Akao (in yellow, center) poses with her teammates (Photo by Andrew Bugembe)
(NOTE: Across the United States, March Madness refers to National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball competitions in a month when university rivalries are at their peak. In honor of the “madness” of watching American basketball in March 2020 and in collaboration with the Uganda Christian University student newspaper, The Standard, UCU Partners is featuring stories on this month on some of the sports played at UCU. This week, the focus is on soccer.)
By Eva Kyomugisha
One of the greatest gifts God gave Africa is football. It is very common to find a group of people gathered at a field or around a television in a pub watching a football match, each with his or her own comments as to how the game should be played.
Ugandan football, which Americans would call “soccer,” came to the country with British introduction in 1897. Like USA soccer, the objective is to score goals without touching the ball with the hands. The Uganda Football Association, now called the Federation of Uganda Football Associations (FUFA), started in 1925 with a league inaugurated in 1962. The game originally for men only has crossed the gender barrier.
Women’s football in Uganda started in the early 1990s but initially was only played for fun and not professionally. According to the FUFA website, the first time qualification was attempted for the African Cup for women was in 1998 when Uganda hosted Egypt at Nakivubo stadium.
Currently, women’s football in Uganda has gained traction with approximately 50 teams participating in a number of leagues in the country.
Ruth Akao plays a ball during practice (Photo by Andrew Bugembe)
As a little girl, Ruth Akao grew up around boys who loved to play Ugandan football. This exposure ignited the 21-year-old Uganda Christian University (UCU) student’s passion for the sport as she often participated in some of the groups’ games.
“It made me happy when I played,” she said.
She continued playing the sport while at school. She has been engaged in professional leagues for over 10 years and isn’t done yet. While at Hope High School along Masaka Road (between Mukono and Kampala), she was scouted to play for the UCU Lady Cardinals team.
“I play position 11 which is the left-wing,” Akao said. “My job is to get the ball from the midfield and cross it to the box for scoring. Sometimes, we do the scoring ourselves.”
According to Akao, a major benefit from the sport is the fact that she receives half tuition to pursue her studies in Human Rights, Peace and Humanitarian Intervention in the Faculty of Social Sciences. She also states that she has been able to meet new people and make the necessary connections that she may need at a later time in her career.
“Ten years from now, I would like to start my own sports academy for girls,” she said.
Akao was part of the UCU Cardinals’ team that captured many honors in 2019, including a win of the Women’s Elite League. Despite Akao’s success in the sport, not many people in her life support her passion for the male-dominated sport.
“There is a time I went to the village and the people there were not happy with the fact that I am a football player,” she explains.
Akao added that most people find girls’ football to be too slow and boring for them to watch. She attributed this to the limited publicity from television and radio stations, which do not air the girls’ games as much as the boys’ games.
“It is only one radio station, FUFA, which sometimes plays our games,” she said.
Akao has also personally had her own challenges the sport. She explains that the volume of games means that she often has to miss some of her classes to participate in them.
“I have resorted to studying in the night in order to keep up with my studies,” she said.
For Akao, she advises the ladies who want to join the male-dominated sport to get out of their comfort zones and do what they love to do irrespective of what people tell them to do.
“Do not give up, and keep going,” she said.
+++
To support Uganda Christian University programs, students, activities and services, go to www.ugandapartners.org and click on the “donate” button, or contact UCU Partners Executive Director, Mark Bartels, at m.t.bartels@ugandapartners.org.
UCU Journalism Student and Netball Player, Hanisha Muhammed
(NOTE: Across the United States, March Madness refers to National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball competitions – a month when university rivalries are at their peak. In honor of the “madness” of watching American basketball in March 2020 and in collaboration with the Uganda Christian University student newspaper, The Standard, UCU Partners is featuring stories on a few UCU sports. Today’s story is about netball.)
By Patty Huston-Holm
For eight years and while serving Uganda Christian University (UCU) as a volunteer consultant and lecturer on the Mukono campus, I watched a bunch of girls move swiftly around a basketball court, passing a ball without letting it touch the ground. This, I was told, is a sport called netball.
I observed the mostly very tall and physically fit young ladies move energetically around an outside basketball court as I engaged in my own end-of-day exercise – stretching and strengthening my arms, legs and abdominal muscles on some nearby metal bars and elevating my heart rate with a rapid climb up and down stone steps. Occasionally, I would sit on the steps overlooking the court and watch the netballers while chatting on the phone with my mother back in Ohio.
Girls playing netball on the UCU Mukono practice court
The ladies had a smaller version of a basketball, an object of familiarity to an American like me. But they didn’t dribble it, which seemed odd. It reminded me of the USA in the 1960s and 70s, when girls were protected from over exertion with female basketball rules of no more than three ball bounces before passing. However, these UCU players that didn’t dribble the ball were not frail.
Periodically, over the years of watching the Mukono, Uganda, girls practice but never seeing an actual game, I looked up the netball sport on the Internet. I learned that it started in 1891 in the United States, which ironically pays little-to-no attention to the sport today. My country’s 2020 teams are mostly comprised of players outside the country.
Netball started for men, but then became a mostly female sport. Netball is the most popular women’s sport in Botswana, Malawi and Tanzania. And it is pretty popular in Uganda.
Finally, in February 2020, I made an appointment with one of the UCU players to learn more. The player, Hanisha Muhammed, is not just any university player. In addition to being on the UCU Angels team, she plays for two national teams – the She Pearls (name connected to Uganda’s reputation as the “pearl of Africa”) for those under 21 and the older women’s She Cranes (named after Uganda’s national bird) team. At age 20, Hanisha is the youngest player for the She Cranes.
On an early evening of February10 and on a day when she is not working her journalism/marketing internship at the Bank of Uganda, Hanisha arrives. She carries her practice ball (slightly smaller than a basketball) in a black bag. She patiently answers questions about her life, and explains the game and why she is so passionate about it.
“I was a swimmer,” she said. “But people kept telling me that because I was tall that I should do netball. I’m 6’3”.”
Short netball players are rare.
One of eight children from two mothers and one dad, Hanisha acknowledges her Ugandan family was more privileged than most. Her mother is a hotel owner from Rwanda, and her father is a retired psychiatrist with mostly Acholi, Uganda, roots. Hanisha calls Kampala her home, but lives in Mukono when UCU classes are in session.
In Secondary 5 (high school junior year), Hanisha exchanged her bathing suit and the pool for a T-shirt, shorts, sneakersand a cement court. She never looked back. Her program of study at UCU is journalism – a career she believes she can do alongside netball until she’s in her late 30s. When her sports career subsides, she will still have something in public relations or journalism.
“In other countries, you quit the sport earlier, but in Uganda, there are players up to 40,” she said.
While little-to-no payment to play isn’t an enticement, travel and the lessons of physical fitness, patience, teamwork and discipline are. The sport has taken Hanisha to Fiji, South Africa and Botswana. She maintains her weight with a healthy diet, sometimes practicing eight hours a day. She drinks lots of water and juice and avoids drugs and alcohol.
Some of the netball rules are: Seven players with two defenders and two shooters on the court. Thirteen players on the team. No dunking. No dribbling. No running with the ball. Feet firmly on the ground when shooting. No basket backboard. Release ball within three seconds.
“The umpires do the counting, but so do we,” she said. “You can’t hold onto the ball very long.”
Hitting the net’s pole so that the ball bounces off of it is a highly honed skill, she explained, adding, “The best players know what they are doing when they do that.”
“The game has a lot of rules,” according to Hanisha, who, like other netball players, pulls her long dark braids up on the top of her head for a game. “Few basketballers can play netball, but netballers can play basketball. Netball is about the feet, how you land with the ball and speed. You have to be as quick as possible.”
While realizing young girls look up to her, she does the same with Peace Proscovia, a UCU graduate with bachelor and master degrees in business administration and captain of the She Cranes.
After Hanisha’s graduation in October 2021, she hopes to begin playing more with international teams. Right now, her life is occupied with studies at UCU, playing netball, reading and praying. Financial remuneration is not important.
“Money doesn’t blow me away,” she says. “It’s just not a priority for me.”
+++
To support Uganda Christian University programs, students, activities and services, go to www.ugandapartners.org and click on the “donate” button, or contact UCU Partners Executive Director, Mark Bartels, at m.t.bartels@ugandapartners.org.
Fayed Baale celebrates after winning game 6 of the finals of the National Basketball League (NBL)
(NOTE: Across the United States, March Madness refers to National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball competitions – a month when university rivalries are at their peak. In honor of the “madness” of watching American basketball in March 2020 and in collaboration with interns working at the Uganda Christian University student newspaper, The Standard, UCU Partners is featuring stories on the UCU sports of basketball, netball, soccer, rugby and hockey.)
By Maria Eyoru
Every evening, when returning the Standard newspaper office keys to the Uganda Christian University (UCU) main gate, I watch students, namely members of the UCU Cannons boys team, practice at the nearby court.
My interest in the game especially peaked when I observed the shortest player on the team. He dribbled the ball, gripping it firmly in his hands while smartly ducking to dodge his taller opponents. I was intrigued by this young man who stood at five feet, eight inches – more than four inches shorter than any other player.
His feet appeared to move as light as feathers as he smartly ran fast while still dribbling the ball, ducking down to pass the ball to a teammate. That uncanny speed, especially by a not-so-tall player, caught my attention. The opponents seemed lost and confused. Captivated by what I saw, I decided to talk to this player – Fayed Baale. I simply had to know more about this UCU player of a sport, basketball, which started internationally in 1891 and in Africa in the early 1960s.
Fayed’s journey to become a basketball player wasn’t easy. It was a difficult voyage that involved a game of cat and mouse. Before he developed the interest in basketball, he had a passion for playing football (soccer) as is most common among the youths of Uganda.
One of his coaches, Zayed Yahaya, approached him about shifting his skill to basketball. Zayed nudged and kept nudging until Fayed joined in Secondary 3 (high school junior year).
Fayed Baale, shorter but faster
Fayed said his coach’s persistence was so overwhelming that he found strategies to “dodge” him. Half joking, Fayed added, “He started monitoring me and punishing me, so I played out of fear.”
At the onset, Fayed’s parents were not supportive and asked teachers to discourage him from being on the court. Basketball began in 1963 in Uganda. It was registered under the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) and has since grown to have over 20 teams. It is popular but still lags behind soccer that has been around longer.
“My parents tasked the teachers at school to punish me if they ever found me on court, but they did not,” Fayed said.
He eventually developed a passion for the game and started to play with the National Basketball Association (NBA) Junior League; the team won the NBA Junior League in 2015.
Though he loves the game, he understands that height as his could be a challenge. He overcomes his elevation deficiency with being quick on his feet, playing smart and focusing on his goals. He has to put in extra effort and works twice as hard as the other players through speed and quick thinking.
“What it takes for me to make it, you have to have the heart, passion, self motivation, patience and work harder,” he said. “I work out a lot so that by the time I go for the game, I’m faster than others. And I use my brain. That is how I survive.”
His drive comes, in part, from Stephen “Steph” Curry, a Golden State Warrior with National Basketball Association honors in the United States. Curry is taller than Fayed and from a sports family with a role model sports father and basketball-playing brother and volley ball-playing sister. Curry also is a decade older than 20-year-old Fayed, the first born of seven children. Yet, despite differences, the California basketball star serves as an inspiration for the younger and shorter Ugandan.
Fayed is planning on playing the sport professionally when he finishes his education and while being a human rights activist in Uganda. He is pursuing a Bachelors degree in Human Rights, Peace and Humanitarian Interventions within the Social Science faculty at UCU.
+++
To support Uganda Christian University programs, students, activities and services, go to www.ugandapartners.org and click on the “donate” button, or contact UCU Partners Executive Director, Mark Bartels, at m.t.bartels@ugandapartners.org.
UCU Nursing students Babirye Tamara Peace and Kakooza Abdul Wahabu practice a birth simulation with “Baby Nicole.”
Uganda Christian University (UCU) is launching a new program – a master’s course in midwifery and women’s health – under its School of Medicine. At the request of UCU Partners, Ugandan writer Constantine Odongo had a chat with Elizabeth Namukombe Ekong, a lecturer in the medical school’s nursing department. What follows is some of this conversation related to the new program.
What programs are under the department of nursing? We have undergraduate and master’s programs in the department. In the Bachelor of Nursing Science, which began in 2006, we have two entry points – nurses with diploma, but want to get bachelors; and the direct entry right from S6 (high school graduation). The completion program takes three years for nurses already experienced, while the other entry takes four years. The master’s in nursing started in 2008. We are now introducing the master’s in midwifery and women’s health.
Students Kiribata Dorothy, Bagenda Isaac, and Mbulaka Remmy Allan with a practice plastic baby as part of their training in the UCU nursing program.
When does the new course start? In 2017, the National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) approved our curriculum, but we have not had the personnel the NCHE insisted on. They insisted on staff with master’s degrees in midwifery, yet most of us have masters in nursing. We have been looking around for personnel. The challenge we have had is that in Uganda, only one university has been offering this course, so not many people have the skill set that NCHE required. The other challenge is many people who opt to pursue master’s degree studies are already established somewhere else. So, it is not for us to uproot them from their already set systems. There are some people who have expressed interest, so the university actually put up advertisements in January, calling for people to apply for the position of lecturer in midwifery. As this year (2020) is the Year of the Nurse and Midwife (designated by the World Health Assembly under the World Health Organization in honor of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale), it is appropriate that UCU starts the master’s in midwifery.
Which people are you working with to ensure that the program kicks off? We are trying to put up a team as NCHE recommended. The other thing is we have partners who are professors with PhDs in midwifery and are willing to come and teach and also offer online interactions, since the program design is a modular one. We have two professors from the United States – one from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and another from Bethel University in Minnesota. They are ready to start the teaching in May, if we have set our intake to start and we have finally got the required number of students, the personnel and the clearance from NCHE. We are making arrangements for the professors to come and make the physical preparations. We expect the face-to-face teaching to happen three times a year.
Elizabeth Namukombe Ekong, nursing lecturer
Who helped you design the curriculum for the midwifery master’s course? We developed it from a prototype curriculum that was designed from a program by the East, Central and South African College of Nursing (ECSACON). The ECSACON prototype is the same that many universities in the region use to develop their curriculum. We undertook a study to review the status of midwifery in the region and established that there was a need to provide a platform for the existing midwifery cadres to upgrade their skills at master’s level. When developing the curriculum, some of the areas the study looked at is the number of midwives in the country, the mortality rates, etc. From the ECSACON prototype curriculum, we developed ours for the master’s course, with assistance from colleagues in the UK. When we were satisfied that it was ready, we passed it through the approval process up to the university Senate and the NCHE. With the approval in 2017, it meant that the moment we get the relevant personnel with a master’s degree in midwifery, we would be ready to start.
What achievements has the nursing department registered? We have developed skilled competent and dependable nurses with the passion and faith to render services across the continent, but also offer leadership. Our graduates have been absorbed in different institutions, both state and non-state and the feedback we get about their conduct is encouraging. We have had collaborations with facilities where we send our students for placement, like Uganda-China Friendship Hospital Naguru, the hospitals of Nsambya, Mulago, Butabika, Jinja referral and many others.
Some of our students are Assistant District Health Officers, and some are in charge of medical facilities and in other leadership positions in hospitals. Others are working at the Ministry of Health.
What is in the curriculum for the midwifery master’s program that you are soon launching? The curriculum is designed with two tracks: Education and Practice as the program prepares educators and practitioners We have areas of midwifery education, which involves teaching and learning, curriculum development, measurement and evaluation; we also have an area on research and statistics. We have another area of midwifery leadership courses and management, so our students are able to graduate with better management and leadership skills.
There are foundation science courses like pathophysiology, pharmacology, and advanced health assessment in maternal and infant care. Other profession-based foundation courses offer an opportunity for the students to learn theories in nursing/midwifery, together with advanced courses in normal and abnormal midwifery. With other partner universities both here in Uganda and beyond, we share courses to do with cultural diversity, trends and issues in midwifery, neonatal and women’s health. Students also go for an international module (internship) to strengthen their teaching approaches and clinical experiences.
The students also take selected courses in advanced clinical practice from areas of their desired specialty in maternal and child health. Health care systems is another course taught to enable students understand the major elements, dynamics, determinants and organizational themes in public health, policy issues and health financing.
How have you taken care of the developments in information and communications technology as far as your course is concerned? We intend not to leave our graduates behind as far as information and communications technology is concerned. We have lined up a course in informatics, which involves the application of technology in what they learn. We expect to take the students through online healthcare packages, how they can remotely follow up on patients and network with the online medical ecosystem in order to know a patient’s medical history and other things.
Many women, especially those in rural areas, still opt for traditional birth attendants (TBAs) to deliver them, citing harassment from midwives. What is your department doing to reverse this phenomenon? We always emphasize professional ethics and Christian values in our students and that is why we have faith-based and foundation courses to see how virtues of the respect for one’s work is instilled and how the students ought to relate with their clients. In the midwifery curriculum, for instance, we have integrated Christian worldview to help students relate and handle our clients from a Christian perspective.
Why should we separate nursing from midwifery? Would it be better to equip the students with both skills, so the medical field gets multi-skilled professionals? At UCU, the Bachelor of Nursing Science teaches concepts of both nursing and midwifery, just like the undergraduate course, which teaches medicine and surgery. The specialization occurs only at post-graduate level. That said, there are universities that offer bachelor’s degrees in midwifery. It’s also important to note the difference between the work of a midwife and a nurse. A midwife’s work involves care for women and families whereas a nurse is involved with the general health of everyone. Midwives focus on women, children, pregnant women, reproductive health issues and educating the community about the same.
+++
To support this Uganda Christian University program and others as well as students, activities and services, go to www.ugandapartners.org and click on the “donate” button, or contact UCU Partners Executive Director, Mark Bartels, at mtbartels@gmail.com.
Annet Kabanyoro, UCU graduate working on her PhD in South Africa
Annet Kabanyoro is a doctoral student in healthcare at the University of South Africa. The dean of the School of Nursing at Kampala International University, she has risen through the ranks from enrolling in a certificate in nursing and kept on advancing, including with a master’s degree from Uganda Christian University (UCU).This is part of her story as told to UCU journalism student Esther Byoona.
What do students learn in a doctoral health science program? There is an advanced level of learning. Communication and how you communicate are advanced. We do write ups, learn how to write, scientific writing, completing the thesis because you’re at that advanced level. Everything is advanced.
How does this level of health education improve healthcare in Uganda? When you’re at an advanced level, you can influence policy in a positive direction, to make sure health service delivery is improved to make sure people do the right things. You ensure people are using evidence, evidence-based practice, research and published scientific information so when you’re at that level you are able to influence policy, read literature synthesize it, write in scientific journals and implement more.
Why do you care about healthcare in Uganda? A population that is not healthy cannot advance.Without healthcare, more people would be sick all the time.People cannot go to work, go to business, and go to school. There is nothing that can go on. Health and care of it should be taken as a priority. When you are healthy, you could do many things including self-care, but sickness debilitates and some people can hardly care for themselves.
What does your career path in heath care look like? I started at a low level in 1992. I was at the certificate level in nursing and I kept on advancing.I did a diploma, degree, a masters, now I am doing my PhD. I have done other courses like leadership and management and others. But I started at that lowest level so I’ve gone through all the levels of training in nursing since 1995.I assumed different roles ranging from being a bedside nurse in the clinical area to a nurse educator.
What do you love about the healthcare profession? When you’re a health worker, and someone comes to you very sick, and they get better, you feel motivated. You feel happy, you feel great and sweet and you know that wow, you did your part. I love to see a patient who came when they were very sick and then improve and they are walking and smiling and thanking you. In education, when you see students on day one, you see they don’t know anything about the profession so you train them. They get to know what you do. Seeing students advance and get well socialized in the profession excites me.
What are the other benefits? I get enumeration, and enumeration helps me take care of my family. My first born is a doctor. Though it can never be enough, we thank God we have food, housing, and clothes. I network with my colleagues professionally both locally and globally. I did a module in America.
What are your challenges? Working in a resource constrained environment. Sometimes you want to do something but you don’t have the resources. I have to improvise all the time whether in clinical or education. You want to do a training and you cannot refuse them because it is their right but the resources are never enough. And culture can be a challenge.
Do you have any advice for those who may want to study healthcare? They should understand nursing is a calling from God. You should deliver service above self. The nurses’ anthem spells it out. There is not much money earned from nursing. Professionalism is key.
+++
To support Uganda Christian University programs such as the ones in nursing as well as other programs, students, activities and services, go to www.ugandapartners.org and click on the “donate” button, or contact UCU Partners Executive Director, Mark Bartels, at m.t.bartels@ugandapartners.org.
(NOTE: The author of this article is a fourth-year honors student pursuing her Bachelor’s in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Uganda Christian University. These are her August 2019 impressions of a first time trip to Rwanda as part of the American-based Uganda Studies Program.)
By Delight Cajo M. Salamula
The Nyamata Genocide Memorial in Kigali is where I saw, touched and felt the atrocity of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi ethnic group of people. It was inside a catholic church where Tutsi men, women and children fled, hoping to be protected from the “enemy” – the Hutu. Tutsi men were on the outer end of this five-acre plot to shield thrice their number of vulnerable women and children whose strength could not measure up to theirs. A book, “Mirror to the Church,” estimates that 5,000 Tutsi perished during the massacre at Nyamata and that 8,000 victims are buried in mass graves behind the church.
Bloodshed was the theme of the Easter holiday. But this time, it was not the blood of Jesus Christ claiming its dominance through his resurrection. It was the bloodshed of best friends killing each other. The irony was that the Hutu and Tutsi, along with a pygmy tribe called Twa,were under one king in 1994 in Rwanda. They have the same language and cultural norms.
The movies “Hotel Rwanda” and “Sometimes in April” and the “Mirror” book by Emmanuel Katongole give only a glimpse of the emotional and physical calamity that happened on the Rwandan soil April 7 to July 15 in 1994. The origin of this massacre had an economic backbone. The colonialists split already existing Rwandans into the three ethnicities based on how they looked and how much land and cattle they owned. The Tutsi were the rich with more privileges of higher paying jobs and their children studying in better schools compared to the Hutu and Twa. The Hutu, aggravated to think the Tutsi were the major bottleneck to their development, planned the killing for about a year before it started.
Delight Cajo and students in the Uganda Studies Program learn a Rwandan dance as part of their experience in understanding genocide and reconciliation.
Bad as the genocide was, not all the Hutu participated. An estimated 1.5 million out of 8 million Hutu did, according to Reverend Antoine Rutayisire, who wrote the book “Faith Under Fire.” This book also shows how God came through with miracles saving lives in this massacre.
As I was pondering Rev. Emmanuel Katongale’s words about whether “the blood of tribalism runs deeper than the waters of baptism,” it dawned on me that God can wipe out the ethnic scars of the Rwandan Anglican Church. In 2019, these people sang and worshiped like they weren’t in Rwanda during that horrific time in 1994. Rhetorically, I wondered, had it happened to me, would I forgive the one who made me an orphan and go ahead to fellowship with him?
An experience in Rwanda with the American-based Uganda Studies Program changed my perceptions in many ways. Through an organization called Christian Action for Reconciliation and Social Assistance (CARSA), I listened to stories of two reconciled perpetrator and victim pairs of the genocide. If you want the truth, listen to both sides. Expressions of pain, anger, jealousy, betrayal, vengeance / revenge, ignorance, hatred, obedience to authority, confusion, psychological transformation, murder, awareness, acknowledgement of mistakes, search for forgiveness, change in behavior, bonding and acceptance of mistakes and history were told.
What stood out the most for me from our visit with CARSA was the psychological transformation that yielded into a peaceful human environment. The psychology behind reconciliation is having a common interest. Cows represent wealth in Rwanda and Uganda, but also reinforce peace in Rwanda. The perpetrator and victim(s) of the deceased family share a cow as upkeep. This enables them to shed layers of the grudge. If one can forgive the person who killed his or herbiological family, then it is possible to forgive and reconcile with absolutely anyone.
While not all Rwandans have reconciled, it was powerful to learn from those who have.
God did not plan the genocide. It’s by God’s grace that people whose families had been killed got back together and have hope through forgiveness and reconciliation.
One of those reconciled is Reverend Antoine Rutayisire, who recalled when he was five years old that his father was killed during the genocide. As some feel the world turned its back on Rwanda, he doesn’t. He does not blame America, the United Nations and others for not stepping in and stopping the genocide. According to Rev. Rutayisire, Rwanda should take full responsibility for its situation.Today, there is Rwandan peaceful cohabitation in which all residents are called Rwandans. In fact, the labels Hutu and Tutsi are forbidden for use of identification in the country.
Advancements over the past two decades include economic growth, health care and infrastructure. Through these, I realized one could always rise up when fallen.
The Rwandan economic growth rate averaged at 7.5% over the decade 2008 to 2018, while per capita growth domestic product (GDP) grew at 5% annually, according to the World Bank.On a local level, I learned through Hope International about a savings program that enables medical insurance for the poorest members of a community. One hospital, in Butaro village, treats cancer at no cost.
As I journeyed through Rwanda back home to Uganda, I saw eucalyptus trees planted on either side of the road, palm trees in the midsection of road and all the slopes of this country’s mountainous terrain with contours. Rwanda has a wave of natural beauty tethered by fresh air and temperate weather. Its culture esteems their inimitably defined long-horned cattle as a sign of wealth. With gratitude, people dance with their hands up in a U-shape to imitate the cow horns,amalgamating energy for the men (bulls) and grace for the women (cows).
I acknowledged the slogan, “God worked very hard for six days creating the heavens and earth. But on the seventh day, He needed a break, so He picked Rwanda as the place to take a much-needed sleep. God sleeps in Rwanda, then keeps busy at work everywhere else.”
+++
To support Uganda Christian University programs, students, activities and services, go to www.ugandapartners.org and click on the “donate” button, or contact UCU Partners Executive Director, Mark Bartels, at mtbartels@gmail.com.
UCU students Ivan Mutesasira and Mildred Nampala pose with chess and “overcomer” coach Robert Katende. All are from Katwe. (UCU Partners Photo)
By Patty Huston-Holm
In the game of chess, if you lose the queen, most players forfeit.
Not so for Robert Katende, best known as the chess coach for Phiona Mutesi, the Ugandan slum girl featured for overcoming the odds of poverty in the “Queen of Katwe” movie. Not so for Ugandan Madina Nalwanga who had never seen a movie before being plucked from a line up to portray Phiona in the 2016 movie. And not so for chess players and Katwe slum residents Ivan Mutesasira and Mildred Nampala, studying at Uganda Christian University (UCU) in 2020.
The list of Katende-influenced, overcomer names is long and growing.
Children learning about life and chess at SOM Chess Academy in Katwe (UCU Partners Photo)
The game of chess and the Sports Outreach Ministry (SOM) Chess Academy compound in Katwe are the visible ties between Katende and his protégé students. Yet, the most valued of 16 chess pieces – the queen who can move in all directions on 64 squares of the game – symbolizes much more. Katende and his young chess players have suffered losses that would cause most people to quit. But they didn’t.
On a hot, sunny day in early January 2020, more than 50 children surround Katende at the academy. He calls them “kings” and “queens” because, he says, they can rise to the top despite their poverty and other vulnerabilities. They call Katende “coach” as they learn not only how to play the game of chess but how to maneuver through life.
On break from regular school, the poorest of Kampala’s boys and girls ages three to teens, play or silently watch two-player teams at a dozen handmade, wooden chessboards. They sit or lean against each other under an avocado tree, within a three-sided tent or in the building that also houses Katende’s small office at the academy. Katende tells some of his story behind the better-known one about Phiona. It also is detailed in his newly released book, “A Knight without a Castle.”
Coach Robert Katende at the academy in Katwe (UCU Partners Photo)
Katende lost his “queen” – his mother – who abandoned him before he was a year old. As he grew, he felt so abused and unwanted that his only deterrent from killing himself was that he couldn’t scrape up enough money to buy rat poison to do it. He persevered with a life that often found him sleeping on cardboard with his grandmother and a younger child, suffering injuries that included a dislocated wrist wracked with pain as he successfully completed written exams, and digging his fingers into gardens and laying bricks to work his way through school while oftentimes being cheated out of wages.
Today, the former mathematics teacher with a university degree is the backbone of the Academy located in Katwe, which is the poorest slum in Uganda’s capital city of Kampala. The Academy is a haven in a village best known for high illiteracy, poor housing, prostitution and low employment except for metal workers who get accolades for their skill in crafting beds and sheds. The chess coach also leads the newer Robert Katende Initiative, a child-uplifting, fund-raising arm based in the United States.
“I see myself as a moving miracle,” he said. “It is not of my own making. God has chosen me to glorify His name. I have no reason to be alive but for His Purpose.”
Katende’s story is one he would rather tell through the next generation that he might have inspired. That generation includes:
famous Phiona, now studying business at Northwest University (Kirkland, Washington), where another Katwe chess player (depicted in the movie as the boy clicking his fingers a lot) named Benjamin also is enrolled with a dream to become a neurosurgeon;
teenagers named David, Lydia, Gloria and Stella who auditioned as young, poor Katwe children and received supporting roles in the movie;
two student chess players enrolled in engineering at the Mukono campus of UCU. There, with the hand of the university’s Vice Chancellor, the Rev. Canon Dr. John Senyonyi, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) exists to serve the underserved with the Academy – if there is financial support.
Through the UCU Partners organization, based in the USA state of Pennsylvania, San Antonio, Texas, resident, Sandra Lamprecht, offered that first support. She sponsors the two UCU students, Ivan Mutesasira and Mildred Nampala. Already an admirer of UCU quality curriculum and character-building education and with family in Uganda, the United States woman saw the “Queen of Katwe” movie in 2016, met Katende in 2017, and felt led to help.
With Katende’s recommendation and facilitated by the MOU at UCU, Lamprecht first agreed to be the American “mom” for Ivan Mutesasira, who is a lesser-known character in the “Queen of Katwe” movie.
“I’m the guy with the hat,” Ivan commented amidst the young chess players, including one hanging onto his leg on this January 8 day. He smiled as he referred to his movie portrayal as a member of the chess team that traveled more than a decade ago with Phiona to Juba, South Sudan, and the tournament where she won and garnered international attention through the media, a book and then a movie.
Like Katende, Ivan, who is now 28 years old, believes his life outside the movie better defines him and God’s purpose.
“The movie touches me because I lived it – paying for water and fetching it in a jerry can, sharing pit latrines, no electricity,” Ivan recalled. “My parents divorced when I was age five. There were five of us as children with a mom supporting us by selling vegetables at the market.”
While he was raised Christian and went to church, Ivan saw his life take an upward turn when, at age 12, he met Katende. Through moves on a chess board, the young Ivan learned discipline, responsibility, strategic planning, action consequences and that someone – the coach and God – believed in him and loved him.
“My friends were dropping out of school and having unplanned children,” Ivan said. “I was learning to accept and appreciate what I had, trusting in God, praying and playing chess.”
What Ivan learned through the chess academy is continuing at UCU, where character building is incorporated into his program in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Upon his graduation with a bachelor’s degree in July 2021, he hopes to make a difference in the place where he grew up.
“That building is wrong structurally,” he said, pointing to a crumbling residence towering three stories above the Katwe academy. “Effluent from the upstairs bathroom is flowing down into people’s rooms. That’s part of what I want to fix to improve lives.”
Mildred Nampala, 21, and the second Katwe youth sponsored at UCU by Sandra Lamprecht, likewise wants to be part of the solution to her country’s poverty issues. She is a year behind Ivan at UCU and is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in electronics and communication engineering.
One of three children, Mildred never knew her father who died when she was a toddler; her mother died when she was 12 years old. She served as a house cleaner and cook in exchange for school fees and a place to live with an uncle, his wife and five children until one of the biological children got pregnant out of wedlock. Out of fear that the same would happen with Mildred, the uncle kicked her out of the house. She found refuge in various homes, including that of her sister who works as Katende’s accountant.
Mildred found refuge in chess. The game also reinforced the value of teamwork with all the pieces working together under the guidance of the players. And the “Queen of Katwe” movie that Mildred has “watched more times than I can count” reinforces that she and others in poverty can be more.
While he has had offers to relocate with other organizations and in developed countries, Katende says he is called to remain in his Katwe birthplace. As he looks around and admires the mechanical skills of the less-educated population of the slum, he aspires to grow the chess academy focus into a vocational school within the next few years.
“The school will go there,” he said, pointing to an area near the academy’s single avocado tree and below crumbling houses and rows of laundry blowing in the dusty wind.
This Katende and others know: Millions of people around the world play chess. Losing a queen early on doesn’t mean you lost the game.
+++
To support Uganda Christian University programs, students, activities and services, go to www.ugandapartners.org and click on the “donate” button, or contact UCU Partners Executive Director, Mark Bartels, at m.t.bartels@ugandapartners.org.
Prof. Monica Chibita with her husband, Justice Mike Chibita (left) and the Uganda Christian University Vice Chancellor, Rev. Canon Dr. John Senyonyi at the inaugural lecture
By Douglas Olum
It was 1:45 p.m. East African Time on Friday, January 17, and I was in the Nkoyoyo Hall at Uganda Christian University (UCU). A couple of other people were gathered under the same roof. But, unlike the other days of that week, the sky was coated in dark clouds. And drizzles from the sky were peacefully showering the trees and green grass on the compound, making them look even more beautiful.
Prof. Monica Chibita delivers her professorial inaugural lecture
For a moment, my heart wondered why the rain on such a day? We were set to listen to the first-ever professorial inaugural lecture at UCU, and it was to be delivered by the dean of the faculty of Journalism, Media and Communication, Prof. Monica Balya Chibita, receiving full professorship.
Then I remembered one Bible verse, Hebrews 6:7 (KJV) which states: “Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God.” Indeed, the rain was a momentous blessing as Dr. Chibita was to be only the second to Rev. Prof. Christopher Byaruhanga, the dean of the UCU School of Divinity and Theology, to receive such a full academic professor designation
Over the weeks, this particular lecture on the topic of “Between freedom and regulation: Reflection on Uganda’s Communication landscape” had been widely advertised. And a number of people, both within and without UCU were eagerly waiting to listen to this incredible academic whose childhood dream wandered from becoming a nurse, to becoming a lawyer because it seemed prestigious, then to becoming an altar girl, a social worker and finally a teacher.
Soon, Prof. Chibita marched into the hall in company of her husband, Supreme Court Justice Mike Chibita; her mother; four of her five children; Rev. Byaruhanga; the Vice Chancellor, Rev. Canon Dr. John Senyonyi; two UCU deputy vice chancellors; and other UCU faculty members, donned in their academic gowns but not the mortarboard cap that only Monica Chibita wore to match her red robe.
The University Chaplain, Rev. Eng. Paul Wasswa Ssembiro, led the opening prayer. And it was all joy and praises as the Deputy Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, Rev. Dr. John Kitayimbwa, the Vice Chancellor, and the dean of the UCU School of Divinity and Theology, provided words in the ceremony for the highly anticipated lecture.
“To us as a university, Uganda Christian University, this is a very welcome opportunity for us to showcase to the public but also to showcase to our very students what it is we are doing in the area of teaching and learning, in the area of research and in the area of community outreach,” Rev. Dr. Kitayimbwa said.
Prof. Monica Chibita (left) receives an award from Uganda Christian University Vice Chancellor, Rev. Canon Dr. John Senyonyi, shortly after her professorial inaugural lecture
Dr. Senyonyi expressed appreciation to Prof. Chibita for her focused developmental leadership that has transformed the former department of Mass Communication under the Education and Arts faculty to its own esteemed faculty.
“Shortly after she joined UCU, Prof. Chibita sent five staff for PhD studies to build her department. Furthermore, she merged that departmental growth with her personal academic growth, thus becoming the second home-grown professor at Uganda Christian University,” Dr. Senyonyi said, “Today her contributions are out for all of us to see. She stands tall in every way among the achievers of this university.”
Dr. Chibita graduated in 1986 with a Bachelor of Arts in Education (Literature in English) from Makerere University. In 1992, she obtained an MA in Journalism from the University of Iowa. She joined Makerere University as a lecturer in 1994, where she rose through ranks up to Associate Professor. Between 2003 and 2006, she pursued her doctoral studies from the University of South Africa. She joined UCU in 2012 as head of the then department of Mass Communication under the Faculty of Education and Arts. Over the years, she developed and got her department lifted to a faculty status.
“Congratulations to you, Prof. Chibita, for a well-deserved promotion,” the vice chancellor continued. “I am elated to host UCU’s first inaugural lecture.”
An inaugural lecture is a formal public function in which a newly appointed full professor is unveiled to the public, with the desire to inform the academic and general public of the professor’s recent research and publication works that have merited her new appointment.
Dr. Senyonyi warned that UCU will not grant professorship and honorary doctorates to people who do not deserve it.
“It seems to me today that university leaders and even none academic personalities have taken to self-proclaim themselves professors. Someone asked me to give him an honorary doctorate, even without a clear beneficial relationship with this university. Of course I refused and instead proceeded to write a policy on honorary doctorate to knock out the quacks,” Dr. Senyonyi said.
He also encouraged the university academic staff members to invest in research, warning that, “Academics who do not research are digging their academic grave,” because without research, they die academically.
In her lecture, Prof. Chibita illustrated the issues of media ownership, management, operations, legal frameworks and how the arms of the media in Uganda have continuously been twisted since the pre-colonial days, to curtail media freedom and serve the interests of the financial and political powers. Some of the means used by the governments that she illustrated included expelling foreign journalists and banning newspapers under the Milton Obote II Government. Others include the mandatory annual licensing of all journalists by the Government of Uganda. She noted that the pages of laws may be confusing for journalists.
Another challenge to Uganda and global communication in the age of social media is the blur of lines between consumers and distributors of news. She concurred with the vice chancellor and his concern with lack of research, including lack of deep reading in an age when people get news from Facebook.
For Uganda, part of the answer is in translation to mother tongue. Prof. Chibita asserted that, at least 36 different languages are spoken in Uganda, including dialects like English and Kiswahili. But research has shown that people in the central and western parts of Uganda prefer to receive information in their own languages.
To her, that explains why large corporations like the Vision Group, with 53 percent ownership of the media in Uganda, run English and Local Language newspapers, radios and television. These include: The New Vision as English Newspaper, Bukedde as Luganda paper, radio and TV for the central region. Others include: Rupiny Newspaper and Radio for the North, Orumuri newspaper, Radio West and TV West for Western Uganda.
At that, she joked with her audience of roughly 500 dignitaries, current and former students and colleagues and family and friends, “I won’t embarrass you by asking how many of you read the newspaper today.”
Fulbright Professor David Hodge with wife and daughters on the Uganda Christian University, Mukono, campus
By Benezeri Wanjala
Relaxing at his new home-away-from-home on the leafy, expansive Uganda Christian University (UCU) in Mukono, American Professor David Hodge talked about his life. He is a social worker, researcher and teacher. He is married to Crystal, and they have two daughters, Esther and Rachael, ages 15 and 12.
A lecturer of Social Work at Arizona State University in Phoenix, USA, he’s here for a year – through June 2020 – as a Fulbright Scholar, he says. His specialty is spirituality and religion.
As we chatted, Mrs. Hodge offered me a beverage. Their children were away at school.
David Hodge
Hodge outlined the process of obtaining the scholarship: “When you apply for a Fulbright, you have to come up with some sort of plan that you will execute. Then you go through an extensive review process, which is evaluated by external reviewers who decide whether it is a good fit or something they want to support.”
He teaches a Master’s in Social Work class at the UCU Kampala campus. The program classes are condensed into three days – Thursday, Friday and Saturday. This arrangement is typical for advanced degrees, he says, because it enables students to work during the rest of the days in a week. His particular class in religion and spirituality takes place on Thursday evenings.
However, teaching is one of two components of his yearlong Fulbright scholarship. The second is research. He is developing tools and approaches to help social workers tap into clients’ spiritual strengths. His research project involves making the tools “consistent and congruent with Ugandan culture.” The research tools are qualitative in nature, as opposed to quantitative.
“I will take the questions and approaches, and I’ll ask social workers how I can make them more consistent with cultural norms,” he says. His previous writings have evolved around Christianity, Islamism, Hinduism and some indigenous tribal religions.
“My career has been focused on helping social workers work with clients’ spiritual and religious strengths in an ethical and professional manner,” he continued. “My academic work pretty much all revolves around spirituality, religion and culture.”
He obtained his PhD from one of the most respected schools of Social Work in the United States, the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Thereafter, he did post-doctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2005, he joined Arizona State University, one of America’s largest universities. Ten years later, he became a full professor. He also served as head of the PhD program for six years before stepping down to pursue the Fulbright scholarship opportunity. The Fulbright at UCU was attractive because of the East African reputation for spirituality.
“It is a faith-based school and its mission is to achieve excellence in the heart of Africa,” he says. “When you look at the demographic data, Sub-Saharan Africa is the most spiritual and religious geographic area in the world. For my work, you can’t think of a better environment.”
Additionally, Hodge has found fascination in the food, wildlife and other cultural aspects of Uganda.
“There are all kinds of monkeys that jump around in the compound and on the roof,” he remarks with a smile. “We don’t have that in America. The monkeys there are in zoos. Here they are out swinging in trees. So I took some pictures and sent them to my parents, and they found it interesting.”
He has enjoyed all the Ugandan food he has tasted so far.
“I haven’t had rolex yet, though,” he admits. Rolex is a Ugandan street delicacy, composed of eggs wrapped into a bread called chapatti. He says he likes the vegetables in particular and he buys them from the local market.
He also likes the weather. “You can have your windows open all the time. That’s a real luxury. In Arizona, it’s desert. It goes as high as 40 and 50 degrees Celsius during the summer. In the winter it goes down to close to zero.”
The transition to Uganda has not been without challenges. While they have made new friends, his daughters are finding it slightly harder to adapt, especially at school. They study at an International School, which is on the Northern Bypass of Kampala and involves a lengthy transport time from their home on the main UCU campus in Mukono.
“They had only been to one school their whole life before they came to Uganda,” he said. “They have to go to bed very early and wake up early as well. I am lucky because I only need to go to Kampala once a week.”
Land transportation in Uganda is a challenge for the entire family. Hodge and is wife do not have international driver’s licenses. Traffic jams are commonplace while traffic lights and drivers with licenses for the cars, taxis and motorcycles are not.
He has found the difference in the standards of time interesting. While Americans are extremely time conscious, Ugandans are not.
“My Ugandan friend says, ‘People from the West check their watches for the time, but Ugandans have the time’.”
He continued: “The way I look at it is different. People prioritize values differently. For example, Americans tend to prioritize efficiency over relationships. Ugandans prioritize relationships over efficiency. Societies are structured differently. And that’s one of the things I like about Ugandans. They are warm and friendly, but that means when you’re talking to someone, you might not be able to make it for your next meeting. It’s hard to optimize all your values simultaneously.”
Prof. Hodge is looking forward to the rest of his time in Uganda, both professionally and personally.
“On the personal end, I am looking forward to learning more about the Ugandan culture,” he said. “And I’d like to see some of the wonderful sites in the country like Lake Victoria and the source of the River Nile.”
Paul Robinson, right, with Tate Keko, Maasai elder, in Loita, Kenya, 1992
(The Fulbright Program is designed to improve intercultural relations, diplomacy and competence between people in the United States and other countries. This is the second of three stories about American Fulbright Scholars serving with Uganda Christian University.)
By Patty Huston-Holm
“It all starts with a conversation,” said Paul W. Robinson.
Amidst raindrops on fig and lemon trees, sips of hot tea and bites of freshly made banana bread on a chilly Friday afternoon, Dr. Robinson shared what he felt would be the beginning, middle and ending of his appointment as a United States Fulbright Scholar. He spoke from the patio of the Uganda Christian University (UCU) apartment of his daughter, Rachel, who directs the Council for Christian Colleges and University Uganda Studies Program on the Mukono campus.
Margie and Paul Robinson
“Ultimately, it’s about servanthood,” he said, distracted briefly as he and his wife, Margie, pointed to the delightful sights and sounds of the African parrot. “For all cultures and not just people who are Christian, this is key. To serve, you begin with listening.”
Forty years of teaching African history, anthropology, development studies, research methodologies and community health with half in East Africa, plus 65 years of life and learning, have told him so. The Wheaton College (Ill.) Professor Emeritus and Fulbright Scholar will spend the next year with UCU’s Institute of Faith, Learning and Service to help nurture and deepen the university’s practice of integrating the Institute’s three components for students, staff and programs. African leaders, including the late South African President Nelson Mandela and Nobel Laureate and Kenyan Professor Wangari Maathai affirm that Africa’s greatest challenge is developing leadership that is intellectually grounded, ethically formed and committed to service.
Robinson hopes that in some small way that he can support the work of UCU colleagues leading the Institute that was launched in 2010 as well as those within the School of Research and Post-Graduate Studies who share his servanthood passion.
“It’s my understanding that in some regards as the university grew in 20 years, it faced challenges that resulted in a diminished focus on faith and learning,” said Robinson, who has studied and taught in several American and African universities. “This is a pretty common experience in Christian higher education globally. Institutions frequently lose their core.”
Robinson was born in the Belgian Congo as a son of missionaries. When he was age eight, his family fled as refugees from the Congo’s first post-independence civil war to Kenya. There, he met and later married Margie, his high school sweetheart who also was born in the Congo. Together, they forged a life crossing continents and raising three children while being engaged in university teaching, development and church service.
His life and work were informed by a two-year academic and spiritual journey in the desert areas of Kenya and Ethiopia while doing field research for his Northwestern University doctoral dissertation. During that time, he had conversations with sages of the Gabra camel-herding culture to learn how they survived and flourished in one of Africa’s harshest physical environments.
“It’s important to recognize that we all can learn from each other,” said Robinson, who is an American citizen with some roots in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Montana but who considers Africa another home. “We should never be so busy with the reality of where we live that we can’t do that.”
Robinson’s long list of service includes: director of an international study program at St. Lawrence University (Nairobi, Kenya); leader of a USAID-funded initiative responding to the East African HIV-AIDs epidemic; co-founder of The Christian Bilingual University (Congo); elder involved in urbanization work at Nairobi (Kenya) Chapel; and director of a Wheaton College Human Needs and Global Resources Program that engages 200 organizations in 40 countries worldwide. He also continues to serve on boards for a half dozen Christian organizations involved in education, development and missions.
While the Western world sees its role as serving less-developed countries of “the majority world,” Robinson believes that “at the heart of service is a commitment to listening, learning and being present.” Countries known as “developed” have a lot to learn from those they would serve about injustice, suffering, community and more. The traumas of Africa – “fleeing from post-independence Congolese militias, soldiers with guns at barriers and borders, losses and heartache” – remain a part of him, but the “courageousness, resilience, hospitality and generosity of African people and the vibrancy of Africa’s vegetation, tall elephant grass, bird song, hearth-smoke in evenings and mornings” are stronger, he says.
“Africa is a place where people care deeply about their neighbors and want to help them, and serve them,” Robinson said. “It is a continent of abundant and rich resources that could be the life-blood of its peoples, but because of poor leadership and a global economic system that primarily extracts its resources, Africa remains a continent of deep inequalities and poverty.”
In addition to research student involving UCU’s climate and culture, the professor will teach two courses that focus on global perspectives and transforming poverty.
Paul Robinson looks at UCU’s mission, vision and core values, realizing that often for all universities, these are words forgotten or misplaced in the midst of daily tasks of listening to student stories of financial woes, teaching and grading papers. The UCU commitment to offering a “complete education for a complete” person aligns and resonates with his core passions and work.
“How do you effectively teach a whole person?” he asked. “You need to look at the foundational questions of what knowledge should be understood, what skills should be developed, what attitudes fostered, what values modeled, what experience needs to be involved and finally but most importantly, what service should be incorporated.”
With answers to these questions as a baseline, Robinson hopes that a process will be deepened to encourage a more concrete and sustainable model to strengthen UCU.
+++
To support Uganda Christian University programs, students, activities and services, go to www.ugandapartners.org and click on the “donate” button, or contact UCU Partners Executive Director, Mark Bartels, at mtbartels@gmail.com.
The Just family – Jason and Ladavia; Jada, 14; twins Jamie and Jael, who recently turned 9.
(The Fulbright Program is designed to improve intercultural relations, diplomacy and competence between people in the United States and other countries. This is the first of three stories about American Fulbright Scholars serving with Uganda Christian University.)
By Patty Huston-Holm
“The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.” Proverbs 16:9
Uprooting from a developed to developing country shouldn’t be an overnight decision. For Dr. Ladavia Just of North Charleston, South Carolina, it wasn’t.
Sitting barefooted in her Kampala, Uganda, home while her three children were in their new school and juggling phone messages about her husband’s American-to-Uganda air travel snafus, she reflected on her path across the ocean to serve with Uganda Christian University (UCU). The three-year discernment journey started in February 2016 with UCU’s Vice Chancellor, the Rev. Canon Dr. John. Senyonyi, visiting South Carolina. This connection was followed by Ladavia’s two exploratory trips to Uganda before a Fulbright Scholarship award to do nine months of work related to Dr. Ladavia’s expertise in pharmacy.
Ladavia Just
Dr. Just is teaching pharmacology courses for second-year students at the UCU School of Medicine that is located within Kampala’s Mengo Hospital. She also has been tasked with helping to lay the foundation for a new pharmacy program at UCU’s School of Medicine. In addition, she will conduct research assessing the feasibility of increasing access to heath care using telemedicine in refugee settlements.
“When I look at the needs of Ugandans, the list is overwhelming,” she said. “I wondered how I could possibly have made a ripple of an impact. Now as I consider the fact that I have been practicing as a clinical pharmacist for the past decade, coupled with my background in postsecondary education and health administration, I realize there is a ripple that has my name on it.”
That ripple became a wave with “first God nudging me very subtly” before the giant push with her husband, Jason, agreeing to hold down the fort with his work at the Medical University of South Carolina while his wife and three daughters took up a year’s residency in Uganda. The couple agreed that having their twins, Jamie and Jael, age 9, and Jada, 14, engaged in the international experience, including school in Uganda, would be a plus.
Here’s some of what Dr. Ladavia Just knows as it relates to the need she might fill in Uganda:
In the United States, the career path to become a pharmacist involves at least two years of undergraduate study, four years of graduate-level study, and two exams. There are 144 accredited programs with the more than 300,000 pharmacy graduates (2016) making more than $100,000 a year. These American pharmacists give advice on wellness, educate on drug benefits and side affects and administer certain vaccinations. Throughout the country, citizens can access a licensed pharmacist about every two miles (3.2 kilometers).
In Uganda, which is about the size of the state of Oregon, you can become a pharmacist following a four-year program, followed by a one-year internship, in four locations – one in the north, one in the west and two centrally located. While institutions offer lower levels (certificate, diploma) of programs related to pharmacy work in Uganda, the best comparable solution to supplementing health care in this country is the licensed pharmacist, making 4 million shillings ($1,085) a month. Except for the injection role, they operate much the same as those in the Western world. But there are are not enough of them.
As quoted in May 2019 by Uganda’s Daily Monitor newspaper, 20 percent of the just over 1,000 Ugandan licensed pharmacists are working or getting further education out of the country. And 90 percent of the rest are working in private pharmacies that the most economically vulnerable, particularly the rural poor that make up 80 percent of Uganda’s population, cannot access.
According to Samuel Opio, the Pharmaceutical Society of Uganda secretary, Uganda needs five times more than the 150 pharmacists who graduate each year.
“If you look at Uganda’s 42 million population as a while, the number of ‘in country’ pharmacist ratio is roughly 1 per 60,000 people,” Dr. Ladavia said. “The Ministry of Health has indicated a goal of 1 per 20,000 over the next decade.”
The pharmaceutical issue in third-world countries goes beyond access data. It’s also about substandard drugs. In June of 2019, the Ugandan National Drug Authority estimated that 10% of all medications provided in the country are counterfeit. Ineffective ingredients (sugar, powder, chalk, etc.) in these fake drugs can be deadly. In July of 2019, the Ugandan government was exploring a relationship with MediConnect block chain technology to alleviate the problem.
While considering assistance to start a UCU School of Medicine pharmaceutical school at some point, providing this information to the university’s medical students will assist in not only added knowledge but also with reinforcing ethical and Christian practices in Ugandan health care, according to Dr. Ladavia.
Dr. Edward Kanyesigye, Dean of the UCU Faculty of Health Sciences (including the medical school) cites Dr. Ladavia’s practical and teaching experience as an asset to UCU as well as her highly relational personality. In Uganda’s community-based culture, the American pharmacist had the added advantage of being able to build sustainable relationships.
An added uniqueness with Dr. Ladavia is her African-American heritage. Most Westerners working in Uganda are Caucasian. This ethnic unfamiliarity results in many locals mistaking her for Ugandan until she starts to speak. She recalled one restaurant experience in Kampala with white-skinned Americans.
“My friends, Amy and Jayne, were given menus, and I was not with the assumption that being Ugandan, I would get my food from the local buffet, “ Dr. Ladavia recalled, smiling. “When hearing my American accent, the wait staff quickly apologized and brought me a menu. But the rest of the lunch was spent with curious stares of other (Ugandan) diners.”
Heritage, Dr. Ladavia believes, will be another asset to her teaching in East Africa. While teaching basic principles of pharmacology, the nervous system, chemotherapy and other drug-related topics, students and staff will expand their cultural, racial and ethnic awareness by learning who she is and what she believes. If the subject of slavery comes up, she welcomes the conversation.
“I want them to understand and learn from me, ” Dr. Ladavia remarked from her home in Kampala, shortly after moving in. ““Already, I have learned so much from them.”
She has learned how to go to the market, to enroll her children into an international school with children from 35 countries, to find a place where her children can see a movie, to drive a car on rugged streets and around bodabodas (motorcycles) that don’t follow traffic rules, and to buy and keep four rabbits for her girls to have as pets.
“Ugandans are wonderful, friendly people,” she said. “I know that God is using me for His Glory and placing His children from here in my path.”
+++
To support Uganda Christian University’s School of Medicine and other programs, go to www.ugandapartners.org and click on the “donate” button, or contact UCU Partners Executive Director, Mark Bartels, at mtbartels@gmail.com.
Sheila, center, is shown with some faculty at Bishop Barham University, Kabale, where she assisted in her role as an intern with the fifth annual dissertation writing and research clinic in 2019. (UCU Partners photo)
(LAST OF FOUR PARTS: This article features one of 10 interns hired to assist with the five-year-old Uganda Christian University dissertation research and writing training. She was selected from among 200 applicants. In addition to serving post-graduate students through the clinic, interns build their own resumes and obtain jobs or further education opportunities. Parts I,II and III can be accessed at those links. A video is here.)
By Patty Huston-Holm
When Sheila was born in 1996, she was given the Ugandan name Ainembabazi, which in her Runyankole mother tongue language means “God has grace.” She was the first born of Frank Kamukama, a vocational agricultural teacher, and Grace Kiconco, a housewife and part-time shop owner who sells basic household items in their Western Uganda Mbarara District.
Her younger sister, Franklin, got the name Ainomugisha, which means “God has blessings.” Her two brothers, Kelvin Ainamaani and Alvin Ainebyoona, have Ugandan names translated to “God has power” and “God is everything,” respectively.
God, obviously, is central to the family.
Sheila Ainembazi, intern
Thus, on the September 2, 2019, morning of this interview, Sheila praised the Lord for placing her in the next phase of her studies to be an attorney. While disappointed that she would be in a nine-month Law Development Centre (LDC) program in Mbarara and not alongside her best friend, Ruth, chosen to study in Kampala (269 kilometers or 167 miles away), she was grateful. Sheila and Ruth, who graduated in July 2019 with Bachelors of Law degrees from Uganda Christian University, received entry into the country’s LDC program with classes starting September 23. Due to some Ministry of Justice disagreement, this cohort of students was not required to take the usual pre-entry exam to qualify for this phase.
Coming from humble beginnings, Sheila has been able to find blessings and patience wherever she has been placed.
At UCU, she was a work study student who rose early each morning to clean offices, dust library books, prepare tea and make deliveries before her classes as part of her tuition reimbursement. She learned the value of being “the least of these” and appreciation to those who noticed and thanked her for her work, including Dr. Joseph Owor in the School of Research and Post-Graduate Studies (SRPGS).
While studying law on the UCU Mukono campus, she became especially concerned with Ugandans who were mistreated due largely to their literacy levels. Her final research paper focused in the inequalities and legal violations related to land ownership and transfer rights, especially as it pertains to women.
“Most Ugandans are illiterate,” the 23-year-old said. “They go in and buy a two-page book and write sale agreements and think they are done until they save money and go further to register their land. Then a richer, more literate person comes in and agrees to pay more and gets a title. For women, a husband dies or leaves, and the clan pushes her and the children out even though she legally has ownership. These are some of the issues I want to help with.”
Noticing injustices, Sheila reflected, has been part of her life for quite some time. A leader in her high school, she often noticed student issues and brought them to the attention of administrators.
“I remember we were being served old food at the canteen,” she said. “The mandazi (fried doughnuts) were molded. We broke them open and saw it. I brought that to the attention of our school leaders, and it was resolved.”
Sheila understands being shunned and humbled. Not all around her at UCU understood or valued her janitorial work.
“One student (in Law) told me that doing a maid’s work was not good for my career,” she recalled. “He said people don’t trust a cleaner.”
But one such person who did trust her was the Rev. Canon Dr. John Senyonyi, UCU’s vice chancellor. He observed her diligence and hard work and, along with his wife, Ruth, decided to provide Sheila with lodging at their house as part of their support of her scholarship in her final two years. Being able to work and live on campus and have her housing and some food provided enabled Sheila to focus more and excel higher in her studies.
For this, she is grateful, along with being chosen as a 2019 intern for the UCU Partners and SRPGS co-sponsored clinic to help post-graduate students. She learned a lot about technology, organization, time lines and service.
Today, she is concerned about paying fees for her next nine-month law study program. Some of her payment of $400 for three months work in the internship will help. She is praying for more support.
“God will make a way,” she said. “God has made a way.”
+++
To support Uganda Christian University programs, including the post-graduate literacy program, go to www.ugandapartners.org and click on the “donate” button, or contact UCU Partners Executive Director, Mark Bartels, at mtbartels@gmail.com.
Allan Kasango poses with Sheila Ainembabazi – both interns for the 2019 UCU training to help master’s students finish their dissertations. (UCU Partners photo)
(THIRD OF FOUR PARTS: This article features one of 10 interns hired to assist with the five-year-old Uganda Christian University dissertation research and writing clinic. He was selected from among 200 applicants. In addition to serving post-graduate students through the clinic, interns build their own resumes and obtain jobs. A profile on another intern appears in the last part of this series. Parts I,II and IV can be accessed at those links. A video is here.)
By Patty Huston-Holm
“Please,” implored Allan Kasango, “can’t you take just one more?”
Speaking softly but forcefully, the almost 24-year-old asked the three Americans volunteering their time with Uganda Christian University (UCU) post-graduate students to squeeze one more, and then “just one more” into their already-packed schedules.
“You can’t refuse him,” Linda Knicely from Ohio USA said, half joking.
Thus is one special trait of Allan Kasango, a UCU alumni selected for an internship with the fifth annual clinic to help mostly master’s level students with their research and writing. One of Allan’s tasks was to schedule students for individualized coaching with the Americans. He did it well with a reminder, “We need to serve them.”
His curriculum vitae mentions that he is “adaptable, self-motivated and enthusiastic.” Friends, according to Allan, say that he is “humble, caring, loving, calm, helpful.” These characteristics contributed greatly to the fact that of the 115 students enrolled in the 2019 four-week workshop, 91 received one-on-one assistance and most attended the weekly, two-hour lectures.
Allan Kasango
“I believe in working hard to get what I want,” he said.
The oldest of three children from the eastern Uganda region of Tororo, Allan’s mannerisms are influenced by the compassion of his mother, Justine, and the work ethic of his father, Wilson, a medical doctor with the United Nations and serving in such high-need areas as South Sudan and Yemen. The mom is of Samia culture. The dad is Musoga.
While his father’s position might wield influence for a job, the son is expected to “make it on my own,” Allan said.
It was through his own efforts that Allan found work with The AIDS Support Organization (TASO) and Tororo General Hospital. Both experiences provided opportunities to use the knowledge and skill acquired through his UCU bachelor’s degree in social work and administration. In addition to such clerical tasks as filing and scheduling, he counseled clients about their social and medical issues, including those who are terminally ill.
“I went into communities to help distribute drugs, to provide clients with disease coping skills,” he said. “I listened and offered advice to help people live healthier and longer.”
Work at the two locations was unpaid. Thanks to UCU Partners, an American-based, non-profit fundraising arm of UCU, Allan received a salary of $125 a month for three months. With this, he was able to help with living expenses in the nearby Seeta house he shared with six other family members and “save a little” for a future job hunt and possible support of his siblings, Daniel, age 4, and Fiona, age 16. In Uganda, the oldest child is expected to help with education costs for younger brothers and sisters.
“When I was in primary school, I wanted to be a doctor or a pilot,” Allan said, recalling a song where students would stand in front of the class and insert their early career aspirations in a designated place. He was fascinated with airplanes, but has yet to ride in one. As his education continued, weak performance in science ruled out a job in medicine.
Social work – with its people and service focus – is a good fit. Active listening and caring came easy.
As Allan’s internship came to an end in mid-September 2019, he was looking at job advertisements and discerning next steps while “talking with the Lord.” He was exploring whether he should join an existing social work organization or do something entirely different, such as opening up a wholesale shop with food items.
“I always put my thoughts in prayer,” he said, referring to Matthew 7:7 and its reference to asking, seeking and knocking on doors. “I ask the Lord to show me what to do next. He will open up the right thing.”
++++
To support Uganda Christian University programs, including the post-graduate literacy program that hired Allan as an intern, go to www.ugandapartners.org and click on the “donate” button, or contact UCU Partners Executive Director, Mark Bartels, at mtbartels@gmail.com.
Americans Patty Huston-Holm (right) and Linda Knicely – volunteer lecturers and coaches for Uganda Christian University post-graduate students (UCU Partners photo)
(SECOND OF FOUR-PART SERIES: This is the second of four stories about a five-year-old, American-led writing and research workshop at Uganda Christian University. The first article contained reflections of the Ohio woman who founded and leads the training. This second article reflects thoughts of an American volunteer in 2017 and 2019. The final two articles feature UCU graduates who helped with the workshop. Parts I,III and IV can be accessed at those links. A video is here.)
By Linda Knicely
“It’s not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?” So said American essayist and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau.
Ugandans are busy. During the four weeks that I and three other American lecturers spent on the Uganda Christian University (UCU) campuses in four different locations, presenting to graduate students and faculty members during the dissertation clinic and trainings and individually coaching the students in 2019, this was apparent.
Sometimes they’re busy earning a living, taking care of children, and handling other tasks needed to survive. Other times, they’re busy relaxing and enjoying fellowship with one another. On campus, they’re learning. Both formally from their instructors and peers in the classroom sand informally during pick-up basketball games, at the canteens or as they walk and talk with each other. They’re learning how to grow into young adults of integrity, guided by Christian principles in the nurturing environment of UCU.
They’re also teaching.
Linda Knicely, left, with one of her students from 2019 (UCU Partners photo)
They teach by example – the genuine and warm “You are welcome” that greets us at every turn brings smiles to our faces and is not as common in other parts of the world as one might think (or wish). They teach by sharing their stories with us and sometimes their language and their culture. They teach by risking vulnerability as they reveal their fears, their hopes and their dreams for themselves, their families, and their country of Uganda.
Americans are busy. Sometimes we’re coping with what, as I explained to one of my UCU students, David, we call “first world problems.” Very minor issues, in the scheme of things. We work hard, both on the job and even at play. We can find it hard to relax and just “be.” Sometimes, unfortunately, we consider ourselves more often as “teachers” for the rest of the world, than learners. What a loss, for those that have that perspective, for there is so much to learn in Uganda.
I’ve been busy. When I first came to Uganda for six weeks two years ago (2017), I had no plans of making a return trip. It wasn’t a personal judgment about Uganda, but more about my craving to explore and experience as many different places in the world as possible.But because of what I learned that year from the people of Uganda, mostly in the UCU graduate school program, and the piece of my heart that I left here, I surprised myself by deciding to return.
In very typical American fashion, as our students (and interns) in 2019 have learned, we (our American team here) like to “keep time” and schedule ourselves tightly in order to be as productive as possible. I came back to teach, of course, and to support the graduate students with whom I interacted, to successful completion and defense of their dissertations.
But I also came back to learn more, and to re-imprint the lessons of two years ago on my memory and in my heart. My time spent here at UCU during this visit has felt even busier. Self-reflection will be a process that may wait until I return to the USA and my life there. But I hope that some of the lessons that I learn in Uganda prompt me to always question: “What am I busy about?”
And then there’s Patty Huston-Holm, the queen of “busy.” Patty was in Uganda for her eleventh visit in 2019 with many of the visits lasting months at a time; she led the student and faculty dissertation training for the fifth consecutive year on behalf of UCU Partners and the UCU School of Research and Post-Graduate Studies. While we (me, Tracy and David Harrison) were along this year, other years she has “flown solo.”Patty is never satisfied with what’s she’s done before, but constantly strives to improve the presentations or extend the program’s reach.
This year, she added coaching sessions at the UCU Kampala campus and faculty and student presentations on both Kabale and Mbale campuses. And the work that we’re directly involved with only represents one of the many roles that Patty has personally embraced in her support of Uganda Christian University’s mission.
I think that even those staff who know her on campus would be surprised at the time that she invests when she is home – continuing to arrange logistics and remain in communication to plan next steps, etc. She commits her tremendous talents and experience to this work out of Christian love for her Ugandan brothers and sisters, both those she knows already and those who will be impacted in the future through the vision and efforts of today’s students and staff at the university.
Patty’s clear sense of what she should “be busy about,” inspires me, and many others whose lives she has touched.
Two years ago, during one of our first conversations about Uganda, she told me that she believed in “investing in people.” I can’t think of a better way to be busy.
++++
Ohioan Linda Knicely volunteered with Patty Huston-Holm in 2017 and 2019. To learn more about how to become part of this literacy work at UCU, email Patty at hustonpat@gmail.com. For more information about UCU Partners and how to contribute financially to students, programs and facilities at UCU , contact Mark Bartels, UCU Partners executive director, at m.t.bartels@ugandapartners.org.
American Patty Huston-Holm (standing) with UCU graduate school leadership, Kukunda Elizabeth Bacwayo and Joseph Owor (UCU Partners photo)
(FIRST OF FOUR PARTS: This is the first of four stories about a five-year-old, American-led writing and research clinic at Uganda Christian University. The author is the founder and lead facilitator of the training. The second article reflects an experience of one USA citizen who assisted with the clinic in two different years. The final two articles feature UCU alumni who served as interns with the clinic. Parts II,III and IV can be accessed at those links. A video is here.)
By Patty Huston-Holm
I don’t think much about gold. I’m not a wealthy person, so the only gold I’ve ever had is in the wedding band I’ve worn for 27 years. And the only reference I had to this precious metal was during a junior high school history class when I learned it was discovered in some kind of “rush” and then used in coins in the United States in the 1800s.
Until Monday, August 13, 2018…
Sometime around 4 p.m. and at a desk in a room shared with two other people at Uganda Christian University and in a country I had associated with tea, tilapia and bananas, a young student named Christopher Mwandha expanded my knowledge about gold. The mining of it around Lake Victoria, he said emphatically, was destroying the wildlife in this second largest body of fresh water in the world. Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa, is home to hippos and fish and more.
That afternoon and in a room filled with East African tropical heat moved around by a fan, Christopher talked about his water pollution research connected to gold mining. In particular, his focus was on the small village of Nakudi near the Kenyan border. It was here in an area previously known for farming and fishing that a group of some farmers and fishermen struck gold when digging a hole to bury a friend. They buried the friend elsewhere and became miners.
Christopher’s dissertation research surrounding this is a requirement for his master’s degree in Science and Water Sanitation. He is one of 150 UCU students I coached and one of more than 300 I’ve taught in five years of leading a writing and research training through the university’s School of Research and Post-Graduate Studies (SRPGS).
He was my student. But I also was his.
I am an education missionary.
Yes, I’m a volunteer – starting when coming to Uganda with a Reynoldsburg, Ohio, church in 2009. Yes, I contribute financially to Uganda’s needy. Yes, I’m a believer in Jesus Christ. Yes, coming from the Mid-West that gets brutally cold in the winter, I sweat and work hard. But I don’t build buildings, preach the gospel or give up my American home so that others can have one in Africa.
A lifelong writer and teacher and an Ohio State University Buckeye with journalism and communication degrees, I invest in minds. I build people. And they build me.
One avenue for this building is an annual, free workshop to help post-graduate students and their supervisors with dissertations and thesis projects to improve the master’s degree graduation rate and to expand global awareness of their research. The workshop includes large-group lectures and one-on-one coaching. The individualized assistance is where the magic occurs – both for coaches and students.
I tell students that writing a research paper can be lonely. Having a coach who believes in you helps fill that void; it’s half the battle towards completion. Coaching them to produce a paper with credible, original, well-written and compelling information is the other half. Good coaches listen – and learn – while nudging students to see what they have to offer their country, continent and world.
With the first clinic in 2015, my husband, Mike Holm, and I began supplementing what university faculty members were already doing with their heavy workloads. Under the guidance of SRPGS leaders, Dr. Kukunda Elizabeth Bacwayo and Dr. Joseph Owor, we implemented a learning model that keeps getting better. Two interns that we hire each year make us better; likewise for them as they receive resume-building experience and get jobs or further education shortly after working with us.
Columbus State Community College President, David Harrison, with a USU post-graduate student he coached in 2019 (UCU Partners photo)
Americans Linda Knicely and Larry Hickman, career development specialists; Sheila Hosner, an international health specialist; Tom Wanyama, an engineer and professor; Tracy Harrison, a reading specialist; and Dave Harrison, president, Columbus State Community College; helped with improvements by their on-site assistance and expertise at various times over the five years. They came from Ohio, Washington State and Canada – all as volunteers.
Now, semi-retired, I donate my knowledge and skills in Uganda for four to six months a year. Approximately half of that time is with graduate students. The other half involves working with young journalists, public relations employees and other university staff on various literacy initiatives. Occasionally, like now, I write.
As I reflect on what I’ve learned from UCU’s post-graduate students, I recall how they have educated me on such topics as disparities of health care in higher poverty areas, injustices for women when it comes to property and child “ownership,” truthful news reporting in South Sudan war zones, Islamic to Christian conversion, prevalence of counterfeit drugs, differences in preaching and teaching of the gospel and terminology such as “waiting homes” to help economically disadvantaged women prior to delivery of a baby. Interest in their research often finds me digging into their topics after the coaching sessions and late into the night.
Beyond the academic, the young people I meet in Uganda stretch my appreciation and thankfulness.
One such master’s level student in 2016 sobbed from a simple gesture of giving her half of my granola bar during a lunchtime meeting. Through tears, she shared her childhood story devoid of love and compassion. She was abused by a stepmother who denied her food and water to drink or bath, forced to sleep outside in the dirt and required her to walk alone and vulnerable in the dark to get alcoholic beverages for her father’s new wife. She was grateful, she said, for a simple gift of food from me that day. That afternoon, in addition to working on research in the university library, we held hands, prayed and forgave.
God’s work is good. And it’s not lonely.
++++++
Patty Huston-Holm has been volunteering through UCU Partners for half of her decade of service in Uganda. To learn more about how to become part of her work, email her at hustonpat@gmail.com. For more information about UCU Partners and how to contribute financially to students, programs and facilities at UCU , contact Mark Bartels, UCU Partners executive director, at m.t.bartels@ugandapartners.org.
A roller compacts soil on Agape Rise Road, below the Bishop Tucker Building.
By Douglas Olum
It is a rainy Monday morning in central Uganda’s Mukono district. Resident and non-resident students are making their way to sit for end-of-semester exams at Uganda Christian University. At one of the gates, an off-campus student carries her shoes in her hand as she tiptoes through the mud. Others walk in mud-soaked shoes, sliding and leaping off the road to a safer haven on the grass leading to a gate.
Ivan Tsebeni, a second-year Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication student and member of the Guild Parliament representing the Faculty of Journalism, Media and Communication, says some of his peers missed classes in the previous weeks because of the mud.
“The problem is that you dress smartly from your room, but when you get to campus, one may think you are from the garden because of the mud,” Tsebeni said. “Some students cannot stand that.”
Mukono has a tropical climate with significant rainfall even during the driest month. In December 2019, Mukono was experiencing an unusually high amount of rainfall. According to climate-data.org, this area experiences roughly 50 inches a year.
UCU’s Kids Care Centre Road in the campus “tech park” area is freshly tarmacked.
To better serve students and faculty in both dry and dusty and wet and muddy weather, UCU is doing what it can inside its gates. The university is in the second phase of tarmacking of roads within the Mukono campus. The roads under construction are: Agape Road, Bethany Rise, Words of Hope Road, Kids Care Centre Road, and the Bishop Tucker Parking Yard.
The other areas being upgraded include the new Commercial Area, near the Janani Luwum Dining Hall, which is being excavated and the Words of Hope Parking Yard, which is set for tarmacking.
This phase two, 1.5-kilometer (just under 1 mile) road construction, which is estimated to cost shillings 1.7 billion shillings (about $460,000), is being done by Stirling Civil Engineering Ltd, a Uganda-based company, the same company which constructed the first phase.
In a recent interview, the Deputy Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration who is also the Acting Deputy Vice Chancellor in charge of Development and External Relations, David Mugawe, said the project was being subsidized by the development fund collections from students every semester. Students pay a sum of shillings 50,000 (about $13.5) per student, per semester as a development fee, alongside other functional fees.
Remmy Allan Mbulaka, the Guild Minister of Health who is also a member of Parliament representing the UCU School of Medicine, commended the university for acting against the dust and mud.
“I am happy that the university is doing this,” he said. “It should cover the entire campus so that dusts are reduced.”
In April 2017, the first phase of the roads construction covered 1.5 kilometers out of an estimated 3 kilometers (1.8 miles). The Vice Chancellor, Rev. Canon Dr. John Senyonyi, said that the project had been delayed due to the prohibitive cost of road construction.
“There is dust when it is sunny and dry as well as mud when it is raining,” the Vice Chancellor said. “But once we start [the construction], it will give us the commitment to continue working on the roads and ensure that UCU stands up to its quality as a university.”
The roads upgrade is part of the 2012-2018 UCU Strategic Plan, which also formed part of the University Master Plan. The second phase is planned for completion over four months – by February 2020.
Even with the muddy and dusty roads, Uganda Christian University has over the years, been ranked among the most beautiful universities in Africa because of its compound dotted with trees, modern architectural classroom blocks, library, halls of residence, lush green areas and the historical Bishop Tucker building.
A 2017 ranking by Christianuniversitiesonline.org placed UCU as the most beautiful Christian University in Africa. Another ranking by www.timeshighereducation.com in 2018 also placed UCU in the 9th position among top 10 most beautiful universities in Africa.
It is hoped among many staff and students that the completion of the roads construction will not only save them from the dust and mud, but also enhance the image of the university internationally.
+++
To support Uganda Christian University students, programs and facilities, go to www.ugandapartners.org and click on the “donate” button, or contact UCU Partners Executive Director, Mark Bartels, at mtbartels@gmail.com.
Aisha Nabukeera (upper left), a survivor of child abuse, is shown in the field educating children and others about abuse and their rights as part of her foundation’s work. The 26-year-old UCU graduate was purposely burned over 80% of her body at age 13.
By Joseph Ssemutooke
In 2006, Aisha Nabukeera drew national attention after suffering child abuse that nearly claimed her life. Age 13 and in Primary Six at Nyendo Primary School in the southern Uganda town of Masaka, Nabukeera suffered third-degree burns on 80% of her body after her step-mother forced the young girl to wear a petro-soaked dress while lighting a kerosene lamp. A neighbor who came with a bucket of water saved her life but not the physical scars she still wears.
Today, the 26-year-old Nabukeera is one of Africa’s foremost youth champions of the fight against child abuse and, despite the scars and horrific memory, was a finalist and named Miss Popularity in the 2015-2016 Miss Uganda beauty pageant.
Aisha Nabukeera poses with her foster father, Frank Gashumba, on her graduation day at UCU.
A 2018 Uganda Christian University (UCU) graduate with a Bachelor of Social Works and Social Administrative degree, she is the founder and director of a fast-growing, anti-child-abuse initiative, the Aisha Nabukeera Foundation (ANF), which was started in 2017. In 2019, Nabukeera was named one of Africa’s 12 beneficiaries of the Generation Africa programme.
The ANF advocates for children’s rights and assists abuse survivors. Representatives of the foundation visit schools to promote awareness and prevention about child abuse. The Generation Africa programme, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, seeks “to help young Africans whose personal experiences have shaped their determination to help others facing challenges across the continent through telling their stories globally.” The dozen selected each year receive training in global development skills to further inspire change.
Aisha Nabukeera, left, with burns shortly after her abuse at age 13; and, at right, wearing her UCU graduation cap and gown.
“When you tell someone your story, they get hopeful about life,” said Nabukeera, who received the Generation Africa training in Johannesburg, South Africa, in mid-2019. “For many children facing tough conditions that have seen them go through abuse, seeing me and hearing my story gives them hope.”
Nabukeera uses her experience of excruciating agony and pain from her abuse as well as the pain still with her today in her passionate fight against child abuse.
“My mother told me many years after the incident that she even thought of poisoning me and killing herself because she couldn’t bear to see me in pain and having no money to fund the treatment,” Nabukeera said, pointing out the added psychological damage of bullying because of her bodily scars. “At school some called me things like ‘roast chicken.’ When I contested in Miss Uganda, some said I wasn’t beautiful enough to be there.”
When Nabukeera’s biological mother reported the case to the local authorities to try and get justice for her daughter, the step-mother insisted that Nabukeera had simply tried to self-immolate herself. Her biological father sided with the step-mother.
As part of her child abuse battle today, Nabukeera urges the government to strengthen penalties on persons who hurt children. She says oftentimes when children’s rights are abused, responsible authorities don’t take serious action, which widens the door for other perpetrators.
“Stop telling abused children that their pain is not a big deal and that there are people worse off than they are,” she said. “No one should ever belittle someone else’s suffering, instead people should work to heal those who are suffering by bettering their conditions and helping them get justice where they have been served injustice.”
She also advises children to speak out. She says that if one fails to get assistance from close relatives, the child should talk to neighbors or nearby authorities. To parents, she calls for equal attention to their children, whether they live in polygamous or monogamous families.
She credits several adults for her ability to pull away from her childhood incident. Among these is Ugandan socio-political commentator Frank Gashumba who pledged to unofficially adopt the “burnt girl” and become her “father.” He helped her through school. In 2009, the late founder and director of the St. Lawrence schools, Prof. Lawrence Mukiibi, gave her a six-year scholarship at St Lawrence School, Horizon campus. And after passing her UACE exams in 2014, she joined Uganda Christian University.
“Most of my (biological) family abandoned me,” Nabukeera reminisces. “Going to school was just out of question for me. I was treated as a hopeless case, and so I lost all hope. I thought it was the end of my life, which made me so bitter and angry at the world.”
Acts of kindness from Frank and Lawrence – two one-time strangers – turned that around. She has since found forgiveness and grace for her step-mother and others.
“Now, I believe her act of malice might have been the greatest gift of my life,” Nabukeera said. “I have moved on.”
+++
To support Uganda Christian University students, programs and facilities, go to www.ugandapartners.org and click on the “donate” button, or contact UCU Partners Executive Director, Mark Bartels, at mtbartels@gmail.com.
Conrad Oroya displays some accolades at his office in Gulu
By Douglas Olum
In today’s Uganda, the pursuit of a law degree is a top choice of school children and their parents, largely because of the career path’s reputation for securing private and public jobs that yield money. Most law schools receive overwhelming applications. For the 2019 intake, for instance, Uganda Christian University (UCU) received more than 1,000 applications, but only admitted about 400 due to capacity limitations.
For many, it’s about the money.
UCU graduate Conrad Obol Oroya
For Conrad Obol Oroya, a 2011 UCU Bachelor of Laws graduate, it isn’t. He channels his knowledge to pro bono (free legal) services. His journey along this path started from UCU where one of his professors, Brian Dennison (now living and working in Georgia, USA), included community legal support training. During his legal profession preparation, Oroya says he participated in land conflicts mediation and helped people to write their wills, among other free services.
His passion to help the less fortunate continued as he received his postgraduate certificate in legal practice in 2012 from the Law Development Centre, where he took a job at the institution’s Legal Aid Clinic. He was soon employed as the Court Reconciliator. He later joined Legal Aid, a pro bono legal service provider in Uganda where he served as the Assistant Legal Officer before he was promoted to Legal Officer. After that, he worked for the International Justice Mission, another pro bono legal service provider.
Oroya says he is passionate about helping the economically disadvantaged get justice. He believes that poor communities like those in northern Uganda really need his services. A 2016-17 report by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics estimated that at least 10 million of the estimated 37.7 million Ugandans live in poverty. People in Eastern and Northern Uganda, depending largely on subsistence agriculture, are the poorest of the poor.
“It would be fancy to work in Kampala and make a lot of money but that would be serving personal desires without impact on the community,” Oroya says, “To me, a thank you note from a poor person is more worthy than driving a Mercedes-Benz.”
Oroya is a full-time lecturer at northern Uganda’s Gulu University. He also owns a law firm, Conrad Oroya Advocates in Gulu, and is a Regional Counsel Member of the Uganda Law Society, representing lawyers from northern Uganda. But he continues to offer free legal service both at a personal level and through his previous employer, Legal Aid.
Every Wednesday, he travels to a court in the neighboring Nwoya District as a lawyer on State brief (without pay) to defend individuals caught on the wrong side of the law. In his office, there are two huge piles of files – one for paid services and the other for free services. He says most of those pro bono files are for poor men and women who generally have only the clothes on their backs and a small piece of land being grabbed by wealthy individuals.
“I am happy to be serving in this community because I am making some impact,” Oroyo said. “I have won at least 300 cases and restored more than 400 families to their land after wealthy individuals grabbed them. My pro bono services also have greatly helped to decongest the Gulu Prison.”
A call to servant-hood was so strong that Oroyo turned down a prestigious opportunity to work in Europe. In 2016-2017, he got the Commonwealth Scholarship to pursue a Master in International Human Rights and Criminal Law at Bangor University in the United Kingdom (UK). Of 29 Ugandans that year, he was the only Ugandan legal scholar. And he emerged as the best Master of Law student. His dissertation was titled, “Law Reform Examination and Property Rights and Gender Equality: Women’s rights to property upon divorce and separation, a comparative legal study of Uganda, England and Wales,” also was voted as the best dissertation in 2017.
Those achievements earned him two accolades and he immediately got an offer from a professor to work with him as a Research Assistant, a position that would have automatically earned him a teaching job – and more money – in the UK. But Oroya says beside honouring the terms of agreement he had with his then employer, International Justice Mission, he knew that the poor in northern Uganda needed him more. So he turned down the opportunity.
Upon his return to Uganda, Oroya embarked on a move to try and reform the systems in place. He trained fellow lawyers, prosecutors and police officers on best practices of investigation and the need to respect individual human rights during arrests and detention. Detention without trial, torture, and grabbing of land that deny individuals the right to own property are the most common forms of human rights abuses meted by law enforcers in Uganda.
Many times, suspects are arrested before investigations are done and they are held in custody for weeks or months beyond the mandatory 48 hours as police investigate. Besides, it is a common practice for the wealthy to buy favors and win cases against poor individuals who cannot afford the cost of legal representations.
For Oroya, there is much more to be done. And he feels led to help do it.
+++
To support Uganda Christian University students, programs and facilities, go to www.ugandapartners.org and click on the “donate” button, or contact UCU Partners Executive Director, Mark Bartels, at mtbartels@gmail.com. Also visit us on Facebook and Instagram.
Monday Edson (right) prepares to carry out a test on the UCU Vice Chancellor, Rev. Canon Dr. John Senyonyi, inside the new university ambulance while the Guild President, Bruce MugishaAmanya (in suit), looks on, shortly after the new university ambulance was brought.
By Olum Douglas
When Monday Edson joined Uganda Christian University (UCU) for his undergraduate studies in 2010, he did not see himself on the Mukono campus beyond getting his degree. Edson then had a diploma in nursing and worked at a specialized children’s neurosurgery center called Cure Children’s Hospital of Uganda. At Cure, he was the In-Charge for the Intensive Care Unit and Wards.
But when he graduated in 2013 and returned to his work place, he felt something was missing.
“I enjoyed the Christian components of life in UCU, especially the mission weeks, prayers and worship,” Edson said. “I could not wait for a chance to return to UCU because as you may know, our work requires a lot of spiritual enrichment. And UCU provides that working environment.”
Monday Edson carries out a check on a student at the Allan Galpin Health Centre. His education is supported by UCU Partners.
His love for the university was not only based on the spirituality but also the dream to pursue further studies and share his knowledge and skills with aspiring nurses, a thing he believed the university would grant him.
Indeed, his dream is coming true, thanks in part, to Uganda Christian University Partners financial assistance. Edson, now a final-year student of the Master of Nursing Science at UCU,says after exhausting his savings to sponsor himself for the first and second modules of the program, he was at the brink of dropping out until Partners stepped in. The sponsorship has saved him from worries and given him room to focus on his work and studies.
“Many times people think when they gain skills they should run away in order to find greener pastures, forgetting that there are even greener pastures where they are,” he said. “I have found mine in UCU and I want to work, study, teach and mentor future nurses from here.”
Since his return to the university in 2013 as a staff, Edson was appointed Head of Nurses at the university’s Allan Galpin Health Centre. His key roles include supervision of nurses. But it is common to find him in practice, attending to students and staff in need of health care. He also enjoys mentoring student nurses at the university as time permits. After his Master in Nursing Science, Edson desires to pursue a PhD in the same field to enable him venture into teaching.
“I feel that I have the calling to teach, but that does not mean I will quit practicing,” he said.“My aspiration is to see the theories we learn transmitted into practice. And that is what motivates me to mentor the students.”
Outside his prescribed tasks, Edson also chairs the university’s Inspection Committee, a subcommittee of the Health and Safety Committee. His committee inspects and ensures good hygiene and healthy practices at the university’s kitchen, dinning hall, canteens and halls of residence.
To his work mates, Edson is a humble, down-to-earth, team player who is very active in every activity that involves the university’s health center.
Kenneth Kiggundu, a Medical Records Clerk at the health center, says, “Edson is a very knowledgeable person in nursing procedures, yet very humble.” Rachael Nakamya Lule, the health center administrator also says, “Edson is very committed and easy to work with.”
Since his appointment as the head of nurses in 2013, Edson has pushed for several changes in health services at the facility. Such alterations include expanding service hours from 12 to 24 hours a day. The work shifts increased from two to three eight-hour shifts that include a night shift.
While he says human resource remains a great challenge at the facility as nurses must carry out nursing as well as dispensing duties that many times cause delays, Edson is happy that a lot has changed within the health center, and many more students are appreciating the services.
To Edson, his job is a fulfillment of Christ’s mission, and there is no greater satisfaction in it than a “thank you” note from a client.
+++
To support UCU students, programs and facilities, go to www.ugandapartners.org and click on the “donate” button, or contact UCU Partners Executive Director, Mark Bartels, at m.t.bartels@ugandapartners.org.
Julius Mucunguzi, left, with the Honorable David Bahati, Uganda’s minister of state for finance and planning; and Jack and Linda Klenk in October 2019. Jack serves on the board for UCU Partners.
By Julius Mucunguzi, Communications Advisor to the Prime Minister
Those who have read my book, “Once Upon a Time – The Story of Keeping Hope Alive” (2014) may remember where I write about my first travel to the United States as a fresh young man in May 2000 – arriving at Dulles Airport, Washington, DC, with no luggage.
After waiting alongside the conveyor belt for the entire luggage to come through without seeing my bag, I walked out through the huge lounge unsure of what to do next. I only had on me $70 dollars, which I had planned to use to get a taxi to the Ellipse Apartment in Fairfax, Virginia, and wait for the stipend that would come from the Weatherspoon Fellowship at the Family Research Council, which admitted me for an internship.
My eyes were welling with tears of fear and anxiety. Here I was – in a foreign land for the first time in my entire life – with no luggage apart from the clothes I was wearing.
Unknown to me, a friend, Rev. Canon Geoffrey Byarugaba, aka Uncle Geoff, who recommended me to the fellowship, had informed this couple on the right hand side – Jack and Linda Klenk – about the details of my travels and they decided to come to pick me up from the airport.
As I stood staring at the different signposts, I saw my name written on some manila paper held high by two people with very warm and wide smiles. The sight of the name “Julius Mucunguzi” took me by surprise. I walked over and announced that I was the one.
“We are here to pick you and take you to your apartment,” Jack said.
“Where is your luggage?” Linda asked.
” I have no luggage. It did not come,” I replied, almost sobbing.
“Do not worry,” Jack told me. “It will come when it does. For now, let us first take you to buy some clothes.”
I had packed about 10kgs (22 pounds) of millet and sorghum floor so I would make ekisyanga, a special type of a traditional Ugandan beverage called bushera. It was common for those of us who went to boarding schools in those days.
I jumped into their vehicle, and off they drove me to a huge shopping mall.
Here, inside a large Wal-Mart store, they asked me to choose clothes of my choice, but I was timid, not knowing what to pick or leave and fearing to appear like someone abusing their generosity. Jack noticed it and simply picked several shirts, trousers, vests, boxers, a jacket, and shoes. He put all of them in a cart. Meanwhile Linda picked spaghetti, bread, milk, sugar and lots of tinned foods and added them to the metal cart. We walked over to the counter, and they paid the whole bill.
They took me to the Ellipse Apartments near the Government Centre in Fairfax, and I entered the house. After they had left, I quickly started fitting myself in the new clothes.
They fit me so well. They were the best clothes I had ever owned. Alone in the room, I jumped up and down, thanking God for the loss of my luggage. If my luggage had come, which contained some very old trousers and shirts I had been wearing at campus and a pair of old shoes that looked like dried fish, perhaps they would never have taken me to the shopping mall.
Jack and Linda would from that day become my family in DC. I later learned that they loved Ugandans with a passion. They had been picking up many Ugandans from the airport. They even had turned their huge house in Lorton, Virginia, into some sort of Uganda House where they would host students and elders alike.
In the years that followed, several other friends would benefit from their generosity, including Mike and Monica Chibita (Uganda’s chief prosecutor and Uganda Christian University dean of journalism and media studies, respectively), Ethan Musollinii (motivational speaker and human resource consultant based in Kampala), Enock Mayanja Kiyaga (journalist based in the United Kingdom), Aloysius Bisigirwa (residing and working in Washington, DC), David Bahati (Uganda’s minister of finance) and many more.
I would later learn that Jack’s love for Uganda started in the 1960s when he travelled to my country as a student teacher and taught at Sebei College in Kapchorwa.
The couple often visits Uganda. On their trip in October 2019, I was attempting “to revenge” – a Ugandan slang popularized by one of Uganda’s former Presidents. It means to return the favor. While seemingly inadequate, I humbly offer these words as part of the favor.
One of the greatest gifts God gave Africa is football. It is very common to find a group of people gathered at a field or around a television in a pub watching a football match, each with his or her own comments as to how the game should be played.
You must be logged in to post a comment.