Linguistics as Liberation: a story of learning Lubwisi

Uganda celebrates independence tomorrow. 57 years ago the British granted the Uganda Protectorate full independence. Of course prior to the 1800's Uganda existed independently with no permission from the British at all, with four or more distinct Kingdoms, each with their own languages, traditions, militaries, trade patterns, preferred foods, capitals and courts. Besides those four, there were dozens of smaller groups creating their own cultures and habits. One of those smaller groups was the Baamba-Babwisi-Batalinga-Babulibuli grouping here on the northwest slopes of the Rwenzori mountains trailing into the vast Ituri rainforest, straddling the imaginary border lines that the British and Belgians negotiated. They lived with very minimal contact with the world at large until the British put in a dirt road in the 1950's and set up a yellow fever research station. The larger kingdoms and tribes around the area tried to dominate, and the British actually encouraged that using those more familiarly organized tribes as administrators of their taxation and profit-making. So I suspect that independence in 1962 did not much impact the average person here. Over the next two decades Uganda's central government in conjunction with Protestant (Church of Uganda) and Catholic missions had set up a few schools and clinics, and our own World Harvest predecessors were making trips from Fort Portal into Bundibugyo to run immunization clinics, public health trainings, and the beginnings of churches. In the process we realized that the predominant language spoken here, Lubwisi, had never been written down. There were no books, and no Bible.

So from the late 80's on, we have had linguists on our team who have worked with local cultural leaders and trained Babwisi themselves to take over the work. They spent years meeting with hundreds of villages to clarify the vowels and consonants and decide on what letters to use, then more years translating the Bible bit by bit. We now have a full New Testament, and some primers, and work ongoing in Psalms. Meanwhile schools are teaching kids to read in English (in spite of national policy of learning to read first in the mother-tongue language, backed up by solid evidence that such a policy leads to better English literacy in the end), all secondary education is in English, government and business occurs largely in English (well, not really here, but most places). So you might argue: WHY learn Lubwisi, why translate it, why invest hours and years into this small language at all, when English competence dominates the world? 

Because God cannot be known fully in English, or any other language.  I am deeply indebted to an excellent book I am reading but not quite finished called Global Humility by Andy McCullough. He re-writes the tower of Babel story by pointing out that after Noah, in the chapter BEFORE Babel in Genesis, a diversification of language and culture was actually the good work of humanity in the world. It was Nimrod the hunter who tried to control, centralize, enslave with one language, one tower, one place. In this perspective, the intervention of God to re-enrich the languages was not an act of punishment but an act of liberation. "A multiplicity of languages, then--and this is the important point here--is a blessing, not a curse."

This has huge implications.  Colonial languages dominate and assimilate and if we only see the world from the perspective of the powerful, we loose beauty and nuance. As missionaries we are called to the margins, to the groups who do not control the world. We are called to become like preschoolers, babies, repeating sounds and pointing at objects. We are called to make mistakes and look foolish. We are called to dependence upon the skills of our neighbors in teaching us. We are called to honor the particularities of this place and time. We are called to move out, not conscript in.

Which is what we devoted the last week to here in Bundibugyo, thanks to Karen Masso.  Karen joined this team not long after we did and we have walked this path together for a very long time now. The Massos have moved back to the USA but Karen still works as a language-learning facilitator for Serge, gathering materials, teaching, supervising, investigating options for language schools. She prefers the growing participatory approach, which involves a lot of visual aids and repetition and a recording-listening app called Mesha. She taught 14 local people in the mornings to work as language helpers and then we all had lunch together and those 14 worked with the team for the afternoon, 1 or 2 with each adult and our best helpers taking the kids in a group. One week is just a taste of what we need to continue plugging away at for months and years. But perhaps the best part of it was the capacity to bring together our very diverse group and start building community between the language experts and the needy foreigners.

Every night Karen was cutting out visual aids and arranging packets

Day one, a meeting with Karen to explain to us the process

We usually had brief times as a group then the bulk of the time was one on one or two.

Many of the new language helpers are CSB grads, including those who found faith and purpose in those years

These kids are going to zoom ahead of us in a month I am sure

The last day, we handed out certificates and tokens of appreciation to all our helpers. Just a representative sampling of the "graduation" shots.

This is a job even a new mom can do . . . 

what a gift to have a true friend spend the week with us. Missing her already.

Quietly Extraordinary

Yosefu and Rose, with Mugi and Zawadi, in the late 90's on the airstrip

"Quietly Extraordinary" was Pat's phrase to describe the life our our friend Yosefu Mutabazi, who died this past Sunday morning at the age of 61. He was born in Rwanda, but moved to Uganda with his father as a boy and went to primary school in the Masaka area.  I could not follow the whole story but something to do with a piki and getting a job brought him out to Bundibugyo, where he met and married Rose and adopted her young son Mugisa who had immigrated from Congo. They went on to have three more children together,  Zawadi Edith (nursery school/early primary teacher with son Abel),  Sam (studying physics, chemistry, and math in S5), and Katusime (an S4 candidate taking exams this year). Yosefu was one of the first men who embraced the Gospel as our team began living and working here, and has been a right hand person of World Harvest Uganda ever since. He trained pastors, helped with Bible stories and translation, worked to establish churches, developed youth programs. He managed the Books for Bundi Library and more recently worked with Laura Stewart's new NGO promoting Bible Memory for youth (Onelife 20:24).  But mostly he opened his heart to the ever-changing group of bumbling foreigners, gave us advice, listened to our questions, gently corrected our mistakes.

He was never in a hurry, never demanding, patiently deliberate, dedicated to Scripture and truth and mercy. Perhaps because he began as an outsider he was sympathetic to our neediness. After knowing him for more than two decades we found ourselves entrusting our newest missionaries into his care. I don't think any of us imagined Bundibugyo without him.

Friday during our CSB celebration, as so often happens with highs and lows, he came to see Dr. Marc having become weak and stumbled and fell the day before. His blood pressure was sky high, and Pat drove him to the local small Catholic health center near by for treatment of this newly diagnosed malignant hypertension. We all thought this was concerning but treatable. However by Saturday he had become unconscious, and in spite of heroic efforts by Marc, Pat, his family, and many friends enabling transfer to Fort Portal, he never regained consciousness and died Sunday morning. We were sadly unavailable having driven Kevin to the airport and picked up Karen . . . but returned Sunday evening to sit at his home til nearly midnight.

Traditionally, when someone dies, the close family sits in the house with the body (in a coffin or on a mattress) and others stay outside awaiting burial the next day. In the old days there would be drums beating all night to ward off evil. These days, we have lights hooked up, speakers for music, and in this case even the Life Ministries projector showing the Jesus film.

Monday morning, we were back down to sit and show our support physically, while younger men started digging the grave. Since Yosefu was a much-loved senior, his grave was lined with bricks and finished with cement. 

Women take turns coming into the house to sit with the wife, children, and body, sometimes singing and praying, talking or being quiet. 

While friends comfort and youth dig, the elders organize for the funeral. Tarps propped up by poles, the sound system, many rented plastic chairs, and an ever growing crowd of people throughout the morning.

The church elders sat at this table receiving any donations to help the family, recording them in a book.

The funeral consisted of praise music, speeches, sermons, tributes, condolences, all of which went on for many hours. We collected and printed a dozen or more messages from across the world, as our missionaries recalled Yosefu's grace in their lives. Here Scott is preaching on Revelations and hope, the New Heavens and New Earth, the Kingdom on which we stake our life, using a song lyric from Andrew Peterson:

And all of the death that ever was

If you set it next to life

I believe it would barely fill a cup

'Cause I believe there's power in the blood . . .

I have to admit that lyric takes some faith here in Bundibugyo. There is a lot of death.

But as the rain poured down and the daylight faded, that lyric stuck with me. We were dancing in the mud, declaring death to be impotent in the face of the life God is bringing. We were remembering a man who preached this truth even as we reminded ourselves of the same truth in our grief. If our theology does not survive a leaking tarp on plastic chairs next to a fresh grave, with bereaved kids all around, then it is not worth embracing. 

By dark, we were ankle deep in heavy mud and rain, the coffin was in the ground, and people were dispersing quietly home. 

The final tradition is held 4 days later, which was this morning, and symbolically the tools of burial are to be washed that day and a large amount of food prepared. Everyone returns to sit under the tarps a final time and eat a plate of food. This symbolizes peace with the spirit of the person who has died. After that, the family is free to leave the home and start re-assembling their life.

We know we will see Yosefu in eternity, with his ready smile and loping gate, probably surrounded by small children who felt the warmth of being in his orbit. Please remember his family in your prayers.

Christ School - 20 Year Ebenezer

Celebrating 20 years of Christ-centered education, for God's glory and the good of Bundibugyo. That was our theme on Friday.  Our first class entered in 1999, and those first few years were a struggle of survival. The ADF attacked in the area and burned students at another school (Kichwamba), finances were week-to-week and uncertain, we were betrayed on multiple sides by people breaking trust and doing harm, there were riots and sorrows and losses. But the point of an ebenezer is this: a memory, a marker, this far by grace, by God's help, we have come. Not by our own skills or power or luck, but by grace alone.

Grace, mediated often through these two. Kevin and JD Bartkovich joined our team in 1998 as educators who embraced our team leader Paul Leary's vision for a quality boarding school in the district. Bundibugyo was 50th out of 50 district on test performance. Our team had begun to train church leaders and translate the Bible, to reach out in health and water engineering, and we knew we would need a school to equip the rising generation to lead. Kevin was particularly aware that sending kids outside the district for schooling risked having them lose touch culturally with home, having them not return, having them model their lives on big-man power-accumulation values. So he and JD dedicated themselves to building up a new school, from scratch. Scott and I became team leaders as the Leary's left in 2001 which put Scott in the position of Board Chair. We had already sponsored one of the students in the very first class, and continued over the years to put ten of our "fostered" kids and our four biological children through the school. As leaders and parents we were invested, treasure and heart. And as leaders, we have stayed involved over a long arc. Particularly as we returned in 2019 to devote the year to sustaining the school in a time when we risked losing the whole project.

So it was a delight and a privilege that Kevin agreed to return as the guest of honor last week. The photo above is from about 9 pm after the full day of the massive party, as the staff requested to gather and speak words of thanks to Kevin and to Scott. Because though the grace has flowed through our mission, the main place it has landed and been multiplied to spread to students and to the district, is through our CSB teaching staff. These men and women are all in. They live on campus, they teach, they encourage and discipline, organize and inspire. It is their faith in God and their commitment to the school's values that impacts students. Our vision has always been to produce servant-leaders. This is so counter-cultural, in American and in Ugandan culture. Leaders who humbly put others before themselves. We saw that very concretely on Friday. These staff were ushering, serving, setting up, taking down, running errands, absolutely ensuring the joyful success of the day.

Besides the mission and the CSB staff, the other sponsors of the event were the CSB alumni, known here as OB-OG's (old boys and old girls). Above, Scott and Kevin pose with acting head teacher Peter Bwambale and the chairman of the OB-OG organization Agaba Amos. Many of the 750 students who have graduated from CSB returned for the day. Because when all is said and done, 20 years of school-establishing is not really about building classrooms and dorms or having a great football pitch. It is about the young men and women who leave the gate to change the world. Everywhere you go in Bundibugyo now, in government, media, health, education, business, in homes and churches, you find CSB grads who work with a different level of integrity and competence, with a vision for service and a heart of faith.

With all that prelude, back to the party. We invited and expected over a thousand people; I have no idea how many came but it was way over that. The week leading up to Friday was particularly stressful because a prominent local woman died after giving birth, and the family delayed her burial until Friday. Nothing is more important in Bundibugyo than a burial, so all of the district leadership who were coming to the CSB event were also juggling the burial plans. This caused a lot of stress for the people involved, and for us as hosts. We were deeply sad for the grieved family whom we knew, and it was hard to justify celebration in the context of grief. But that is the paradox of life on earth, seen starkly in Bundibugyo. We hold onto sorrow and joy in full measures, at the same time. Mercifully, the main political guests managed to make it to both, though the day became quite long.

Our CSB student choirs and dance teams performed for the guests, looking sharp and talented!

And we show-cased the local cultural group who outdid themselves with traditional dances, playing their flutes and banging their drums and shaking their bells. 

Besides music and dancing, every major event needs speeches. Politicians from the local surrounding village community right up to the LC5 (governor), the alumni association (above, note our son Balitebia John in the handsome maroon suit and his fiancee Paula in the yellow dress), the organizing committee, the PTA, the acting head teacher, the chairperson BOG, and the guest of honor. There were 28 lines on the program for all the invited greetings, speeches, and performances. Which took us about 6 hours.

These people deserve the greatest credit: the organizing committee, led by teacher Desmond (with mic) who is the longest-serving staff member and carries the vision, mission, and values of the school in a very unique way. All seven of these people donated days of work to the event. 

Scott spoke about the ebenezer theme, looking back on God's goodness to us and looking forward by faith to the calling we still have. Kevin told stories of God's faithfulness over his decade of preparing and then leading the school. He challenged the alumni to invest, challenged the students to avoid attempts at "short-cuts" and to live by trusting God and working hard. 

The final event was cutting the cake, complete with confetti and sparklers and cheers.  Left to right, Isingoma Edward who served as head teacher in the 2011-14 years when we desperately needed his help, he dropped everything else in his life and came. Me, Scott, Agaba Amos (head of alumni), Kevin, acting head teacher Peter Bwambale, the LC5 Mutegheki Ronald, the Chairman PTA Edison Balitwana, and the women's member of parliament for Bundibugyo District Josephine Babungi.

And while all that hooplah was shouting and sparkling on the football pitch, there were dozens of people cooking in and around the school kitchen.  Massive pots of meat, baskets of tomatoes, diced and sliced cabbages, plucked chickens, savory rice.  Because educating children takes the entire proverbial village: parents who entrusted us with their kids, the neighbors who sold us land, the brick-layers and sweepers, the teachers and nurses. And the cooks. So many cooks. 

It was a great day, that stretched into the night, with music and gusto and pride and reunions and a sense of accomplishment. 

The interesting thing about ebenezers in the Bible--they are not final markers, not tomb stones. They are testimonies of progress, a dividing line between danger survived and victory enjoyed, but the journey continues.  Friday, and the entire week leading up to the party (starting with the graduating classes' "Candidates Party" held the Saturday prior), afforded us a definite time to acknowledge the good that has come out of the years and lives poured into this work. But it was also a week of dreaming, and of remembering the vision. Bundibugyo needs a reliable, competent school within the district, a place where God's Kingdom is intentionally welcomed, where girls can learn without harassment, where being successful is not defined by money or prestige but by character and service, where learning includes practicums and not just notes, where local dances and drumming are admired on display, where parents are accessible and family is valued. And though we have a two-decade start, we have far to go. So let us end this 20-year post with a thanks to the donors who have enabled us to come this far, and an appeal for your prayers that the same grace by which we have come would carry us forward.

A Wedding after a Funeral

The above could be the story of life.  First there is death, then resurrection. First there is suffering, then joy.

Twelve years ago, we were in another busy Fall season, when mysterious deaths began occurring and we ended up in the midst of an Ebola epidemic. Our closest friend and colleague Dr. Jonah Kule died of the disease, and in the aftermath of that sorrow, we developed a program to send a handful of young people to medical school in his honor.  One of those was Dr. Ammon Bwambale, sponsored by the Laura Case Trust, who is now the medical superintendent and our boss as we work at the hospital.  (And cute enough, another redemption, the little boy and girl excited by the bride and groom in the photo above are two of his four children, both born very prematurely and both miracle survivors!). Another was Dr. Baluku Morris, who excelled in med school and was chosen by the government to be trained as an anesthesiologist. And who this weekend married his best friend, Phoebe.

with Dr. Ammon at reception

On Sunday, we found ourselves sitting in a church in Bundibugyo Town, with Dr. Ammon opening and leading the initial part of a wedding ceremony where Dr. Baluku was getting married. It was an 8-hour marathon of waiting, worshiping, eating, dancing, clapping, listening, speeches and prayers. First in the church with, then processing in cars through town honking horns, and then at a local restaurant venue with tents and booming speakers. At some point in the church service, it occurred to me that this day of joy would not have happened without the time of sorrow a dozen years before. Ammon and Baluku Morris would not be doctors, would not be leaders. We might not have even known them at this point in their lives.

Instead, this day burst with true happiness.  My favorite moment was when one of the dance groups played a very traditional scale and beat, which inspired about half of the seated audience of hundreds to move out of their chairs and out into the grass and join the dancing.  It was so spontaneous and people looked truly joyful. There are not many people from Bundibugyo who reach university, medicine, specialization . . . so the celebration was of marriage but also of hope.

Early in the day, Scott said, at least this is one party where I don't have to give a speech (after several unexpected invites over the prior few days). But mid-reception, it was announced that he would. And we are glad he did have the opportunity to remind people of Dr. Jonah, and of the way God brings good out of evil.

Outfit change to something traditional, long live Wakanda

Here is a quote from Kate Bowler's podcast interviewing Nora McInerny about grief: " Yes, I have a life I love and a life I miss.  Yes, I'm filled with happiness and gratitude and with an eternal ache.  Yes, we have all been broken before and yes, we could break all over again. The years will roll on, more joy, more pain, more possibility, more yes, more and more."

The centrifuge of suffering

In Bundibugyo, the Paeds ward is a centrifuge that applies a centripetal force upon all the misery of the world and distills it down into the bodies of dozens and dozens of small people.

This beautiful place, like all others on our planet, has a hidden brokenness. As we round the mountain curves to return home, I see the smooth amazing pavement which has replaced one of the most difficult roads in the world. I see the outlines of palms and the vibrant green of banana trees, testaments to rainfall and abundance.  I see songbirds and sunsets, hear laughter, creativity, resilience, commitment.

But spin the globe a few times, and then enter the ward to see what settles out. Malaria, malaria, malaria, and the nurse tells me they lost one last night because the quick-acting and effective artesunate is out of stock. My first patient is a newly admitted 4-year-old, gathered on the floor on a mattress with her mother and little sister. I can see her skin is tortured with scabies (a mite) and her face puffy with marginal protein in her diet. Her baby sister's clothes, her mother's thin-ness . . . I am nearly certain that if we tell them to buy artesunate in a clinic, they won't be able to. We have a national medical store that supplies the district, but our population is large and growing, our malaria progress has stalled, the rain this year never stopped, and the vials of medicine run out too fast. We try giving her an oral dose which she immediately and dramatically vomits out. So I end up driving into the market and finding a private pharmacy where I can purchase 8 vials.  8 lives. $1.67 per life.

A few beds later, an 8 year old with HIV/AIDS. I had seen her just before I left for Serge meetings, suspected she was failing treatment, and obtained a specimen container from the lab for her to cough into to diagnose possible TB. We enrolled her for nutritional help, talked about medicine compliance, and left the student doctor to follow her.  Two weeks later, there she was. About four times someone had re-written the same plan in her chart, but nothing had happened. Her attendant grandmother did not have the understanding to complain, to push, to advocate. She lost the specimen container.  I found her not eating, breathing fast, coughing, vomiting, dangerously thin and dehydrated, not getting medicines, patiently waiting for a miracle I suppose. Caring for advanced immunodeficiency requires a fair amount of resourcefulness. To keep up with pills, with check-ups, with care. Clearly the decimated body of this child showed her family could not manage. We found an NG tube and I pulled a nasty looking fluid out of her stomach; not an ideal specimen but hoping it might show us if she has TB. We restarted meds, and a new plan for milk and hydration. The HIV virus is not highly prevalent here compared to many areas, but even 3% of 300,000 people is still 9,000 sorrows.

Across from her, a 2 year old with pale hair, big eyes, swollen limbs, skin ulcerations. His mother left him with his father as the marriage dissolved. His father, it seems, was nearly blind, in his 60's and in poor health, and really had no business getting this much younger woman pregnant.  Months later, he barely found his way to our outpatient nutrition program with his son having dwindled to near death, and the team quickly realized the need for inpatient admission. Thankfully the "divorced" mother's mother, the child's maternal grandmother, surfaced to stay with him in the hospital. His wounds look much better, but he lays stretched in the bed, listless. And his caretaker grandmother complains that while she gives him the therapeutic milk, she has nothing to eat herself. Adults suffering sorrows and making choices and having relational rifts that spin down to nearly kill a child.

Another twenty patients, sickle cell anemia, transfusions given, wheezy coughs, pneumonias, too-early weaning from breast feeding leading to intractable diarrhea, abscesses. I'm almost to the back wall when I see teeth way to big for the mouth of what looks like 3-month size baby. This twin is over 2 now. The mom tells me a story about going into labor too soon, delivering on the way to the hospital, an evidently poor birth outcome leading to severe brain damage. The other twin though looks normal. Something about this baby's spasms just grabs my heart, she really looks like she is suffering. How is it to be this mother and watch this happen, hour after hour, month after month, year after year, in a place with so few options? How is this baby even alive?

And so it goes. The day began with a nearly two-hour all-staff meeting about laboratory quality improvement, and ends with Jessie and I in the District Health Office trying to make sense of the large numbers of malnutrition patients in our books versus the small numbers in the hospital's reported cases. It takes a lot of time and effort to identify the point of the gap, and set up a meeting for Monday. Both of these sessions are very important, because donor money demands results, and the lab and the nutrition help we get will not continue if the data does not show competence. The list of problems to overcome to make changes seems daunting: interruptions in electricity, a broken generator, no service for the machines, running out of paper, out of medicine, out of forms, out of uniforms, out of staff, out of time. This hospital was designed to have 100 beds and serve a population of probably 50,000 in the 1960s. (Uganda and I are the same age, and population in the country in my life has gone from under 7 million to well over 40 million. ) The budget for Bundibugyo hospital for operating expenses (not counting the staff salaries and the standard medicines supplied by the government) is $12,000 A YEAR.  I suspect that keeps a comparably sized American hospital running for about 10 seconds.  So we problem-solve where we can, improvise, document, fund-raise, teach, help.

Budgets, education, lack of supplies, politics, power, accountability, belief--these huge and nebulous issues are hard to even grasp. But when the centrifuge spins, they bore down into the tiny lives left covered in insect bites, apathetic with hunger, shaking with fever.

Lord have mercy.
Give us wisdom and stamina.
Amen.

An open letter to the question - are missionaries just modern colonialists or white saviours?

Dear person who might consider supporting Serge in East and Central Africa-

You are very correct to note that the history of Western involvement in Africa is a mixed bag at best, and the harm has been monumental. We have lived in Uganda and Kenya for 26 years and would be the first to acknowledge that for every way that we have sought to lay down our lives and show the love of God, we have done so with impure motives, pride, false assumptions, exasperation, superiority, and at times cynicism. We are still a work in process ourselves, not to mention the work we do.

However, if your concern is to support a cross-cultural effort that is founded in partnership, focused on empowerment, and genuinely living out the Gospel, your church would be hard pressed to find a better investment.

All of our teams in East and Central Africa exist at the invitation of our African partners. We do not work anyplace as lone rangers. There is no place that we call the shots or impose our unchecked will. In every new endeavor we first seek invitation, and we only go where we are asked. I will speak specifically of Bundibugyo, since that is where we are currently based, but the principles are broadly similar in our work in Kenya, Uganda, DRC, Burundi, Malawi and South Sudan.

Church—the handful of churches planted by Serge are part of the Presbyterian Church of Uganda, which is fully self-governed and self-supporting. We attend one of them, and the Pastor and elders are all local people, the worship leader, the music, the choirs, all leadership is Ugandan. Americans are participants in the congregation only. Our role now is to bring in occasional training, to pray together, to be friends.

Bible Translation and Literacy—the area’s language was unwritten when we came, and listed as a priority for SIL/Wycliffe. Our team started the project, which is now fully in Ugandan hands, with SIL providing consultation checks a few times a year, usually remote conferencing. The New Testament is complete and printed. We supply a local office space to the translation team and some minimal support; the rest comes from the community and SIL funding. The local translators are plugging through the Old Testament. Our team has brought in Ugandans from other parts of the country to do literacy work in the primary schools and funded literacy training materials, again the model of partnership.

Health Care—we very specifically never built a clinic or hospital, but from the very beginning worked completely in partnership with the Ugandan Ministry of Health (government, though other teams work in partnership with African church hospitals). Over the years we have funded rehab and upgrade of various infrastructure projects, extended immunization outreach, trained traditional birth attendants and community health workers, sponsored dozens of nurses, lab techs, doctors for training, and provided clinical care alongside our Ugandan colleagues with ongoing medical education. We work in a government referral hospital where the medical director is a Ugandan whom we helped train, and is now our boss. We work under the supervision of the Ugandan District Health Officer as well. Our role is to empower and work alongside as equals. The healthcare system IS getting more trained Ugandans, though none yet with the level of training and experience our team provides. Many of our other teams are integrally involved in medical education at the student, intern, and resident level, offering both expertise and discipleship.

Water—we built the original gravity-flow water system in the area that saved countless lives, but now the entire engineering/water/sanitation system is managed by Ugandans, with our engineer providing consultation or doing specific projects under their authority.

Youth Work—we have a library which we open to kids after school, and have at times done evangelism and discipleship through sports. Like the other outreaches above, this is in partnership with the Ugandan church. On some teams we work through sports to equip coaches as positive, loving figures in a child's life; on others we have equipped teachers in trauma healing.

Education—the one institution we did build was Christ School Bundibugyo, at a time when this district was in the very last place in the country for educational achievement. The purpose was to have a Christian secondary school that would train leaders in the District. That school now has a Ugandan head teacher and full Ugandan staff, including some graduates who have gone on for further studies.  Serge provides orphan scholarships for about 15% of the students, and a half-tuition-subsidy for the other 85% to enable the poorest people to access education. This half/half partnership with local Ugandan parents is, in our opinion, excitingly fair. Our board is 10 Ugandans and 2 missionaries. A missionary still works in a role of mentoring the head teacher and staff, and providing accountability for finances and direction for the spiritual care and overall trajectory of the project.

When we moved to Uganda we also assumed that 10-20 years would be fully adequate for a complete handover of all our assets and work. In fact, at the ten year mark, we led our team in an “exit strategy” retreat. We invited three respected African church leaders who did NOT live and work with us in Bundibugyo so had no skin in the game, to speak into our lives as a team. Should we accelerate our departure? Was it time to move on? They were familiar with the place and our work, and they told us NO. Bundibugyo, they said, needs the kind of change that is generational. They advised us to think on a longer timeline. So we did.

If you think about it, it makes no sense to Africans that what took Americans 300 years to achieve (moving from very basic hunter-gatherer existence with 50% child mortality and about a 40 year life expectancy . . .. .  to a very industrialized society with paved roads, running water, sophisticated health care, universal education and literacy, electricity, and 5% or less child mortality with 80 year life expectancy) should be achieved in Africa in 30 years or less. And that is speaking nothing of the spiritual journey. Our culture has had Judeo-Christian influence for centuries with high rates of access to the Word, and yet we still struggle. Imagine having only had the Bible available for the last two years. Bundibugyo had very limited contact with the outside world prior to 1950. The world view of the average person is still very much shaped by fear of ancestral spirits, and the great harm the spiritual world can inflict.

So yes, Africans are in charge of Bundibugyo. We do not work independently in the church, in health or education, or anything. Nor do we want to. But we do believe that the call to take up the cross and follow Jesus to all nations, to come and listen and work and serve in the most difficult places, is still relevant. Why? This morning my Bible reading included Micah 6, and we have verse 8 on our prayer card, so it’s as good a summary as any.  What does the Lord require of you, of us? To do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.

JUSTICE-this is one of the primary themes of the Bible and a core character of God’s nature. American Christians enjoy a high proportion of the world’s wealth and education. As a pediatrician, I choose to work on the continent with the majority of the sick kids with the least doctors. It just makes sense. I did not deserve to be born to parents whose work and opportunities allowed them to purchase a home and cars, to live in a country where a public high school and state University gave me a solid education, to have excellent medical training, clean water, abundant access to electricity and books, almost no exposure to fatal diseases as a baby, and on and on. Even living in a remote place on the Uganda/Congo border, it is hard for me at times to imagine the life of my neighbors. Until I would be content for my own kids to live with those resources, I should be working to improve them.

MERCY-Thankfully, God does not only operate on justice, because all of us receive much better than what we deserve. Jesus modeled going to the margins. Jesus walked the dusty obscure roads, and lived His entire life in poverty and transience. The parables talk about seeking out the lame and the blind, calling those on the edges to come to the feast. Jesus spoke of being encountered in acts of mercy to the prisoner, the hungry, the naked. There is also a joy and holiness in going to places that are hard to survive in, to be the hands and feet of Jesus.

WALK HUMBLY WITH YOUR GOD--let me just leave you with that last idea about joy emphasized. Our team enjoys the people, the beauty, the challenge, the spiritual growth of living and working cross-culturally. It is a rich life in so many ways. Walking with God is a privilege we have. We love this life. It is also a path that leads to knowing God’s heart more deeply. And it takes decades for all this to happen. We keep learning. I probably thought I understood the place at the one-year mark more than I think I do now at the 26-year mark. Eugene Peterson and others write about the value of a long obedience in the same direction.

I have one more idea to add to that list, it is something I think about that is perhaps more from Ephesians 6 than Micah.  And it is this:
RESIST EVIL—we are in a struggle against principalities and powers that seek harm. And sometimes being an outsider gives us an independence, a platform that is harder for a cultural insider to have. A couple of days ago, I cared for an infant who was three weeks old.  Her father has AIDS, her mother was not yet infected at the time of her prenatal test. (Our team pioneered HIV testing and care here). But around her delivery time, this young mother was hospitalized and our team gave her nutritional boosts because she was so frail. She was also anemic, and needed a blood transfusion, something we have often supported. Sadly a few days after delivering and going home, this mother died. In most of the history of Bundibugyo, if a mother dies, the baby dies. It is assumed. But because we don’t assume or accept that, as outsiders, we say no, let’s do something for this baby. So we have a program that enrolls such orphans, and while we might give a few cans of powdered formula to tide them over emergently, our goal is to help the baby’s grandmother re-lactate. Yes, she is only in her 40’s and her youngest child is four, so it is not that difficult for her to produce breast milk again. For a few dollars of medicine and a few minutes of my day, I could talk to her, examine the baby, prescribe, encourage, and just be that little outside boost that helped the family bridge from death to life. There are so many ways that our presence is salt and light, that we draw a line against evil. One of the reasons we have kept our involvement in Christ School is that it is a tiny piece of the Kingdom of God carved out of a place that has known much darkness.  We don’t allow students to be beaten with canes.  We don’t allow teachers to sexually abuse girls. We don’t allow the staff to buy the answers to exams. We don’t allow sacrifices to spirits. We don’t allow extortion of parents. I promise you that those things are happening in many schools, but we have a role of being a little outpost to show a handful of students a different path, which we hope they will choose to stay on in their lives.  MANY have, and the impact shows! So there is a disruption that is good that we embrace. My husband and I did MPH degrees at Johns Hopkins on our first sabbatical. One of our professors there was actually a former missionary kid from India, and when we enrolled he was an emeritus professor of public health in his 70s. He wrote and taught about the power of the three-part partnership in transforming for health: the community must be involved to analyze and solve their own problems, the government must drive policy and provide infrastructure, and the outside “expert” catalyzes change by bringing new ideas, training, questions, connection.  I think that’s very insightful and applies to missions too. In fact, I daresay that our American churches could use some disruptive majority-world people asking hard questions about our patterns of evil, African missionaries to challenge our assumptions that it’s OK to be a church elder and live a lifestyle driven by consumption and accumulation, or to be a Sunday school teacher who is addicted to social media or gossip, or that it’s normal to worship only with people from the same social and racial background. We all have our cultural blind spots, and evil pushes in on all sides.

This has been a long answer, because we take the church’s partnership with Serge very seriously. I hope you and your staff take the time to prayerfully seek God’s heart on this. We don’t want you to go against your conscience and if you believe that your calling to the world is specific to your home town, and shouldn’t extend overseas, or that all cross-cultural commitments should be short-term, then our models would be incompatible and we would need to find our support elsewhere.  But for the sake of our missionaries and our partners on the ground, we do hope that you can come around us with blessing and care. And for your sake too, because I think your connection to people at the margins of your world will bring YOU blessing and joy.

Hoping to be your partners for the world’s good and God’s glory.
Jennifer

Happy First Days of School: and next year yours could be happier!!

Next year, you could be having the best experience of your life. Don’t take it from me, listen to four voices below. I sent an email out to some former teachers with Serge, asking them to describe their time, and here is a sampling from the first installment of replies. I have grouped their long essays into five areas that most people mentioned as reasons they were glad they spent a couple of years teaching with us in Africa: the wonder of the people and place, the intensity of living in community, the uniqueness of the teaching experience, the relationship they developed with third-culture kids, and the impact on their personal life.  The voices below are from real men and women, serving in multiple countries, over the last decade and a half. If they inspire you, please take a step of praying and contacting us! As the 2020 school year starts, we anticipate needing a minimum of 7 teachers for mission kids and could use others in teaching and coaching cross-culturally too.

 First day of school, circa 1997, Bundibugyo

RMS in 2017ish (Rwenzori Mission School, Bundibugyo)

KHA in 2019 (Kibuye Hope Academy)

Ugandans and Uganda: Welcome and Beauty

I was a little hesitant  at first when I learned it would be rustic living and that we were so far from a major city.  But, everyday as I walked to the little school house and felt the warm sun and enjoyed the lush greenery and looked up at the beautiful Rwenzori Mountains, God would affirm that this was the place for me. (Anna D)

As a Christian it became clear that sharing a common faith with many Ugandans I became friends with, we had more in common than I thought! My Christian Ugandan friends showed me that we truly are brothers and sisters in our faith. (Pamela C)

What I did not realize in accepting the role to teach at RMS, was that I would also be able to serve in many other capacities on the mission team. I helped lead a small group at Christ School, helped to coach a cross country and track team, and work with the nutrition program. (Scott I)

Community Life

I also loved that I wasn't only a teacher, but a part of a team-  a mini picture of the body of Christ.  My teaching these children freed their parents to participate in healing in the local health center, run a large secondary school for Ugandans, provide nutrition and agricultural training, and most importantly together be sharers of the gospel.   I quickly developed a closeness to team that felt like family. (Anna D)

I loved cooking with and for others, enjoying meals together, praying together, seeing friendly faces as I walked down the road, walking and riding a bike everywhere, and just the simplicity of life. (Kim B)

My time with my teammates is one of my favorite memories of living in Bundibugyo. Team dinners, pizza nights, birthdays, traveling, Bible study, serving together, living together and being in close community was one of the best parts about being in Uganda with Serge. I miss my fellow team every day! (Pamela C)

Unique Teaching Experience

We had a sweet one room school house experience. We learned together, went for nature walks in the jungle, traveled to Kampala, Fort Portal and Kenya together as their parents needed to for different reasons. We had a cow and a pet goat living in our school yard, which entailed many mornings chasing an escaped animal or two! It was genuinely one of the best experiences of my life.  (Pamela C)

When I taught in the US I often left home in the dark, had an extremely busy day with, with over 100 students, lots of paperwork, and grading.  It was a gift to have 5 students, many less papers to grade, and a much more flexible schedule.  I loved taking my students on community field trips to see how cocoa was harvested, then fermented and dried.  We did nature journals following the cycle of the mango tree in our school yard.  We took walks to the river and collected local clay for an art project. (Anna D)

Although I was living in an intensely cross-cultural setting, the mission school provided a welcome haven for part of my day; a place where I could speak English without altering my accent and explore the treasures of children’s literature, mathematics, art, physical education, gardening, history and Christian education. With access to the internet, printing, and excellent textbooks, we had ample resources that made teaching in this remote, rural setting feel relatively straightforward.  Plus, the simplicity of an environment that was not ruled by technology allowed for a beautifully simple and sweet learning environment where we could spend time gardening, reading under shade trees, and using real dusty chalk.  (Scott I)

Relationship with TCK’s

I loved the depth of relationship I had with my students, and the freedom to involve faith in every situation. (Anna D)

Now 12 years later as I look back on my time in Uganda, my best memories are about being a part of my students’ life in school and outside of school. Eating meals with them, celebrating birthdays, holidays, etc. (Kim B)

Personal Growth

In some ways life away from the US was a lot harder and certainly different, but it had a richness that I had never experienced before, and I learned to walk more closely with Jesus and care more deeply about things that he cared about.  While I went with the hope that I would shape young lives, my life was shaped too in ways I could not have imagined. (Anna D)

God stretched me in ways that I didn’t picture for myself. I was pushed to be a leader and a friend to people that seemed so different from me. I saw the Gospel in a culture and context different from what I’d always known, and that helped me better understand my faith and who Jesus is. (Pamela C)

I realize the value of my experience when I think about how it’s changed my perspective of the world forever, and still impacts who I am today. I would not be who I am or where I am without my experience in Uganda and Sudan.I believe I am a better wife, mother, friend, stranger... because of my time with Serge in Africa. (Kim B)

Taking a leap of faith to “put life on hold” and take a year-plus to raise support, and move to Uganda felt like I was giving up something important, stepping off a track into a big, wide unknown. Now, 13 years later, I can look back and see God’s hand in re-directing in the paradoxical Kingdom way: in losing our life, we actually gain everything.   Before I moved to Uganda, I imagined fearful circumstances: insect infestations, heat, and an unfamiliar diet. While each of these concerns had some merit, what I gained living in community with mission-focused Jesus followers in a beautiful jungle setting and developing friendships with resilient Ugandan boys and girls – were gifts beyond what I could have ever imagined.  Those gifts were not only food for the journey in the moment, but seeds that grew into helping me to become the person I am today by allowing God to make me into something new.  It is impossible to imagine the story of my life today without the Bundibugyo chapter. (Scott I)