First water, then goats and computers: an English parish's links with Uganda

For A Change, Dec-Jan, 2000 by Ann Rignall

When an English church looked for a clean-water project to support in 1983, no one knew how far it would lead, writes Ann Rignall.

The speaker held up two glasses of water--one clear and sparkling, the other cloudy. He asked his audience whether they would like a drink. When they replied in the affirmative, he hid the one filled with clear water and offered them the other. `In many places in Africa this is all that is available for the people to drink.' He was speaking on behalf of the Busoga Trust, a small charity set up in response to the Bishop of Busoga's passionate desire to see the two million people in his Ugandan diocese have clean drinking water.

The speaker was at St Peter's Church in Hale, an affluent commuter suburb of Manchester. Most of its inhabitants are professional or business people. In 1983 they were looking for a project in support of the United Nations' call for the 1980s to be `the decade for clean water'. They selected the Busoga Trust and for six years raised money for it, through garden parties, ploughman's lunches, coffee mornings, talks and generous personal giving.

The coordinator of the Trust suggested that St Peter's be twinned with a rural parish in Busoga Diocese to establish a more personal relationship. They began to establish a link with the village of Nawaikoke some 70 miles from Jinja, Busoga's main town. Nawaikoke is rural with no electricity or running water. Cooking is done over open fires. It took time for the link to be set up owing to the political situation in Uganda. `But a flame had been lit,' says Keith Neal, the secretary of St Peter's Committee for Mission, `and we sensed that God did not mean it to be extinguished.'

This was the attitude of all those involved in the project. They met difficulties and setbacks, but were not put off. In 1992 the curate of St Peter's, Clenyg Squire, spent six weeks in Uganda. On his return, 100 people came to a public meeting at the church. Nawaikoke began to live for them. He had discussed with the villagers four possible income-generating projects for consideration by St Peter's. After much enthusiastic discussion the congregation settled on providing a milling facility for maize, millet and cassava.

In due course another member of St Peter's Committee for Mission, Anthony Holmes, went to Nawaikoke to install the flour milling machinery. He tells of the difficulties of concocting a mounting system for the mill. `I was taken to the depths of an open market in Kampala where we bartered for rubber cut from old tyres and for nuts and bolts rescued from goodness knows where, probably old locomotives. Timber we bought from the roadside.... I recall the difficulty with cutting holes in the timber. No one in Nawaikoke could find a drill, so a luckless fellow was assigned to cut the holes, through three-inch hardwood planks, using a rough and blunt chisel.'

Transporting the mill itself was another adventure. `By the time a puncture had been repaired and my driver had concluded an important meeting with the local clergyman, two hours had been lost. We were scheduled to collect the Archdeacon en route and we lost more time having tea with him and his wife. Still our late arrival in Nawaikoke didn't seem to matter.'

As the years went by more initiatives followed, such as a nutrition project to improve the health of women and children in particular. Out of this grew a goat-breeding project. In all, some 20 members of St Peter's visited Uganda to see the situation for themselves and to help install equipment and machinery. Most paid their own fares and at times they went against their own inclination.

In spite of the difficulties, those who took part had a sense of God leading them to people who could help, in both Uganda and the UK. The goat-breeding project was an example. Caroline Holmes, Anthony's wife and a lay reader at St Peter's, visited Nawaikoke to talk and work with the women. She realized that the women in rural Busoga had no access to milk and, because of their poor diet, their breast milk was like water and lasted only about three months. Their goats only yielded about half a cup of milk a day, and needed to be bred with good dairy goats.

`I never cease to be amazed how one thing can lead to another,' wrote Caroline. `No sooner had I started enquiring about the possibility of using dairy goats to make milk available to the poorest women, than we came across Gideon Nadiope.' Part of Gideon's passion and vision was dairy goats. `He had spent a whole month's wages obtaining a catalogue from America about some dual-purpose (milk/meat) dairy goats which were being bred in Kenya with American money and know-how.'

It was a long struggle to get the goats from Kenya to Uganda. A vital link was an honest customs man who let them over the border without demanding bribes or requisitioning the animals. The goats were eventually given to four people in 1999. It is a four-year programme and Gideon monitors it constantly. Finance came from sources other than St Peter's and US Aid is hoping to set up more such schemes in Uganda.