Flying to Uganda is a curious experience. There were so many
volunteer and missionary groups (even Reinhard Bonnke, no less, for those in the
know) on the plane from the US and Europe going to Uganda to do projects on
agriculture and health, visit friends and family doing the same, or to preach.
Not to mention a children’s choir returning from a tour who sang for us whilst we waited at Kigali and a Ugandan nun
living in Germany going to collect a sick child for surgery. Those were just
the ones I was aware of. If every flight is like that, Uganda ought to be the
most developed and evangelised country on the planet. Sometimes I have the
impression that most people you talk to in England know someone who has done voluntary
service here, and certainly one sees a huge number of signboards with this or
that development agency’s name and project whilst driving about.
A lad I sat next to on the plane asked about my motivation
to do this work. I told him compassion and anger. He said what are you angry
with? I said injustice. But who is responsible, and what can be done? Ugandans
have to find their own justice for the wrongs in their society, but what about
the injustices of colonialism, neoliberalism and the international trade
system? Injustice is globalised as well as local as the rich and powerful take
advantage of the poor and weak. Anyway I’d better not get started on that, as I
am not here to overthrow the world economic system. Maybe, though, it’s the
same thing on a micro scale. I don’t see how one group of
people can be empowered without disempowering another to some degree. Development is a political
process, I suspect even before it is an economic one. Dangerous talk!
Two ladies collapsed on the plane but some of the other doctors present were more eager than I to offer their assistance, so I didn't have to help.
I got a nice welcome to Soroti from some of the girls I know
here as well as from Colin and Ronnie, a lovely couple here working on a
well-drilling project. I am going to have to sort out somewhere to put my
clothes and stuff for the next six weeks though, and the insect life in the
room will take some getting used to.
I've been talking to another Tom, who is proposed as my research assistant and I think he will do very well.
Went shopping this morning to town on the back of a motorbike, it sounds like I will do a lot of travelling that way.
More news soon!
Tom x
Yesterday at our church service we had two visiting Ugandans, who are relatives of a man who moved from Uganda to Meltham in 1974, and set up a charity to support orphans in his home area http://opencharities.org/charities/1126741 . He died a couple of years ago but these two people have come over to see where John lived and continue the connection. Sitting next to one of them was a girl who came from Kampala as an asylum seeker. As a young teenager she was given a foster home and attends the Elim church normally but she came to St James' with her friend yesterday and enjoyed speaking Buganda with a fellow Ugandan.
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