Uganda - enlarging our understanding

Becky Roberts was a co-leader of the CMS Encounter group visit to Uganda

Here is her 'take' on the experience.

"If I die before I wake, at least in heaven I can skate." Some of our team were singing this lyric from an American pop song as we clambered into the pick-up truck I was about to drive across Kampala through chaotic traffic. 

The irony of it quickly became evident because Kampala tended to have three-lane traffic trying to squeeze into one-lane roads. People, push-bikes and motor bikes cut in between cars if an inch of space was left between one vehicle and the next. Local minibuses overtook on the inside and outside, so avoiding deadly accidents, given the high risk of injury, was much in my mind!

Moreover, we were going to work with street children from one of the slum areas and had visited mission hospitals where the presence of death was very tangible.

 

The flippancy of the lyrics reflects, to some extent, Westerners cynicism about God (according to a recent headline in a leading British national newspaper, God is being 'vanquished'). They also touch humorously on the question of meeting cultural expectations, exemplified in the team's exclamations on arrival at Mbale in east Uganda, "But there's nothing to buy!" or "There's no hot water!" or "I need time to myself".

Such preoccupations tended to be reflected in certain choruses - in which much of the focus tended to be 'me'-centred - they had chosen for our team worship. Yet we also sang, "I'm coming back to the heart of worship and it's all about you, Jesus."

In our contact with Uganda, its people and culture, how could our faith experience relate to that of Ugandans? In our team encounter with all these new experiences it was important to affirm Jesus as Lord at the beginning and end of the journey. However, it was difficult to gauge how much of our growth in him was coloured by our cultural expectations of worship and the expressions of faith to which we were used.

The Encounter group visited St Paul's School, Namawongo, which was hosting a week-long Kids' Club.

Praise God!
Familiar bible verses and prayers set in a Ugandan context meant different things to me. Praying that line of the Lord's prayer "Give us this day our daily bread" acquired a new reality amid the generosity of our Ugandan hosts and the knowledge that we were providing meals of beans, chapattis, meat and rice for street children who might otherwise not have eaten.

 
Funnily enough though, praying the Grace with our hosts, "Lord, some people have an appetite and no food. Some people have food and no appetite. We thank you that we have both. Amen", being thankful and trying to treat the last line in particular with integrity was very difficult after two to three meals a day for a week of the same matoke (banana) and meat in sauce!

 
Thinking of God as provider and sustainer in Uganda produced in me a tension between making provision and choosing to share. I found our standing with rucksacks full of valuables in front of 700 uniformed children, whom we were teaching to sing "Jesus' love is very wonderful", very hard. What was I showing of Jesus' love? Was it in my encouragement of them by being there, by our spending time together or by my just "being" even though I wanted to 'do something' closer to the classic Western approach to mission?


The whole group observed that praise and thankfulness were the starting-points for all Ugandan spirituality. "Praise God!" was written on the pick-up truck, "Praise God!" sounded at the beginning of any testimony, "Praise God!" was voiced all the time. We had learnt the East African revival song "Tukutendereza Yesu" before we left the UK but I don't think we had realised how thankfulness for the Gospel and "Glory, glory to the Lamb!" permeated the whole of the Ugandan Church. 'God of Glory' was a repetitive refrain in many extempore prayers and the words were mirrored wholly in the lives of Ugandan Christians we met. It seemed to be the grounding of their faith and existence.

The group, and their hosts from Namawongo, in front of Lake Victoria.

I wonder what are the basic grounding and aspirations of the average Christian in the UK? Does the mind-set governing any spiritual journey determine the expectations of that journey? I know I often place demands - just like the demands of the team on Ugandan culture - on God and moan when they are not met. 

 
Yet the demands of life on Ugandans became terribly evident to me at one hospital: cases were discussed in which families had to choose whether to let their sick babies die because it would be cheaper to do so and have other babies, or keep them alive and pay more for treatment than they could ever hope to earn. The context of third-world debt and the reality of greed and excess hit home when I was faced with the physical poverty of such Ugandans.

 
It made me question whether I praised God for God or for my circumstances. One of the team suggested that it was easier to be a Christian in Uganda because there was less to get in the way, so faith was 'simpler'; you may have heard the saying "I didn't realise God was all I needed until God was all I had". 


Other questions I had to face included: Do I replace God 'being all in all' with self-sufficiency? Do I fulfil the command to love others through generosity of thought, word and action? Are these expressions culturally determined rather than by my awareness of the Kingdom of God? Is there one thing in our culture that

 
In a visit to see children's work in the market village of Bulucheke, wall charts, typical of those lining school staff-rooms everywhere, included an unusual category. Class reports included assessments of each child's spiritual growth - measured by his or her knowledge of the Bible, ability to pray and changes in his or her behaviour - in daily life.

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