My trip to Uganda 2023
In June 2023, I was privileged to travel to Uganda with WorldHope Corps. Reverend Dennis Singini, head of WorldHope Corps Malawi, joined our team from the USA. Pastor Baamu Moses of WorldHope Corps Uganda hosted us. One of the highlights of my time in Uganda was worshipping in Pastor Moses’ church with our team and the local people. It was a delight and blessing to listen to Pastor Moses preach in his native tongue, as Rev. Dennis translated into English for us. These two men of God talked back and forth to one another, preaching in two languages as they spoke to us.
We went to Uganda with plans to conduct Shalom training with farmers in Ssesse, meet with the coffee cooperative in Mbale, and conduct training for women in the making of malaria soap and reusable sanitary pads. We did all of this. However, the most important thing that we did, and the biggest blessing to us as well as to our friends, was meeting and reconnecting with the people who share in this work with us.
Different members of WorldHope Corps regularly communicate with our partners in Malawi and Uganda. We mostly use email and WhatsApp. Zoom calls are sometimes possible, but the connections are not reliable. None of us have been to Africa since 2019 due to COVID-19. To be able to see our friends again, to travel with them, and to break bread together with them blessed us all.
I regularly work with Agness Nyangoma in Uganda. She communicates for the Community Boarding School in Katikara which her parents, Pastor and Mrs. Mukiga, founded and run. Together with Agness, WHC has raised money for beds, mattresses, mosquito nets, and shoes for the school and children in the last few years. I had never met Agness in person. The highlight of the trip for me was meeting and spending time with Agness. I was able to visit “Agness Classic Boutique”, the business that Agness has started and manages. We were able to encourage one another face-to-face.
While in Katikara, I not only visited with Agness, but was able to visit and spend time at the Community Boarding School. The children had entertainment prepared for us and we were able to see them in their new shoes, real shoes. We toured the school, as we had in 2019, and it needs so much. It’s hard to know where to begin, or what is best. We are waiting for our partners to help us with this. For now, because of friends of WHC, there are enough beds, mattresses, and mosquito nets for the boarding children, and they all have real shoes.
The perspective is different when you are in a place rather than getting written communications about a place. We visited the site of the (then) closed Hope Tailoring School in Ssesse, Uganda. We met the teachers and supporters of the school. We met the man and his wife who provide the building for the school, free of charge. It was only by being on-site, that we realized how sad was the state of the building. We were already talking with Pastor Moses about what would be needed to reopen the school, which closed during COVID, and a plan to help it to become self-supporting. WHC committed to funds to pave and level the dirt veranda where the students sewed. That uneven dirt floor was contributing to the problems that the treadle machines were having. While we were still in Uganda, funds were raised from our friends at home to repair the machines and sponsor a teacher for a full year as the school worked toward self-support.
Would I go again? In a heartbeat. Agness was only one of several with whom I regularly communicate, but don’t see. I was able to reconnect with Justine Nanyombi and Anna Sanyu as well, women whom I had previously met but not seen for four years. I was able to meet some of the coffee farmers who have embraced the ideas of Shalom, working together and forming a cooperative to pool their resources, grow a better bean, and sell in bulk. These men and women are an inspiration. I was shown by Abu what a coffee plant looks like and how the beans grow. I was hosted by Pastor Moses and his wife, Annette, in their home. I saw the cows that they have. Cows that were purchased from the proceeds of the sale of pigs. The pigs were raised from pigs that were purchased from the proceeds of jewelry sold, jewelry made by the women in Annette’s jewelry cooperative. All of this started with Shalom training, training teaching people to work together, using what they already have to build a better community. I was blessed by these people, their work ethic, their care of one another, and their love of God. I can hope that they, in turn, were blessed by me.
Gale Gieg
Board Treasurer and Finance Coordinator, WHC
Portland, Oregon