Uganda Perspective

Merry Christmas 2009

Christmas Greetings to everyone in the Land of Clean and Plenty from warm and sunny Uganda. 

If you are used to Christmases fully decorated with trees and colored lights and Santa Claus, you would feel at home here, though it seems a little silly to see a jolly fat mzungu dressed to go out in the snow.  The bigger cities like Kampala and Mbarara look very festive.  Christmas music is everywhere. 

It is an exciting time here, the biggest holiday of the year, as we have many of the same traditions as in the West but with a lot less frantic shopping.  The meaning of the season takes on a different context where the first thing we do at this time of the year is celebrate the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ.  Gathering together with our large families is second.  Gift-giving and party-going are last on our mind.   You can certainly see last-minute Christmas shoppers, but without the panic you see in London or Chicago.

Christmas here is a time of grateful celebration.  Remember, the vast majority of people here have little in the way of material goods, rely on their faith in God as much as they do air, food and water for sustenance.  The very idea that our Great and Almighty God loved us so much to become one of us, to be born and live among us, suffer our human frailties, experience the jealousy and evil that is in all of mankind – and demonstrate the alternative - only to have it end in immeasurable suffering, is a thing of wonder.  We are grateful to be living in a time of peace – there are no wars or rebellions in Uganda now.  We are grateful to be experiencing a growing prosperity – with more businesses starting in Uganda, both home-grown and from international investors.  We are grateful for a stable currency, with inflation at less than 6 percent.  We are grateful our main roads are under repair.  We are grateful for all the schools, that every child has a chance to get a basic education.  We are grateful that enough food is grown in the south that we can feed the drought-stricken districts in the north.  We are grateful for our leaders who are the most conscientious in Africa.  And, we thank God for sending over 600 NGOs to help our country grow and prosper – whether it is providing food, technical assistance, building churches, taking care of orphans, drilling wells or any of a thousand other things.

Thank you, God, for coming to earth in the form of the Savior Jesus Christ.  We celebrate this birthday with you and we know you are smiling with us.  Merry Christmas to all.

(hat tip to Helping Hands Ministry for the photo)

Americans Visit Their Sponsored Child

While they were in Uganda in November 2009, Margaret and Jerry Webb of Chicago took the opportunity to visit Sylvia, age 5, a child they sponsor through Juna Amagara.  It was not an easy journey from Mbarara over paved road at first, then dirt, then a side trail somewhere north of Ibanda, following a  track through a forest of Lantana bushes.  We came upon a small house where the grandmother, also named Margaret, came out to meet us.  Sylvia was there, smiling and ready for hugs.  With her were three cousins who also live in the house.  Jerry and Margaret got to hear about Sylvia’s life, ask questions of the grandmother and also play with the family.  They delivered a gift of coloring books and markers and helped Sylvia understand how to use them.  In the end, Sylvia held Margaret’s hand all the way back to the van with the grandmother murmuring “webare kwija” (thank you for coming) over and over. 

“It was the most amazing experience,” said Margaret Webb. “This little girl whom we’d known only as a photo and bio instantly touched our hearts.  They welcomed us into their home which was so basic – dirt floors, newspapers as decoration on the walls – but so full of love and hospitality, the accommodations didn’t matter.  We saw that Sylvia was healthy and well-fed.  She shared her school work with us.  She laughed.  She wanted to be held.  I can’t imagine how she and her cousins would be living without Juna Amagara.  This is an experience every child sponsor should have; you see instantly how vital you are to the life of this child and her family.”

Do you sponsor a child in Africa?  How about Uganda?  Click HERE to sponsor a child through Juna Amagara Ministries. 

More Than a Basket

Five years ago, the grandmothers of rural Kishanje were worn out.  They had lived through decades of famine, warfare, rebellion, idiot dictators and warring neighbors. Then, just as they were looking forward to taking their rightful place as respected elders, their children died in the AIDS scourge and they returned to active duty taking care of their grandchildren.  In the fields by day, dealing with small children by night, there was nary a thought about old skills the women had enjoyed in their youth.

Fast forward to today.  A young man from the village grew up, became a man of God and started an organization that would tutor kids after school.  He helped them with homework but also taught them life skills and Christian behavior.  He touched their minds, their hearts and their souls and filled up idle hours with valuable skills.  Those kids in turn came home, eager to teach their siblings and the grandmas.  Life became brighter.  And as it did, the grandmas began to revive old weaving skills. 

The first efforts three years ago were crude, almost embarrassing.  But now the weavers of Kishanje are turning out baskets like none other in Uganda.  Rich colors, new patterns, tighter weaves, new shapes.  They are simply breathtaking.   Multiple Women’s Councils have arisen, much like quilting bees, where ten or twenty meet to talk of their children and to weave.  They teach each other.  They innovate new styles.  As you can see, the products are magnificent. 

Each basket is a testimony to the resiliency of the human spirit.  Each is a triumph of joy over adversity.  Each is a tangible product of hope.  Just like the children who are being transformed – woven - into uniquely crafted leaders of tomorrow .   

The Reality of AIDS Part 16: Behavior Change Continues

It is 2008 and changing the behavior of a population continues to be the primary too l applied by  Uganda in its battle to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.  For more than 20 years - nearly two generations of people here in this society- the message has remained the same - abstain from sex until married, be faithful to your spouse during marriage and use a condom if there is a chance you might become infected. 

The current campaign is directed at stopping the "Sugar Daddy" phenomenon where a college girl or young woman links up with a successful older man who takes her to restaurants and clubs and gives her stuff - clothes, a phone, air time, bling bling, in exchange for sex.   In her 2005 article, Helen Epstein relates: One of the women's dorms on Makerere campus has a reputation. "Go there some Saturday night," said a professor I knew. "That's when the men in their big cars come and pick up the girls and take them out. Sometimes you just see men sitting in front of the entrance, waiting. They call it ‘benching.'"

Epstein says she tried to find the phenomenon but did not.  Instead, she wandered over to where Pastor Martin Ssempa was playing to an overflow crowd at the University Swimming Pool - pushing abstinence as he does every Saturday night - driving the point home.

Billboards installed throughout the country in multiple languages are designed to both build the self-esteem of young women and also inflict a sense of shame on the Sugar Daddies themselves.  Check out these two examples seen in Kampala in December, 2008. Is it working?  Apparently so.  Interviews by Uganda TV talk show hosts with young women were full of revelation:  "I didn't know I had a choice about it but since I do, I choose to take care of myself," one said.  "I've seen a lot fewer old guys in cars on campus," said another.  There were no interviews with Sugar Daddies.

Missionaries Find Muslim Neighbors Changed by Love

When Matt and Crystal, two young American Christian missionaries working with Juna Amagara Ministries, decided to build their home in Mbarara, they knew the neighbors were Muslim.  They assumed life would be a challenge.  They were not disappointed.

Matt worked alongside the Ugandan construction crew laying bricks, hoisting rafters, oiling the wood, roofing the house.  All the while, the neighbors peeked at them from around corners, scowling.  Matt adopted a yellow dog - the one breed in town, known as the African Retriever.  The dog appointed himself security chief for the Children's Home where Matt worked and kept strangers at bay.  But when the dog strayed into the neighbors' yards, they would beat him with sticks.  When Matt tried to arrange for electricity to be brought to his house, he discovered it was very expensive.  He needed to get his neighbors to participate.  But they would not.

Matt and Crystal prayed for their neighbors.  Crystal gave birth to a baby boy.  Prayer fellowships were held for ministry kids in their home.  The neighbors stole fruit from the missionaries' garden.  During one long dry spell, the neighbors ran out of water.  Matt said, "Please, help yourself to the water in my tank.  I have plenty.  He had caught rain from his roof in a large tank, plenty for bathing, washing and drinking.  The neighbors humbly accepted his offer.  It has taken more than three years, but the neighbors are coming around.  One woman approached Crystal during the day when no one was around... "Tell me about this Jesus of yours," she said.  The neighbors have now chipped in on the electricity and on Christmas eve 2008, in an Edison moment, the lights began to glow.

When Matt and Crystal adopted an abandoned infant infected with HIV/AIDS, something one can do only if they have lived in Uganda for more than two years, the neighbors began to go out of their way to interact in a positive way.  They no longer stole fruit.  They no longer beat the dog.  Matt says it's because of the love of Jesus.  Crystal says it's because she and Matt clearly aren't going anywhere.

The Reality of AIDS - Part 15 - Uganda Model Fails Elsewhere

Wouldn’t it make sense that if one country had figured out a way to decrease the new incidence of AIDS from 36% to 6% that other countries wouldn’t adopt the same strategy? Unfortunately, and maddeningly, this has not yet happened. I wanted to know why, so I asked people who had tried to make it happen.

Oliniye Darimola, born in Nigeria, is the African Regional Director for Scripture Union based in Nairobi, Kenya. Sitting on the tree-shaded shaded terrace at the Namirembe Guest House over tea, I asked the Director this question. “Uganda has several things going for it that are simply not present elsewhere,” he said. “First, the presence of AIDS was highlighted here early; the leadership did not hide from it. There is a strong faith community – Scripture Union is strong here with a school system where preachers and evangelists are welcome to visit and enlighten children. Where Scripture Union has a presence –Nigeria, South Africa, Botswana, Malawi – we teach the same message – abstinence and being faithful, but in these places, faith issues do not make the moral message as strong as in Uganda.  Also in these places, there is not the strong leadership as was here in Uganda. And AIDS rages on.

With the strength of the Catholic Church in Africa and its emphasis on experience sharing through regional conferences, I asked Fr. Obunga in 2005 how he thought the Uganda Model could be spread to the rest of Africa. He said, “We had an Africa-wide conference in South Africa in 1999. By then, the disease had killed millions of people. Many of the representatives there thought the Americans were going to come in and solve the problem medically. They are still waiting. And people are still dying. I guess I don’t have a good answer to the question except to keep meeting and keep talking.” 

In September of 2007, Bishop Hugh Slattery of the South African Diocese of Tzaneen spoke about the current state of AIDS prevention through pro-life Population Research Institute’s Weekly Briefing. He related that a program called Education for Life developed by a Ugandan nun in the early 1980s really started the public awareness process there educating people about the dangers of promiscuous sex and its deadly consequences.  “The adult HIV rate in South Africa was 18.8% at the end of 2005, or about what it was in Uganda 15 years ago,” he said.  “Finally, the Education for Life program has now been introduced in this diocese and is spreading throughout South Africa.”

Church of Uganda Archbishop Henry Orombi said, “Not all of the countries in Africa were very serious to begin with. In Malawi, it was not easy for churches to speak out. Other places like South Africa did not accept that AIDS should be something to talk about because culturally, there are a lot of taboos associated with sex. Kenya didn’t want rumors of disease to hurt its tourist trade. Our position was not embraced by everybody but people are beginning to realize that where we are standing is about the safest way we can address AIDS as a church.

“In the context of the continent, I think in the last few years, we have not begun to speak about AIDS per se but in 2000 I was in Cape Town and the church there was asking me if they could come to Uganda and learn from what we have learned. I said Yeah, Man. Give us an opportunity and we can show you. That was recognition of needing some help. I never heard what happened.”

The sad reality is, without strong national leadership voicing the belief that AB can slow the disease – supported by the church with its moral compass - as demonstrated in Uganda, entire populations throughout Africa must depend on condoms to slow the spread of the disease and on ARVs to keep infected people alive. In this scenario, the cycle of death will never end. 

The Reality of AIDS - Part 14 - Selling Condoms

Interestingly enough, teaching people to use condoms requires changing behavior, something the anti-abstinence people argue cannot be done. One of my favorite stories came from the Roman Catholic Secretariat. It involves a team of “condom trainers,” social engineers traveling on motorcycles, sent to an outlying village to teach people how to use the prophylactic devices in order to not only protect themselves from AIDS but also to prevent unwanted pregnancy. When news of the training was announced in the village, many women became excited about the possibility of preventing pregnancies.

Standing in front of the village, the trainers used bananas to illustrate the proper way to apply a condom, all the while extolling the virtues of latex and its ability to protect both the wearer and his partner. They told the people if they used these devices, they would not die from AIDS and they would have fewer babies. After demonstrating the technique, the villagers were encouraged to practice with the condoms on bananas until they felt comfortable with with the process. The training ended. A large box of condoms was left behind and the trainers went on to the next village.

Six months later the trainers stopped by for a follow-up visit. The chief received them with typically warm Ugandan hospitality, but when they asked, “How’s it going,” the chief shook his head. Sadly, he said, the condoms do not seem to be working. We still have women becoming pregnant and people are still getting sick. “We are doing everything you taught us but it is not working,” he said. On further investigation, the team found the chief had spoken the truth:

Every home had placed in plain view a banana wearing a condom.The villagers never realized the device was meant to be worn by a human being.

 

The Reality of AIDS - Part 13 - Selling Abstinence

Shortly after the turn of the 21st century, when it seemed the condom wars would never end, the AB message received an enormous boost with the onset of the President Bush’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), based entirely on what is known as “The Uganda Model” for stopping the spread of the virus. 

PEPFAR infuriated the UN-based public health community.  In 2005, Dr. Ruben DelPrado, the Uganda coordinator for UNAIDS was asked to leave the country because of his vociferous objection to a public health policy that reduces an emphasis on condoms and for lobbying for homosexual rights in a nation where homosexuality is illegal.  Speaking from his office in Geneva after leaving the country, Dr. DelPrado told me, “That government is making a huge mistake.  There’s no way an ideology can be used to fight an epidemic.”

“By ideology, you mean marriage?” I asked.

“Yes.  Marriage.  Being faithful.  It is against human nature,” DelPrado stated. “You cannot stop promiscuity in that culture.  The only way to fight the spread of AIDS there is to provide condoms.”

The idea for PEPFAR was introduced in 2003 largely on the results of research undertaken for USAID by Harvard’s Edward C. (Ted) Green, Dr. Rand Stoneburner and Dr. Norman Hearst.  In a presentation before the Medical Institute for Sexual Health in Austin, TX to Ambassador Randall Tobias, the Global AIDS Coordinator and approximately 35 appointees of the Bush Administration from the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services, Green stated that worldwide, 8,000 people die of AIDS every day, the equivalent of 20 fully-loaded Boeing 747s crashing, killing everyone on board, day after day, year after year.  He told how, at the urging of USAID, more than 100 developing countries had completed the formulation of strategic AIDS plans by December, 2002.

Heralded as one of the most objective presentations on dealing with the AIDS pandemic, participants dealt only with statistical fact, openly avoiding issues such as “Is my personal or corporate ideology or time-honored presupposition threatened?  Is my personal or corporate prestige threatened?  Is my person or corporate financial future threatened?  Was a program developed by me or my group of our friends?”  The purpose of the presentation was to answer the question: “Is there one place in the world, shown by scientific study, to have reversed a generalized HIV epidemic for an extended number of years?”  The answer was yes.  Uganda.  As Rand Stoneburner stated: “Uganda is the only country in the world where HIV prevalence in a heterosexual population has undergone such a dramatic and sustained decline (a decrease of HIV prevalence in pregnant women from 30% to less than 6% 1990-2000)

Norman Hearst, Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine reported: “There is no known example of a country that has turned back a generalized heterosexual epidemic of HIV primary through condom promotion.  Contrary to popular belief, there is little evidence to show that all this condom promotion we’ve been doing all these years in African countries with generalized epidemics has made any difference.

“Fortunately for Uganda, there weren’t a lot of foreign experts then telling them how to do things in the late 1980s and early 1990s,” he added.  “So they did things their own way.  That’s when Museveni was going around with his bullhorn telling people about Zero Grazing and, in the circles I travel (the so-called AIDS experts), everybody thought he was a clown, a buffoon.  Everybody made fun of him.  Well, it turns out he was exactly right and we were all wrong.”

Soon after this conference, President George Bush launched PEPFAR as a $15 billion fund to support an abstinence-first education effort in seven African nations.  The program was ultimately expanded to include many Caribbean countries.  Deemed successful by USAID, the President proposed doubling the size of the program in 2007.  The funding at last gave Uganda and other countries the tools and techniques they needed to present its case in as bold a fashion as the condom providers.

The Reality of AIDS - Part 12 - A Case for Abstinence

Perhaps the most authoritative voice on the subject of abstinence as a tactic for stemming AIDS proliferation comes from Edward C. Green, a research scientist at Harvard University and author of Rethinking AIDS Prevention. In 2003, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) asked the sociologist to study the long-term benefits achieved through the various AIDS prevention methods in Africa. When it was submitted, USAID shelved Green’s report and hired a condom advocate to conduct a further study which it ultimately accepted. Green had concluded the “ABC method – abstinence, being faithful in marriage and Condoms only for high–risk populations – was most effective in the dramatic reduction of AIDS cases in Uganda.

“We have in our possession a social vaccine,” Green said, referring to a point made by fellow AIDS researcher Rand Stoneburner, MD, MPH. “The biomedical vaccines we talk about for AIDS have been 10 years away for 20 years. They’re still far away and no one is expecting such a vaccine to be more than about 35 to 40 percent effective when and if we get one. In fact, a new, more aggressive strain of the AIDS virus has just recently emerged. But, as Stoneburner has been saying, we already have a social vaccine promoting partner reductions, fidelity, monogamy, abstinence.”

Green at first focused on the facts in Uganda in 1993 when he was a social engineer and self-avowed condom advocate. He says he was stunned to see infection rates were falling because of something other than condoms. “Nobody believed that the rates were coming down and nobody believed that it had anything to do with abstinence and faithfulness,” he said. I said to USAID in a report that’s published in my book ‘Ah! Look, they’re doing something different and it’s working. My recommendation was to put more resources into abstinence and faithfulness.’ Those recommendations were ignored until Green’s findings caused George Bush to issue the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2002, a program designed to push abstinence.

Green cites a parallel situation: “You would advise young people not to start smoking and say to others: If you already smoke, consider giving it up or at least have fewer cigarettes per day,” he said. “But for the last 20 plus years we have not been able to say that about sexual behavior. We haven’t been able to talk about sexual behavior like, ‘If you’re young, don’t start until you’re married and, if you’ve already started, stick to one partner. Don’t have dozens or scores or hundreds of partners.’ In any infectious disease, you want to limit your number of contacts. How do you limit your contacts when it comes to something that’s sexually transmitted except with fidelity and abstinence?”

“There is a trend in Africa toward abstinence and fidelity despite lack of funding for that sort of promotion,” Green said. “Though faith-based organizations have been the major voices for abstinence in Uganda, they have been sidelined. Almost none of them have been funded by major donors, or major organizations that fund AIDS programs. We found that if you ask people in those countries why they’re choosing those methods, it’s typically because some religious group told them they have to do it or they’ll die. Such blatant truth-telling is stemming the tide of the AIDS epidemic in some African nations.”

Such recognition is even happening in the U.S. The on-line fact sheet on condoms issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used to begin with this statement: “Condoms are effective in preventing HIV and other STDs.” The fact sheet was removed from this website site in 2002 and was later replaced with one that states: “The surest way to avoid transmission of sexually transmitted diseases is to abstain from sexual intercourse or be in a long-term monogamous relationship with someone whom you know is not infected.”

Reality of AIDS - Part 11: "Virginity is Cool"

“Every time I walk into a singles bar, I can hear Mom's words: Don't pick that up; you don't know where it's been.” - Jeff Foxworthy

It is Saturday night on Munongo Road in the heart of Kampala and there is sex in the air. Young men and women are hanging out. The girls, poetry in tight jeans and tube tops, with pouty looks, knowing smiles and eyes that say “available” greet the boys, strutting in their best shirts, their hair just right, smelling good and only too willing to oblige. They sway to the throbbing music from a dozen loud speakers. Billboards promise popularity and success with a Nile Lager. Open-air bars and discos filled with people ripple with too-loud laughter. A tender touch, a whispered word, a slow dance and the night is young. Western rap echoes tribal drums that touch the ancient souls of the young, and for this generation, the effect is the same as it was for their ancestors. Undulating hips, the heat of the night, a Waragi for the lady, a moist sheen on the skin, the throb of a drum, a taste just to feel good, and the evening wouldn’t be complete without…

Two miles away, the roar of a crowd swells over Makerere University. Some 1,200 students fill the bleachers at the swimming complex to sing, laugh, shout and pray with Pastor Martin Ssempa, who has only one message: sex is a precious gift from God. Ssempa, an evangelical pastor and social activist talks about family – the goal of life, often including his wife Theresa and their children on stage. He invites visiting missionaries and colleagues to talk about their families and their walks with God. “If you want to live a long life pleasing to you and pleasing to God,” he says softly into the microphone, “You will keep this gift, this treasure of self, hidden away until you present it to your lover on your wedding night.”

Tonight, he speaks to the crowd as he has for more than a decade, as if each person were sitting with him privately in a little office. “Isn’t it interesting,” he says, “that Satan, the tempter and destroyer, would show up with death right at that place where we are meant to create and cherish life? You can choose life or you can choose death. God wants you to choose life. Go ahead. Choose life.”

The people he is reaching at this university of 40,000 students are enthusiastic and inspired. And now, after years of delivering the message, Ssempa looks into the growing number of faces at his overflow Saturday night rallies and says simply, “Yeah. Virginity is cool.”

“You know,” he told me earlier. “When students were dying from the disease – when their friends could see them wasting away – there was fear. It was easy for people to understand the message of abstinence and being faithful then. I myself watched a cousin’s sister die in Masaka in 1986. There was a famous rock singer named Philly Lutaaya who got AIDS and then started to sing about what a tragedy it was for young people. He sang until he died and was a huge influence on a generation. The threat was clear then. Today, it’s not so easy.”

“What do you mean,” I asked. “Aren’t students still getting AIDS?”

“Oh, yes. They still get it,” he replied. “And I fear they are getting it in far greater frequency than they were ten years ago. Philly Lutaaya had his message but tonight there is a popular rock group performing on campus with their message: ‘Slim-U is Dead.’ (Slim was what people in Uganda called the disease before it was called HIV/AIDS.) “The problem is that HIV positive people look normal today,” Ssempa said. “Anti-retroviral drugs, the ARVs now in plentiful supply mask the disease. You don’t see people walking around on campus with big purple sores. The hospitals here are no longer full of people wasting away. People live longer so we don’t graduate people with posthumous degrees much anymore. If you talk to students, they will tell you it is okay to party once again. But it is not. People on ARVs can still spread the disease.

“It all comes back to the basics,” Ssempa said. “The spread of AIDS is a behavior problem. If people want to live a long life and not be the carrier of death for other people, they need to make the conscious decision to abstain from sexual relations until they are married. We are telling young people to base their lives not on whether or not the man has a condom in his pocket. And the message is getting through. There are virginity clubs, virginity rallies, the First Lady holds Abstinence rallies that are hugely popular. Yeah, Virginity is cool.” Another joyous roar erupts from the swimming stadium.