be “their ambassadors” -- to tell the story of the organization and the children looking for sponsors to their friends to increase support – not just monetarily, providing advice, and connecting them with resources. For them, its first and foremost about building relationships with the kids and making sure that everything that is done is in their best interest.




Concrete ways to help:

• Visit Keneth’s website (http://hfacm.blogspot.com/) and learn more about his work. He loves building relationships with people and meeting new people on Skype to talk about the organization.

• Get together with friends or family and sponsor a child, like Richard. If you don’t have the financial resources, you can still start building a relationship with a child via penpals and tell their story to your friends.

• Donate skills: In particular I’m trying to help Keneth and Charles develop their websites and public relations aspects of their organization.

• In terms of support at Yale, we are creating a club that Keneth’s organization as a case study for hands-on community development work – we want to help him register as an NGO, create a community needs assessment, develop income generating programs for the community, and work with existing Yale groups (such as engineers without borders, amnesty, and the global development alliance) to address the needs of clean water and health in the village. If you have any suggestions of resources that would be helpful in this regard, please let me know.




I’m so excited about the beginning of this partnership -- it’s really incredible to witness a love that is so strong it is almost tangible -– a love that connects and protects and empowers.

Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill

So this post is long, but important.


The background
As you probably know, last summer I worked in Uganda for two months at a microfinance company. Since I was already in Africa this summer, I decided to visit Uganda for a week and a half. The main purpose of my trip was to lead a trip to my friend’s NGO (an incredible experience, which I will post about soon). While I was in Uganda I also conducted interviews about the controversial Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which I plan to use for a paper once I return to school.



Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill
Also termed the “kill the gays” bill by Rachel Maddow, the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill is a piece of legislation that has been introduced in the government to criminalize homosexuality. While some countries regulate sexual acts, this bill is even more expansive and severe. Some notable parts of the bill include:
a) The death penalty for cases of “aggravated homosexuality”
b) Seven years in prison to anyone who “aids” “abates” or “promotes” homosexuality. This includes the current work of educators, lawyers, and health care professionals.
c) Seven years in prison for a person who is believed to have the “intention to commit homosexuality.”
d) Up to three years in prison for a person waits more than 24 hours to report someone whom is believed to be homosexual. This would require doctors, counselors, priests and other religious leaders to face prison time if they did not report private conversations to the government.


How it all got started
While homophobia is not new in Uganda, the political capital necessary to fuel public support for this bill was fostered by three American evangelical Christian leaders. While their teachings about “curing” homosexuality have been largely discredited in the US, these men came to Uganda in March of 2009 to hold seminars talk about how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.” One of the men, Scott Lively, a missionary who has written several books against homosexuality, including “7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child” and “The Pink Swastika,” attended a meeting with Ugandan conference organizers during the drafting of the bill. Shortly after their visit, the bill was introduced into the legislature by a Ugandan Parliamentary Leader, Bahati, on October 14th, 2009. Of course, isolating blame to these three men would be illogical, but many Americans are shocked to learn that some of these leaders are supported financially by religious communities in the US. And it is certainly true that religious leaders have used religious justifications to support the bill, such as Pastor Ssempa, a friend of Rick Warren, who held numerous scatological porn screenings to drum up support and fear for killing gays in Uganda in his church. Or the Uganda Mufti, Sheikh Ramathan Shaban Mubajje who wants gays marooned on an island in Lake Victoria until they die.


Public Opinion
Homophobia and transphobia are ubiquitous in Uganda, mainly because of the propaganda and false stereotypes spread by such community leaders. When I interviewed friends and students my age, many of whom were educated at the best university in East Africa, they gave me the following justifications for the bill and their support of it:
- Homosexuals go into schools and recruit children. They lure them in with money and presents. We need to protect the children.
- Homosexuality isn’t “African,” it’s a western disease, imported by the white man.
- Homosexuality is wrong/unnatural/against the bible. People need counseling to change. Since its unnatural, homosexuals don’t deserve rights.
- Homosexuality is the same as pedophilia and is carried out through sexual violence.


For centuries the LGBT community has been targeted as a way to preserve social order, scapegoated to address social problems and unrest. Sociologists have documented that communities, when subject to an external threat, also target minorities internally. In the US, this type of violence was clearly inflicted against the LGBT community during WWII and McCarthyism. And many will argue that support for legislation like Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the Arizona Immigration Law is a continuation of our nation’s illness of targeting minority groups internally in order to gain a sense of false security during a time of national instability.

In Uganda, you only have to glance at the headlines of one of the nation’s newspapers that “outs” top officials, religious leaders, and community members (conveniently including pictures, home addresses, and places of work of “homos”) to see such internal discrimination inflicted on the LGBT community in Uganda. In many ways, regardless of whether the bill passes, it only reflects a social climate of hatred and discrimination toward the LGBT community. To just cite one example, the week before I came to Uganda, Pasikali Kashusbe was brutally murdered, beheaded and castrated in Uganda. His head was found in a latrine on the farm where he worked. His body was found earlier in the week about half a kilometer away. In 2007, Mr. Kashube and his partner Abbey joined Integrity Uganda, an organization for LGBT Episcopal and straight allies.

Cultural imperialism?
While most oppose this type of violence, some people are afraid to intervene because of fear that they will be imposing imperialist attitudes in Africa. I appreciate the sentiment and agree that the voices of individuals in the LGBT community in Uganda should be at the forefront of any action. Yet it is also helpful to remember that homophobia, not homosexuality, is the Western import. Anthropologists have documented non-heterosexual relationships in Africa for centuries. (For more information about same sex practices in Africa, see “Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men and Ancestral Wives” by Ruth Morgan and Saskia Wieringa) In fact, it was the British colonialists that brought in the first laws criminalizing homosexuality, codified homophobia which conveniently also exerted control over the indigenous people and deemed traditional practices unacceptable.



The Ugandan LGBT Community



Tapping her black converses, held together with rainbow shoelaces, she says
I'll stay here [in my office], even if there is a mob of people throwing fire that burns us alive. If I call a police, and they find out, they will just join the mob... But if we stop and stay the office is closed, they have won. So ill stay here.

I’m sitting at Free to Roam Uganda (FARUG), an organization for LBT women in Uganda, and I’m absolutely floored. I know I can’t even begin to imagine the severity of the words as they hang in the air. I can’t imagine what its like to walk home and hear neighbors jeering that they are waiting for the bill to pass so they can kill you. I can’t imagine what its like to have to worry whether there is a critical mass of people around that will stop an attack. I can’t imagine what is like to have scars on your back as the visible reminder of other’s hatred of your existence. All I know is that these people are incredibly strong. and brave.




A variety of LGBT organizations exist in Uganda, operating under the umbrella organization Sexual Minority Uganda. These groups offer individuals in the community access to health services, resources, social networking, and counseling services. There are organizations for youth and adults, women, men, trans and intersex individuals.

But what’s most striking is not the programming, it’s the community. This place was like a haven. Everyone around me at FARUG was smiling and joking, bobbing occasionally to the latest Ugandan songs. Perhaps its because people know that in this space they no longer have to amputate part of themselves. Even the names reflect their community, such as the man they call Uncle, program director for the trans group and, at the age of 21, one of the youngest employed trans activists in the world. As they go around collecting money for a young gay man who is in the hospital because of a motorcycle accident, it’s clear that this is their family, their family by choice – which, for some, is their only family.

The Bishop
Seeing and hearing about the hatred they experience is difficult. Knowing this hatred is supported by people who claim to be speaking because of their faith in Christianity makes me physically sick. But amidst the violence and injustice, I had the opportunity to meet an incredible man, Bishop Christopher Senyonjo, the leader of Integrity Uganda.



The Bishop greeted me with such a warm, grandfatherly smile, a genuine smile that few people can give after they have been publically humiliated by the media, asked to leave their church, and live in fear for the security of their family.

Are you afraid?
Paul said in Christ there is no male, female, jew, gentile, slave, or master. In Christ we are all one. That principle is very important. I’m not scared to stay, I will go against discrimination, even though now and then I will get harassed.


What about people that use faith to support the bill?
Jesus came to help the oppressed. Not to put more oppression against the oppressed. Evangelical. The root of the word, is good news. Evangelical, good news, what is this good news? …. Does my faith tell me to hate people, or love them. Faith should not leave us to hate…. I’m a Christian. One element I regard very important, which was wrote by coming into the world by incarnation, Jesus Christ being born here. The word of God is to bring love. Sacrificial love. Not just loving myself, but think about other people. .. the litmus test I have, even on my faith. “is this loving”. If this is not, then I say I’m sorry, that is not the faith I should hold.

What will make people change?
That’s why education is the important. Not in Africa alone. Everything. Ignorance about human sexuality is widespread….I know something about the history of the homosexuals in the west. People could be hanged, killed. But it is changing. It takes time. It takes time. It takes time to learn, be exposed, change about things….Things will change. For sure. Because to me, God is still creating.

I agree with the Bishop that things will change. It will take time, but things will change. For the ordinary Uganda, actions are not taken simply out of hatred, but hatred that is motivated by fear – fear based on lies that are propagated about the LGBT community, fear of a loss a sense of loss of culture, fear of difference. The things I’ve talked about in this blog entry may be shocking, but it is in no way isolated to Uganda. Hatred is still being promoted in pulpits in the US today. Unequal rights are codified in law. Slurs about sexuality are common insults in schoolyards. And violence is certainly widespread -- outside of my own hometown, on the anniversary of Stonewall last summer, a man suffered a concussion because he was thrown against the wall of the gay bar that the police raided.

And all it takes for evil to succeed in the world is for good people to sit by and do nothing.

In addition to finding ways to oppose violence in Uganda, this bill is a reminder to me that we still have a long way to go in the US. A long way to go to embrace equality for all people – regardless of race, religion, sexuality, gender identity, expression, nationality, or disability. A long way to go to move beyond tolerance toward celebration of difference, to oppose ignorance that still infects the US. A long way to strip away the fear that motivates discrimination and our implicit acceptance of hatred by our inaction.

Paul said, three things, very important. Faith, hope, and love. These three. But the greatest of them all is love.

If love is not above … its[all] absurd.