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.
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.
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 .
It is 2008 and changing the behavior of a population continues to be the primary tool 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 researcherRand 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.”
“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.