John's interview - what does 2015 hold for Rev Life?

Here's an interview that I did from BathCAN just before Christmas. It sums up what we are thinking about the future with Revelation Life.....

Please tell us about your new role and what it will mean to you and your family?

My new role as Uganda Director will essentially be to see even more people helped and leave poverty in the slum communities where we work. We obviously want to be as effective as possible in seeing families improve their lives and so part of my role is to help us as a team, gain new skills to make that happen.  That means prayer, strategy, partnering with the community groups we work with and expecting special things to start to take place!  Sue works a few days in an international school and outside of that is great at bouncing ideas off and she is particularly involved in our Family Centre project – a place where vulnerable families can start to rebuild their lives and most importantly, stay together.

Tell us about your heart for Uganda and Africa?  

I’ve travelled to various African countries as part of my previous role with Send a Cow and it’s hard not to fall in love with the continent.  That doesn’t mean that living here doesn’t present a few challenges and frustrations, but we really enjoy the Ugandan way of life.  My passion here is to see people work together and get new skills to get out of poverty and solve their own problems.  The most useful phrase is that we want to give people a hand-up and not a hand-out.

So, my heart’s desire is for the slums to be places of opportunity and dynamic change rather than hopelessness and struggle.  I think God can do that!

What do you hope to achieve in your first year or two in your new role?  

My first couple of years will be focussed on helping us to get a really effective way of working with community groups in the slums.  I see those groups as really key to seeing change happen as we carry out training with them.  As they become stronger, they will be in a better place to deal with the ongoing issues that are facing the communities such as floods, low incomes and childhood malnutrition.  So, if those groups are resilient and able to affect real change in their communities in the next couple of years, I will be a happy man!  We also want to expand into other slum communities in Kampala as we are currently working in just four and there are close to forty slums now, and counting.  Overall, expansion is a key objective alongside a continued professionalising of the organisation across the board.  I think that should keep me busy.

What will be the main challenges for you work-wise and personally for 2015?

Challenges come in all shapes and sizes when you live in Uganda.  Some are unforeseen, but I would think the biggest challenges will be: to get enough rest time for us all to pace ourselves; to generate enough support to see big changes in the slums and to stay focussed on the main ‘thing’ that we do as an organisation. 

On a personal level it’s about ensuring that Sue and the girls are happy at school and in their friendships, plus the commute for Sue can be pretty stressful – as anyone who has encountered Kampala’s traffic will understand.

Having read the latest news on Rev Life – Aisha’s story – it seems that malnutrition and infant mortality are huge issues in Uganda right now, how do you and Rev Life address these needs?

Well, both malnutrition and infant mortality are ongoing issues here and unfortunately, the figures in slums are much worse. We have a Nutrition Programme that we are just ramping up to support highly malnourished children, in addition to teaching the mothers about how to help provide nutritious meals.  We try to work in a joined up way wherever possible and with other organisations, so in nutrition we are also teaching families how to grow vegetables in recycled containers, as well as referring families to another NGO who specialise in critically malnourished children.  We are really blessed to have three highly skilled nurses on the team who are spear-heading our community healthcare work so that families have the knowledge to take care of their own health wherever possible.

What would you say are the main issues societally in Uganda now?  And how will you be addressing them?

That’s a huge question!  All the issues are so complex and interlinked, but there is also a huge amount to be grateful and hopeful about here. There is a strong sense of togetherness in the communities, even in difficult situations and in pain.  I think if I were to boil it all down, I’d say that when poverty and everyday needs fill people’s lives, they don’t get much chance to look up and to think outside of their current situations.  The more we can help them to see that things can be different in their families and communities, the more likely things are to change. We know that with God all things are possible, but we need to really believe that and then get practical.  So, the more new skills we can see people have in growing food, saving money, running a small-business, working as a group and staying healthy, the more we will see them building better futures together – hope on its own won’t do.

According to the Ugandan Ministry of Health 7 cases of Ebola have been reported in Uganda – have your friends/neighbours/community been affected by this? Do you have a strategy at Rev Life to deal with it?

The Marburg Virus did show up a few times, but has been contained really well.  At Revelation Life we have an emergency policy and strategy in place were things to become an issue, and it’s really encouraging to know that Uganda has the most experience in locking down Ebola in the past.  I think when you live here, you are very aware that Uganda is about as far away from the epicentre of infections as the UK is and so we are prepared for the worst, but expect to be fine.

How can we in the UK support you and Rev Life in 2015?

As we want to work with more slum communities here, we would really love to partner with more churches in the Bath area who can help make that happen.  So it would be great to talk with any leaders who could be interested in that, as I think we are going to see some really exciting things in the year ahead and it will be a fantastic thing to be a part of.  Maybe anyone reading could send an email to mail@revelationlife.org.uk or to the Neal’s or me.  Having such strong relationships in the slums also means that we are strong on feeding back to churches with stories, pictures and videos – especially now we have a really good internet connection in place!  Of course, we’d also love people to pray for us and our work, for success with the communities and for God to lead the way in all that we do.

We are just running our Christmas Appeal, which goes on into the start of January.  It’s all about the importance of good memories at Christmas time, as we have the power to help that happen for people in the slums next year.  We’ve had a good response so far, but we’d love it if anyone wanted to donate to support our vital work in 2015 through that.  It may be a good way for people to re-focus and keep Christmas about the poor and marginalised.  

Busy bending wire

We've been busy with all sorts recently. One of the things, apart form working with Revelation Life, that I have been busy with is some work for Send a Cow, like this video.

If you've got children, or just lots of wire and time on your hands, you might like to make one of these Wire Toy Cars. In this video, my friend Solomon shows how to make one - he used to make them as a teenager as a way of making some extra money.

See what you think...

Green shoots

It's been a while so apologies and all that.

Things in the slums have changed quite a bit since we have been in the UK for the last 6 weeks. Walking around today in Kinawataka there were shops where there used to be houses. Houses where there used to be space and rubble where there used to be shops. All very disorienting for me, let alone all the children and families that live there.

So, why the big changes? It would take a while to explain so read this for the ins and outs, but basically the railway wanted their land back thank you very much and so people had to get off it. This meant that loads of homes and shops had to be demolished to make way for a 'safe zone' (oh, very droll) of 30 metres next to the railway. This is all for progress of course - Kampala will soon have its very own fully-functioning, shiny passenger railway. Not sure whether I should get excited or not though.

All this eviction and demolishing has changed the face of two slums in particular and it clearly sends home the message that housing insecurity in slum communities is just part of life and a very disruptive one.

Amongst the rubble and shops displaced from their natural sites like an erratic rock dumped by a glacier (had to come in handy one day), there are some signs of hope and growth. While away, some of the team had been tasked to teach groups about growing vegetables in containers on their roofs or any space close to their homes.

I went today for the 'transplanting session', where all the tomatoes, kale and cabbage seedlings were moved (ok, transplanted) into the containers. It was great to see the excitement and joy on the women's faces as they lovingly guided their seedlings in place. As they left with their containers I sent a little prayer up that this would be a new start in their lives, a time to see opportunities and growth.

We've also now found a good supply of large bottles to act as containers from one of the local plastic recyclers. At 12p a pop, I'd say that's a pretty sustainable, locally resourced project.

Now all we need is to see some nice red tomatoes!

Something a little different

So, this is nothing to do with slums, development, poverty, our family, or feelings.

It is a glimpse into how I love to unwind and have adventure in this fantastic country though. Fellow adventurers should enjoy this video of a day out on the bikes!

The writing's on the wall

As part of the overall plan to move things along slowly in the slum communities, we've had a lot of fun creating murals as an awareness raising tool. These two mural sets have been about how to make a Tip Tap (a simple hand-washer) and a Bag Garden (think vertical gro bag). As well as these instructions are key messages about the importance of hand hygiene and eating nutritious vegetables. You may know that already, but only if you can read Luganda.

Before getting them painted, we surveyed households closeby to see what their understanding was in these two areas. Some of the results were pretty eye opening. Here are a few:

34% of people had not eaten any fresh fruit in the last week - some hadn't for months!

Only 1/3 of people eat 2 or more vegetable portions in a main meal.

A whopping 48% of Banda slum children had diarrhea in the last 6 months. 33% of those, more than 4 times! 

We're now in the process of finding out how the murals affected people's knowledge and attitudes, then we'll being doing training at the mural sites on the techniques to see if we can help people to change what they do as well. So, here are the lovely murals, which are like mini oases of colour amongst the brown, grey and dust of the slums.

This is Nalongo's house. She is a bit of a mover and shaker in Kinawataka community and is really pleased with her newly painted home and really well placed to influence her neighbours.

These children followed us around whenever the murals were being painted. The colourful nature of the murals means that we often catch children staring up at them and reading.

The lady from this house asked if we could add some paint to the front of her house too. So, what the heck, we went for blue!

The toilets that Revelation Life put in are in the foreground and the plan is to have several Tip Taps here to make this a kind of sanitation centre. It will also make more money for Hadijah - the lady who looks after the loos and receives about 5p every time someone spends a penny.

My personal favourite! This mini toilet is right next to the railway line where hundreds of people walk to work every day. A great site to get messages that save lives to a lot of people.

What happened to the Children’s Village plans?

Since moving to Uganda, I have learnt so much. It was easy for me to think I knew what was needed while sitting at home in the UK, thinking about Uganda.  However, once we moved here, I realised how much I didn’t know and just how complicated 'helping' is! When we moved here, we thought we would be helping set up a children’s village for orphaned, abandoned and very vulnerable children as well as working in the slum communities. We had some questions about this so we set about doing 'research'. This involved visiting a variety of projects, looking closely at the issues and needs in the slum communities and talking to experts in the area of children in Uganda. This took us on a very interesting journey and ended up shaping our vision for the work here.  

What we discovered was that in Uganda there are a huge number of children in institutional care. There are 50,000 children estimated to be living in approximately 800 institutions (orphanages and children’s centres) across Uganda. The shocking thing is, is that the majority of these children (80%) have a living parent or living relatives. Many of these children end up in institutional care for a host of reasons other than having no one that loves them or wants to care for them.  Many children end up in institutional care because of poverty. This is not just an issue in Uganda, but the world over.  Parents often in desperation leave their child at an orphanage in the hope that they will be fed, go to school and have medical needs met. Many families are not able to provide these basics for their children and an orphanage seems the only option. Orphanages are in plentiful supply and very often the funding is also plentiful as many Western donors want to fund orphan care.

A question that has been bothering me for a while is in the UK and generally in the Western world, we phased out orphanages and institutional care over 30 years ago as we know how damaging it is for children.  So why is it so acceptable to fund an orphanage in another country when we don’t believe it is best for our own children? Today I discovered that since 1992 there has been a 119% increase in orphans in Uganda. What I found unbelievable was that in the same period of time, there has been 1624% increase in children in institutional care!

Of course there are many many reasons why children end up in institutional care and some of them are legitimate. It breaks my heart however to think of many children separated from parents or grandparents who love them because of lack of money. What would Uganda and many other countries look like, if the money had been ploughed into supporting, equipping and empowering families rather than building orphanages?

‘Working with families and trying to tackle poverty and the issues that stem from it is messy work. Putting kids in orphanages is easy.’  I don’t want to settle for easy. I want to see long term change, empowering families to have the resources, skills and knowledge to stay together and support their children themselves.  I believe this is what Jesus would want too – reaching out and supporting a whole family rather than just removing a child.

That’s why I am so excited about the current work that Revelation Life are doing and some of the ventures we are moving into. Our heart is to work closely with very poor families in slum communities, supporting them in spiritual, practical and training needs. Walking through some very difficult situations with them and helping people find opportunities for the future. Seeing these families grow and blossom is beautiful. I don’t think there is anything more precious than seeing the love between a parent or caregiver and their child. We are also in the planning stage of a family centre where families in extreme crisis situations will be able to live for a fixed period of time while they are given the support, counselling and skills to get back on their feet.  Hopefully this will be a lifeline to some parents who really love their children but just have been dealt a lot of bad cards in their life.

It may be a tricky business supporting broken families but definitely worth it in the long run. Children deserve to grow up in family, whether this is with their biological family, extended family or new family -  the important thing is that every child has the right to belong and to be loved as part of a family and not to be a number in an institution. I pray that through our work here at Revelation Life we will help provide this basic need to some of the children we meet.

Trip to the Village

In Uganda, people talk about ‘the village’ as this place – out there, somewhere, anywhere, BUT NOT in the city.  It basically means countryside. Nearly everyone in Uganda has a ‘village’ that they either grew up in, or their parents / grandparents grew up in. Often families in Kampala will have some of their children spending extended time in ‘the village’ with relatives. I have never had an opportunity to visit ‘the village’ before so felt privileged to be able to accompany my very good friends Harriet and Solomon and their daughter Jemima to their village on Saturday. They were returning a family friend to her home, who had been staying with them for the holidays.

It took us about an hour and a half and about 100 speed bumps (not exaggerating) to get there. The road got progressively bumpier and trickier to navigate as we got closer to ‘the village’ we were visiting. The term ‘village’ for me conjures up a pretty picture of a group of houses all together in a clearing, maybe the cluster of houses in a circle! This is not really what a Ugandan village is like. The houses can be spread far apart and some peoples closest neighbour is a mile or so away. We visited several homesteads before arriving at the family friend’s home who we would spend the day with.

I parked our car under an enormous mango tree and the whole setting looked idyllic. A brick house in a nice clearing, plenty of trees – chickens and pigs running around free range.

The view was amazing and there was a handy ledge on the front of the house where you could sit and pass the time. After living in Kampala for 8 months, the 2 things I could not get over in this setting were the quiet and stillness and the fresh, fresh air.  Even when there was noise in the distance as farm labourers shouted to each other – it still seemed peaceful. You could hear the birds and hear nature.

We were given such a warm welcome and I felt very much at home. Their home, although nice by village standards, was still very basic. Their only visible posessions, were a few chairs, a few tablecloths and plates and other crockery. No photo frames, ornaments, gadgets, TV, toys or any other STUFF. They had no electricity so that cut down on a lot of what they could have! No Table and chairs, just mats on the mud floor. They seemed to be a very vibrant, happy family and extremely hardworking.

As I sat and waited for food to be prepared, life seemed so slow. The pace of life so different from the city and certainly from the West.  I enjoyed watching Mayah play on a rope swing with her friend, enjoying life’s simple delights.

 We were served traditional banana pancakes first. The main course consisted of beans, matoke, cassava, g nut sauce and cabbage which I can actually say I enjoyed! What I found so wonderful, was that all the food came from their land. All of the food they eat comes from their land with the exception of salt, sugar and oil. No supermarket shops with trolleys full just many early mornings, digging in the fields and then reaping the harvest.

This simple way of life also comes with its challenges. Water has to be collected from some distance which I was told was ‘far’ (whatever that means!). What I couldn’t believe was when the mother told me that if the garden needs water she will collect 30, 20 litre jerry cans and carry them back one at a time on her head. That is devotion to your plants but then again it is their means of survival. Their daughter Robina, who was about 14 has to walk 1 and a half hours to school there and then the same home again. This would be preceded and followed by chores. A very different kind of life then what I experienced as a teenager.

Village life is certainly hard work but I love the simplicity of it. They are not consumed by materialism but just a simple existence. They do not have loads of STUFF to clutter up their lives but they have what they need – a loving family, good friends, water, great fresh food to eat, ability to send kids to school, a house and clothes to wear oh and a radio! Who needs more than this? I don’t want to feel guilty about what I have but I do want to appreciate everything I have and practice gratitude on a daily basis.  I desire to live life simply, not getting bogged down by what I think I may need to make me happier. Surely I have enough.