Hope for Hope to become a nurse

 

Hope has lived all of her life in Acholi Quarters with her mum, her two biological brothers, and variable foster siblings as her mum has taken in different children over the years when their family circumstances broke down.

Her home has always been some variation on a 3m square room, although more recently it was a couple of rooms as there wasn’t enough space for everyone to sleep in the one room. Her bed has always been a mattress or blanket on the floor, and sanitation has always been a long-drop pit latrine.

Due to the civil war, her mum never went to school, and Hope has never known her dad, so doesn’t know if he was literate or not. So the chances are that, when Hope completed her senior 4 exams at secondary school last November, she was the first one ever in her family to get a secondary education. That’s quite an achievement, and a big milestone in her family. And it was enabled in part due to the sponsorship of her education by CRED donors (which will continue, to cover nursing tuition fees).

But now Hope has her sights set on the next stage of her education. Ever since she was in Primary 5 (age about 11), she’s harboured a dream of becoming a nurse. She admits that she’s more of a practical person than an academic, and nursing for her is about fulfilling a wish to help others, make them better, and gain skills that can be of use in her family, in her community and across the country.

So, it was great to sit with Hope today and hear her talk about the Certificate in Nursing course that she has registered for, and will start in July. When I asked her what she is looking forward to about the course she said that she is excited to be learning about health and gaining medical skills so that she can help people in her community to get better. She’s also excited about moving to a new environment and becoming a boarder at the college, as she’s never really been anywhere except Achol Quarters.

She says it will be weird to leave her mum and her brothers at home, and not know each day what they are doing, but she knows she’s doing the right thing and that it is best to board so that she can have more time for studying and learning. She also mentioned how weird it will be to have a bed all to herself, and to not have to cook the meals for everyone (more insights into Hope’s current lifestyle!)

As Hope gathers together the requirements for being a boarder (mattress, blanket, bucket, broom, cleaning cloths, soap etc), and prepares for this big new chapter in her life journey, I pray that this will be a time when she really flourishes, and finds her own identity outside of the community of people who have shaped her life until now. They are wonderful people, and have definitely helped give Hope a great start, but now is the time for her to find herself, and to carve out her own journey in new and exciting ways. I wish her all the very best, and look forward to hearing updates on how she is getting on. 

 

Launching ‘Vita Plenae Uganda’

 

Over the past couple of days I’ve had the joy and privilege of delivering 360Life training to a group of teachers, church leaders, community leaders, youth leaders etc who are all based in and around the Soroti region of Uganda.

One of the key outcomes was the launch of Vita Plenae Uganda, a Ugandan-registered organization that has been set up to deliver trauma healing and mental-health training inspired by and based on the 360Life training programme. How wonderful – to know that the VPU folks believe in 360Life so much that they want to find a way to get it out across the nation through a locally-registered vehicle.

The vision of VPU is to see ‘lives transformed through healing, identity and wholeness across Uganda’. Their mission statement is ‘to educate, equip and empower individuals and communities to discover their God-given identity and fullness of life (uzima) through trauma-informed healing, compassionate service, and holistic wellbeing’. NB uzima is Swahili for wholeness.

The main trio who are heading up VPU are Sylvia, Pastor Steve, and Augusten, and after the training we sat together and discussed the next steps for the organisation, as well as the bigger dreams, and the various steps to be taken towards those dreams. These plans include working with NGO staff serving vulnerable populations, church and community leaders, teachers and school counsellors, prisoners and prison officers, refugees and host communities, and survivors of gender-based violence. Big dreams and big plans, but there’s nothing wrong with that, and as they shared their ideas with the other participants at the training, there was a real buzz of excitement and buy-in from all.

360Life programme initially emerged from conversations with various folks in Uganda, and then Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia and beyond. But the first conversations were in Uganda, and so it felt very appropriate that the first ‘expansion’ of 360Life has also been in Uganda. My prayer is that we will also have iterations of 360Life in other countries, as other folks trained in the programme follow similar paths to the VPU team.

But for now, I’m grateful to Steve, Sylvia and Augusten for taking these first steps, and I pray that the journey ahead for them will bring healing and wholeness to many – individuals and communities alike – across the nation of Uganda. 

 

Cred Partner gathering – what a treat!

On Wednesday 13^th May, 9 of the 11 CRED partners gathered at central location in Nairobi to travel together to the Links Africa Hub in Embu district in the foothills of Mount Kenya for 3 days of fellowship, learning, building relationships, deepening friendships and journeying together.

Those who were there were (in no particular order): Kenyanito (from IDAK), Harriet (from Acholi projects), Pius (from GNPDR), Aaron (from Chisomo), Bee (from Ellilta), Joseph (from TVST), Alice (from Stepping Stones), Bishnu (from PSD Nepal), and Terry (from F4M). So, between them they represented Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Malawi, Nepal and Zimbabwe.

And what a wonderful time was had by all. There were sessions on AI and how to use it rather than just fear it; what makes a good partnership: both North-South and South-South; leadership qualities; and raising up the next generation. The high level of participation and discussion in all of the sessions was a good indication of just how much everyone was getting from the content of each session. Each of the partners also had opportunity to share about their own work, and it was great to hear the updates from everyone and see the passion for their work shining through as they spoke.

Some of the partners had met some of the other partners before, so the gathering was also about a time to catch up with each other. But for 5 of the participants, this was their first time of meeting any of the others face to face – previously there had been some zoom communications for some of them – and it was fab to see the conversations continuing over meals, and into the evening, as bonds were made and folks discussed various aspects of work, life, challenges, shared experiences, shared knowledge etc.

And of course, the other great benefit for all of the participants was just the time to be away in a quiet and relaxing environment, to be able to step back a bit from the day to day, to be served rather than always serving, to have a bit of pampering through delicious food and hospitality. Each of those present spends so much of their life giving and giving and giving to others – it was beautiful to be able to give them the space and the opportunity to receive.

As everyone travels back to their home, their family, their ministry – my prayer is that the blessings of these days will last long beyond the time taken to get home. May the learning, the partnerships, and the rejuvenation be shared with the teams of the different projects, and in so doing trickle down for the benefit of all.

 

Positive Life Kenya

 

First day in Kenya and I visited a ‘new-to-me’ project that is based in one of the informal / slum settlements on the outskirts of Nairobi. The organisation is called Positive Life Kenya (PLK) and was founded back in 2010 by a wonderful woman, Mary Wabwire, who continues to lead the organisation with wisdom and an unquenching passion for intervening into the situations that first touched her heart and led to the birth of PLK.

PLK’s focus is based around programmes that support vulnerable children, young people and families living in, and caught up in the cycle of poverty. They do all sorts of outreach programmes in the community, run a primary school for the local children, and have a vocational training centre for young people. They do a lot of work on life skills, empowering young single mothers, and community-based interventions around educating, informing, and advocating for the rights of all, but particularly women and girls. I’ll let you read more if you want to at https://positivelifekenya.org/

Whilst at PLK, two of the social work team took me on a home visit to one of the families that they are journeying with. The home that we visited was about 3m square. It had a tin roof, and the walls were crumbling as they had been damaged in the recent floods that affected lots of vulnerable communities in Nairobi. Pieces of cardboard were up against the walls, presumably to stop the mud from crumbling down onto the children as they slept. There was one bed in the room, which had most of the clothes piled up on it, and a gas cooker in the corner. A plastic stool was the only other bit of furniture.

The mum was at home with her youngest, a son who is just 2 months old. She also has 4 daughters, two of whom are at primary school and two of whom are secondary school age, but as we visited during the school day, I didn’t get to meet them.

Between the mum and the PLK staff, they shared her story with me, as this family has only actually been part of the PLK ‘family’ for about 3 months. Prior to that, the staff were aware of the family in the community, but they had never been called to get involved as mum seemed to be doing fine with her 4 girls.

But then she got pregnant with her fifth child, and this seemed to be something that she just couldn’t cope with. The thought of one more mouth to feed was too much, and the mum was seen to be oscillating between wanting to terminate the pregnancy, even at such a late stage, or ending her own life. As soon as the community leaders realised how much she was struggling, they asked the PLK outreach team to start engaging with the mum, which they did.

Through home visits, gifts of food for the family, many conversations, and just being there, the mum started to feel less alone, and the suicidal ideations ceased. She still was not sure that she wanted to keep the baby however, and was open to the idea of having baby adopted once born. The visits and support by PLK continued, and one day they went into the home to find that the mum had given birth (on her own, no-one to assist), and was lying on the floor holding a very young son. The PLK machine swung even more into action, and by the end of the day, the baby was clean and clothed, mum had had a wash and was feeding the baby, cloths and clothing had been washed, and food was on the table for the family.

Two days later, when the PLK staff member visited, it came up about the mum’s previous thoughts of giving the baby up for adoption. The mum looked up, smiled shyly at the staff member, hugged her son tightly, and said that he was going nowhere.

And so he is still with her, and it was a beautiful moment to be able to kneel down today next to the mum, hold out my finger for the baby boy to hold on to, and see the strong love from the mum shining down onto her son.

That visit was to just one family out of so many who live in dire poverty and struggle against so many odds just to keep going each day. The statistics are desperate: almost 8.5% of the global population live in extreme poverty, and the poverty rates in low-income countries are higher now than they were before the pandemic (according to World Bank). It can feel so overwhelming.

But thankfully, it seems to be a given that, where there is poverty, there are also people who want to do something to help. Not in a patronising, self-seeking way (although those people do exist), but in a quiet, self-effacing, humble way that is all about just trying to make life a bit better for others. Sometimes that’s being done in a formal way through organised systems and structures and programmes, other times its being done in an informal, helping your neighbour way.

Thank goodness for the likes of PLK, working quietly and tirelessly in communities across the world, making a difference, one family at a time. Showing God’s love in practical, caring ways, and bringing hope into the lives of folks who need it most.

What a wonderful way to start my visit to East Africa.