Mercy Collective – Uganda: Anthony’s report
Let’s start this off with a high: I have been promoted to Lieutenant in the Boys Brigade in December, which means I have more authority to help carry out the activities our now many boys are enjoying each week.
Just after Christmas, I went out to visit Uganda, to perform ‘round 2’ of visiting. I saw a few places that I saw last time. I had a much smaller window of time, due to upcoming elections and the anticipated problems what resulted therefrom. It allowed me to have a general meeting, and further one day with each Member of Mercy Collective. I also had enough spare time to look around the local market to get some Ugandan-tailored ‘Kitenge’ shirts, most of which were pre-made, but I also had some made-to-measure during a tour of a seamstress’s workshop!
On the plus side, the poultry project is thriving. The funds that the church helped to raise have allowed for the establishment of a hatchery. Chickens can be either kept for egg laying, eaten, sold, or even bartered for other animals!
The mechanics workshop, intended to provide livelihoods, is also underway; but needs significant investment and help.
Sadly, some of the situations have in fact worsened. The church that I wished to twin our church with has since failed. Many of the villagers still live in the same conditions. There are still plenty of children missing out on their education. Quite a few widows are still isolated with no assistance. A widespread lack of rain led to crop failure of maize, beans, and other essential foodstuffs; however more adapted plants were able to survive, such as bananas and cassava.
I did try to begin setting up a Boys Brigade over there, but internet shutdowns and other delaying factors meant this didn’t happen during my time. However, I am still in touch with the relevant people, and things are slowly moving along.
In other news, as soon as I came back from Africa, I went straight to East London to see a few community projects as part of my course that I am partaking in with the URC. I saw how the local initiative turned abandoned buildings into community hubs such as a homeless shelter and a community cafe, and took an abandoned plot of land and restored it into a sports ground and community garden. They even made a sculpture out of knives that were surrendered into a ‘knife bin’ that was outside one of these community centres.
Overall, I feel I am learning a lot from the course, and hopefully by the time that the course concludes, that I will be able to summarise the information and have it useful to the Church, the BB and the Uganda projects.
For the previous module of my course, one of my assignments was to reflect on a new way of prayer – I decided to write about how the Ugandans partake in ‘cyber-prayer’, either via SMS or via social media. It proves that the Spirit connects with us beyond the conventional spoken / written word; that God is with us in all formats and dimensions. It also allows people to connect and pray together who are physically apart.
Hope you enjoyed reading, Anthony.