John the carpenter

Otwona John is a carpenter. Self-taught, small-scale, but a carpenter none the less. He is married to Irene, and they have 6 children, 4 of whom are at school, 2 of whom aren’t – mainly due to the fact that John and Irene can’t manage to earn enough money between them to pay all the school fees.

Otwona John

John can do a range of carpentry – mending doors and shutters, making coffins, mending furniture – it depends what the need is, what work he can find, and whether he is able to access the required materials and tools at the right time.

John and Irene are Acholi, and he fled from the north in 1994 when the Lords Resistance Army was at full force. He used to live in Kitgum, and has 25 acres of land up there that he would love to go back and settle on sometime. John’s dream is to return to his homeland, build a house and workshop, and set up business as a carpenter there.

But he doesn’t know how.

One of the things I have seen time and again when chatting with people in Acholi Quarters, and in other areas where people are expending much of their energy just surviving, is that whilst they might have a pipe-dream of how to escape poverty, what they really lack is the knowledge on how to even start working out the first steps on moving towards that goal. For many of them, a lack of education adds an extra layer of challenge to the process, and of course if you don’t have much in the way of exposure to other ways of life or methods of doing things, then the uphill battle becomes even steeper.

So it was for John – he knows where he wants to get to, but hasn’t the faintest clue how to start. As we chatted, always his focus was on the final destination that seemed far too remote, but with no concept of breaking it down into smaller steps that could become achievable.

Having the opportunity to sit with John, and spend time talking about his plans, I was able to help him move his thinking on to the step-by-step approach. To break down the big end goal into smaller, ‘slowly-by-slowly’ steps that started to feel like something John could achieve, and not feel overwhelmed by.

Chatting with John about his plans, with a little bit of help from Harriet re translating

By the end of our time, John had a plan – a set of steps that he is going to start following. He still thinks a bit about the big end goal, but in between he has started to see how there are stages along the way that he can work towards, and that in their own way can be the stepping stone to the next stage.

For John – the conversation led to a plan that he clutched as he walked away smiling.

For me – the conversation confirmed for me that this is what I love to do: to meet with others, to have those strategic conversations, and to help them discern and clarify their next steps – towards a goal, towards their calling, towards becoming the person they are meant to be, and doing the task or role that they are made to do.

It is such an honour to be able to help someone move forward on that sort of a journey, and I pray that as Otwona John moves forward on his journey, that it will be one that takes him home to Kitgum, and that provides for him and Irene and the children a life that they can enjoy and delight in.

John and Irene: 'sharing the love'!!