times like these

What a time to be alive! Uhhhh. I don’t even know where to begin from. One thing i am thankful for right now is having a secure home in a quiet place far from the chaos of town and this has afforded me the privilege of sitting in our porch with a cool breeze and write down my thoughts. I have realised in times of crises like these, where you call home matters a lot.

A lot has happened from the last time i wrote. Today we are in day 7 of the extended two week lock-down and this is the least popular extension of them all; which is sad especially when some are trying to adhere to it but increasing numbers of people are tired and are breaking it. Last week i took a walk to town and was surprised because it was different from the previous time i was there. There were more people in town, many cars in town, shops that were not announced to reopen were all open and a few people i talked to said the same thing- “i have reached the wall and there’s no other option”. Feeding their families is key and a majority of them had run out of options and the only thing left was to risk to go hustle. From the news, it looks like it’s the trend countrywide. Government is still distributing food mainly in the capital and the up-country populace seems to start getting mad why they are left out and yet the lock-down affects even them. So far, i am choosing to refuse to fall into the temptation to drive, because you just never know when the evil day will strike and you get arrested for disobeying the presidential orders as some have been including two members of our household who were apprehended for being out during curfew hours, though of course my circumstances are totally different from what many people are going through. 

The worry is the continued rise in positive cases mainly from the truck drivers from the neighbouring countries where the virus seems to be spreading more rapidly. Many people are fearful that the president might extend the lock down again next week; i hope he does not. And then the issue of the face masks that are now compulsory. I am wondering how this is going to be enforced especially in the villages and among those who might have to choose between buying a face mask and buying food. God help us all.

There have been a lot of tears and mourning from the last time i wrote. Our pastor and ministry friend lost his 8 year old son to pneumonia! My co-pastor and his wife also had a miscarriage a couple of days a go, i was in excruciating pain myself from a serious bout of ulcers and still on medication and recovering from it, people that i know have lost children, teenagers and just yesterday another young man in his late twenties died after he collapsed on Saturday. My work mate is currently on drip with malaria, one of girls at home here has her grandmother on a deathbed. Then the continuous calls for help from left, centre and right.

Countrywide the current heavy rains have caused a lot of destruction- houses have been swept away, people killed, roads washed away, crops destroyed in the gardens, etc. Mother nature seems to be very furious with us and is revenging for something that we have done.

Back to the continuation of my experience with the 1993 famine and how it changed our society forever.

Growing up, our families were mainly extended and the pride of a man was having all his sons build their huts around him in the same compound and all their wives would cook, and food would be served and eaten communally with the father and his sons eating at the table, the mother and her daughters in-law would also sit in one group and eat and the children would also have their own group eating together. It was a beautiful sight to behold. Women would cook food in excess knowing anytime anyone would pass by and he or she would be welcome to come and eat. People would eat green vegetables, Beans, and Peas during the day and then Meat or Fish or Chicken or wild game would be for supper when there would be no or minimal chances of anyone passing by and needing to eat! It was a good tactic and some stubborn kids would want to continue playing up to late when they realise their hosts were cooking soup and it was a different story in their own homes. They would be gently nudged to go back to their homes to shower since it was getting late!

However, when the famine struck, everything was turned upside down. Extended families started breaking up with some members accusing the others of not doing enough to bring in food, wives started serving some food and keeping it aside so that their kids would eat later before going to bed since what was served earlier was not enough. There was a famous place where people who had money would go and buy food and it was called “Agip” here in Soroti. If you passed by a home and people were eating, they would tell you “Karibu Agip”, Kiswahili word for “Come to or welcome to Agip”, literally communicating that this food was bought from Agip and it’s small and not enough for even us. They were passing a message that “we are not eating food from our gardens”. From that time till now the extended families have slowly been disappearing and i wonder what will now happen to the Nuclear family after COVID-19 and its effects. The biggest emerging issues already so far is the rise in cases of domestic violence and mental health issues. Families are likely to break up even more as hopelessness breeds more violence and depression.

For now though, the best thing we can do is not to point fingers and play the blame game but to fight for each other’s survival first, then we can go back to our political battles afterwards. Those who have, should not demonise those who don’t have, calling them lazy and reckless and rebuking them for not planning. But help them survive first and then give them “a piece of your mind” later. And those who don’t have should not look at those who have as boasting and showboating and praying for their downfall, but rather be grateful and pray for them and you can go back to calling them whatever names after we have all survived this. We are all His image bearers and ought to honour and value each other rather than jumping at each other’s throats. 

May His Amazing grace see you all from going insane. Shalom.   

Dungeon thoughts

Hello everyone. Today, i write with a very heavy and sad heart. Last week started with a lot of promise and positivity. One of my senior pastor friends and father figure here in Soroti called early in the week and told me he was in trouble. My heart raced and i kept thinking about the bad news he was about to break to me, only for him to tell me that the trouble was that he missed me and he needed to call and find out how i was doing! I was pleasantly surprised and encouraged to know that someone thought about me. 

Later in the week i video talked with my mentor; maybe those who watch “The Voice” music competitions would call him a mega mentor? We had not talked for a while and it was good to catch up. I felt the week was going on well, we had given out food to families that needed it most and helped a few people here and there with XYZ.

Then yesterday we had a great Sunday service at home, i thought, and had planned to have a big dance party at 5pm as a family just to make sure we’ve all still got our moves, and also as a way of telling COVID-19 we were not prepared to let it steal our joy and our everything.

Then i got a call from one of our church members and also workmate that a brother from our church had his three and half month old baby on oxygen fighting for his life! I had to rush to make some petitions to God and switched off my phone in order to concentrate. Later in mid afternoon Beckie comes in and breaks the news that the baby had passed on to glory! This is our first loss as a church and it hit really hard. I called the brother who had called earlier and he told me the kid’s dad was unconscious and also needed much prayer. I was told the baby was supposed to be referred for more treatment out of Soroti but there was no transport means readily available due to the travel ban and also the hospital resources being reserved for COVID response. I was mad that i would not be able to go and give a hug to brother Julius and sis. Sophy because of a ban on funerals and also the travel ban. We sent help their way, though to me, no amount of money can compare with a good hug and words of encouragement from a friend or family.

After about 40 minutes Beckie walked in again and said “are you ready for more bad news?” I almost screamed “NOOOOOOOOO” but i said sure and she told me one of our most vulnerable church family members who we had just helped with food and medical treatment two days earlier also had her youngest daughter admitted in the clinic after she just suddenly collapsed! The baby who died also started by collapsing and then just kept on getting worse and worse very fast. We are still praying for this baby and petitioning our father to save her life and bring complete healing. Her family is already in tatters and the worst thing you want right now is more sickness or even death in that family.

About two hours or so later, i was now seated outside, sipping some hot tea thinking deeply when Beckie came out again and called out and asked if i was ready for more bad news! We had to cancel the dance party because of all the bad news and i was seated there thinking whether i should cancel our daily family Bible study at 8pm as well when the latest news came in. Our dear friends who are more of family than friends had also lost a baby, they had a miscarriage! In my head i was like Lord, what’s going on? 

Let me leave that sad news there….

COVID19 or however they call it is turning our lives upside down. I was watching BBC News last week and the UNWFP was forecasting the East African region to be hit hard by a famine that had already started hitting some parts. They attributed this to poor rains last year, locust invasion this year, poor rains this year as well as the effect that COVID was going to have in these economies. Whenever i hear that word “Famine” my mind rushes back to the “great famine of 1993”. As i told you last time that i would touch on it a little this time and maybe i will continue on it next week God willing.

I was about 8 by then and in primary school. The famine was so severe that there was a lock down of sorts. Schools and churches were shut. I don’t know about those in town but for us in the village the situation was dire. We had no food. We would go with our grandmother to work for those who needed help in return for food but this also ended soon as the famine started catching up with even the so called “village rich”. We cooked every green thing imaginable until there was nothing green anymore and everywhere was just dry with dry heat. All the trees had shed off their leaves and were bare. We hunted for all the bush rats we could find in the beginning before we all became too weak to even lift a hoe up! There was food relief which to me looking back now was more like food punishment of the sorts. We all had to walk for about 4 miles to the distribution centre so that those giving food would see all the members of our family. Then we would be given four cups (roughly two kilos or four pounds) of maize flour (posho) and two cups (a bout a kilo or two pounds) of Beans for our family of 6 to last a month at least until the next distribution! People would still fight for food and we would hear rumours of how those who were in charge had first taken XYZ number of sacks of Posho and Beans for themselves. We would then have to trek back home slowly with regular stops once all of us or any member of our entourage would lose sight! Yes, lose sight! By this i mean your vision would just go black and you would feel your head spinning and you had to sit down immediately for a little while until you are able to see again and then trek again. Our grandma would pick a handful of Posho flour and drop it in a big saucepan of boiling water just to change the colour of the water and then serve us to drink. She would say “drink until you sweat all that hunger out”. Mingling the posho (making it into a sort of doughy bread) would be wastage and so we just drank it in water (i am saying drank and not eat because it was not thick but just white water!). She did the same with the Beans. She would boil a handful and put salt to just have the colour of soup and give us to drink. You would be lucky to have a Bean in your bowl and if you chanced to get one or two you would pick it, put it or them in your other hand and then drink the soup first, after you finish, you run somewhere either behind the house or where you are not seen and then take your time biting and chewing your Bean or Beans slowly just to have the feeling of chewing something! 

People we knew died from that famine and we came close ourselves to death a few times. To let you know how serious this was, even birds were starving, and once in a while, when we would go to hunting for birds with our slingshots especially after gaining the energy from drinking something hot, we could find birds that were tired of flying once in a while and when we opened them up we would find no food in the food sac (i hope that’s how it’s called). That famine altered and changed the dynamics of our society forever, the old normal went through the window and the new normal was ushered in. I will tell you how next time…

So whenever i hear news of famine, the one of 1993 is my benchmark though we haven’t had anything like that since. But i have serious fears that this time, we might descend into something close to or even similar to that because if this virus persists and our already fragile economy collapses (God forbid), coupled with the damage that locusts have caused in some parts of the country and irregular rainy season that’s already hampering the planting season, then we will be in serious trouble. A friend of mine who i have known for years has two kids who have sickle cell anemia, he had a small stationary shop at their centre that he survived on besides farming that he had to close down due to the lockdown, had his entire gardens and fruits eaten by the locusts and is now in serious need of help and this won’t affect him only this year but next year as well. This past week some of the people we gave food burst into tears because they had no food and didn’t know where their next meal was going to come from. Government is also overwhelmed and is only giving food to two districts out of the 132 we have and even in those two it’s overwhelmed. The food they give (6 kilos of Posh and 4 of Beans) is very insufficient to run a home until their situation improves. In fact it cannot even feed most families for four days and yet we are hearing the effects of this thing will not disappear anytime soon.

Yesterday we checked the prices of Beans in town and already they have gone high by significant amounts. Last time we bought our bag of beans at 332,000 Shillings, yesterday we were told it’s now 400,000 Shillings! And so are the prices of all other essential foods. I am hoping tomorrow when the president addresses the nation, he will give some good news. I am happy with how government is handling this pandemic with now 47 recoveries and no deaths and no new infections found so far in over two weeks from among the citizens except from truck drivers coming in from our neighbouring countries. I hope we will have some phased reopening of the country so that people can go and hustle for some food because any extension will make an already difficult situation worse.

On a positive side though, i have been able to spend more time with our son teaching him some of the things we used to do as children. We have been able to make a cow from the anthill mud. We also started making letters of the alphabet from the mud and we have made some “bullets” for my slingshot. We are exploring ways of starting a side business of selling these “bullets” to those who might need some in order to make some money. I was joking with a friend that we can do home deliveries for these on a small fee.

I know this is a long read, so, bless your heart for making it all the way to the end. I would also like to hear how you are doing and coping up with this pandemic. Till then, Stay safe and take care of yourself and your loved ones, Shalom.

Some thoughts from Rev Ruudz

Having taken almost a three year sabbatical from writing, i thought now could be the right time to striating writing again once in a while. And with all the hullabaloo surrounding the discussion of COVID19; with some even renown preachers whom i have followed for a long time suggesting the end is nigh, others saying COVID19 will wipe us all out and with different medias both small and big pushing their own versions of “breaking news” and “exclusives” on the subject, it almost takes a miracle to remain sane and “normal”. Yes, that word “normal”, i don’t know how normal i am right now and i don’t know how many of you are still “normal”.

Ahaaa…i wonder how each of you is coping up with this isolation and social distancing thing from wherever you are. For us here and for me in particular, i don’t know what to even think of or make of it. 

On one hand i was glad when our president made the call when he did to shut down schools and big gatherings. At that time we had less than 5 cases i think (hopefully my memory is still holding) and i thought that was brilliant because if the thing had spread to our schools, the effects would be devastating considering the status of our limping health sector. The president gave genuine reasons and for the first time in my lifetime i saw both ruling and opposition politicians agreeing that was the right thing to do. But then gradually, the shut down kept biting different categories of people until it came to an almost grinding halt bar a few “essential service providers”.

Things really started dawning on me when i started seeing our young people come back from school one by one. When our eldest came back from University, he was not particularly happy. After interacting with him, he told me he did not want to leave school because he’s already too old to be at school and didn’t want to take a time off. he actually stayed in his hostel for almost 5 days after the shut down and i kept calling him to come home because rumour was circulating that public transportation was going to be closed and he would have been cut off. This rumour became a reality less than 4 days after he came!

Presidential addresses soon became something all of would look forward to with some dread, wondering what was coming next and indeed each address always came with “new measures”. And just like a good teacher does, the president would recap all the previous measures, give the latest number of those who are positive, make a few jokes in between and the towards the end, announce new measures. I actually came to believe that the president himself enjoys these briefings and appears not to want to end them, otherwise, why would he spend over two hours each time addressing us, sipping his drink occasionally (still a mystery what it is that he sips from his mug), cracking jokes and even answering a few questions from his social media followers? 

The bite of the measures soon started taking their toll and we are all still reeling from these measures. I could say i am still dazed. A few days from our grand opening of our “Airiamet (Meeting Place) Coffee Shop”, the president announced a total lock down! I had just finished recruiting 6 unemployed young people and they were all excited to start work, then boom, no customers! then came banning of private transportation except cargo trucks, then motor cycle taxis known as Bodas except for deliveries but not passengers, then a curfew from 7pm to 6:30am each day, etc. The markets and people reacted to these measures with panic. Prices of some essential basics like salt increased by more 200% in one of the days. The social media was awash with nail biting stories of the effects of the shut down; from women giving birth on their walk to the hospitals, some security forces beating people and raping women (the president later called them pigs, which is a new name people call them now), a photo of a bleeding old woman who was thrown down on the turmack by a boda that was taking her to hospital when police started chasing them down, a nurse using a wheel burrow to wheel a patient to the next hospital because the one she worked in didn’t have the medications, to a boda being shot dead by security forces for carrying a passenger, another boda knocked off a traffic police officer who tried to stop him because he was carrying a passenger, women sleeping in the markets because the president said all market vendors and factory workers should camp and sleep at their work places  to avoid bringing the virus to their homes and yesterday i saw another touching photo of a man trying to scoop maize flour that had poured down on the road to take home. The worst is a couple of people that i heard committed suicide because they could not feed their families; one teacher who lived hand to mouth could not feed his family for two days and couldn’t bear looking at his wife and kids helplessly, he hung himself!….there are many heart wrenching stories that i cannot write all of them. Two days ago i watched a video of a heartless drunk young man beating his 70 year plus old mother because she did not leave for him food!

I miss our little church family, i miss seeing everyone taking tea and chatting and our Sunday school kids blowing candles and cutting cake each month when we celebrate birthdays. It breaks my heart that i cannot see them like before, and it’s harder because most cannot afford the luxury of social media because most are struggling to put food on the table. So for us, the idea of online services or virtual meetings is a luxury and too expensive a cost for our members. Hearing them tell and testify on the phone of how God provided a meal for them and how they are having faith in his word keeps warming my heart, but at the same time breaks my heart. There are particularly 3-5 families that i know are struggling and our church collections were all used up for the purchase of church land and i keep praying for their sustenance.

When the president announced an extension of the lock down for 21 more days last week, there was a sense of desperation, hopelessness, despair, name it, from those personally know. I cannot even name the number of calls i get per day from relatives and friends asking for help to have food. My relatives and many others particularly had a very poor harvest last season because of rain fluctuations which have continued up to this year. They already had a famine even before this pandemic surfaced and they are now struggling even more. They all look at us as rich people, which we are, compared to many others and they always get startled when i tell them rich is relative because when we also go to the States, we are poor and have to get government insurance! Many cannot wrap their minds around that. So these volumes of calls for help have started taking a toll on me personally. I have my own family of 12 and a half to feed, and yet all these calls are calls of genuine need of people in need of food. I have struggled with depression for a while and the beginning of this lockdown worsened it. But i am grateful that when i started doing exercise (which i started after the president stopped people from jogging and instead asked all Ugandans to exercise from their houses and even went ahead the next day to post a video of himself exercising in his office, i was challenged to start), i feel a little better now.

I have also noticed a couple of our young men are struggling. I talked to them recently and it all comes down to the feeling of hopelessness. They have both had traumatic pasts and felt hope being at school and the extension of the lock down didn’t help matters. They want to be at school and are worried the whole year might end up getting “wasted”. And the realist in me is not good at coming up with hopeful encouraging words because we do not know how long this is going to continue and we are torn between acceptance of this new life and hope for a return to the previous normal. So please, spare some time and pray for Edgar and Jorem, they need it and the rest of us as well.

The thinker in me has been tossing around in my bed wondering how powerful this virus is. That powers and empires, with wealth and science and technology that cannot be compared to any other in history have been reduced to their knees! Who knew that the enemy would not require the atomic bombs and missiles and war planes and name it…how powerful is this tiny virus to close the aviation industry and temporarily (hope so) disrupt every country in the world! It makes the words of apostle Paul ring true that “…for the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God…”Hopefully now that the foolishness in us has been exposed, it’s time to seek for true wisdom from God. This is my prayer that all the world leaders and scientists and all those powers that may, can seek for true wisdom and i am glad to read about the increasing number of people who are searching about Jesus and confessing him as their Lord on their own. This is significant because many of the so called great pastors and prophets of our time, who have been stealing money from the unsuspecting flock as “seed” for healing, prosperity, blessings, etc have been found out. Many announced this year to be a year of this or that and the congregations cheered with hopeful glee not knowing God had other plans. A comedian i follow on twitter recently made fun of some of the pastors we have here in Uganda and around the world and he was showing clips of their “New Year” messages and many were claiming “God told me this is the year of…” and it went from property, wealth accumulation, health, double portions, blessings, etc and the congregants shouted  “i receive” and many said seal it with your seed of faith. Of course i am not saying all of them are fake, but from my knowledge from my own background of this type of things, i can tell that many of them are in this for money. Hopefully Corona will shape all of us into seeking him in ways we have never done before and that we will all use this darkness to shine his light so that when the world sees this light and salt in us, they will praise our Father who is in heaven and not us.

I better sign off from here, i already feel better because i have got some things off my chest. Maybe it’s a great idea to keep writing after all. In my next writing, i will try to compare the current situation to the one of the great famine of 1993 that had such life changing devastating effects. Please let us keep praying for one another and i pray for the Lord to touch all of you who might be sick, anxious, worried or whatever it is. We will come out of this stronger and better than we went in. Just take off this time to reflect and pause. Reevaluate, refocus, repurpose. For me the brightest thing during this time is that it has helped me and our son bond more. Before i would run to town in the morning and race back in the evening to try to see him before he went to bed and many times i always arrived late and i would feel bad. Now he has all of us and we have bonded more and his true personality is starting to come out. He does not know what’s going on or why everyone is at home but he sure enjoys the attention and the time. Now he calls me to pray with him before he takes his nap and before he goes to bed at night! So my friends, find something to be thankful for during this time, till we meet again whether in this life or the next, remain in his shalom. Be better and not bitter. Bless you.