Category Archives: UCU Alumni

UCU shares medical equipment with Mengo, Mukono hospitals

March 15, 2021News, Students, UCU Alumni, UCU School of Dentistry, UCU School of MedicinePatty Huston-Holm

Entrance to Church of Uganda Hospital in Mukono – one facility that benefited from UCU equipment donations

By John Semakula

Whenever songs of the late South African artist, Lucky Dube, are played, many music lovers in Africa strike a chord with them. One of the songs, The Hand that Giveth, makes lovers of his music go wild – not just because of the beats, but also the message in the lyrics. The message in The Hand that Giveth is derived from Acts 20:35, which says it is more blessed to give than to receive.

The most recent act by Uganda Christian University (UCU) is a replica of the message in The Hand that Giveth. The institution has shared a donation of the sh520m (about $141,488) medical equipment that it received recently from the US with three hospitals in Uganda – Mukono Church of Uganda Hospital, Mukono General Hospital and Mengo Hospital in Kampala. The three beneficiaries are UCU’s training partners for its medical and dental students.

The medical supplies and equipment was donated and transported to Uganda by MedShare, a US humanitarian organisation.

UCU’s Vice Chancellor, Assoc. Prof. Aaron Mushengyezi; the Deputy Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration, Mr. David Mugawe; Deputy Vice Chancellor for Academics, Dr. John Kitayimbwa; and Dr. Edward Mukooza, the chairperson of the university’s health and safety committee, delivered the equipment to the hospitals.

The consignment included catheters, breast pump kits, blankets, abdominal binders, a Cook SP Tube Introducer Set, and PDB Kidney Shape Balloon. Also provided were applicators, antiseptic, swabs, Povidone Iodine 10%, cabinets, filing metal drawers, covers, face rest pad covers, disposables, thermometers, electronic probe, drapes, surgical and endoscopies.

At Mengo Hospital, UCU’s medical training school founded in 1897 by the Anglican Church, the consignment was handed over to the facility’s medical director, Dr. Rose Mutumba. Commending UCU for the gesture, she said. “UCU is walking the talk and we are excited about the fruits and the prospects of this partnership.”

At Mukono General Hospital, the donation was received by Dr. Robert Kasirye, who is in charge of the facility. Kasirye, too, expressed appreciation to UCU for the gesture. Part of the donation was delivery kits for expectant mothers. Statistics show that in Uganda, 15 women die every day from pregnancy or childbirth-related challenges. Many of the expectant mothers who die during child birth delay to reach hospitals after failing to get money to buy delivery kits, hence developing complications.

“We shall use whatever you have given us equitably to the save mothers,” Dr. Kasirye said, adding, “For long, we have had a good working relationship with UCU. The university’s program, Save the Mothers, built a shelter at this hospital, for expectant mothers. That is a plus for UCU and we shall continue working with you.”

At Mukono Church of Uganda Hospital, the Diocesan Bishop, James Williams Sebaggala, who is the chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the hospital, received the equipment and supplies.

The prelate said he was glad to receive the donation at a time when they were looking for a Good Samaritan to donate the necessary equipment.

Assoc. Prof. Mushengyezi noted that the donations were intended to further cement the relationship between UCU and the hospitals.

“We thought that as part of building our partnership in training students, we should support you also by providing some essential medical items that you need in your daily work, as you attend to patients,” he said. “We are here to show that we care for our friends by donating these supplies.”

Mushengyezi added that UCU’s first lot of medical and dental students who are in their third year now would soon be sent out for internships and asked the staff of the hospitals to accord them the necessary support.

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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.

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UCU alumnus ‘will not be intimidated’ as icon of justice

March 10, 2021News, UCU Alumni, UCU School of LawPatty Huston-Holm

(NOTE: 2004 Uganda Christian University graduate and civil rights lawyer, Nicholas Opiyo, was imprisoned in Uganda for eight days, including Christmas 2020. The charges were related to fundraising of the human rights’ nonprofit organization, Chapter Four Uganda, where he serves as executive director. Without access to Opiyo until his release on December 30, this story was written largely with information from sources outside Opiyo. Once released, he posted on his Facebook page his response to his written/spoken support. That response is at the end of this story.)

By Douglas Olum

The mention of the name, Nicholas Opiyo, rings a bell of justice and the struggle for protection and defense of human rights among many Ugandans.

As Diana Muhanguzi puts in her Facebook post, “I [first] met Nicholas Opiyo in the year 2016 when he was representing my father in court for free and he managed to get for him bail.”

In the same vein, Bryan Ksg, a medical doctor writes, “During our internship three years ago, [the] Ministry of Health brought up a draconian policy of bonding Medical Interns into work without any compensation at respective hospitals. Imagine working 24 hours as an intern without food or even rent! Counsel Nicholas Opiyo offered zero cost legal services to medical interns and helped us secure a Court injunction to stop this policy.”

In the words of a renown Ugandan columnist and journalist, Daniel K. Kalinaki, “Few lawyers spend as much time hobnobbing with the police trying to find ‘disappeared’ people, helping folks post bail or just press back against the overreach of executive authority [as Nicholas Opiyo does].”

Nicholas Opiyo, right, interacts with his client, Dr. Stella Nyanzi, during one of her trials in 2019

Nicholas Opiyo, a 37-year-old, bespectacled Uganda Christian University graduate, is described by his colleague, Robert Kirunda, as “tall, dark, gentle, soft spoken and deeply caring. Selfless to a fault, and loyal in every way. Deeply reflective and thoughtful in every task and time. Never to shy away from a fight and yet as carefully strategic and methodical.”

Opiyo is the Executive Director and Lead Attorney at Chapter Four Uganda, a civil rights charity. He is the recipient of German Africa Prize, 2017, UCU Law Society Alumni Human Rights Award, 2018, Voices for Justice Award from Human Rights Watch 2015 and the European Union Parliament Sakharov Fellows Prize in 2016. Until March of 2017, he was a member of the Team of Experts to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Peaceful Assembly and Association. He also is a visiting scholar at the Centre for African Studies, Stanford University, Calif., and the Global Health Program at the University of San Francisco (UCSF), California.

His work has over the years been characterized by a series of wins. But asked what the secret to his success was, he told The Independent Magazine journalist, Joan Akello, in a 2014 interview that, “I do not believe that there is any secret to my work except hard work, persistence and being able to take the walk along sometimes lonely legal roads. [But] I chase causes not a big cheque.”

Recently, Opiyo has represented the leading Uganda opposition politician and presidential candidate, Robert Sentamu Kyagulanyi (Bobi Wine), the controversial Makerere University academic, Dr. Stella Nyanzi, and many others he believes have been unfairly and illegally arrested and detained. He has been in the forefront for condemning actions of security operatives who torture and abuse Ugandans.

On December 22, 2020, Nicholas Opiyo, alongside three other human rights advocates – Herbert Dakasi, Anthony Odur and Esomu Obure – was abducted by plain-clothes, armed men from a restaurant in Kamwokya, a suburb of the Ugandan capital, Kampala, where they went to have lunch. Until late evening of that day, police said they had no clue about the arrest and did not know the whereabouts of Opiyo and his colleagues. But with mounting pressure, they later revealed that the four were under their custody.

Opiyo was charged on December 24 with money laundering and remanded to Kitalya Prison, while his colleagues were released. Prosecution alleges that, in his capacity as the Director of Chapter Four Uganda, Opiyo, on October 8, received $340,000 through the organisation’s account, “knowing at the time of receipt that the said funds were proceeds of crime.”

Chapter Four Uganda denied the claim. The arrest and detention of Opiyo attracted criticism from diplomatic missions in the country, Civil Society Organisations and the legal fraternity.

Partners for Democracy and Governance, a coalition of 14 diplomatic missions in Uganda, including the US, UK, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and the EU, among others, expressed concern over the arrest, saying that “Human rights defenders play an important role in every country and should be able to work without fear of arrest or reprisals, wherever they are.”

On Monday December 28, Opiyo re-appeared before a Kampala Magistrate via video conferencing from his detention facility, and he was further remanded until January 11. He, however, attained partial freedom on Wednesday, December 30, when High Court Judge, Jane Okuo Kajuga, who heard his bail application, granted him a Uganda sh15m ($4,104) cash bail.

Prior to his arrest, unknown people, suspected to be government security operatives, broke into Opiyo’s house and took his “laptop, phones, other electronics and several other items,” as his September 9 Twitter account states. Similar break-ins have been reported in various civil society offices in the recent years.

Chapter Four Uganda, posted on their Facebook Page, shortly after the arrest that at the time, that Opiyo was gathering evidence of the killing of more than 50 Ugandans in Kampala during a demonstration over the arrest of presidential hopeful, Robert Kyagulanyi around Mid-November.

As Daniel Kalinaki sums it up, “Officials whose capacity has been “built” under Western donor funding to the “Justice, Law and Order sector” go around hunting for people receiving money from abroad. The government is happy to beg and borrow… but will spear any citizen it finds in bed with the aforementioned partners…”

The first Facebook post from Nicholas Opiyo since his release expresses his appreciation for messages of support. In part, the post states: “I am teary reading all of your messages… Thank you so much. We will fight these baseless and malicious charges. One thing is clear; we will not be intimidated. I will continue to do my work and defend the rights of the vulnerable and marginalized in our society… I can only repay your faith and belief by fighting on and continuing the work we have been doing over the years. I am undaunted by this minor inconvenience, rather inspired by it.”

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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

American lecturer describes e-teaching experience in Uganda

March 5, 2021SRPGS, Students, UCU Alumni, UCU School of Social SciencesPatty Huston-Holm

UCU Post-Graduate Student, Prisca Nandede, and niece

By Patty Huston-Holm

On a Saturday and at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time and via Zoom, the niece of one of my Uganda Christian University (UCU) students in silliness stuck out her tongue at me. I playfully stuck mine back. Then, in a time zone eight hours later, Prisca Nandede, a sociologist pursuing a UCU Masters in Development, shooed away the niece and a younger nephew hanging on her neck, as we got down to business.

Such is how I did my work – coaching doctoral and masters level students about writing and research – virtually in the Covid-restricted learning environment of 2020.

It was a setback. I didn’t want to teach this way.

Author/Lecturer Patty Huston-Holm teaching at UCU in January 2020

The beauty of being on the ground, engaging an entire classroom and praying one-on-one with a struggling student was replaced with text in emails, unfamiliar names asking questions in an e-learning platform and faces blurred through wireless optics via Zoom across the Atlantic Ocean. The pandemic that beached me in the state of Ohio USA did the same but in closer proximity to other UCU lecturers and students.

Misery does love company. But as a volunteer faculty member, I took no solace in the worse suffering of my East African colleagues who were without teaching jobs or teaching with greatly reduced pay. Nor did I relish the shared desolation of students struggling even more to have jobs, put food on the table and access technology to learn and get a degree.

We were in the same e-boat, keeping afloat as best we could.

My course was optional – a seminar, actually – and free of charge to post-graduate students. It was a research and writing seminar designed to help them with their dissertations and theses. Since 2015, I lead the training in person alongside faculty within the UCU School of Research and Post-Graduate Studies (SRPGS). The summer of 2020 was to be a time to focus on a train-the-trainer model in which Ugandan scholars would assume greater ownership of this assistance to students and to their research supervisors.

When leaving Uganda in February 2020 after seven weeks of face-to-face assistance in Mukono and Mbale, I promised Dr. Kukunda Elizabeth Bacwayo and Dr. Joseph Owor to be back in July. As we exchanged hugs and smiles, we knew nothing about a deadly virus drilling into our countries with economic, educational and health consequences.

Starting in mid-March 2020, the coronavirus changed life – and the delivery of education – as we knew it. In both the United States and Uganda, the emphasis was on a greater shift to on-line learning with the realization that the students most financially and technologically challenged would encounter the greatest obstacles.

For my seminar, the content was much the same as what I delivered in person for six years. The focus was on guiding students through the components of the UCU Academic Research Manual with strategies for good writing, quality research and plagiarism avoidance mixed in. My new delivery model involved 16 virtual lecturers on 20 different topics. With eight lecturers from North America and eight from Uganda, we recorded subject matter experts in business, social work, theology, law, education, engineering and journalism, among others. Through YouTube videos of under 15 minutes each, they provided a real-world context for academic learning. We conducted live zoom chats with professionals. We offered e-badges and e-certificates for students successfully completing the quizzes and short writing activities.

From mid-September to mid-December 2020, there were more than 100 students enrolled into the 24-7 e-seminar. Roughly half of those engaged in the content at some level. Nine got certificates. Five, including Prisca Nandede, took advantage of my free services as a virtual writing/research coach.

UCU Masters in Development student, Prisca Nandede

During that Saturday Zoom session, we discussed Prisca’s research topic about how a woman’s participation in the economy impacts her spousal and overall family relationships. Prisca, in her early 40s and working with the Uganda Ministry of Water and Environment, also shared her passion for her job and her concerns about the health of some family members, challenges with technology in Uganda, fears of pre-election violence, remembrances of living in Mbale and Masende and her love of Christ.

While realizing that quality is often more important than quantity, I shared my disappointment with student participation in the e-seminar. I expressed hope for better engagement in the next seminar – March 8 through May of 2021. I asked Prisca for advice to reach and help more students.

For the students and their teachers struggling with on-line delivery, she said, “They need to understand that we all have to adapt (to change) at a certain point.” Concluding our one-on-one Zoom session before the ending prayer, Prisca, one of the UCU students who persevered (i.e. Romans 5:5 with a message of hope) to finish the pilot e-seminar in December, issued this reminder: “It all comes down to God – His plan for us.”

I look forward to what He sets before me in this next 2.5 months.

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For more of these stories and experiences by and about Uganda Christian University (UCU) staff, students and graduates, visit https://www.ugandapartners.org. If you would like to support UCU, contact Mark Bartels, Executive Director, UCU Partners, at m.t.bartels@ugandapartners.org or go to https://www.ugandapartners.org/donate/

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Family roots + UCU applied learning = graduation

January 28, 2021COVID-19, News, UCU Alumni#entrepreneurship, #Kapchorwa, #potatoes, #UgandaChristianUniversity, business, Mukono, Uganda, UgandaPartnersPatty Huston-Holm

By Collin Wambete

In addition to sickness and death, the COVID-19 pandemic reaped loss of employment and gaps in education around the world. Youth in Uganda have been discouraged and even more hard pressed to make money, including acquisition of funds to go to school.

Amidst the storm, Cherop Lillian found an answer to her personal situation. That answer – potatoes with an occasional onion, fruit and other edibles – enabled her to graduate on 18th December 2020 with a Bachelor of Agricultural Science and Entrepreneurship at Uganda Christian University (UCU) with financial security.

She brought Irish potatoes from her home in Kapchorwa District, which is roughly 266 kilometers (165 miles) away from the UCU campus Mukono District. Starting in February 2020, she set up a retail business 50 meters (164 feet) away from UCU’s main gate. First, raw potatoes, onions and fried potatoes were sold. Ready-to-eat, fresh fruits followed.

Cherop Lillian at her December 2020 graduation from UCU

For Lillian, the lockdown that started in March and the subsequent loss of customers posed a threat to the survival of her business. She’d make fries from potatoes and sell to the students that were on campus. Her target market predominantly being students, the lockdown threw a wrench in her plans.

Who would she sell to? With transportation being shut down for 32 days, what would she sell?

She cut down her usual trade of six-to-seven 100kg (220 pounds) bags of potatoes to two bags. For most of 2020, no one was around to buy ready-to-eat fries. Lockdown measures eventually eased up and UCU, under Standard Operating Procedure guidance from the Ministry of Health, was permitted to let finalists return to campus and complete their studies. These final-year student customers returned on October 15th when UCU re-opened.

Food was the obvious product for sale. History told her so. The earliest business venture she can remember is selling vegetables on her veranda. On holidays, she fried cassava chips in senior six and senior four.

“It is a must for everybody to eat food, so this is a viable business.” She said.

Logistics was part of the survival. Since her produce comes from Kapchorwa, her business depends on the stability of crop prices there. Transport costs shooting up all over the country due to curfew and new road restrictions was an added obstacle.

“I spend 75,000 Uganda shillings ($20.50) to transport five bags of Irish potatoes and this is too high for me,” she said. “I wish I could buy my own van; it could be much cheaper.”

Lillian’s business survived. On January 1, 2021, it was stationed 100 meters (328 feet) from the main UCU gate. Most days, she was at her stall by 7 a.m. She employed five staff. In addition to potatoes, sometimes they sell homemade passion juice.

“At my age (24) I am trying as much as possible to find my destiny, and the mistakes I make today become very big lessons to me especially in business,” she said. “I do not ask for money from people and my parents are glad that as a girl child, I am independent and able to cater for my basic needs”

She advised fellow youth to venture into business, have self-drive, and aim at growing business instead of focusing on profits at the beginning. These skills, she acknowledged, were largely learned in her program of study at UCU.

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Former UCU Guild President publishes book on youth and leadership

January 11, 2021News, UCU Alumni#book, #CourageUnderFire, #Guild, #Leadership, #PriscaAmongin, #UgandaChristianUniversity, business, Uganda, UgandaPartnersPatty Huston-Holm

Prisca Amongin (center) and friends at the launch of her book in December 2020.

By John Semakula

Uganda Christian University’s (UCU) former Guild President, Prisca Amongin Nangiro, has published a book challenging Christian youth in Africa to aspire to become leaders.

In her book, “Courage Under Fire: Let No One Despise Your Youth,” Amongin observes that the more Christian youth assume leadership positions on the continent, the easier it is for youth voices to be heard.

Prisca Amongin and the current UCU Guild President Kenneth Agaba Amponda during the launch of her book last month.

“We have to find our way into these big rooms to let decisions be taken in our favor,” Amongin writes in the 128-page book. “We need ambassadors, we need vessels.”

She observes that leadership positions give youth an opportunity to fulfill the burdens that are on their hearts.

“Heaven is on the search for men and women who will make a difference in our days,” she writes. “Dear friends, God is counting on us; on you dear reader. Our generation has so many wars against us, which we must fight. We cannot afford to maintain the status quo in politics, in health, academics among others. May the Lord make us restless and separate us for His work…”

Amongin’s book has received endorsement from prominent and influential Ugandans such as the Rt. Rev. Sheldon Mwesigwa, Bishop of Ankole Diocese in Western Uganda, and Lawrence Ssebulime, her former UCU lecturer.

Ssebulime describes the book as “a burning sensation that evokes a positive attitude even in the toughest of challenges.” Bishop Mwesigwa says the book is a “spell binding” story that takes the readers through the scenes and emotions that shaped Amongin’s resolve to engage in youth leadership positions with a desire to transform society.

“With Amongin’s brain power, godliness, down to earth character, social capital and zeal for service, youth will be inspired to exploit their leadership potential, even without adequate resources,” Bishop Mwesigwa writes in his endorsement message. “I unreservedly recommend this book, which illustrates that youth are leaders of today and not tomorrow.”

Amongin, who became the first directly elected UCU female guild President in 2016 and graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Finance and Accounting in 2018, started writing her book in March 2020 when the Ugandan government imposed a countrywide lockdown to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Amongin says it is good to always look at the silver lining in every looming cloud.

“Who knew the COVID-19 pandemic season would finally birth the hours I needed to put into this book to get it started?” she asked rhetorically during the launch of the book on December 27, 2020, in Kampala.

Prisca Amongin (in black) and her older sister, Filda Nangiro Loyok, at the launch of her book last month.

“I wanted to invite us on a journey to think together on why we are here in this world . . . To find ways for us to contribute and participate to resolve some of the issues in our immediate communities, especially as leaders and as the young people of our generation.”

Amongin who is currently contesting for the Female Youth National Parliamentary seat in Uganda, says that if elected, she wants to use that office to coordinate programs for youth development.

“I will use whatever there is within my means to advance the desirable change for all the youth,” she wrote. “This shall be made possible through partnership, lobbying and advocacy.”

Amongin’s book advises youth to enter politics with an ideology.

“Rome was not built in one day,” she says. “Each decision we make comprises of a collective approach. As a house is built brick by brick, so our lives are built decision by decision. These decisions have a collective destiny. In order for us to achieve the greater goal, we need the right ideology.”

Amongin’s family shaped her love and passion for leadership. Her mother, Eunice Lochoro Nangiro, served as a teacher before joining the National Resistance Council in the early 1990s to represent the people of Kotido District in northern Uganda. Her father, Simon Apollo Nangiro, taught her and her other siblings how to face life by ensuring they had experience with the family business in Moroto town.

“Through that experience we learnt people skills and staff management,” Amongin says. “He also taught us all how to stand up for what we believed in and work hard.”

Amongin, 28, comes from Natumkasikou village, Rupa Sub County, Moroto District in the Karamoja region, which is one of the poorest and least developed in Uganda. She urges youth not to let their humble backgrounds to stop them from scaling higher heights in life.

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‘I welcomed Christ into my life’

January 4, 2021Bishop Tucker School of Divinity and Theology, News, UCU Alumni#BishopTucker, #EasternCollegeAustralia, #RevOchen, #UCUGraduate, #UgandaChristianUniversity, Christianity, God, Theology, UgandaPatty Huston-Holm

Ocen Walter Onen at the UCU Mukono campus

(NOTE: In October, UCU Partners published an article about how this graduate of UCU helped the poor. That article is here: https://www.ugandapartners.org/2020/10/we-cannot-keep-preaching-the-gospel-to-the-poor-without-helping-them-realize-their-potential/. This article is the “back story” of that alum.)

By Ocen Walter Onen

BEFORE KNOWING CHRIST
In the morning hour of about 8:45 a.m. on March 2 of the year of our Lord 1992, my mum gave birth to me. Like any other baby, I cried at my first arrival into the world, which was going to be my home for some years as the Lord so wished. My mum later told me that I was born during an insurgency – various Ugandan civil wars.

Though, what was worse than my country’s rebellion against government is the fact that I was borne into non-Christian family. This meant that my life and growth were somewhat controlled by the traditional ancestral deities. For example, when I was a four-year-old, I fell sick and my parents consulted a traditional healer, who said that “the god wanted my name to be changed from Okot Walter Onen to Ocen Walter Onen.” This practice of listening to witch doctors was inherited from our great-great ancestors and continued until 2005, when Jesus Christ interrupted this evil chain – starting with me and then with all my family by 2014.

KNOWING CHRIST
On May 5, 2005, I welcomed Jesus Christ into my life. The burdens accruing from my countless sins had suffocated me and sincerely speaking, “I was dead pretending to be alive.” So, when a preacher quoted Matthew 11:28 (Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.), I realized my vulnerabilities and the need to accept the free mercy of God to redeem me from my state of hopelessness.

I could say much more about this wonderful day, but let me turn your attention to what happened after I got saved. Immediately, I felt my heart lightened, and my fears of guilt disappeared. In fact, the spirit of God filled me and I began going to church, sharing with brethren through fellowship and Bible study.

I began to question where God was leading me. What was my purpose? What does He exactly want me do? Why did He create us in his image instead of animals, trees, mountains and other non-human creations? Why does He cherish us so much to the extent of giving us His only Son? These questions shaped my thinking and ignited my quest for a philosophical understanding of the church’s doctrines. It was also one of the key reasons that compelled me to pursue a degree in Theology and Divinity at Uganda Christian University.

AT UGANDA CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY (2016-2019)
At UCU, I met distinguished scholars, especially from the faculty of Bishop Tucker School of Theology and Divinity who encouraged me to wrestle with new theories and concepts about Christianity and its mission in the world. For example, Rev. Can. Prof. Byaruhanga Christopher challenged us to think outside the box and avoid the temptation of spiritualizing Jesus’ proclamation in Luke 4:16-18, but apply it to fight multidimensional poverty, injustices and the all forms of ungodliness in our vocational context.

According to him, “a pastor is the fifth gospel” meaning that people will always look up to you for the meaning of righteousness. Another professor, Rt. Rev. Prof. Alfred Olwa, who was our dean then, also would reinforce the message that the centre of Christianity is shifting from the global north to the global south. The theologians in the global south, including Africa, should be more prepared than ever to shape the discussion revolving around the orthodoxy of the unchanging gospel truth in the dynamic world.

I wondered how we might do this if most of the biblical scholarship is still being done in the western world. The urgency of theologians in the south to participate in sharing the Word became more apparent.

AT EASTERN COLLEGE AUSTRALIA (2019-CURRENT)
In 2019, the words of the “Amazing Grace” hymn became ever more real. I received my degree from UCU on July 5 that year. Just the day before, I learned that I had been awarded a scholarship to pursue a Master in Transformational Development at Eastern College Australia. What a blessing! In fact, I felt like God’s exhortation to prosper us had just visited my door. Glory be to him, our rock and our redeemer.

In November 2020, my post-graduate studies are deconstructing, reconstructing and restructuring the worldview I had built from UCU. Indeed, it has created a platform for me to amalgamate both theology and development in one single unit of “integral mission.”

CHRIST IN EDUCATION
The COVID-19 pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges throughout the world, including in Uganda and specifically with education. A shift to on-line learning has been difficult for many.

Despite obstacles, I encourage current students of Uganda Christian University to appreciate the fact that a university education produces thinkers who can derive solutions for the mantra of prevailing problems in our communities. Individuals with university degrees are best positioned to creatively engage in rigorous research and innovation.

Scholars will play a key role in unleashing the United Nations sustainable development goals for 2030, the vision 2063 of the African Union, the vision 2040 of the republic of Uganda, and/or the vision of their own communities, or their own vision. At that, this is only possible if we permit Jesus Christ to reign in our lives, thoughts, words and actions.

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The Rev. Ocen Walter Onen is a UCU Bishop Tucker School of Theology and Divinity alum who is pursuing a Master in Transformational Development from Eastern College Australia.

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I slept in the office for four days preparing for my first business pitch

October 21, 2020News, UCU Alumni#AlexTaremwa, #Futureof Media, #matookerepublic, #NationMediaGroup, #TheInnovationVillage, #TheWorkshopUgandaPatty Huston-Holm

The most important seven minutes during the pitch. PHOTO BY The Innovation Village/Twitter

By Alex Taremwa

The Workshop Uganda is a media start up I conceived in 2017. As a journalist who had written large-firm profiles for some of Uganda’s top newspapers, I noticed that voices from the small business sector where more than 50% of Uganda’s GDP came from were prominently missing in the mainstream.

A selfie of the author, Alex Taremwa, right, with some of his team members at The Innovation Village after the pitch rehearsal.

My idea? Create an online platform that voiced their “hustle” and make it easy for customers to see and buy their products – a noble cause. I interested a few friends to help with the concept. Alas, we were not making much headway despite publishing several profiles, some of which got our clients visibility that yielded multiple deals. With no clear vision, no commitment, no capital, no team, I did what every other unserious entrepreneur would do – give up.

What I didn’t know, however, is that people – very powerful people – had been watching what we and other idea people were doing. When the Nation Media Group (NMG) – the biggest media brand in East and Central Africa launched their inaugural Future of Media competition searching for the “next big idea” that proposes a new business model to save the industry from the pangs of disruption (see my previous article on this topic), I submitted an entry.

According to the Daily Monitor, a subsidiary of NMG, 150 entries were received by the Innovation Village – a local business incubator and The Workshop Uganda (renamed The Digital Workshop) – was among the top 10. In fact, according to exclusive sources, we were number one.

Giving a voice to small- and medium-sized businesses is ever critical in Uganda’s COVID-19 lockdown as, according to an April 2020 survey by the Uganda Economic Policy Research Center, they are less likely than large businesses to survive. When asked about the likelihood of survival during a three-to-six month business suspension, macro/large companies were mostly not phased while roughly 25% of micro, small and medium business owners said they wouldn’t subsist.

Putting in the work
Between 2019 when I shelved the idea until when I submitted it as an entry into this competition in 2020, I had subjected it to a lot of scrutiny. Under Prof. Rhonda Breit, a seasoned Australian lawyer and journalism scholar, I worked on The Digital Workshop (changed from The Workshop Uganda) as an Advanced Digital Journalism project at the Graduate School of Media and Communications (GSMC) of Aga Khan University (AKU), where I am student. During this process, we made the project niche, figured out a business model that suited it and even pitched it to a mock panel from the new Deutsche Welle Akademie-sponsored Innovation Center at AKU in Nairobi, Kenya. I worked on a Lean Canvas, the problem-solution model and put it on a pitch deck.

Long days at the office with the project’s Creative Director, Edward Nimusiima, right.

While at it, I confirmed two things: not only could we scale our project across East Africa, we could also add a third product to it – a Reality TV show. In a Think with Google Podcast last week, I learned that videos dubbed #WithMe (Cook with Me, Workout with Me, Study with Me) had over 4 billion views on YouTube. Not only does such content offer a more personal experience, it is highly inspirational, offers audience value by giving them “news they can use” – a key component of monetization but relatively inexpensive to produce.

Our innovation is three-in-one: an e-Commerce platform, a reality TV show, and a second-hand furniture recycler. We recycle second-hand furniture, record a TV episode while at it and then sell that recycled furniture through an e-commerce App. We are also proposing a $5 weekly subscription for our content.

This model will be interoperable built within a mobile application that also has Web support. We believe this is a solutions journalism project that saves the environment and gives the audience value – the future of media.

Pitching for dummies
Standing before a mock panel for marks in Nairobi was much different from standing before a panel of judges with a request of $20,000. This being my first time, I watched a lot of YouTube videos of my favourite human marketer – Steve Jobs – the fallen Apple Inc. CEO.

Before the main pitch, we were invited for a rehearsal at the Innovation Village Hub in Ntinda – a Kampala suburb. At this point, I didn’t even have $20 to get around and yet I need to transport myself and my team to attend both events. I had to think fast. In 2017, I had asked an American friend visiting Uganda Christian University (UCU) where I worked then to be on our Board. Would she loan me $150?

“I’ll give you $200,” the woman (who asked not to be identified) typed. “But it’s not a loan. When you have money, remember this and help somebody else.”

The rehearsal went well. We had been told to fix our pitches in under seven minutes. I hit 7:24 seconds. Not bad for a first timer but if you have watched Shark Tank, not good either. People have squeezed million dollar ideas in under three minutes.

Sleeping at Matooke Republic
After that rehearsal, I decided that until I get the pitch in record time, I would not leave my office. I edit an online publication and while everyone was working from due to the COVID-19 guidelines, I slept in the office for four days rehearsing and fine-tuning my pitch. I would call in my team members; Edward Nimusiima, Patience Ndinawe, Nicholas Opolot, Ziyal Amanya, Agatha Muhaise, and Arthur Matsiko to go over details. The cost structures, profit projections, the numbers mostly to make sure the judges don’t catch me flatfooted. I am not a numbers person but I learned more in those four days that I had in all my 18 years in school.

Did we win? No. We didn’t. But when I walked out of the pitch room, someone I later found was very important walked to me and said, “If NMG doesn’t take you on, come to me. I’ll invest in you. But first, get some sleep!”

Alex Taremwa is a journalist, a graduate of UCU and an MA student at the Graduate School of Media and Communications (GSMC) of The Aga Khan University in Nairobi.

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UCU alumnus lifts up students, teachers during pandemic

October 5, 2020COVID-19, News, UCU Alumni#coronavirus, #COVID19, #girlchild, #Kyungwe, #Lockdown #Uganda, #teacher, #UgandaChristianUniversity, UCU, UCUPartnersPatty Huston-Holm

Nsubuga (at left) with workers at the school farm

By Maxy Magella Abenaitwe

Teachers worldwide are often underpaid, frequently disrespected, sometimes suppressed and occasionally ignored. This is despite the fact that educating children is one of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals with the acknowledgement that 69 million primary and secondary teachers will be needed globally to reach that 2030 target. To date, and according to the latest (2016) school census, Uganda has 261,000 teachers.

Deogratious Nsubuga, a 2018 first class graduate with a bachelor of science degree in education from Uganda Christian University (UCU) is among these. He is an author, writer, motivational speaker, entrepreneur and a headmaster at Agape Christian School, Kyungu. Having started teaching right after his Senior Six exams in 2014, he has grown a passion for improving teacher reputation. He wants to help administrators understand a teacher’s role and struggles.

“These are people who often have no clue what teaching is like, people who have had their education in developed countries and cannot relate with the problems on the ground here,” Nsubuga elaborates.

The appointment as head teacher at Agape Christian School in 2019 brought him closer to forging those relationships and understanding that would, in turn, improve the quality and quantity of students at the school. As of March 2020, the number of students in the school had increased from 135 to 400 in a year’s time. Starting 2020 in high gear and eagerly prepared to mold his students to attain the best grades possible, the COVID-19 lockdown blocked all the school programs and fractured hopes.

Filled with grief and short of words, Nsubuga struggles to describe how demeaning the COVID-19 lockdown since March has been to teachers in Uganda. To have the basics of living, including food in cupboards, teachers have taken hard labor jobs such as digging and washing neighbor’s clothing.

“Some teachers have sold off their clothes and shoes,” Nsubuga said. “You will be surprised to see teachers walk to class ragged and barefooted after the lockdown.”

To curb poverty-related problems related to his school, Nsubuga has exchanged his head teacher role for that of garden and small business employer.

Nsubuga supervises one of his staff members at the school farm

Two teacher assistance examples
Cornelius Arkker, for example, is one of the teachers working as a produce manager with a food store business started by Nsubuga. Arkker feels honored to have met and worked with an innovative and developmental person like Nsubuga.

Arkker says Nsubuga has inspired him to improve his character, in terms of being patient, honest, principled and hopeful.

“There is a time I delayed for an appointment with Nsubuga by four hours,” Arkker said. “Being the principled person he is, I thought he would get mad at me, he instead calmly listened to me and everything went on as planned.”

Nsubuga also has mentored teacher, Isaac Kawanda, who is currently managing the Musomesa Education Consultants project. The firm handles all records and sales of academic books published by Nsubuga. Both Nsubuga and Kawanda met as young untrained teachers in 2014/2015.

“Nsubuga always told me that I am a young, energetic man who can do wonders,” Kawanda discloses. “His company has helped me unveil my academic and business potentials. He has made me realize how capable I am.”

Student assistance examples
In addition to helping teachers re-tool their skills to survive during the coronavirus lockdown, Nsubuga initiated the use of social media to maintain student interest in education, monitoring streets to guard youth safety and making public address announcements to get communities engaged in nurturing young people.

To reinforce learning, he formed WhatsApp groups to better ensure student access to academic work. However, due to limited technical resources and poor network, some students have been left out. For these students, he plans remedial assistance after the lockdown.

Andrew Baluku, a Senior Two student, commends his teachers for the academic support rendered to him, especially during the COVID restricted environment. According to Baluku, online studying is efficient because he pays maximum attention to his studies. However, he yearns to have more subjects like agriculture and commerce.

“Studying alone gives me more time to learn at my pace and understand some concepts,” Bakulu explains. “I think online studying would be the best, if not for the limited resources to maintain it. Plus, some of my colleagues cannot afford it all.”

Nsubuga also has engaged the community about the effects of the COVID-19 lockdown and how they can adapt and offer their assistance. Through a community radio characterized by a highly raised wooden platform and a speaker with sound covering at least a hundred meters (328 feet) of Kyungu village, Nsubuga encourages local parents to prepare their children for the lockdown experience, particularly the girl child. He has spread a similar gospel via Dunamis radio Uganda.

Nsubuga narrates an incident when he bumped into one of his teenage female students being intimately held by a boy in the evening. Much as Nsubuga was able to rescue her and drop her to her home safely, Nsubuga still wonders about the safety and well-being of girls.

Giving a hand to someone’s growth and development is Nsubuga’s happiness. This is a spirit he developed from the UCU community, where sharing and kindness are virtues.

Previously, Nsubuga possessed a self-centered mindset towards the process of achieving success.

“Before I came to UCU, my principle was, ‘hustle, get in my way, I kick you out and proceed,” Nsubuga said. “However, the UCU Christian environment put in me a spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood.”

He is thankful to God that he was able to meet a Christian family (UCU) that groomed him spiritually.

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Time to laugh: UCU student-turned-comedian tells you why

September 29, 2020COVID-19, News, UCU Alumni# EhmahNapoleone, #Comedian, #COVID19, #EastAfrica, #EmmanuelOtim, #Laughter, #Lockdown #Uganda, #UgandaChristianUniversity, UCU, UCUPartnersPatty Huston-Holm

Emmanuel Otim poses for a photo after his interview with UCU Partners.

By Maxy Magella Abenaitwe

Most Ugandan children have been told that holding on to sciences – that is, the traditional, formal curriculum – is the only key to success. Little or no value is attached to talents outside that box or personal passions. Those who create their own chances and platforms to ensure talent growth beyond what is customary are few.

Emmanuel Otim, a Uganda Christian University (UCU) bachelor of arts in education graduate, is among those few. Since 2007, he has identified himself as a comedian – a career path sparked by his love for stage performance.

This, then, is how Otim (known as Ehmah Napoleone and preferring to be known as simply “Ehmah”) made it unfold. Having lived a childhood with various stage opportunities, he fit himself in the already-established university entertainment sessions. Under the brand name, The Filosofaz, he and a bunch of friends broke the mold of the University praise and worship system of entertainment and introduced comedy.

Otim with colleagues after a presentation. https://youtu.be/FuRnSmosnKw — Otim with colleagues after a presentation.
https://youtu.be/FuRnSmosnKw

The comedy group grew so popular that students referred to the Saturday evening walks to watch Ehmah and his partner, Catro Johnson, as, “The great trek to Nkoyoyo hall.” The paved route from the Dining hall to Nkoyoyo hall became known informally as Prince Ehmah Road.

For someone who had grown up with no access to television and the Internet, his first comic sessions were presentations solely intended to cheer up students and satisfy his own creative talents. Little did he know this would become a career that would pay his bills.

Several times, friends tapped him saying, “Man! You’re going to be big, you will be a millionaire.” Their encouraging words started to sink in. He began to realize there could be something special about what he had been doing.

Ehmah still remembers Peace Lona, a girl he had met in his S5 class at Makerere high school in 2004. She told him about the successes of Kato Lubwama (comedian turned politician) and Philip Luswata (actor/director best known for “Queen of Katwe”). To further educate himself, Ehmah started attending comedy shows, including those of East African comedians like Philip Luswata and Ebonies.

“Going for these shows shaped my idea that I could actually earn from this,” he reckoned.

In 2009, DSTV held competitions called “Stand Up, Uganda.” He didn’t compete but found family in a union formed by the top 10 winners of the contest. A Ugandan named Omara, who took second place in the competition, called on Ehmah to assist in forming the Crackers’ show that later premiered on National Television (NTV) as Mic Check. Omara and Ehmah had met at UCU.

To Ehmah, his “fully rewarding” world of comedy is the job he “never sought.” It simply evolved.

As of September 2020, Ehmah’s highly ranked comic gigs have taken him to Zambia, Namibia, Kenya, Rwanda and South Sudan as well as within his native Uganda. In spite of curfew, economic and travel restrictions of the COVID-19 lockdown, Ehmah has maintained his relevance with some earnings through social media fan base management, replacing a desired stage performance schedule.

To access one of the UCU alum’s comedy videos, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuRnSmosnKw&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1qdbgjlnxaXzIfq8nwq9yKa9ukNsmTo5QXs8ZoWW6ZUYWR2659YUBmu9o

In August 2020, Ehmah Napoleone’s You Tube channel and social media platforms were trending with more than 2,000 views of “Afande Piano,” an imaginary police spokesperson of the Wakanda Republic. Afande Piano is an exaggerated sarcastic character who mimics the Ugandan police spokesperson who at many occasions has been cited defending police and government for their deeds. In addition to bringing smiles to people’s faces, Ehmah’s aim was to show the public how hard it is to be a spokesperson in a country with a political environment like that of Uganda.

While the Afande Piano character is partially political, Ehmah usually refrains from politics as well as tribal, vulgar and religious content that may negatively impact on society.

At that, for the sake of solidarity, advocacy for the rights of Comedians, growth of the comedian industry and as the spokesperson of The Uganda Comedian Association (TUCA), Ehmah has taken part in political performances with comedians like the Bizonto group that were once arrested over allegations of promoting sectarianism through their comic church-like hymns. For some performers, like Allan (alias Optional Allan) and Joshua Okello (alias Okello Okello), he has both learned and mentored.

Kibuka describes the five-year relationship as a kind, generous, helpful and friendly mentorship. He applauds Ehmah for paving for him the way from the ghetto setting to the urban stage.

“I will never forget the day he recommended me for my first Jazz comedy Uganda performance,” Kibuka recalls. “It was unbelievable, I mingled with big names in the Ugandan comedy industry. That day, I realized my potential.”

Okello, Ehmah’s other mentee credits him for being professional, principled, honest and flexible.

“Ehmah keeps time and will always show up if you have a booking, appointment or performance with him,” Okello said. “This is a rare trait among Ugandan entertainers.”

Okello recalls of a time he invited his mentor to perform on a show he had organized in Soroti. That day it rained, and the show flopped. As the dismayed organiser, worried about how to pay, Ehmah agreed to forego his payment.

Ehmah credits UCU for his humility as this was reinforced there for students and staff. He points his success to the 2006-2009 UCU community that embraced him and offered him his first platform as an amateur comedian.

“By the time I left UCU, I was already a brand,” he noted.

Ehmah is saddened by what he perceives as a decline in creative stage talent emphasis and opportunities at UCU. His cry is for the university to embrace drama and entertainment because it holds a great future in Uganda.

His passion for comedy has helped him overlook some challenges like the negative perception some people have towards entertainers. Most parents dislike comedians around their children because they think artists are not good role models.

“Sometimes it’s hard for people to accept you,” Ehmah said. “Africans have not yet embraced comedy as a profession.”

The writer of this article, Maxy Magella Abenaitwe, is a 2018 graduate of Uganda Christian University with a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication. Before her country’s lockdown, she was an intern for the UCU Standard newspaper.

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Barriers to integrating e-Learning into Uganda’s education system

September 3, 2020COVID-19, News, Students, UCU Alumni#Covid-19, #e-Learning, #Lockdown, #National Council for Higher Education, #on-line Learning, #Uganda Communications Commission, Uganda Christian UniversityPatty Huston-Holm

e-Learning compatible with multiple devices that can be accessed by both staff and students. COURTESY PHOTO/UCU Law Society

(NOTE: This article was written before the Uganda National Council for Higher Education gave late August 2020 approval for UCU to offer on-line courses.)

By Alex Taremwa

On Friday, July 3, 2020, my good friend Rebecca Karagwa, a recipient of a generous Uganda Partners scholarship, should have graduated with her Bachelor of Laws from Uganda Christian University (UCU). Only that did not happen. After waiting for online exams in vain, she celebrated anyway. She cut the cake and ate it.

Her official school completion was delayed partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic that forced schools shut but also due to the Ugandan education system technological limbo in 2020. Since the colonial era, classroom instruction in Uganda – even at top government-supported universities like Makerere University (the 8^th Best in Africa according to recent rankings) has been a blackboard and chalk affair.

While students in countries like Rwanda begin to interact with computer technology as early as primary school with the help of education tablets that the government freely distributes, it is common for a student in Uganda from a rural area like Kazo to join a university without ever touching a computer.

UCU Students browse online reading material in the UCU Hamu Mukasa Library. COURTESY PHOTO/UCU E-Learning

I write from experience. Before I joined UCU in 2010, the best I knew about a computer was to correctly identify the mouse, keyboard and monitor. It was the first-year, UCU Basic Computing Foundation Course Unit that moved me to computer literacy; I scored 98%. This is true today for many students at Ugandan universities.

While the Ugandan government directed that Information and Computer Technology (ICT) be taught compulsorily at secondary level, most schools in rural areas and some in peri-urban areas have at most eight functional computers to be used by a population of 800 students or even more. At the maximum, each student will have interfaced with the computer for about five full hours in a term. To say that this time is insufficient to create any sort of mastery is an understatement.

Nevertheless, students move on to the universities where some semblance of e-Learning can be felt. Lecturers often send course material on Email and can ably grade assignments through academic systems such as Moodle. But from experience, both students and lecturers confess that the traditional approach where assignments are typed and printed is more “effective” than the modern style because the latter requires an internet connection or a physical presence at the University where one can access free Wi-Fi.

But there is an even bigger reason. Most of the courses taught at universities had not been customized for online delivery. When you visit the Uganda National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) website to see the listed of accredited online courses for universities, you’re met with an empty list. There is, however, a list of new guidelines that the NCHE is mooting to furnish universities in a bid to support their customization of online programs.

Online programs have to be immersive and interactive to compensate for when the students are not physically present at the university as the case is now. The challenge is that neither the university nor the government can guarantee that students will have access to a computer and stable Internet to support this kind of learning.

Statistically, only 42% of Ugandans are connected to the Internet, according to the Uganda Communications Commission. This represents 19 million of the 45 million Ugandans. If you break this figure further, the biggest concentration of Internet users is in Kampala, Wakiso, Mukono, Entebbe, Jinja and other major towns, but most of the rural countryside where the students are during this lockdown is largely uncovered.

To worsen matters, Uganda has the most expensive Internet per megabyte of all the countries in East Africa. It doesn’t help our case that social media platforms like WhatsApp, on which students are currently interacting as they hope for take home exams, also attract a daily tax.

It would have been better and cheaper for the government to lift tax on social media to promote learning via smartphones on Facebook Live and YouTube but instead, the government is settling to buy two radio and television sets for each of the 140,000 villages in the country. While this happens, universities like the United States International University in Africa in Nairobi, Aga Khan University and other ultramodern institutions have already closed their semesters successfully by administering exams online. All the institutions had to do was to use part of the students’ already paid tuition to activate for them data bundles with which to access, write and submit the exams.

Together with an e-Examination system that closed submissions after the permissible three hours, the universities were able to avoid physical access to the premises, keep COVID-19 at bay and still successfully close their academic calendars with minor interruptions.

Selfishly though, the government has refused to allow institutions like Uganda Christian University (UCU) that have the necessary infrastructure to support e-Learning to proceed with their academic calendar, claiming that some students who are in rural areas will not be able to access the learning material – even when the very students petitioned the Speaker of Parliaments seeking permission to sit their exams and move on with their lives.

Uganda has attempted and failed twice to allow finalists to return to their respective institutions of learning to write their examinations. Information from the corridors of power now has it that the government is mooting to force a dead year on students like Karagwa that were hoping to graduate simply because there is no infrastructure to support e-Learning.

As long as COVID-19 is still a global pandemic, education in Uganda will remain on halt and even when schools resume in the near future, e-Learning will remain a far cry until the technological barriers to uptake are addressed.

Alex Taremwa is a journalist, a graduate of UCU and an MA student at the Graduate School of Media and Communications (GSMC) of The Aga Khan University in Nairobi.

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‘Nothing inspires me like bringing new life into the world’

July 8, 2020Faculty of Public Health, Nursing and Midwifery, UCU Alumni, UCU School of Medicine#Ibanda, #Maternalhealth, #UgandaChristianUniversity, Nursing, UgandaPartnersPatty Huston-Holm

UCU Alum Christine Nimwesiga poses with a group of nurses after training them on maternal health practices.

By Alex Taremwa

(NOTE: Story and photos were generated before Uganda’s COVID-19 lockdown.)

Buried deep in the western region of Ibanda District is Uganda Christian University (UCU) Nursing Graduate Christine Nimwesiga. A trained nurse and midwife, she deputizes the District Health Officer and has been at it for seven years since she was transferred from Kisoro District.

Ibanda is a district on the verge of a municipality status, but its maternal and infant mortality leaves a lot to be desired.

“When I joined, the district registered about 18 maternal deaths,” Nimwesiga said. “but we have halved that figure to about eight and even those are referrals from outside districts.”

She is not just an administrative person. She is a self-motivated nurse and midwife who gets her hands dirty in the field. In her own words, nothing inspires her like the delivering a newborn, especially being there for that first cry.

UCU Nursing Graduate Christine Nimwesiga reviews district Maternal and Neonatal Health records with a nurse at Ruhoko Health Center in Ibanda district.

Among Nimwesiga’s accomplishments in Ibanda is that 77% of pregnant mothers deliver in hospitals. She achieves this using Village Health Teams (VHTs) and Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) that are trained to encourage hospital-administered deliveries.

However, needs remain. She admits that although 86% of pregnant women turn up for the first antenatal check-ups in hospitals, only 46% return for the fourth visit. As a result, cases of severe anaemia and haemorrhages manifest often during birth, some causing maternal deaths.

Documenting the need in 2018, Nimwesiga presented a research paper at the annual Nurses Celebrations. It was titled; “Assessment of adherence to iron and folic supplementation among pregnant women attending ANC.” Her results revealed that pregnant women do not take supplement iron and folic recommended during pregnancy; hence, the anaemia.

As a result, she has developed plans to train nurses on identification of potential complicated births, structured stakeholder meetings in the health sector to adopt interventions that are making Ibanda some kind of a model district.

“I have formed committees at each of the 22 high volume delivery health centres where we monitor, record, follow-up and report on each prenatal, neonatal or postnatal deaths. The results are what inform our interventions,” she said.

Nimwesiga revived the technical support supervision committees that train and mentor health workers on safe delivery, nutrition and baby resuscitation for children born when they can’t breathe, and these committees trickle down to Sub-County and Parish levels.

“It was an intentional career development plan,” she said. “Every year, I ensure that we send one nursing officer, two enrolled nurses and two enrolled midwives to school. Now I have a pool of professional staff to pick from. I have even put it in the budget that at least three nurses attend the annual nurses’ celebrations.”

Personal goals
Nimwesiga’s kind of nursing is an evidence-based one. She would rather spend her day researching, publishing and studying on solutions to her people’s problems but she has no financial support for her research. She can neither publish nor go to the field.

“Most funders want to channel their support through universities leaving most of us with valuable field knowledge and access to respondents out. In places like here, we are in a pool of data but a local government will always remain local. We have no funding, no Internet, nothing,” she lamented.

Nimwesiga, age 38, wants to have her PhD by the time she is 45. She will then join academia, grants writing and research and perhaps move close to her family that currently lives over 300kms (186 miles) away in Kisoro.

UCU relationship
Nimwesiga holds UCU in a special place in her heart. Not only did she get a promotion after her MA in Nursing, she also has been involved in the Department’s activities and ensures that UCU Nursing graduates get internship and employment places. In the future, she hopes UCU can implement plans to conduct speciality continuous development courses for working graduates.

“Our staffing is at 67% – both medical and support staff,” she said. “Compared with other places, we seem to better off but when you compare with the population of 270,500, we are limping. So I created two positions under me for capacity building and most of these are UCU graduates.”

Nimwesiga has won several scholarships including a 10-day leadership course in South Africa that she began in March. The course was taught in South Africa and only four participants were from Africa, and she is the only Ugandan.

She is grateful to UCU for the opportunities that it gave her and the foundation to take her career by a firm grip. She advises nursing students at UCU to be self-motivated, work passionately and focus on changing the livelihoods of the people in their communities.

“Your actions will sell you. I love my profession. I am a born nurse and it gives me great pleasure to serve my people. It has taken me places,” she concluded.

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2020 Global 5K participants from USA, Canada, Nigeria, Uganda

May 19, 2020Faculty, Scholarship, Sports, Students, UCU Alumni#Canada, #Florida, #Global5K, #markbartels, #NewMexico, #Nigeria, #Pennsylvania, #UgandaChristianUniversity, Scholarship, UgandaPartnersPatty Huston-Holm

By Patty Huston-Holm

“If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together.”

The African proverb was the essence for the first few years of the Global 5K, a five-kilometer (3.1 miles) walk/run/social engagement activity sponsored by the Uganda Christian University (UCU) Partners non-profit organization. Abby Bartels, who lived for 10 years on the University campus and raised three children there with her husband, Mark, is the founder.

The year was 2015 and a time when many organizations were jumping on a 5K fund-raising bandwagon. For UCU Partners, it was less about raising money and more about building a relationship base among alumni of the Uganda Studies Program (USP), a one-semester, UCU learning experience for students enrolled in Christian universities, mostly in the United States. Mark Bartels, executive director for UCU Partners, started USP on the UCU Mukono campus. UCU Partners values USP alumni because they are a unique set of donors who have lived and studied at UCU.

“The event was actually better than expected because it strengthened connections not just with American students but with Honor’s College students and staff,” Abby, now living in Pennsylvania, said. “In addition to a time for remembering and re-connecting about a cultural, Christ-centered experience, it became an opportunity to raise money for Ugandan students in need.”

According to Ashton Davey, UCU Partners fundraising coordinator and facilitator for the 2020 Global 5K, nearly 200 people participated this year. Despite the hiccup of having an event on April 4 in the midst of worldwide COVID-19 lockdowns, more than $3,000 was generated, mostly by participant purchases of the event’s green T-shirt. The funds will supplement tuition for 12 needy students at UCU.

“Many participants found the Global 5K to be good motivation to get out of the house and simultaneously support a great cause,” Ashton said. “The event’s flexibility allowed people to participate alone from wherever they live, which allowed them to adhere to social distancing guidelines.”

So what was it like engaging in an event during an unprecedented worldwide pandemic? From Canada, Nigeria and Uganda, and nearly half of the 50 USA states, here is a sample of thoughts compiled from virtual interviews.

Atimango Innocent (Minna, Nigeria) – former UCU Honors College student who previously benefited from the scholarship assistance and was once a USP staff member; now engaged with The Navigators, two-year discipleship training program

In the midst of focusing on Mathew 28: 19-20 and its message about “making disciples of all nations,” Innocent and a friend, Drew Uduimoh, did 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) for the Global 5K. She has done it every year except for maybe one when the event didn’t get off the ground. For 2020 and while Nigeria reported more than 800 virus cases, she jogged around the town where she lives with no lockdown restrictions.

“I feel personal about it since I was one of the students who benefited directly from the funding,” she said of the Global 5K. “But I also find it a time to do reflections on people and on the Lord.”

Mikaela Hummel (Pakenham, Ontario, Canada) – USP student in 2019, while studying at Houghton (NY) College, where she receives her undergraduate degree in May; preparing to begin studies for a Masters of Science degree in physiotherapy

Mikaela, at right, with her family in Canada

On the day of the Global 5K, it was 10 Celsius (50 Fahrenheit) in Pakenham, Ontario, where Mikaela participated in the event with her mom, dad, sister and dog. She wore long sleeves under her green shirt and her traditional African kitenge-design shorts. The area where they ran was a bit quieter than usual as COVID-19 restrictions had most stores closed and gatherings limited to five people or less.

“The experience in Uganda helped me to pause and think about what is really important in life,” she said. “The Global 5K is a time to reflect on that again. The pandemic puts the brakes on even stronger, reminding us to trust God.”

Erin Neilson (Gallup, New Mexico) – USP student in 2006 while majoring in music at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pa.; now raising two children and serving on a church music team with her husband, Phil, a middle school English teacher and also a 2006 USP student and USP program assistant 2008-2009

USP alumni, Erin and Phil, and family in New Mexico

On the date of the 5K Zoom discussion on April 20, New Mexico had more than 2,000 confirmed cases of cornonavirus. Sixteen days earlier, the Neilson family of four, living in a small town near part of the Navajo Nation, did 5 kilometers. A special highlight was that Christiana, age 5, made the entire distance on her own. Caleb, a toddler, was carried.

“We had been hoping to hike with friends, but due to social distancing requirements, we ended up with time just as a family,” Erin said. Fourteen years after our USP experience I am reminded of the value Ugandans place on presence and am trying to live that daily with my children.”

Laura Sollenberger (Gainesville, Florida) – USP student in 2018 while majoring in exercise science at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pa.; now finishing her Penn State University bachelor’s degree in nursing through on-line classes while living back home with her parents

For Laura, her career move from occupational therapy to nursing was stimulated by a 150-hour internship at the Church of Uganda hospital (Mukono), where she realized the intimate and critical role of health care workers at a patient’s side. COVID-19 has reinforced that decision with some frustration that she can’t be on the front line now; she graduates in December.

Laura’s UCU experience in 2018 was “life-changing with deeper connections to friends and God, clearer purpose, better understanding of systemic injustices, and the challenge of learning from new cultural perspectives,” she said.

Laura planned to re-connect with 10 of those friends by participating in the Global 5K and making rolex afterwards in Lancaster, Pa. Instead, she is sheltered with family in her home state of Florida. Her mom and dad did the 5K with her.

“We did a Zoom afterwards,” she said of her USP friends. She added, “I will definitely go back to Uganda someday.”

Molho Bernard (Kilowoza/Mukono District, Uganda) – 2018 UCU graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in Education, working with the Honors College and USP up to February 2020 when Ugandan universities closed due to COVID restrictions while pursuing a Masters of Education in Planning and Administration.

On April 4, Bernard engaged in his second Global 5K by walking around his compound – different than the previous year when there were more people and it occurred on the campus. His “informal” companion during his warm-up with push ups and laps around the compound was a two-year-old named Mathew who lives in the same area and “loves coming to my room to watch me do some art work.” The 5K has special meaning to Bernard as he was once a recipient of the money raised through the event.

“In 2018, my family was going through a financial breakdown, and I was afraid of getting a dead semester,” he said. “Through the proceeds of 5K through UCU Partners, I was able to have my tuition and graduation fees cleared.”

Bernard continues to appreciate the Christian and academic standards at UCU. The environment has enabled him to “know Christ more, and I have grown up more in loving, trusting and obeying Him.”

Ashton, who splits her time between Uganda and Kansas, said it was “heartwarming” to see social media posts of people supporting Uganda Christian University in the 5K green T-shirts – from those “running in rural villages in Uganda and families hiking to wave across the state border at each other to USP alumni organizing a Zoom call to reflect on the lessons they learned in Uganda.”

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COVID-19: Panic buying, added work from home, trusting God

May 5, 2020COVID-19, UCU Alumni#Corona, #Covid-19, #Manchester, #Museveni, #SarahLagotOdwong, #UgandaChristianUniversity, #USAID, #virus, God, Kampala, Mukono, UCU, UgandaPatty Huston-Holm

Sarah Lagot Odwong, UCU graduate and USAID employee

By Sarah Lagot Odwong

March 21^st, 2020. 11:32 p.m. Uganda had its first identified case of COVID-19.

My mind buzzed with a thousand thoughts. Only weeks earlier, my siblings and I – with our own bills to pay – had emptied our savings to complete a large part of the construction work for my mother’s house. Because her life had been wrought with difficulty, it was always our dream to give her a place of rest.

There is no good time to be dirt poor, but having a bank account blinking red when a government shutdown is inevitable is the worst of times. Sleep eluded me.

I arose early on March 22. On my way to work, I noticed the unusual flurry of activity on the Kampala roads. The traffic was horrendous. Pedestrians trudged in silence on the pavements with swift gaits and downcast faces. The boda-bodas (motorcyclists) rode dangerously, swerving and wedging through the small crevices within the disorganized flow of traffic. It was a dystopian sight. I got into work in a pensive mood. I did not have much time to settle at my desk as a staff meeting was hurriedly called.

We sat hunched on white rickety plastic chairs in the parking yard. The chairs were spaced out from each other. Some staff wore masks. Others nervously tinkered with their phones.

Our boss announced, in part:

“As you all know, the first positive case of COVID-19 was confirmed last night. The grapevine alleges that the country will be in some sort of lock down. It will probably be announced later tonight when the President makes his address. I suggest that we share work plans with line managers and get all the resources we need to work from home…You will have your salaries in your bank accounts by this afternoon…”

At least some positive news. I got a notification from my bank at 1 p.m. that my account had been credited.

I picked up my bag, scampered to the car and drove to the nearest supermarket. I passed by the bank ATM at the premises, withdrew some cash and sauntered into the store. Inside, the panic buying had already ensued. There was a mad dash by shoppers. The queues stretched for miles. Shoppers’ trolleys were loaded with toilet paper, kitchen towels, soap, wipes and other hygiene products. Others heaped vegetables, milk, bread, cartons of beer, meat and liquor.

Only one big bag of rice remained. I grabbed it. I proceeded to pick up other dry rations, hygiene products and joined the snaking lines to pay prices that had increased tremendously in a matter of hours. Little bottles of sanitizer that were affordable a week earlier now cost almost ten times more. I bought just one.

Like anticipated, President Yoweri Museveni announced a lockdown of the country for an initial 14 days. After the two weeks lapsed, 21 additional days were added.

While fortunate to still have a job, my workload increased with hours extending from early morning to late at night. Not only do I have a full-time job, I also support the crisis communications for the epidemic response.

Before the outbreak, I was living out of suitcases, on the road for days and sometimes weeks at a time, working long hours. Now at home, my workload has ramped up even more. I jealously read texts in group chats from my girlfriends who suddenly find themselves with bursts of free time. They are learning new languages on Duolingo, learning to sew and evidently having an extended holiday off work.

Not me. I spend my days hunched at a desk in the living room with my pajamas on and my hair tied in a headscarf. I am writing, attending endless Zoom and Skype meetings, and tending to incessant phone calls.

What I have found hardest is the physical distance and inability to see family – both in Uganda and elsewhere. No travel on roads or in the air. We created a family chat group on WhatsApp, which helps my coping. Seeing videos of my nieces and nephews doing hilarious things, the new baby attempting to walk and other family milestones, I am reminded that there is hope after this plague blows over. And it will.

What precious time I have away from my computer, I am reminded to prioritize the things that really matter. Family, faith, friendships, love and personal development. We waste time chasing the wind, like the writer of Ecclesiastes opines. The “busy” job, the career growth, and monetary gain. All of it is meaningless.

What this pandemic has shown is that when it is stripped down, life makes meaning with just the simple things. Healthy thriving relationships with God, family, friends and the people who love and support you. They will always be a constant. All the other material contraptions we chase fade away. This epiphany has made me change gear.

In what I hope are the final days of this lockdown, I have a different attitude and mindset. Going forth, I aim to structure my work to fit within regular hours. I aim to find more time to check on the people I love.

I am determined to create extra time to pursue my passion projects. I wrote a book during my undergraduate studies that I need to publish this year. I have autobiography projects that I must complete. I have a consulting business to grow. I have a PhD proposal to write. There are friends and family to check on. I have series of sermons to watch.

I have seen the Lord’s handiwork amidst this chaos. He has been faithful. There is no day I have slept hungry. I have a roof over my head. My utility bills are paid. I still have a job. When I feel overwhelmed, I remember that the creator of the universe knew me before I was formed in my mother’s womb. He had the foresight that I would go through this calamity. And he promised to help me weather it.

(Sarah Lagot Odwong is a graduate of Mass Communication from Uganda Christian University and received her Master’s degree in Humanitarianism and Conflict Response from The University of Manchester, England. She currently works for USAID’s Better Outcomes for Children and Youth Activity as the Communications Director.)

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‘I can’t hug her the minute I get home’

April 30, 2020COVID-19, UCU Alumni#Constantine Odongo, #Corona, #Covid-19, #Museveni, #newvision, #UgandaChristianUniversity, #virus, Kampala, Mukono, Poverty, UCU, UgandaPatty Huston-Holm

Madonna waiting for her dad to come home from work

By Constantine Odongo
Emmanuella Madonna is three years old. Every weekday, after taking her after-school nap, the kindergarten pupil engages her friends in the neighbourhood in games, such as dodge ball and hide-and-seek.

That was before mid-March 2020 and COVID-19.

On March 18, she got an abrupt, indefinite school holiday after the Ugandan government announced a closure of schools and a ban on work, unless it was an essential service. The ban was to enforce the health guideline of social distancing and staying home to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus, which has become a pandemic. Madonna now spends more time with her mother at home and keeps wondering why I, her father, cannot stay home with them.

As an employee of Uganda’s New Vision newspaper (i.e. news jobs are considered essential), it means I’m gone much of the day and conceivably more exposed to the potentially deadly virus.

Madonna doesn’t get that. She doesn’t understand why I can’t hug her the minute I get home between 6:45 and 7 p.m.

Uganda President Yoweri Museveni on March 30, 2020, announced a two-week stay-home order and capped it with a 11.5-hour curfew from 7 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. The order and the curfew were then extended by another three weeks.

Since, most times, the normal working hours at my office are not enough for me to accomplish my tasks, I often work up to the 11th hour. My workplace, being a media house, is open 24 hours. But, nowadays, the newsroom is almost empty, save for security personnel, especially past 6 p.m. People abandon office early, in order to get home and beat the curfew time of 7 p.m.

It usually takes me up to 25 minutes to cover the 14km (8.5 miles) distance from my office located in the capital of Uganda, Kampala, to home in Kawempe, a city suburb. I spend close to half of that time at roadblocks, trying to explain to security why my media movement permit sticker is on the dashboard and not on the car screen. Some motorists had lost their outside car stickers to thieves, who would pluck them off cars and sell them in the black market in Kampala, sometimes as high as one million shillings (about $280).

As I arrive home after work and oftentimes after the routine security interrogation, I see Madonna run to arms she can’t yet embrace – until I am cleansed of possible contamination to her and others in my family. I watch a fight brewing between Madonna and her nanny, who is seven times her age, but understands her job to keep a daughter from her dad in the world of COVID fear. I always ensure I bathe as soon as I arrive home, before getting into contact with anything or anyone, so that I do not become a conduit for the coronavirus.

Every morning, if Madonnna wakes up before I set off for work, she tries her luck in convincing me not to go to work that day. When President Museveni banned public and private cars from the roads on March 30, I carried my computer home and set up myself to work there. However, an unstable Internet network, an unfavorable work station and distractions by children hindered my ability to work.

Madonna’s sibling, Morgan, will be making one year on May 5. Throughout the day, I arbitrated disputes between her and Morgan. April 1 was day two of my full operation from home. We were both at our workstations, Madonna’s about two metres (6 feet) away from mine. When I stepped away from the room to receive a phone call, Madonna removed a keyboard key.

Madonna’s grandmother, a lady she was named after, lives and teaches in a primary school in Tororo district, located 220 kilometers (136.5 miles), east of Kampala. One-and-a-half weeks before the lockdown, schools were closed. Initially, teachers saw joy in the holiday. But it was short lived as they experienced more than one negative aspect of the lockdown.

The weekend after schools had been closed, as one example, Madonna’s grandmother attended a funeral in Tororo, without knowing that she and some friends were going against the guidelines of the Ministry of Health – that only close family members bury the dead due to social distancing. There were water points for the mourners to wash their hands before getting to the funeral, but not many even understood why the water and soap had been provided.

Such stories justify why the Government enlisted the services of the security forces to enforce the observance of the lockdown guidelines. I remind myself of this each time I am stopped. Life as we know it has changed for Madonna and me. With God’s guidance and understanding, we will appreciate the fruits of the difference and get through it.

(Constantine Odongo is a deputy chief sub-editor for New Vision. He received an MA degree in Journalism and Media Studies from Uganda Christian University.)

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COVID-19: What $40 a night in quarantine teaches you

April 2, 2020COVID-19, UCU Alumni#AgaKhanUniversity, #AlexTaremwa, #Corona, #Covid-19, #isolation, #Kenya, #Pandemic, #UgandaChristianUniversity, UgandaPatty Huston-Holm

Alex Taremwa doing an on-line class via Zoom.

(During this unprecedented time of the COVID-19 pandemic, UCU Partners will be publishing stories about how UCU-connected Ugandans and Americans are coping. This is the first of several accounts.)

By Alex Taremwa

In my shared apartment, Guma Jeremiah storms in from work. I call him the “diplomat extraordinaire” because he works for the Ugandan Foreign Service based in Nairobi. Panting is not Guma’s usual demeanour, and I can sense the haste and unease in this voice – evidently, he is scared.

“Have you watched the news yet?” he asks.

I send my hand for the remote and switch to NTV Kenya. The authorities are confirming what we feared the most – Kenya’s first Corona Virus Disease (COVID)-19 case – a 27-year-old female who had travelled in on March 5 from Chicago in the United States with a connect flight that went through London in the United Kingdom. Both the USA and the UK were flagged high risk by my country, Uganda.

What followed was silence, then a unanimous decision that shopping essential supplies was paramount. The supermarket in our affluent neighbourhood of Kileleshwa, Kasuku Centre, is often less congested but this particular afternoon, it was as if people went out at the same time to shop. The place was filled to the brim – forcing some prices to shoot up.

At the counter was a Chinese man whose tray was mostly occupied by bathroom tissue paper – enough to cover him for two months or more. I can’t tell if it was the four-metre (up to 13 feet) social distancing recommendation by the World Health Organisation (WHO) or his nationality that is associated with the genesis of the novel Coronavirus, but other panic shoppers gave him more than the deserved distance accompanied with a rare stare. I shopped for beef, bread, soap and groceries. Philip, my other housemate, sent for some alcohol.

“If I have to die, I don’t want to meet God sober,” he joked. He is terrified by face-to-face interactions.

Kenya’s announcement on March 13, 2020, was a wakeup call for Uganda. The virus that supposedly didn’t affected “blacks” or “Africans” as previously assumed had touched base in the region. When I first posted the update on my social media, the first responses I received were asking if the victim was White or Black. Around the East African region, Rwanda, the DR Congo and South Sudan announced cases. Uganda, in the middle, was now sandwiched with cases in all directions.

The next move for President Yoweri Museveni was simple, at least according to the opinion of most Ugandans I interacted with: Close the borders and stop all flights. They didn’t care that out of those borders were other Ugandans like myself – students, expats, parents – who wanted to return to their families. It looked imminent that the President, being the populist that he is, would heed to this pressure. He didn’t.

Instead, the president announced mandatory quarantine for all returning citizens – especially those from “Category One” countries that had more than 1,000 cases confirmed. This was my window to come home. Folks on the “Ugandans in Nairobi” WhatsApp group that I created agreed that if we waited, we would be locked out.

And so, I packed ready for quarantine – normally a 14-day absence from the physical scene but present on social media. Living in Uganda though, where we pay tax for being on social media, it is possible to be absent on both scenes.

The journey home
At Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), I met a one Alex Kawalya. He had spent the night at the airport because he had run out of money to hop onto the next flight. He had just sold his phone to one of the airport staff to get a seat aboard Kenya Airways to Uganda where he wished for a miracle if he was to afford the $100 price per night in Entebbe Central Inn Hotel where government was quarantining returning citizens for 14 days.

Stories of returning Ugandans being herded like sheep by the army to the hotel were sickening. Women and children slept in lobbies and the government would have nothing of the “I am a student on scholarship in Kenya and I can’t afford $100 a night” talk. Like Kawalya, I boarded KQ 412 at 11 a,m., not knowing what fate awaited me at Entebbe International Airport – but I boarded anyway.

It was the only one of the few flights heading to Kampala and from the look of things, one of the last ones as Jambo Jet, Fly Sax, and even Uganda Airlines were no longer plying the EBB-NAI route – a real catch 22 situation. You’re not wanted at home, but you cannot stay where you are.

Uganda confirmed her first case on Saturday, March 21, after I had been in the country for a few hours. The victim, looking feverish, was a Ugandan coming from Dubai and had flown in at 2 a.m. aboard Ethiopian Airlines. Having just flown in and in the process had interacted with another Dubai returnee, the pressure mounted. Even when I wasn’t put in institutional quarantine, I felt sickish. I volunteered Kawalya’s name to the Ministry of Health for testing and he did well.

Life in Quarantine
On March 26 and from my self-quarantine hole at Kisubi Forest Cottages in Entebbe, where I am writing this, Uganda has 14 COVID-19 cases. President Museveni closed the airport and borders soon after and has since closed public transport, churches, markets (except for food stuffs). And as of today (March 26), all the 104 tested samples of suspected cases had turned up negative. From this hole, I keep my family updated about my health at all times. Occasionally, I go out, watch the stars and feed the mosquitoes – they are really hungry.

I have to cough up $40 a night to keep my family and country safe but with the stories of people bribing their way out of quarantine, others not staying home as required and thousands who have to be forced to wash their hands with soap – I am not sure if my sacrifice will make any difference.

One of the new cases is a father who travelled from Kisumi, Kenya, by bus and ended up infecting his 8-month-old baby. My conscience tells me that feeding mosquitoes is much safer that infecting innocent people. When I finally get out of this place on April 3, these mosquitoes will surely miss me.

Alex Taremwa is a graduate of Uganda Christian University, a journalist and Masters Fellow at the Graduate School of Media and Communications, Aga Khan University.

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UCU Shepherds gain notoriety in rugby world

March 23, 2020Sports, Students, UCU Alumni#EastAfrica, #MarchMadness, #rugby, #Sevens, #UgandaChristianUniversity, #UgandaRugbyCranes, sports, UgandaPartnersPatty Huston-Holm

(NOTE: Across the United States, March Madness refers to National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball competitions – a month when university rivalries are at their peak. While March Madness was cancelled due to the Coronavirus in 2020, these Uganda Christian University sports stories are offered in honor of what was to be. The stories are a collaborative of The Standard and UCU Partners.)

By Maxy Abenaitwe

In the early years of the past decade, the Uganda Christian University (UCU) 7s Shepherds were the untouchables of East African rugby.

As a result, the Uganda Rugby Cranes and other national clubs like the Black Pirates continuously fished from the Shepherds’ pond. It is no wonder that half of the Uganda Rugby Cranes are former Shepherds.

Rugby, which originated in England in the first half of the 19^th century, is a sport involving two teams of 15 players each. They carry, pass and kick a ball into an end zone with winning determined by the greatest number of points. Often, the sport is known as “rugby sevens” for seven players per team engaged in seven-minute halves. The most basic law of the game is that no player is allowed to throw the ball forward to a teammate. In rugby, the ball is moved with sideways or backwards tosses or a player kicking and running with the ball.

Uganda had a deep history of men’s rugby participation ahead of the country’s first official rugby match in 1958. In 1955, the Uganda Rugby Football Union was formed. Much as there were no clubs at the time, games were frequently played between representatives from Kenya and Tanzania (or Tanganyika as it was called at the time) teams, but matches were mostly against the Royal Navy as well as some British and South African Universities. In 2000, UCU took on the rugby mantle and over time developed a great team of influential players.

Shepherds (in red jerseys) representing Uganda at international level

Over the years, UCU players have been recognized for their talent. Philip Wakorach has been the most desired player, whose talent is sought across borders, namely in Kenya and France. Equally, Ivan Magomu has been the best fly half (receiver of a short pass). Pius Ogena was recently awarded Male Rugby Player of Year 2019 under the Uganda Sports Press Association Awards, and Desire Ayera was recently ranked 37th player of Uganda’s 2019 top athletes.

Considering their current maiden performance, the current Shepherds are leaving lasting marks. The team won gold at the 2019 University Side Step 7s events. The Shepherds went ahead to win during the 18th AUUS 2019 games at Kisubi University. And immediately after their remarkable performance, two players were called at the National Rugby Cranes team.

Ivan Kabagambe, a former Shepherds’ player, says the great performance is largely inspired by the success of the Shepherds alumni.

“The alumni have also kept in touch to ensure talent keeps growing,” he said. “This has been done majorly through friendly matches between the Shepherds and their alumni.”

Despite a few challenges, Kabagambe thinks there is no excuse for not making it at UCU. This signifies that with more support from the university, the team could do wonders since the passion and talent is there. If only the Shepherds could participate in more tournaments, have more funding and have enough designated rugby training space, more medals would be brought home.

Why the great performance
Approximately 90% of the Shepherds attribute their success in the larger rugby world to UCU’s favorable environment that best suits sports development. They cite the hilly landscape, availability of drinking water all over the compound, access to good food, and use of gym facilities as well as university administrative support and medical attention.

The good medical attention, specifically the physiotherapy, helps the players to quickly get back on their feet and continue with their struggle.

Additionally, UCU sportsmen and women have a reputation of being the best people to work with. This is because of their remarkably good discipline. The factor of character also has contributed to the quick growth of the Shepherds.

The future of rugby
Close to 50% of the rugby clubs, the national team inclusive, have aging players. This means university students are being targeted and have professional opportunities.

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‘Nursing is a calling from God’

February 21, 2020Faculty of Engineering, Design & Technology, Faculty of Public Health, Nursing and Midwifery, UCU Alumni#AnnetKabanyoro, #healthcare, #KampalaInternationalUniversity, #UgandaChristianUniversity, #wellness, Africa, Nursing, UCUPartnersPatty Huston-Holm

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.

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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.

Sheila Ainembabazi, 2019 UCU Literacy Project Intern: ‘God will make a way’

January 5, 2020Scholarship, UCU Alumni# JohnSenyonyi, #Mbarara, Christianity, God, Law, Poverty, Uganda, Uganda Christian UniversityPatty Huston-Holm

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.

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.”

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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.

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Allan Kasango, 2019 UCU Literacy Project Intern: ‘I ask the Lord to show me’

January 3, 2020UCU Alumni: #socialwork, #dissertation, #internship, #Research, #UgandaChristianUniversity, Christianity, HIV/AIDS, LiteracyPatty Huston-Holm

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.

“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.”

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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.

UCU graduate uses personal scars to reinforce war against child abuse

December 16, 2019UCU Alumni#childabuse, #Masaka, #MissUgandaBeautyPageant, #News, #UCUAlumnus, #UgandaChristianUniversity, Frank Gashumba, LawrenceMukibi, Poverty, UCUPartners, UgandaPatty Huston-Holm

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 USU graduate was purposely burned over 80% of her body at age 13. — 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.”

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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.

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