Uganda wrap-up March 3, 2009

First, my apologies for going so long since my last blog (which now has pictures for each of the guys who were profiled, by the way). We had a number of tasks we were scrambling to wrap up before we left Uganda, not to mention that I finally succumbed to the inevitable “runny stomach” one gets when spending time in Africa during my last week there. Now that we have arrived safely in Zambia, we have some down time for a few weeks before we head to Malawi in mid-March, enabling us to catch up on some correspondence.

My primary goal before leaving was to complete a six-page summary of our experience for the executive director of Sports Outreach addressing the following topics, among others:

• Financial accountability

• Sports Outreach website

• Office administration efficiency and protocol

• Salaries/self sustaining income for Sports Outreach members

• Venue for members to post suggestions, complaints and questions

• Architectural model for future proposed complex

• Electronic purchases

It really was a pleasure to work with the Sports Outreach team. If you have any familiarity with NGOs in Africa, you know many of them are laden with corruption. Sports Outreach, on the other hand, was very open with its finances; and we never had to worry about what was happening with any money we gave because we always saw the results of how the money was spent. We also appreciated the hearts of the guys with whom we worked and how they lived out their faith even outside of their responsibilities with Sports Outreach. A few examples:

• I was trying to set up a time to meet with Samson one Saturday, and he said he wasn’t available in the afternoon because he and his wife started a ministry with some of the kids who live near the new house he is building. He had noticed that the young boys in the village were just loitering, so he is starting to teach them soccer followed by a time of Bible study each Saturday afternoon. Forty boys and girls showed up in just their second week.

• When I was walking home from the office one afternoon, I heard my name being called and looked over to find Vincent (known as PaPa since he likes children so much), one of the Sports Outreach “Timothys”, talking with a young man at his house. I asked PaPa what he was doing, and he said he was sharing some scripture from Galatians 6 with the young man who played on his other soccer team. PaPa said he shares the gospel with the guys after each practice, and this guy had been going through some financial difficulty, so PaPa was trying to encourage him. He is not a Christian, but PaPa was explaining that Christ, while not taking away his problems, can help him through them. PaPa said he had left him 10,000 shillings and that he was going to come back later that week to encourage him again. Given the little money these guys make, I couldn’t help but be impressed with PaPa’s willingness to give this young man some money (not to mention the taxi fare he had to spend since he had to travel cross town to meet with him). The last time I spoke with PaPa, he said the young man was going to church with him each Sunday and was close to becoming a Christian. That’s what it’s all about! I couldn’t help but compare how PaPa chose to spend his spare time with how I spend my spare time in the States looking for some form of entertainment or going out to dinner.

• I asked Frank, the captain of the soccer team, how he was celebrating Christmas day; and he said he was going to go hang out with the kids in the Bwaise slum where he works.

While I had numerous business ideas that I would have loved to launch, the only one I knew I could realistically start before we left was a window screen business. There are two main obstacles to selling window screens here: 1) convincing people that they need window screens since many of them don’t take malaria very seriously and 2) most of the windows open outward on a hinge rather than sliding, requiring that the screen be fastened to the inside wall around the window. (The more wealthy homes have screens with wooden frames that open and close, but those screens are cost prohibitive for most Ugandans.) Since the walls are usually concrete, the only affordable way I found to attach the screen is to fix a plastic hook with sticky material on the back to the wall, cut four small holes in the screen and attach it to the hooks on four corners. This enables the homeowner to unhook the screen and thereby open and close the window. I will certainly work on a more efficient way to assemble these screens when I get back to the States where I have a variety of accessories and parts to choose from at a Home Depot or Lowes.

The final project I wanted to complete before leaving Uganda was to set up a meeting with an organization called Engineering Ministries International which helps Christian NGOs working with the poor in drawing up architectural plans. The biggest obstacle we saw for Sports Outreach was lack of its own property in Kampala. After seeing how much the Sports Outreach-Gulu branch benefited from having its own land, I thought there has to be a way the Kampala branch can get its own land. Being the capital city with a population of around 3 million, the land in Kampala is much more expensive than in the rest of the country. Sports Outreach has been looking into getting its own property in or around Kampala for some time, but the high price was the primary obstacle, not to mention that the available land was too far outside the city to make ministry among the slums a reality. I got a wild thought one day that we should simply approach the king of Buganda (king of the main tribe in Uganda who, while just a figure head similar to Prince Charles in England, owns the most prime undeveloped real estate in the heart of Kampala) and ask him to give us around 10 acres of his land to develop a sports complex (after all, it’s God’s land). My thinking was that if we brought along an architectural model of what we envisioned for the land in our meeting with the king, it would give us a much greater chance of getting his ear. One of the Sports Outreach members, Sam, comes from the same family as the king, so he came with me to the meeting with EMI and gave me some good ideas on how to approach the king. After meeting with EMI, we realized we probably couldn’t use its expertise until later in the process, so our next step will be to find an architectural firm to help us design a complex and then build the physical model. Humanly speaking, it’s a long shot; but we think God honors big requests if they’re for the right reason, and He can provide us any land He chooses.

Thankfully, we were able to complete our primary tasks before leaving. Laurie really stepped up big-time as the supportive wife the last week as I was dealing with my runny stomach and couldn’t help much with laundry or washing the dishes. She also did all of the packing for our move to Zambia/Malawi. Believe it or not, we chose our same friend, Patrick, to take us to the airport despite the drama with Melissa’s trip. Fortunately, his spark plugs were not “distobbing” him this time, and the trip was relatively smooth (other than the overpacked car with an extra passenger we weren’t expecting).

Laurie and I could not honestly think of many things we’ll miss in Uganda, but we already miss the relationships we had with the good people of Sports Outreach-Kampala with whom we have made new friends for life.

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