Where relief and development meet: A day with COVID relief packages in Bundibugyo

 If you have followed World Harvest Uganda, or Serge in Africa, for the coming-up-on-28 years we've been bearing testimony . . . you're aware that our vision is large and holistic, and our methods are long-term and slow. Christ School has been a 21 year marathon. We have teams with people finishing two and even into their third five-year terms, places where we don't just construct a hospital building but also train class after class of students and interns, or track malnourished kids over years, or plant churches that have gone on to plant other churches, teach pastors who go on to create other programs, disciple coaches who reach into slums and villages. Real understanding takes study, and that study can only happen by living alongside the language, the culture, the challenges, in real time. Real change takes trust, and trust requires relational capital that only grows with multi-year presence and investment.  In the NGO world, this is called "development"; in the Christian world it is called "incarnation". Jesus didn't beam in for a dramatic moment, he took on our bodies and walked our paths.

But sometimes, a response to a crisis means that we shift into "relief" mode. A war sends people on the run into camps, and we might do immunisations or nutrition screening or supplements for kids. A landslide knocks down a swath of homes, and we might buy mattresses and cooking pots to get people back on their feet. Ebola or Covid shut down an area, and we might help fill a financial gap to sustain health centres. In the last few years in Bundibugyo, our spending is about 5% relief and 95% development, which is appropriate to our Kingdom purposes. Pushing on for the long term change that makes the community more resilient and capable of crisis response, but ready to respond to the overwhelming situations that arise. Jesus spent most days walking and talking with disciples, instilling a love-God love-neighbour ethos to change their ways and hearts. But the Gospels are full of dramatic miracles too. Not every blind person in the Palestinian area was remarkably healed or every hungry person fed in those years, but the ones who were pointed out the nature of the world to come, the reality we are made for and long for and press on to inhabit.

So . . . when we went to formally greet the new post-election District government this month, both the LC5 (locally elected governor) and the RDC (centrally appointed representative) asked us to respond to the economic distress of the COVID lockdown in our District. They noted that we had provided quick immediate help when Congolese refugees started filling our local transit centre, so reasoned we should also help our Ugandan neighbours (equality is a very very very strong value). We can't do anything meaningful for 260,000 people, but they proposed a list of registered community groups for the vulnerable, and we agreed to fund a small relief package for one group of up to 30 families per sub-county and township. That's 25 x 30 or 750 families, scattered across the whole district. Some were widows' groups, some disabled, some the unemployed boda drivers (as I saw in a political cartoon, the boda (motorcycle taxi) driver is an essential worker both for most of the health care and commerce in this country but also for providing for his own children), some people living with HIV/AIDS. With the government's leave to transport and gather small groups under COVID protocols, we could proceed in a time where churches, schools, and even driving are prohibited. 

Thanks to donors, even a last-minute two churches who spontaneously wrote and asked how they could help in this COVID time, with the balance of what was raised last year for floods and not fully spent on refugees . . we came up with a budget of about 100,000 USH per family ($28) to purchase, transport, and distribute a 25-kg (55 pound) sack of rice, a 5-kg (11 pounds) sack of beans, 1-kg (2 pounds) of salt, and a crisp 5,000 USH note to help as needed (hauling the goods home on a motorcycle boda, or buying cooking oil or firewood). Over the weekend our administrator John Balitebia supervised the purchase and importation of this food while sending out trusted mission colleagues (Christ School grads who stay active as alumni) to verify each group and prepare them, and yesterday his team of 5 trucks, each with a trained crew of distributors, reached every corner of this district. 

This entire exercise was beautiful on so many levels. First, it was an open door to show God's love sprinkled into hard-to-reach places with word and deed. These recipients were just a sample of the people on the margins rarely tallied in COVID impacts, who have found the austerity of this time to be a heavy burden. Each distributing team shared a short message to the waiting crowd. I listened to one, and the "preacher" was a former CSB student from a different religious background, an orphan, who met Jesus through the discipleship of the school, and gave his own testimony while pointing out that God is a God of seeing and presence, who reaches into the resources of people far away to recognise those who are suffering, and has brought them this food. So the whole thing was a lovely picture of the Gospel right there. 

But secondly, as we have done this a handful of times over the last few years, our World Harvest Uganda team has become quite trustworthy and efficient. John is competent with a spreadsheet and a plan, and others who are mostly all CSB alumni know how to mobilise in the community, check the facts, arrange the trucks, control the crowd, preach and distribute. We instigate and observe basically, while the young generation who were toddlers when we came, who grew up with our kids, who played and learned math facts and Bible stories in our yard and around the mission, who came to Christ School, whom the teaching staff invested in with skills and personal discipleship, whom many have helped with scholarships . . . do the work. And do it well. 

So in the end, relief and development meet. The long arc of decades of development means that the relief work can be done by local people who know the villages, speak the language, and have the capacity and integrity to carry on with the service.

We pray that the rice and beans fill hungry stomachs, and the experience of hearing and seeing God's love fills tired souls. We are all tired of this pandemic. But that doesn't matter, troubles don't end when we're tired of them. God asks us to stay in the fray, to keep at the margins with service and stamina. Thanks to donors who in their own weariness see that the suffering, like the vaccines and oxygen supply, is not justly spread over the world. Some pockets are harder than others. Thanks.

If you would like to contribute to the Uganda Emergency Relief Fund--CLICK HERE.