An Open Letter from Uganda
Disciples are doing significant work all over the world. I am fortunate to know DOC folks in many Regions. Reprinted below is a letter from some people I don’t know that are, if the British Airways strike is over, either back in the states or nearly back. It recounts their time in Uganda and highlights what Christians could, should, ought to be doing in the name of social justice by living out the social gospel of Jesus of Nazareth. It is something we could, should, ought to be doing in these United States for the common good of us all.
March 17, Friday, An open letter to people everywhere. Uganda does not need more missionaries, itinerant or otherwise. It has plenty. It has plenty of churches. In Costa Rica, every village has a school and a soccer field. In Uganda, every village has two or more churches, empty when it is not Saturday or Sunday. Uganda needs engineers, sanitation workers, landfills, garbage pick up, covered drainage ditches, paved roads, sewage, water systems, trained technicians, well designed electrical grid. Roads paved. Maintenance. Traffic laws. Enforced. Textbooks written after 1970. If you must send missionaries equip them to build and repair with local resources. There are enough Bibles. There is not enough malaria medication, not to mention antibiotics, birth control, decent maternity care, well child care, funding for orphan care, Jobs. although there is no lack of need for the work that would provide jobs. 75% of the population is under 25. Talk about a baby boom. I told a group of high school students, yesterday, they will change Uganda. I did not tell them it would be with strikes and marches and crime. I was ready to come home Monday. My work here is ceremonial, documentary, and laundry. Hervey's work is fixing, fixing, fixing, and calmly fielding unending requests for school fees, money to fix latrines, staff quarters, shoes, lunch money, teacher's guides, soccer balls ... . Walking to the taxi stage after visiting a school, we passed the school where H fixed their borehole, two latrines, and gave the children soccer, net, and volleyballs. He heard the children say "muzungu" (white people). The official he works with here laughed. H asked what they said. He told him they shouted, "our muzungu." This morning, my last in Hoima, I sat outside the hotel wall and watched the street just before sunrise. Few cars or motorbikes. Many bikes and walkers. People going to open their shops. Carrying supplies. Guards carrying rifles. A man in shirt and tie on a bike. Children going to school. Two tiny girls dressed in pink checked skirts and pink veils came up to me and greeted me and I them. The tiniest chattered to me. I asked if they were going to school. I think the older girl knew some English. She nodded, kept the veil over her mouth. Beautiful girls. Enormous brown eyes, Sweet dispositions, which is the national disposition.