This is the house where Maria lives....

I nearly met Maria today, but when we called to her home she was out. Maria isn't her proper name, but out of respect for her that's the name she'll have for this blog.
Although she wasn't there, I learnt a little of her story, and am sharing it to give background to the location that I am in this week.

Here is Maria's story - the gentler version:

When she was 9 years old, Maria was forced to work on the streets selling her body to men in order to earn some money to help put food in the mouths of her family. Yes, I really did type 9, it wasn't a typo. This was Maria's life for the next few years, until she got pregnant.

I don't know the full order of events, but she is now 26 yrs old and her oldest child is 8 yrs old, so you can do the maths to work out some of it. Maria now has 4 children, all by the same father, although he is no longer on the scene and instead she lives with her 15yr old boyfriend.

Maria now works as a cleaner in some homes, and earns 500 pesos per month = £22.66. Not a lot to live on when there are 6 mouths to feed, as well as a few 'addictions' to fulfil. But at least she is off the game - one small mercy I guess.

Maria used to live in this house:

but the rent on that house was 500 pesos / month - leaving nothing for anything other than paying the rent. Hence she 'built' the 'house' pictured at the start of this blog; blankets and plastic sheets for walls, a rusty aluminium sheet for a roof,  and a tatty bit of tarpaulin filling in some of the holes. There is enough room inside for a 3/4 size bed - I only know that as it was sticking out of the end of the blanket wall; I can't imagine that there is much else in there.

The project I met with today is working with Maria to help her try and regain some control of her life - to get off her addictions, to gain access to a feeding and nutrition programme, to maybe get some vocational training, and to provide Maria with a circle of people she can trust. All very valuable inputs for a young woman who has had such a tough rough start to life. 

This week I am visiting some projects in the Chapala area of Mexico that work in the poorest areas of this municipality. The focus is to consider if one of them might be suitable for CRED to enter into partnership with. Hearing Maria's story today certainly proved there is a need for these projects, and over the next few days I pray that it will become clear which of those projects, all worthy in their own right, is the one that we should partner with. 

And in the meantime, I raise a prayer for all the Maria's of this world - may there be circles of support for each one of them, just as this Maria has found in the project of today.

On the plane to Mexico

I’ll do a bit of a reflection on today’s events later, but I just wanted to share about an incident that happened on the plane from Atlanta to Guadalajara last night. I found myself sitting between a French guy who was absorbed in the music on his headphones, and a Mexican lady who looked very anxious and totally out of her comfort zone. At one point we were all given the forms we had to fill out for getting in to Mexico – customs forms, immigration etc. The forms varied depending on whether Mexican or not, partly on the language the form was written in, and partly on which immigration form you had.

I noticed that the lady still hadn’t filled hers out even towards the end of the flight, but a few times has said something to a flight attendant when they had come past that included holding up the forms. I wondered if it was a lack of pen that was the problem, so offered her the use of mine, but her response showed that the reality was she couldn’t read the form, or write the answers.

She asked me, in Spanish (which I don’t speak), if I could do the forms for her, and so I did – through comparing my English form to her Spanish form, working out the relevant details, and reading some of the questions to her (how many days away etc), and guessing the occasional answer (reason for visit etc). She was so very grateful to me for doing it, and it reminded me just how disabling illiteracy can be.

I wondered how she had found her way around the airport, how hard it must be to be independent in life, how many times she has to swallow her pride and ask others to do things for her. Every time a form needs to be filled in, or a prescription read, or a written communication sent – help is required. Even though I couldn’t speak the language or read the form, I was more literate in her language than she was.

It was with great relief that I watched the lady go through immigration and not get pulled over for an incorrectly completed form, but as she went I reflected once more on how valuable education is, and how much we must not only not take ours for granted, but also do our bit to help make it a universal provision for all.

Mexico here i come

I'm sitting in the departure lounge at Heathrow airport soon to board a flight to Atlanta and from there to Guadalajara in Mexico, where I will be for just over a week

I'm going there to visit a couple of new projects that are potentials for becoming new partners with CRED, and could also be a new location for taking teams. The projects are Tepehua Barrio CBO which is a community-based project running a number of programmes by and for the residents of the Tepehua Barrio, and also the Villa Enfantil which is an orphanage for some of the poorest and most vulnerable children in the region.

At the moment I only know a bit about each project, through conversations with a lovely lady Francine who lives out there but also has links with a couple of the  CRED Trustees through previous aspects of her work. Francine will be my host whilst I am there, has put together my itinerary for the trip, and we've had some lovely Skype chats so it will be good to meet her at last.

As the week progresses, and I meet various people from the projects, hear their stories, dip into their lives, and get a feel for their hopes and dreams as well as realities of life, I'll be able to update you more on the two projects. I know that Tepehua is incredibly poor, and there are some massive issues that the residents face on a daily basis, not least due to the presence of drugs-related crime in some areas. But I also am told that the area generally is stunningly beautiful, and that whilst the people are poor materially they are rich in other ways.

So it will looks to be a week of many contrasts, a time that is very thought-provoking and challenging, but that is also an opportunity to rejoice in yet more evidence of the creative marvels of God, and His love for the poor and broken through the way He reaches out via the hands and feet of His workers.

I'm looking forward to sharing some of those thoughts and reflections with you. but for now I'd better go and catch the plane!

Adios:-)

Ugandan rural life - some thoughts from yesterday

The flight from Zambia to Uganda on Thursday was via Lilongwe in Malawi, and Nairobi in Kenya. As we flew over Malawi on the approach to Lilongwe, I had a brilliant birds eye view of the country, and one of the things that was very apparent was the organized set up of rural life.

By this I mean that rather than having random homes scattered throughout the countryside, there would be clusters of homes, all appearing to be focused around a central space, and with some sort of boundary hedge around the village. Presumably in that central space there would be the borehole, and in some of the bigger groupings of buildings there would be a larger building or two – maybe the school and the church? Roads connected the villages, and between the villages there were fields, and green space, but no real evidence of isolated houses.

Now I realize that this is just my interpretation of what I saw, and it might be very different at ground level, but it certainly came across as a rural lifestyle that had some organisation to it, and a system that allowed people to live in community, with access to transport, water, and neighbours.

Contrast that to the view of rural life I got yesterday when I went to visit a project that I had been put in touch with through one of the team members on our 360 Portsmouth team. 

The project is called Seeta Nazigwa Aids Project (SNAP) and is about 26 miles outside of Kampala, the final 4 miles of which are along dirt roads going further and further into the countryside. The project was set up by Pastor David, a man of God who has lived all his life in the area, but unlike many of his neighbours who just live a day to day existence, David looked around him at the poverty and determined to do something about it.

 The purpose of my visit was to find out more about SNAP, and establish if the 360 team can get involved in any of the work, and to that end it was a successful visit.

SNAP has set up a school providing education for about 350 local children who would otherwise have to walk an hour or so to the next nearest school, and be educated in classes of 100+ pupils.

There is also a community centre under construction, which will eventually function as church, health clinic, adult literacy centre and more.

The SNAP project helps orphans and vulnerable children with school fees, and has also helped to build homes for some widows in the area who were left destitute when their husbands died.

Plans for the future include a small shop that will sell general goods, tailoring workshops to help local women gain a skill, computer literacy workshops, and more homes for more widows.

All these plans, plus the completion of the community centre and the finishing of the school buildings, all require funds – and that is where SNAP struggles. With so little money in the community, and being fairly remote and unconnected, accessing funds is not easy. But, they keep going, and they pray, and they rejoice in what God provides, and I am looking forward to going back in November with the team to see what progress has been made.

But getting back to the contrast in rural life – the thing that struck me anew whilst driving to SNAP was the haphazardness of rural Ugandan life. Homes scattered all over the place, and all facing different directions; hovels and shacks clinging to bits of land in the shadow of bigger houses, random trees still standing amidst many tree stumps as people seek firewood in a very unsustainable way.

Trying to get pumped water to these homes would be nigh on impossible, as they are not grouped together, and so people end up spending valuable time walking considerable distances to get water from any borehole that has been set up, or from a river or trickle of a stream.

Similarly, providing electricity or sanitation to the homes is equally unlikely, and again the result is people continue to live in the same impoverished way that they have for so many years, and the opportunities for development pass them by.

I don’t know what the solution is. Indeed where does the fault lie for allowing such a haphazard and disjointed approach to rural habitation? Is it the government who didn’t set up good systems in the first place, or is it the church who, in Uganda, is a very well-respected and trusted establishment that can be found in every level of society? Should the church have been teaching more about how to care for the land and for each other through practical ways? Certainly my previous experience of life in Uganda, and in particular the response to HIV and AIDS, is that the church is listened to more than the politicians, and so it was only when the church started speaking out about HIV that changes started happening.

I guess the danger however, is that people get distracted by trying to work out who got it wrong in the past, rather than focusing on how to get it right going forward. I’m not in a position to influence that in any way, but chatting to John yesterday, and hearing once again his passion for sustainable ways of living, and using that as a way to eradicate poverty, and meeting Pastor David, I know there are people out there who do want to see the change, and are doing what they can to bring it about.

I pray that for all the John’s and Pastor David’s in this country  - such faithful servants, seeking the best for the people and the land, in self-less, inspiring ways. May they have many opportunities to grow their ministries, and to bring others on board so that their works can reach out and impact more families and communities who so need to have that positive direction inputted into their lives. 

The colours of life

I had a fascinating conversation with John Njendahayo the other day about colours. It turns out that as far as he is concerned, he only knows the colours red, black and white. He can see all colours, so isn’t colour-blind  at all, he just doesn’t know their names.

This was a really intriguing concept for me, as John isn’t exactly uneducated. He started in a rural primary school in Uganda, but then moved to the city and got ‘spotted’ by a local headmistress of a ‘slum’ primary school for his academic potential, and as a result was funded through the rest of primary school (which goes up to the equivalent of our year 8 or 9 at secondary school).

Another turn of fortune led to him getting sponsored to attend a boarding school in Wales, and as a result he got educated through to passing his A levels. And if you bear in mind that John is Rwandan by birth, and his brothers were fighting for the Tutsis in the Rwandan genocide at the time of John sitting his A levels, then his academic prowess is even more clear.

John returned to Uganda after he had completed a degree at Liverpool John Moore University, and continues to be involved in bringing an educated mind to all the work he is doing, including developing sustainable energy solutions for a range of users.

So, for John to not know his colours was, in my mind, quite odd to say the least.

We chatted on and gradually the reasons became clear for this significant gap in his knowledge.

Having grown up in the country and started his education at a rural primary school, the resources available to the teachers were minimal – black and white text books, blackboard and white chalk, and a red pen for marking. Thus John learnt red, black and white.

What about all the colours around him in the countryside – the green of the leaves on the tea plantation, the colours of the flowers, the school uniform colours etc? Apparently it was all just referred to by name, or by location, and not by colour. And if a flower was described by colour, it was also described as ‘the third one from the left’ or ‘the middle one at the back’ or ‘the one on the tall tree’ etc – never just by it’s colour. And thus John grew up not knowing the names of the colours that were all around him.

As our conversation continued, we discussed how he hadn’t picked up the names of colours later on in his education – when he was in Wales or at University: “I didn’t do subjects that happened to require that knowledge, and like before, there never happened to be a need to identify anything just by colour. Everything had a name, or some other form of description that I could identify with, and so I just never had the need to learn”.

Apparently this particular gap in knowledge is quite common among those who have grown up with a rural education. The resources used are still very much black, white and red, and if the parents don’t know the colours then they can’t pass the knowledge on to their children.

Some have had to learn due to the work they do eg the Acholi ladies who make beads and jewellery have a very good knowledge of colours – they even know the difference between maroon and mauve – but they have had to learn that in order to be able to be successful in their business.

Obviously there are ways round it, eg John has taken to using a camera to photograph items that he wishes to purchase in a particular colour, or to order paint etc. He doesn’t feel confident to just ask for an item based on the colour name alone, and if he can’t physically pick it out, but has to order it, then he always shows the salesperson a photo of the item to ensure he gets the right one.

For many others, they just get by, seeing colours but not naming them. I guess it would be worse to know the existence of so many colours and not be able to see them, but it still feels like a bit of a shame to be deprived of that aspect of descriptive language.

A fascinating extra insight into life over here, and for me three points to take away:

1.     How fortunate we are to have such a colourful education system in the UK, with so many vibrant and stimulating resources available to us, and our children, as they learn

2.     When working with children from these more deprived education systems, don’t assume that a basic concept like colours is known

3.     Don’t ask John to buy you anything based on colour description alone – who knows what he might come back with!

(and yes, John has approved the posting of all aspects of this blog!!)

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Chisomo Street Kids Project, and any other Zambia tidbits that occur to me whilst writing!

Am on the flight from Lusaka to Nairobi, final destination Entebbe (Uganda) and a final couple of days of project visits / trip preparation / time with Natalie before returning to UK.

It’s certainly been a fascinating time with Aaron and Josephine these past few days – seeing the work of Chisomo, and just discovering the different facets of Lusaka a little more.

Like any developing city, there are some parts that feel very westernized and wealthy – not least the brand-new shopping malls with no end of high-end shops, and eating-places. Those are the places not to frequent too much after spending time with street kids, or talking about lack of finance with people serving in such a self-less way. The cost of a burger takes on a new meaning when viewed in terms of how many meals it equates to at the drop-in centre – not that I ate any burgers I hasten to add, but still the prices made me feel very uncomfortable. However, at the same time it was nice to be able to treat Aaron and Josephine to a meal that is a very rare treat for them, and that in itself is a thought-provoking point.

But Lusaka also has its fair share of ‘downtown’ – potholed roads, crazy traffic, bustling markets, excess of street hawkers, rubbish everywhere, pulsing energy, high-volume banter, seedy shops, Manchester United and Chelsea fans everywhere, and minibuses that only go when they are twice as full as they need to be – that’s the side of Lusaka I feel more comfortable in!

But let me tell you about Chisomo Street Kids project, as that was the real reason for being there. I’ll try and keep it relatively brief, but there’s a lot of angles to it – maybe I’ll save some for another day.

Chisomo (which means grace in the local language) was set up by Aaron and Josephine in 1991 as a result of a personal challenge they felt the number of kids that they were seeing on the streets of Lusaka. Initially, they did outreach on the streets – chatting to the kids, hearing their stories, giving food and drink, and generally getting a better understanding for the plight of the kids and the reasons for them being on the streets in the first place.

From there came a drop-in centre, that provides a safe place for the kids to go during the day – to get a meal of beans and rice or nsima, to wash themselves, and their clothes, to have a sleep where they won’t be disturbed or told to move on, and to have someone to talk to. Some of the kids also express the wish to get off the streets, and so that option is discussed and further steps taken as appropriate – finding the family, working with them about the possibility of the child coming home, and helping to prepare the child for that step.

Returning to family life isn’t straightforward however; living on the streets means living with a new set of rules – survival rules – and to transition from that straight to family life can be one step too far for both the child and the family. And of course there is also the issue of why the child left home in the first place – did poverty force them out, in which case can the family afford to have them back; did death of the parents leave them as orphans, in which case are there wider family members who would consider taking them in but in a positive way, not viewing the child as cheap labour; did the introduction of a step-parent to the family result in the children of the previous parent being forced out, or was it an abusive family etc? So many possible reasons why the child ended up on the street, and so many reasons to counsel the family and child through before a successful reintegration can be expected to take place.

Some of this counseling takes place whilst the child is attending the drop in centre, but the next step for the child to take on the road to reintegration is to spend time at The Shelter – kind of like a half way house, where the children live in more of a family like environment. It’s a residential place, and the children have to do their bit with the daily chores – making their bed, washing their clothes, keeping the place tidy, and just generally getting back into the way of being part of a family environment. The children also go to school whilst at The Shelter, helping them settle back into the education system, catch up with their learning, and be in a better place to cope with going to school when they return home – an expectation of all reintegrated children.

It was lovely to visit both the Drop-In centre and The Shelter, and see the work going on there. Unfortunately a reduction in funds coming in has meant that the numbers that Chisomo can cater for has dropped, so neither place was as buzzing as they would like to be, but Aaron, Josephine and the staff keep on going – doing what they can to support the street kids, and give them the opportunity to change the trajectory their life was on.

Another angle to the work of Chisomo is the preventative focus – targeting families in particularly vulnerable areas who have children at risk of going onto the streets, and working with the women to set up self-help cooperatives. In these groups the women get training in life-skills, health and hygiene, parenting and business skills. The women then get help in setting up small – scale businesses, and developing a savings scheme that they all pay into as able, and oversee between them. The children also get access to a range of workshops, including the value of education, life-skills, and various other aspects of why not to go to the streets.

This is a really powerful angle to the work of Chisomo, and the staff have found that not only are there less kids running away to the streets from these targeted communities, but also the success rate of returning street kids staying at home is higher, as the families have a better capacity and resilience.

So, that’s the work of Chisomo – all birthed in a desire to be the hands and feet of Jesus, caring for widows, orphans and vulnerable children. I’ll write another time about the issues they are facing as a result of disjointed and poorly thought through government demands (sounds familiar!?) but thankfully that isn’t deterring Aaron, Josephine and the rest of Chisomo staff, who soldier on regardless. Thank you Lord for them.