After a week in Burundi teaching the CIMS (Comfort International Ministry School – Pastors Training) course in Ngozi and visiting the Batwa project, Comfort International director Callum Henderson now finds himself with a quick layover in Rwanda before heading on to the pastors in Busia, Uganda.
Monday 13th May
At the moment there are three volunteers on mission with Comfort Rwanda staying with David and Agnes and it’s good to catch up with them. They are all amazing Christian girls and doing really well.
I spend most of the morning talking with David. We normally get so little time to talk about anything other than projects and money and reports, and I am reminded that our relationship needs more than that. We talk through a few sticky patches as we unravel some untended knots and it’s good to understand his heart better. Agnes brings in some lunch – she is expecting their second child in a couple of months, a boy to go with Pelia their lovely daughter.
After lunch we go up to the Comfort Rwanda office and talk with the team. There is a new addition who is looking like a good option for the accounting side of the charity and he and I constructively chat through respective perspectives. We’ve arranged to meet Chris to do an interview with a graduate from the Street Kids Rescue. We pick him up from the Good News guest house and make our way to the home of Ishimwe Claude. We were here in the summer hearing their amazing story from street life to a real hope and a future, but even since then there has been new progress. The chicken business they have built up has enabled them to buy the house they were renting and with Claude’s brother now at university and the land they have including a good sized plot which is presently growing maize, their story is heart-warming. Chris directs interviews and cameras but Claude’s mother is determined we should all have roasted corn-on-the-cob and there needs to be a retake as David Gasana’s munching is a bit too enthusiastic as he translates. Things draw to a close as darkness falls and it’s been a really worthwhile day.
Tuesday 14th May
David runs me up to the airport and I’m through check-in by 6am. It gives me time to start a bit of refreshing of the notes for tomorrow – I’m covering Acts and Paul’s letters and I need to get my mind in gear after the Burundi modules. The flight to Entebbe just west of Kampala is short and we are descending well before the flight attendants have finished handing out nuts. I get through passport control and go outside to meet Wejuli Fred but he is nowhere to be seen. There are a couple of dozen taxi drivers touting for business and after forty minutes waiting I get one of them to phone Fred’s number. The line is poor but it seems like he is on the way. Another hour later I get another driver to call and he is entering the airport. That seems to take around half an hour but at last I see him in his familiar red white and black hooped top.
He is speaking animatedly and talking about an accident, but I can’t follow. After two more attempts it seems that a motor cyclist was going very fast, hit a woman pedestrian and then hit Fred’s car. Tragically both have died. It seems that police corruption often means innocent parties to accidents finish up with their cars confiscated and hefty fines if local people know the police, so it appears Fred and the driver had lain low for a couple of hours to make sure they still had a car to make it to the airport. Welcome to Uganda, where corruption has never been effectively tackled.
The drive to Busia is favoured or plagued by the presence or absence of Kampala’s infamous ‘jams’ and we hit one on the far side of the city. Some motor cyclists mount the pavement in frustration and make progress among the pedestrians. The local buses start to follow with a more substantial reaction from the pedestrians. An hour ticks by before we make significant progress. There appears to be one song on a loop on our car audio player. I think it’s reggae but my music knowledge is less than basic. As the traffic eases we decide to stop at some roadside stalls for something to eat. A couple of dozen stalls with street hawkers racing each other to arriving vehicles sell meat, chapatis and drinks. As with so much of Uganda the place is awash with discarded plastic. Everything gets put in plastic bags and within minutes the plastic bags are discarded into the street. Fred decides the barbequed chicken on sticks being eagerly waved by the stallholders sellers are not quite good enough and gets a special made for us. I’d have been happy with anything if we could have got moving quickly but it’s almost another hour before we are on the way again. I notice a steady procession of local minibuses with 20-30 chickens strapped onto the roof. I don’t imagine after being dragged through the wind at 80-110 kph there is much left for the slaughterhouse to do. There are always chickens pecking away at the side of the road but I am yet to see a chicken try crossing the road. Smarter than we thought.
As we draw within range of Busia its getting dark and Ismah, the driver, is constantly on his phone. It’s disconcerting as the road is a constantly changing panoply of trucks, cars, motorbikes, cyclists and pedestrians with a range of lights, indicators and neither one nor the other. Over the next hour he rings and re-rings a widening range of people and grows more and more angry and bangs the steering wheel in frustration. Maybe the looped music is not helping – eight hours of one song can do things to your mind. He wants to hand over money to a brother for his mother as he will be away from home for three days but the brother is not taking his calls. I’m rarely too phased by African drivers but he’s paying less and less attention to the road so when we stop and wait for contact I breathe a sigh of relief. Later on Fred will dismiss him and find a new driver. We get to Busia around 8pm and the short hop to Uganda from Kigali has taken 15 hours travel. I’m staying at the Dom Royal Hotel. When Izzy was with me several years ago we stayed here – we could never find anything approaching a menu at the place and ‘what have you got for dinner’ was invariably met with ‘chips’ and then the list ran out, so we lived on chips and tea for the week and laugh about it still. I manage to add rice and cabbage to the list and chips rice and cabbage becomes my staple evening meal.
Wednesday 15th May
The car arrives around 6.50am with Ismah explaining, ‘the man with the petrol is the one who made us late.’ Two graduated mature students from the Diploma class at Busia will accompany me and help organise this first week that’s been done in Mbale district. There’s different music. I know this one. ‘Mary’s Boy Child’ is already loud and clear. It’s a Christmas collection.
A few kilometres along the road a troop of around 30 baboons have less compunction than the chickens at using the roads and nonchalantly meander across the tarmac and forage in the grass and plastic verge. We come to a police road check and Ismah rolls down the window. ‘We wish you a Merry Christmas’ is blasting out and the policeman checks the documents. Everything is OK. He’s enjoying the music. ‘A Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year’ he wishes us, smiling, and off we go. Ugandans drive on the left. Like Tanzanians. But Burundians drive on the right. Like Rwandans. So I’ve gone right-left-right-left-right-left and hope if I get home and drive down the middle I can spot which way the traffic is going and join them.
It’s the first morning of the training and when we arrive just after nine it’s clear the class is not all present and waiting in anticipation. Registration goes on for some time. Students have come from fairly far around and are not yet accustomed to the CIMS battle cry, ‘this is not a seminar or conference!’ David, Grace and myself spend the first hour explaining the programme and the students nod vigorously in agreement. We go through the book of Acts and by the end of the day there are murmurs of appreciation.
I’m hoping we can have an uneventful journey back and I can get down to some preparation for tomorrow before it’s late but my heart sinks as the car phut-phuts to a stop around half way back. It’s nothing more serious than we’ve run out of petrol and there is a station not too far away and we’re soon back in running order. I get back, do some study, a quick work out and turn in for the night. There’s no internet this evening so I’ll not speak with Izzy (my wife) till tomorrow.
Thursday 16th May
The breakfast is late and the car is earlier so breakfast remains a wistful dream. As we start down the road David twiddles the radio a bit, finds a station and announces, ‘Christmas is finished’. Amen.
The training seems to go fairly well. The students are of a wide range of abilities. I ask some questions to see if they have grasped a concept, remembering the adage, ‘if a student is not learning, the teacher is not teaching’. For some students a blank look indicates this particular teacher has missed the mark and we cover the ground again. But the majority are working hard, engaging well and appreciate the teaching.
We finish around 4.40 and get away by 5pm. After around an hour something doesn’t sound right and Ismah gets out to check. The rear bumper is hanging off at one side. We creep along looking for somewhere to get it mended and find a roadside welder. We need to reverse up a bumpy track to reach the equipment and the bumper hammers into the bumps and the wheels spin. I lift the bumper indicating I can run up the road holding onto it but we decide ‘we’ll do it by force’ and a few attempts later a rather more injured bumper is getting repaired.
I get out of the car and sit on a piece of wood before a shopkeeper comes out and invites me to sit on a plastic chair. We watch the Ugandan world go by while the crackle of the welding tells me something is at least being attempted. A chicken scratches in the plastic in front of us, cement and petrol lorries thunder past cyclists and motorcyclists with inches to spare. Some of them have large bunches of bananas tucked above wheel arches. A banana lorry itself comes past with around ten people balanced on top catching a lift. A couple of young boys are desperately holding onto the rope of a cow which is running after its calf at the side of the road. They disappear behind a house with the tug or war looking decidedly in the cow’s favour. A cyclist comes past with a big shiny coffin wrapped in flapping plastic on the back of his bike. The welding is finished and seems to hold so we arrive back around 8pm. As we pull into the Dom Royal, Ismah turns to me and says, ‘Your driver today is Hourly’. I think for a moment of bus timetables before realising my facial recognition problems have struck again and Ismah is in fact not Ismah but a new driver called ‘Hourly’. I do a couple of hours prep, have a call with Ailidh who is still working for Comfort from her base this year in Brazil (and doing a great job) eat my rice, chips and cabbage, give Izzy a call, and get off to sleep. There’s a lot on my mind at the moment and sleep is a bit disturbed and I tend to sleep less when Izzy and I are apart, but a wee bit tiredness isn’t the end of the world.
Friday 17th May
There are quite a lot of mosquitoes around the room now – the first night in a room is often the best if no-one has slept there for a couple of days, but when I wake up in the morning I can feel bites abounding. There are some mozzies inside the net and I take a swipe with a pillow and leave three red marks on the wall behind the bed – it’s always a bit galling to see your own blood issuing out from a mosquito but I’ve been a good boy (I’m hearing Izzy’s voice say ‘have you taken your malarials?’) and haven’t missed a doxy tablet yet.
It’s the third and final day of training and we’ve lots to get through. I love teaching Paul’s letters and opening up the text to bring a bit of understanding on their context and purpose. You can see that understanding lighten the eyes of the students as the letters become meaningful one after the other. We work through 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, and Philippians before lunch. Some chickens join the class and are shooed out but seem really interested in the teaching and keep coming back. It’s a bit more hurried than I’d like and I miss a fair bit of the notes out. We’re meant to finish by lunch but that’s not going to happen.
The students are unanimous we need to finish and we come back after lunch to complete the teaching. David sidles up just as I am about to begin and lets me know we need to be back to Busia for the pre-graduation rehearsal by 2pm. It’s a 2 hour 20 minute journey and now ten to one so that looks a stretch. I ask him to phone Fred and we are given leave of absence. We finish off Colossians and 1 & 2 Thessalonians and have a final question time. As usual when we start a course the questions have little to do with what we have been studying – students have conundrums they want answers to and the CIMS lecturers might just come up with those answers. We have everything from questions on tithing and getting paid for praying for the sick to whether Christmas Day is biblical. It’s now 2.30 and I’m thinking if we get back to Busia by 5pm that will give good time for prep for tomorrow. I’m struggling with a sense of a clear message and hope to have several hours to really pray and think things through.
An hour later farewell and thankyou speeches are over and I’m thinking time might be a bit squeezed. But the gratefulness is really genuine – several students voice the opinion that their ambition is now to finish the training before they die. Patrick the local organiser is a lovely man and has been praying since 1993 that God would give the local churches opportunity to train. The nearest option he says is Jinja, about four hours away and financially unattainable for local pastors. Nearly all church leaders, he says, are completely untrained in any meaningful way. He is clearly deeply grateful. I assure him and the students that, God willing, we will be returning and completing the course and we take our goodbyes. I’ve already grown fond of those students and am feeling a stronger heart for Uganda than heretofore. I think that means more time away from Izzy or maybe she’ll be well enough to come to. We’ll see what transpires but I know I can’t pick and choose when to follow the call of God and when to give it a miss.
We’re back on the road again and draw into a petrol station as the gauge is looking questionable. There’s no-one on duty so we pull out and try again twenty odd miles down the road with the same result. By now we are puttering along at 30 mph to conserve fuel and things look dicey. A third station yields better results, though, and we pop a few litres in the tank and get home in reasonable time. It’s still light so I go out for a run. My legs are fairly decrepit at the moment and my right is still injured after a skiing accident a couple of months ago and my left achilles has been painful for a few months. I hirple along working out which leg is best and the left one wins. I’m not too familiar with the tracks and roads off the main thoroughfare and after 30 minutes I’m doubting my sense of direction as I hit several dead-ends along sketchy paths in fields of maize and cassava. But people here are friendly and helpful and a couple of ‘this way, that ways’ gets me back on track. The legs have held up and I hobble back to the Dom Royal after 45 minutes. After a couple of hours prep I Whatsapp Izzy. Less than 72 hours and I’ll be flying back to see her. She’s watching rugby as Edinburgh play Munster and she turns the phone towards the screen and we watch a bit together, but it’s getting late and we say our goodbyes and shut the call.
Saturday 18th May
The big day has arrived and I’m up just before 6 to pray and prepare for a few hours before heading for the graduation. Despite the constant pressure of teaching & preaching it does my spirit good to be drawing near to God for help day after day. By 8.30 it’s time to get ready. The students will be wearing academic gowns embroidered with the Comfort International logo. I have doubts over whether Jesus’ disciples would have been parading in academic gowns after their training but who am I to know what’s right and what’s not.
I’m putting on a smart shirt I don’t wear much and discover it has cuff link sleeves. Preparation, Callum, I say to myself with a bit of frustration. I wonder if there is a solution as rolled up sleeves are not really de rigueur for the day. There are a pair of airplane ear plugs in my luggage and I bite off a bit of wire and feed it through the inside cufflink holes, tie them off and they seem to hold the sleeves together. I hope they remain hidden and go out to see if things are moving along. It’s 9am. It takes over another hour before the procession along the 100 metres of road to the graduation site begins and we’re off!
There are multiple guests who need to be read out including an array of pastors, bishops and apostles. African society is deeply embedded with an honour-shame culture and it is important everyone is given their place and honoured appropriately. I have always wrestled with some aspects of honour-shame in the light of the bible’s call to resist the temptation to honour the rich and/or privileged. Especially in the book of James. I wrestle too with the strongly entertainment style of the Christian musicians who come on to sing but it’s much easier to criticize other Christian cultures than spot the compromises in your own. A constant string of people dance their way up to the singers to press some Ugandan shillings into their hands. Everything moves to the beat – Africans are just outrageously rhythmic and I’m suddenly hoping I don’t have to expose my clumsy attempts to look semi-African.
Things proceed in a reasonably ordered way accounting for various call-offs and substitutions of guests including the guest of honour. The national treasurer of the ruling party, the NRM – The National Resistance Movement is one of the substituted. I have my doubts about mixing politics and God’s work – inevitably it leads to a tempering of prophetic witness to the nation and the merging of the church’s call with the politicians agenda. As the morning wears on I become more and more nervous. I’m used to a wee bit of nerves before preaching but there are some fairly vigorous butterflies fluttering around my stomach. There are 41 items on the order of service but we get through them reasonably quickly and the speeches are mainly well spoken. Fred, our beloved CIMS director makes a speech and I notice he is now planning a CIMS programme in Kenya. That’s surprising but then again maybe not – he had mentioned there were quite a few Kenyans who had come over the border for the new cycle of training.
We have pulled the time behind back to around 1 hour late and things are speeding up as rain is threatened. The entertainers are back on and people outside of the marquees are picking up their seats and heading for shelter as the rain comes on. I worry now if my laptop gets wet and the mouseboard stops working but I’m called up and the rain has eased off.
I start by thanking Fred and the LEMA team. They are an exceptional group of people and I want them to know that. A large football pitched size arena of 600 people mainly around 20-50 metres distant is a difficult crowd to engage but as I begin to preach they seem to follow with me. I am speaking on Peter and John as ‘men who had been with Jesus’ and emphasise their effectiveness through the Spirit, the word and a righteous life. I want to impart something worthwhile as a last deposit into the lives of those wonderful students and feel quite emotional.
Soon afterwards the students’ certificates and diplomas are awarded and family members and friends whoop and shout and run towards them with shiny garlands as they file out. It is a time of great joy. The rain has held off but a large black cloud begins to shed its load just as the awards are finishing. The MC is worried we will have cake soup so the cake cutters get to work quickly and lunch is served.
The graduation is drawing to a close. Graduates pose for last pictures, the queues for food have gone, plastic bottled water multi-pack wrappers waft over the grass, a few onlookers outside the venue hang about watching through the railings and, as always, the music plays at volume up. My head is a bit burnt after forgetting to dowse it in suntan cream before preaching in the sun. I look slightly wistfully at the table of cake and see it is empty – a young child wanders off with a plate of the last crumbs. Despite my misgivings about academic gowns, guest politicians, and worship entertainers it has been a good day. I think on balance God has been glorified. And I love those students who have worked hard and truly want to serve God well.
I have a few pictures taken with students and then wander round to the Dom Royal where the electricity is off. A wave of tiredness hits me and I fall asleep for nearly an hour, before a bit of prep for Sunday morning and the obligatory chips, cabbage and rice.
Sunday 19th May
I wake up at 4am, can’t get back to sleep and do a bit more prep. I haven’t realised today is Pentecost Sunday and I think and pray things through when I make the dates connection. I’m picked up at 10am and we make our way to one of the LEMA connected churches. It’s a small church but with big noise ambitions and the loudspeakers are being prepared. The church walls are just some net curtains but that let’s in a bit of air. It’s steadily around 30 degrees now and 20 degrees at night so any fresh air flow is welcome.
Despite a congregation of around 50 people (and an average age of around 20), there are three choirs. The first is little stars, a group of 6-8 year old girls who handle their mics like pros. When the second group, the Beacons, come on the pastor signals for the volume to rise. We get some nice distortion that really helps the eardrums stretch their muscles. By the time the third group come on it really doesn’t matter what language is being sung, I’ve no idea what is coming through the speakers. But we’re dancing to the rhythm and the joy of God is in the place, and if the joy of the Lord is our strength then we’re getting stronger by the minute. Which is probably just as well. The hankies are out now an being twirled above the heads. It’s a favourite of African churches and if football fans can twirl their scarves we can twirl our hankies. I suppose between building up the immune system with the hanky twirling, and the joy of the Lord being our strength, we should all be pretty strengthened by the end of the service.
David the pastor introduces me before I preach. He gives me quite a build up and I jokingly dampen expectations as I start. I speak on the Holy Spirit as our Helper and it seems a wee bit tame after an hour or two of exuberant worship. The microphone is temperamental and I lay it down and tell the translator I’ll speak without it as long as the people can hear him. But he hands it back to. ‘Some of the neighbours pray (i.e. worship/sing) from their homes’ he explains. Ahh – thus the volume needs well turned up so the neighbours don’t miss out. Thoughtful.
It’s warm and the congregation have had a good workout and are relaxing back in their chairs so I work hard to keep things interesting. I’m not entirely sure I’ve succeeded. I get a lift back to the Dom Royal but we go round via the border passport control and there’s a queue of lorries a kilometre long, none of them moving an inch. We make our way through a poorer area of Busia and I hadn’t expected to see so many mud built houses in a built up area in Uganda.
I get back to the Dom Royal and flop a bit as that’s all the teaching for the fortnight over. I watch a couple of cycling Youtube videos and then Fred comes round to chat through the week, discuss the future path for LEMA and CIMS and talk through our visit tomorrow to the LEMA Hope Centre where the Street Kids Rescue is. He is worried the pastor looking after the project does not grasp the idea of a budget determined spending plan through the quarterly cycles. It seems he is one of those for whom ‘muzungus have endless supplies of money and so we can spend what we want and they’ll send us more’. Fred is a great partner and we can talk freely about money, budgets and plans for expansion in a very realistic way. We talk also about the honour culture of Uganda and Africa and whether it fits well with texts like James 2:3 and its insistence that the poor and rich are treated with equal attention and dignity. Yesterday at the graduation those of us who were guests had been served as much food (and a wide range of chicken, beef, rice, banana, vegetables, sweet potatoes etc,) whilst some of the poorer guests finished up with a bowl of rice (admittedly there were around 800 people there which was 200 more than planned for).
David the pastor, whose church I was at this morning, has been speaking with Fred and appears a bit more convinced about the preaching than I was so that is encouraging. It’s important that, as CIMS teachers, we are able to model preaching that is biblical, faithful to meaning and yet interesting. Fred and I finish talking and I do a few exercises and go out a run. It’s hot and humid and my specs keep slipping down my face so I take them off. Bang goes the sightseeing on the road down towards Lake Victoria, but my ears can still pick up the laughter and comments as the unfamiliar sight passes the locals by. I haven’t seen another white person since leaving Kigali airport two weeks ago so it’s fair enough for the people of Busia to have a laugh at a white legged man hobbling his way up and down the road. It’s a quiet evening ahead, a spot of work, a wee bit relaxation, a chat with Izzy (36 hours and I’ll be on my way to see her again!) and off to bed.
Monday 20th May
It’s been a rotten night’s sleep. I wake just after 2am bitten to pieces by mozzies that seem to have found a motorway into my net. I’m missing Izzy and restlessly and unsuccessfully try to get back to sleep. Around 4.30am I give up and try and sort out any sponsorship issues needing attention when I visit the LEMA Hope Centre this morning.
Fred walks me round to the Centre. It consists of an office which doubles as the children’s gathering point, boys and girls accommodation which is really just rooms with mattresses on the floor, toilets, and an outside area where cooking takes place over an open fire. I meet with the staff and volunteers. I’m hoping this is an interesting and happy visit with the focus on the kids but the meeting is tackling a number of challenges and Fred is strongly clarifying financial issues. There are no problems with the handling of finance but expectations for increased support for staff and a list of 17 needs ranging from an electric head shaver to the renovation of another building again emphasise the constant challenge that funding projects faces.
At last we go outside and meet the children. They are doing well. Four of them are at school, the others have not yet started the new term or have been given the morning off to meet me. They sing four songs in four different languages. Impressive. There are then memory verses, testimonies and I play a few games. The kids are great. Their lives have clearly been utterly transformed. I finish up staying for four hours and say goodbye. Afterwards I have another meeting with Fred revolving around funding and then reconvene with the team to clarify expectations. It’s turned out to be a long, intensive but really good day and the key thing is that the children have made great progress although it’s still hard work for the team and the kids do need careful monitoring.
I’ve got a pile of notes and actions from the day and try and get through some of them but the internet is painfully slow and dealing with the pictures a losing fight. I rearrange the mozzie net, get rid of three interlopers who must have been hiding in my pillows, and call Izzy. She has had a two hour meeting with social work concerning our young asylum seeker we are looking after and her head is gone so say goodnight for the last time before I’m home (I never count nights on the plane – once I’m on the way back the pain of separation seems to ease.)