Pictures

This is a blog post of pictures, given that I haven’t really shown any for a while. I figured I’d put them on one blog and then put them up at an internet café (room with computers that you can pay to use) where I have sufficient internet. Let’s start with the Introduction from June 16th (I hope I have the right date). I blogged about it before but with no photos. This is me with a kanzu, common formal wear for men among the Muganda (the ethnic group where Kampala is). The other woman is wearing part of a gomesi, the female formal wear. She had taken part of it off because the thing was over. The picture was taken in what would be like the “living room” of the guesthouse where I stayed while in Kampala. When wearing these, you usually put a sports jacket over it, hence why I was wearing a sports jacket. (Oh and she’s one of the workers at the Kampala office.)

The next two are from two different dance performances.

This next one is at the presentation of the cake. I believe they are igniting the sparklers when it was taken. I find the facial and body language to be awesome. This is the bride to be with her her “eldest brothers” (they were pretending).

 Now for some pictures of my school where I am.



 This is a picture of the Last Supper, made by some of the students many years ago for a competition.

This is a picture of the resurrection, another art project. It reminds me of Church of the Ascension, my home church in Pittsburgh, which has a large painting of the resurrection in the front of the sanctuary. The door on the left next to it is the door where I stayed in for a week and is now my office. 

If you go into that door on the left, you’ll see this room, currently my office. Hanging up is my Kanzu. This hook is high enough up for a body-length article of clothing.

This is the room I now stay in, with Charles. The bed on the left is mine, and the other his.

These are of all the students at the school. It was taken at a school-wide fellowship (like chapel at Wheaton). It’s taken in the school library. The teachers are not in this picture, being one of them, they were next to me and beyond view of the camera. The library is usually the room that I teach in: all but one of my classes is in there.

 I will have more pictures soon, hopefully in the next week.

A Normal Day

I find it ironic that I write about a “normal” day at my school, though I haven’t had such a day for about a week and a half. This is because this last week has been exams week. (I am writing this on Saturday July 21.) It’ll be the same with next week, and then the school closes in August. What that means is that I haven’t really been doing any actual work for the last few weeks and won’t until September. Great time to catch up with my HNGR assignments! Well sort of, that would be easier to do if all the teachers weren’t a little bored/restless and constantly socializing. Anyways, the following is a normal day. I wake up around 7-8, which is late for most here. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I often go to the school’s Fellowship (i.e. chapel) if I am up on time. Afterwards, when I don’t hav to teach immediately afterwards, I usually hang in the staff room with the other teachers who aren’t teaching, doing a mix of reading and socializing. Most days I’d end up teaching one or two two-hour classes. They are slowly increasing the number of classes I am teaching, which took a little halt because of the exams. In the afternoons, I often receive a Luganda lesson (the local language) by one of the maids here. She wants to learn English better, and I think she uses the lessons to learn more English as well. At around 4, I go to my ethnography (usually on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays). The ethnography’s a HNGR assignment and involves observing a cultural space. I am doing it at a local grocery shop. There I help the other worker sell stuff, a daunting task when it’s realized that most customers and I don’t speak the same language or at least are not used to my accent. It’s a good place to practice my Luganda, although that’s a more interesting feature in of itself. As I get better in Luganda, they speak it more, and let’s just say I get completely lost. I usually leave around 6ish. I go back to my homestay and chill. This usually involves a mix of reading and socializing as people are usually in and out the whole night. Sometimes visitors read sometimes they socialize. Of late the former is more common because my host-brother (what I am calling the person I am staying with because he’s single and has no family) has some newspapers, which attracts teachers. I usually eat dinner around 9ish, the common mealtime here, and often as late as 10. Around 10 to 11ish I go to bed.

Homestay

So I have staying with my home stay for about the last few weeks (I honestly can’t remember when I moved in), and I haven’t described it yet. Okay so when I first came to the Ranch (the school compound), I stayed at a guest house for about a week or so until I moved into my home stay. My home stay is with a man named Kenneth, who is the Administrator at this school. I live with him and his servant Charles. Charles is a student at the local secondary school but is from Rwanda. Charles and I share a room (see the picture of my room in the Pictures blog post). By staying here and doing some work around the house, Charles’ boarding fees are paid. We live across the street from the school, maybe 90 feet away! This sort of arrangement, living in a house near the school with a servant(s), is the most common living arrangement for teachers here. Most are (as far as I can figure out) single people without families. Below is a picture of the three of us. I may get a better one later.

Three Sons

So when people ask how many siblings I have and I answer that I have two brothers, most give one of two responses: "Your father must be a poor man" or "Only three?" The first is based on the fact that when you marry here, the husband's family gives a lot of cows to the wife's. Usually the expenses for this are paid for by the husband's sister(s) from the cows she receives when she gets married. With no sisters we don't have that. (I could draw from any father's brother's daughters who are also sisters here, but they have enough brothers themselves.) Anyways, my father would have to dish out a lot about now if he were a Ugandan. That being said, he would also be honored to spread his name with many offspring, which are spread through the father's line i.e. through sons, but that's talked about less here. When people are shocked that I only have three, they are more shocked when I say one is a step brother (I don't start with that for the sake of conciseness), that is that my mom has only two kids! Most families here are about 6-8. That may be complicated because father's brother's children are considered siblings, so when I ask how many siblings people have we often speak with differing terms.

Meat

I remember talking with a teacher here about food. She was describing different Ugandan foods and asking if I had each of them while here. The answer was mostly yes, between my two months here and month last year I have had many dishes. She then asked me about American food. I started describing different American foods my family would make. I forget which foods I was talking about, but the first thing she said was that all we eat is meat. Meat here is associated with wealth/status: it is expensive and rare. When I started describing different U.S. meals, all of which revolve around meat, I was in her mind elevating myself above her. I quickly tried to cover this up by saying that in the U.S. meat is very common, but this only made things worse as this only demonstrated U.S.’s superior wealth over Ugandans. I tried to cover up my tracks by arguing that growing up in the city, we all had to buy food from supermarkets (which means something slightly different here but is similar enough to get the point across). That there meat is about as expensive as fruits and vegetables, so we can buy a lot of it. (Most rural Ugandans eat a mix of foods they grow and stuff bought from nearby. What one eats rarely comes from more than say a few miles away.) I also had to explain that most fruits and vegetables grown there come from other parts of the U.S., and it is thus more expensive, hence it’s the same price as meat. (Even in major Ugandan cities like Kampala, meat is like 8 times the price as anything else.) I don’t know if any of this is actually true, having not really started doing much grocery shopping yet. As a matter of fact if anyone wants to correct me, then it would be incredibly helpful. I won’t promote false myths about U.S. food across Uganda! I also don’t know where most of my food comes from nor type of food grows near Pittsburgh: I’ve been asked many times and often sort of make up an answer. I thought dairy farming is popular in southwestern PA, something that would be oddly helpful if true because it is important here in Central Uganda as well. I am staying at a ranch where my school is and cow mooing is almost a constant thing: there are several mooing outside as I type. Anyways, I got distracted. My point in this blog is not to discuss cattle mooing, but to reflect on something. I have been given a quick glib response to the accusation of U.S. status that I hoped would somehow absolve me of any potential gluttony. I have no idea if it’s actually true, as a matter of fact I sort of made it up on the fly. What I wanted to talk about was that I never thought about meat-eating as a wealthy or status symbol. Maybe that’s a Ugandan (or East African or African) thing that is justifiably not the same in the U.S. (it is true that I would associate vegetarianism with the upper-middle class because it is in my mind more financially more difficult). Maybe we are a bunch of snobby pigs. I don’t know. It did make me think. Every time I think about U.S. food, I realize how meat-filled it actually is. Clearly things like burgers, steaks, etc., but even meals not inherently meat-orientated like pasta, pizza, etc. usually include some sort of meat. Growing up, the meat defined the meal and if meat wasn’t a significant portion of what you ate, it wasn’t a meal. Here in rural Uganda, I do get meat few weeks. In Kampala, I got it every lunch. Though for both of these I would eat like a dice-sized portion. This is one example of when I accidentally walk into a land-mine when I answer a question about the U.S. Saying we do something that is considered “high status” or “unfair” here. I don’ always know what to do. I don’t really have any conclusion for any of this except maybe that I am more aware of when I eat meat.

Sermons

I have been hearing some Scriptural readings in different sermons that I figured would be interesting for those in the United States, hence this blog entry. It should be noted that Pentecostal here doesn’t mean what it normally means in the United States. As a matter of fact, I offended someone when I asked if Pentecostal services normally involve speaking in tongues, which so far I have not seen. Pentecostal is often used as a blanket term for Christian but not Anglican or Catholic, the two largest churches here. One Pentecostal pastor whom I am friends with said that the distinction between say Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, etc. are not readily acknowledged and that on a practical level and particularly in practical conversation these all sort of mesh under the umbrella of Pentecostal. It may be a little more accurate to say “Pentecostal” in Uganda means something closer to what “Evangelical” means in the United States: a general term for many Protestant denominations. Interestingly the Pentecostals here in the rural area refer to themselves as “Born-Agains” and put a huge emphasis on conversion and followed by immediate radical self-transformation. I write all this about Pentecostalism because all the sermons were made at a church that people refer to as Pentecostal. The first is from a church in Kampala on my third week in Uganda. It was about Leah naming her children particularly Judah. See Genesis 29:31-35, but here’s a brief synopsis. Leah was miserable because she was not loved by her husband, Jacob who favored her sister Rachel, but she was having children not Rachel. Her first three sons were named pessimistic names, based off of her unfortunate situation. E.g. she named her first son Reuben based on this: “It is because the Lord has seen my misery. Surely my husband will love me now.” (v 32) The next two were given similar names. Judah’s name means “This time I will praise the Lord” (v 34), where she decided to forgo her misery and praise God. The pastor explained that because of this name, Judah grew up to be the head of the family (in spite of being the fourth born) and then Judah’s clan became the most prosperous (see Numbers) and then became the head of Israel, the first of the twelve to march in battle in the Joshua/Judges period, and then King David. And then Jesus as the ultimate ruler of all. There was a connection between this naming and Jacob’s blessing of his sons in Genesis 49, of which many sons got rather bleak blessings but Judah got a much positive one. Leah’s decision to praise the Lord through Judah though was the first cause of his and his descendants positive existence, as opposed to her other three sons who not only lost seniority as sons to Judah but whose descendents had not quite as good blessings from Jacob nor quite as prosperous of a history. I feel like people in the U.S. often gloss over the naming parts of the Old Testament, which this sermon focused. In a nearby church, they gave the following sermon on Mark 8:22-26. I decided to copy the text below because it will important for understanding the sermon. Mark 8:22-26 They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged to Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spat on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, ‘Do you see anything.’ He looked up and said, ‘I see people; they look like trees walking around.’ Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. Jesus sent him home, saying ‘Don’t go into the village.’” So the preacher emphasized the fact that Jesus took the blind man out of the town/city to heal him. (There is no real difference in meaning between the two in Ugandan English, and he used the word “city” instead. I will be true to his wording and do the same.) For him, the city represents our sinful states, e.g. lust/adultery, theft, abuse, witchcraft, etc. In order to be healed, we must leave our cities. This is why Jesus took the blind man out of the city before he healed him: it would be unproductive to heal without doing this. This wasn’t a questioning of Jesus’ power, but that the city, in particular the demonic presence there, was what caused him to blind in the first place so that he wouldn’t be fully healed. We must leave our cities, our states of sins, never turn back or even look back. (Of all things, this reminded me of Lot fleeing Sodom and Gemorrah at their destruction and his wife’s death because she looked back. See Gen 19:17, 23-26). If we turn back, we’ll end up much worse than when we started. He cited Jesus’ statement about a person being exorcized of a demon only to have the demon return with six of his friends. He didn’t make a distinction between having a sinful habit and being demon-possessed. The demon coming back was a return with a vengeance and then the six demons were six other sinful habits. This would only make our suffering worse. For him, you had to leave your cities we live in prevent us from receiving divine blessing and give you an unhappy life, and we need to allow Jesus to hold your hand so that you may leave.

Night Time Stories

Nights can be DARK here, particularly when there is no moon and/or on a cloudy night. Of course there are no lamp lights or anything like that, and when there is no moon, no light at all. During full moons, it’s nice. You can see forever. I haven’t been scared of the dark like I did with my first few nights in Kamwenge (a rural district in southwestern Uganda) last year. These two stories are interesting stories that occurred at night. I was walking back home with a few teachers. It was a moonless and cloudless night, so it was dark, roughly cave dark. One of them wanted to visit this lady’s house that we were passing by. As we walked through the gate, I was a little confused as to where the gate for her house was because I had never been to her house before. (When you can’t see, memory is all you really have.) Knowing that I had a flashlight in my pocket, not on but just in case I needed it, they were making fun of me telling me that I should take it out and use it. We got to the porch, and we asking if anyone is home. (People don’t knock here, but simply shout into the house asking if anyone’s home.) It turned out that the woman was bathing on the front porch about 5 feet in front of where we were standing. It was so dark that we couldn’t see her at all! Anyways that meant that she was naked, so we didn’t visit her that night. We left, and I told my friends that they should consider themselves lucky that I didn’t turn on my flashlight. This second story is one I have to constantly retell to my friends as they find it hilarious. It was on my second night here in rural Uganda. There was no moon, but at least it wasn’t a cloudy night. I was about a mile away from my home, walking back, the first time I walked that far in one of these dark nights. When walking back I reached the road I need to turn onto. I was walking without light, though I had a flashlight in my pocket. I saw this strange white thing in front of me, and I turned on the light to see what it was. I thought it was a water spucket, a sign that I had gone too far, but it turned out to be a person. I could tell the person had a weapon on his back (I thought it was a rifle, but it turned out to be a bow). What weirded me out was that he did not move. Who when you shine a light directly in your face, doesn’t flinch at all. He stood there motionless and silent. At first I thought he was a statue. To go through it there’s gate for the road that you have to go through as it is closed at night. He was standing directly in front of the little “doorway” for the gate, meaning that as I through it, I had to go right next to him. It was obvious that this was intentional, and I stood for a few seconds deciding whether I would get close to him. It was also certain that he had a weapon in a sash swung over one of his shoulders. After I walked through, twice I turned around and shone the light on him to see whether he was following me. He wasn’t. The second time, after I was maybe a hundred feet away from him, he finally talked and asked what I wanted. He then explained that he was a guard, common things here. My first thought was that’s what he was, but guards are usually more lax. They don’t stand perfectly still like soldier’s at the queens palace. I was later told that he was frequently paid pranks and his completely lack of movement and positioning such that I had to be within a few feet from him was probably that. Anyways, the teachers here love this story.

Rain

So I was told by many people that Nakasongola, the region of Uganda I am in, is a semi-desert. That is it rains infrequently, though not quite rare enough to be considered a full-fledged desert. When I got here, it did look dry. The ground was much dryer, packed into the reddish color from the heat, almost like bricks. It seems like this place has ideal soil for brick-making. It’s also hotter here, than Kampala at least, and Kamwenge (saying it’s hotter than Kamwenge isn’t saying much though as that region is in the hills and known as one of the coldest in Uganda. OMG, it’s so cold: it can get as low as 60 F there!) Anyways, I am confused at the supposed dryness since for the last 10 days it’s rained every day. And we’re not even in the rainy season, or what is normally the rainy season, as far as I can tell at least. I find all this strange. When it rains, the place is MUDDY. I think because the ground is not the most used to rain, it does not absorb it very well. Unlike the sand of actual deserts though, which basically absorbs absolutely none of it, it does for the first maybe inch or two of the soil that cannot be absorbed easily into the dirt below. This is ideal for “mudslides” (luckily this place is so flat that actual mudslides from hills are not an issue) and for general muddy messes. Evidently the cows are not the best for this either: the area is commonly used for cattle grazing (it’s too dry to really grow any crops so they have cows) and when they walk through an area, their hoofs unpack the dirt, which then flies off when it rains. On top of that, the reddish soil when wet effectively turns into clay and becomes the stickiest mud I’ve even seen. Every day last week after walking outside after the rain quite literally only 30 feet, the bottom of my shoes would be covered in a 2-inch layer of soot. It would take just about forever to get off.

             This was written on Thursday June 28. I say this because the date may be important to note. It hasn't rained since (this is being posted on the following Sunday).

Good Reads

This may seem like an odd topic for a blog post, but I figured that one would not get a full understanding of my HNGR experience without having some experience of the stuff I am reading. Okay a little context, I have been reading some books during downtimes while here, some of them are assigned readings for classes and some are books I bought. I decided to include some of my favorite passages as a blog post. These may or may not be “HNGR-ish” or some more than others, if that word has meaning. I know not everyone who read this blogs like reading long passage, but that’s what this post consists of. I prefer long sections instead of quick, short quotes out of context.

This first passage is from Christianity Rediscovered by Vincent Donovan, a reading for one of the HNGR classes I am taking. He was a missionary with the Masai in Tanzania. This was taken from his first trip among them. For those who had Dr. Yamamato, he often read this passage out loud in class, although I don’t know if I will start and stop at the same point as he did.

            “I remember the very first week of instructions when I asked the Masai to tell me what they thought about God. I was more than startled when a young Masai elder stood up and said, ‘If I ever run into God, I will put a spear through him.’

            Here he was immersed on one side in an unshakable belief in the existence of God, and faced on the other side with the numbing reality of a life that includes pain and sickness, death of children and los of cattle. This young elder was trying to come to terms with a God who seemed to responsible for it all. His thoughts were really not very far removed from those of many young Americans and Europeans today; not really very different from the mentality of Albert Camus in The Plague. This is the point at which religious reflection began for him in a very real way. So this is the point at which we began to speak with him and his fellow tribesmen about the Christian idea of God. The question evoked by this comment of his was his question, not ours, and we tried to answer it the best we could.

            It is as good a starting place as any for preaching the gospel to the Masai.

            For the Masai, there is only one God, Engai, but he goes by many names. Sometimes they call him male, sometimes female. When he is kind and propitious they call him the black God. When he is angry, the red God. Sometimes they call him rain, since this is a particularly pleasing manifestation of God. But he is always one, true God. They asked if we did the same. I had to admit that for us, also, God goes by many names, and that in the long history of the bible, the same is true. Indeed, I was to find from research, as a result of this question of theirs, that the Jews called God, on occasion, fire, breeze, and God of the mountain. They were a bet incredulous to learn, that, for all practical purposes, we leave the female out of God, and we consider him as only male, which is, of course as patently wrong as considering God only female. God is neither male nor female, which is an animal classification, but certainly embodies the qualities which we like to believe exist in both. If the Masai wanted to refer to God as she as well as he, I could certainly find nothing theologically incorrect about the notion. Their idea seems much more embracing and universal than ours – and not a whit less biblical:

            ‘Does a woman forget her baby at the breast, or fail to cherish the son of her womb? Yet even if these forget, I will never forget you’ (Is 49:15).

            Then they told me of God, Engai, who loved rich people more than poor people, healthy people more than the sick, the God who loved good people because they were good and rewarded them for their goodness. They told me of God who hated evil people – ‘those dark, evil ones out there’ – and punished them for their evil. Then they told me of the God who loved the Masai more than all other tribes, loved them fiercely, jealously, exclusively. His power was known throughout the lush grasslands of the Masai steppes; his protection saved them from all surrounding, hostile, Masai-hating tribes, and assured them of victory in war over these tribes; his goodness was seen in the water and rain and cattle and children he gave them.

            I finally spoke up and told them they reminded me of another great people that lived long ago, and live until the present time. ‘They are the Hebrew tribe, the Jews, the Israelis. They are famous the world over for having preserved in the world the knowledge of the one, true God. But it was not always easy for them. They often tried to restrict that God to their tribe and to their land, and so made him less of a God than he really was.

            ‘One time, in the early days of their tribe, he called a man named Abraham and said to him, Abraham, come away from this land of yours. Leave your people and your tribe and your land, and come to the land I will show you. And all nations will be blessed in you, if you do this.

            ‘The God of the tribe of Abraham had become a God who was no longer free. He was tripped in that land, among that tribe. He had to be freed from that nation, that tribe, that land in order to become the High God.’

            Each African tribe believes in God, and it is generally considered to be a monotheistic God. But each tribe likes to restrict the attention and protection of this God to its own territory, thus planting the seeds for polytheism.

            I continued talking with the people who were now listening very closely: ‘When Abraham followed God out of his land, there began on this earth the story of the one, living, High God.

            ‘Everyone knows how devout you Masai are, the faith you have, your beautiful worship of God. You have known God and he has loved you. But I wonder if, perhaps, you have not become like the people of the tribe of Abraham. Perhaps God has become trapped in this Masai country, among this tribe. Perhaps God is no longer free here. What will the Kikuyu do to protect themselves against this god of the Masai – and the Sonjo? They will have to have their own gods. Perhaps the story of Abraham speaks also to you. Perhaps you Masai also must leave your nation and your tribe and your land, at least in your thoughts, and go in search of the High God, the God of all tribes, the God of the world. Perhaps your God is not free. Do not try to hold him here or you will never know him. Free you God to become the High God. You have known this God and worshipped him, but he is greater than you have known. He is the God not only of the Masai, but also my God, and the God of the Kikuyu and Sonjo, and the God of every tribe and nation in the world.

            ‘And the God who loves rich people and hates poor people? The God who loves good people and hates evil people – ‘those dark, evil ones out there’? The God who loves us because we are good and hates us because we are evil? There is no God like that. There is only the God who loves us no matter how good or how evil we are, the God you have worshipped without really knowing him, the truly unknown God – the High God.’

            There was silence. Perhaps I had gone too far. The mention of a wandering search that took a lifetime must have evoked memories of their own ancestor recalled from generation to generation around the nomadic campfires. Abraham himself must have seemed like a long lost ancestor to them, he who used to like to ‘fill his eyes with cattle.’ The Masai are a Nilotic people, and they have a dim remembrance of their ancestors crossing the ‘great river’ in their wandering exile. If you look at a map of Northeastern Africa you will find the record of that historic trek. All along the sites they passed through have Masai names until today. The word Khartoum in the Masai language means ‘we have acquired.’ That is where they believe they first acquired their cattle. Khartoum today is the capital of the Sudan. When they came up out of the steamy jungles of the Sudan into the cold plains of Kenya, they said, ‘nairobi,’ which means cold, and it stands as the main city in Kenya and East Africa today. They finally discovered their promised land of milk and honey (the two most desired and appreciated items in the Masai diet) in the empire they cared out of East Africa. But the High God! That was something else.

            Finally someone broke the silence with a question. Whether he asked the question out of curiosity or anger, I do not know. I only know it surprised me:

            ‘This story of Abraham – does it speak only to the Masai? Or does it speak also to you? Has your tribe found the High God? Have you known him?’

            I was about to give a glib answer, when all of a sudden I thought of Joan of Arc. I don’t know why I thought of her, but suddenly I remembered that since the time of Jeanne D-Arc, if not before, the French have conceived of God (le bon Dieu – what would the Masai think of him?) as being a rather exclusively and intimately associated with their quest for glory. I wonder what god they prayed to?

            Americans have some kind of certainty that ‘almighty God’ will always bless their side in all their wars. Hitler never failed to call on the help of ‘Gott, der Allmachtige’ in all speeches, in all his adventures. A Nazi doctor once told me that they could always count on the Catholic school children to pray for Hitler every morning, to ask God’s blessing on him. What god, the Teuton god?

            I have been to many parishes in America where they prayed for victory in war. I recognized the god they were praying to – the tribal god. I will recognize him more easily now, after having lived among the Masai. And what about the God who loves the good people, industrious people, clean people, rich people, and punishes bad people, lazy people, dirty people, thieving people, people without jobs and on welfare – ‘those dark, evil people out there?’ Which god is that?

            I was there for a long time in silence looking at the Masai people. They called their God Engai. Well, that is no more strange-sounding than our gods. The god invoked by the people to bless the troops of Mussolini about to embark on the plunder of Ethiopia, and the god invoked by an American cardinal to bless the ‘soldiers of Christ’ in Vietnam, and the god the French glory, and the German god of Hitler were no more the High God of scripture than is ‘Diana of the Ephesians’ or Engai of the Masai of East Africa.

            To each one of these cultures must ever be presented again the proclamation of the message, symbolized in the call of Abraham – to leave their land and their nation, to learn of the High God, the God of the world. All nations are to be blessed in Abraham.

            ‘No, we have not found the High God. My tribe has not known him. For us, too, he is the unknown God. But we are searching for him. I have come a long, long distance to invite you to search for him with us. Let us search for him together. Maybe, together, we will find him.’” (This is from pages 32 to 36 in my version of the book at least. It’s most of the beginning section in the fourth chapter).

This is another passage that I liked from the same book. It’s from the same chapter, although this time at the end. You may be glad that this one is much shorter.

            “I was sitting talking with a Masai elder about the agony of belief and unbelief. He used two languages to respond to me – how own and Kiswahili. He pointed out that the word my Masai catechist, Paul, and I had used to convey faith was not a very satisfactory word in their language. It meant literally ‘to agree with.’ I, myself, knew the word had that shortcoming. He said ‘to believe’ like that was similar to a white hunter shooting an animal with his gun from a great distance. Only his eyes and his fingers took part in the act. We should find another word. He said for a man really to believe is like a lion going after its prey. His nose and eyes and ears pick up the prey. His legs given him the speed to catch it. All the power of his body is involved in the terrible death leap and single blow to the neck with the front paw, the blow that actually kills. And as the animal goes down the lion envelops it in his arms (Africans refer to the front legs of an animal as its arms), pulls it to himself, and makes it part of himself. This is the way a lion kills. This is the way a man believes. This is what faith is.

            I looked at the elder in silence and amazement. Faith understood like that would explain why, when my own was gone, I ached in every fiber of my being. But my wise old teacher was not finished yet.

            ‘We did not search you out, Padri,’ he said to me. ‘We did not even want you to come to us. You searched us out. You followed us away from your house into the bush, into the plains, into the steppes where out cattle are, into the hills where we take our cattle for water, into our villages, into our homes. You told us of the High God, how we must search for him, even leave our land and our people to find him. But we have not done this. We have not left our land. We have not searched for him. He has searched for us. He has searched us out and found us. All the time we think we are the lion. In the end, the lion is God.’

            The lion is God. Of course. Goodness and kindness and holiness and grace and divine presence and creating power and salvation were here before I got here. Even fuller understanding of God’s revelation to man, of the gospel, of the salvific act that had been accomplished once and for all for the human race was here before I got here.” (From page 48)

The second one is Isaiah 25:1-9 (NIV translation). I won’t talk about why I like it as I will let it speak for itself.

“O lord, you are my God; I exalt you

And praise your name,

For in perfect faithfulness

You have done marvelous things,

Things planned long ago.

You have made the city

A heap of rubble,

The fortified town a ruin,

The foreigner’s stronghold

A city no more;

It will never be rebuilt.

Therefore strong peoples

Will honor you;

Cities of ruthless nations

Will revere you.

You have been a refuge

For the poor.

A refuge for the needy

In his distress,

A shelter from the storm

And a shade from the heat.

For the breath of the ruthless

Is like a storm

Driving against a wall

And like the heat of the desert.

You silence the uproar

Of foreigners

As heat is reduced

By the shadow of a cloud

So the song of the ruthless

Is stilled.

On this mountain

The Lord Almighty will prepare

A feast of rich food for all peoples

A banquet for aged wine –

The best meats

And the finest wines.

On this mountain

He will destroy

The shroud

That enfolds all peoples,

The sheet that covers all nations;

He will swallow up death

For ever.

The Sovereign Lord

Will wipe way the tears

From all faces;

He will remove the disgrace

Of his people

From all the earth.

The Lord has spoke.

In that day they will say,

‘Surely this is our God;

We trusted in him,

And he saved us.

This is the Lord,

We trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad

In his salvation.”

This next passage is from The Politics of Jesus by John Yoder. He is discussing the hymn about Christ in Philippians 2:5-11.

            “In other ages, we observed, theology understood these words as having to do with the divine nature of the eternal Son of God and his condescending to take on human nature. This was the best way to say it when people could think most meaningfully in terms of ‘essences’ and ‘substances.’ But it is equally relevant – and much closer to the substance of the text of this hymn, as we shall see in a moment – to see in ‘equality with God’ also the element of providential control of events, the alternative being the acceptance of impotence. Christ renounced the claim to govern history.

The universal testimony of Scripture is that Christians are those who follow Christ at just this point. The text we were just reading, Philippians 2, was cited by the apostle as part of his plea to the Christians at Philippi to live together more unselfishly. The visions of the book of Revelation go on from the heavenly throne room, where the lam is praised, to a vision of triumph (ch. 12) where the multitude of ‘our brethren’ has defeated the dragon ‘by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.’ Elsewhere, Paul can describe the entire apostolic ministry with its inner and outer sufferings as a matter of ‘carrying about in our bodies the putting to death of Jesus, so that in our bodies the life of Jesus also may be made manifest’ (2 Cor. 4:10). This is what Jesus himself meant by recognizing as disciple only the one who is ready to take up a cross and follow him.

The reason Paul drew upon the hymn to the servant Lord was that he sought to move the Christians in Philippi to a more unselfish attitude to one another, in the interests of more brotherly relationships within the congregation. It was in this connection that we referred to the hymn, since it is one more example of the call to the Christian to imitate his or her Master.

But the original meaning of the hymn was far more than we perceive if we note only the point at which a Christian can be invited to respect the example of Christ. The initial confession of the hymn to the servant Lord was the dramatic juxtaposition of his condescension to the point of death with his victory. The renunciation of equality with God (v. 6) has been understood in later Christian doctrinal development as referring to the metaphysical meaning of deity and incarnation, but probably the first meaning in the hymn was the more concrete Godlikeness promised by the serpent to Adam in the garden, which would have consisted in unchecked dominion over creation. Or perhaps it refers as well to the kind of Godlikeness claimed by Caesar. What Jesus renounced was thus not simply the metaphysical status of sonship but rather the untrammeled sovereign exercise of power in the affairs of that humanity amid which he came to dwell. His emptying of himself, his accepting the form of servanthood and obedience unto death, is precisely his renunciation of lordship, his apparent abandonment of any obligation to be effective in making history more down the right track.

But the judgment of God upon this renunciation and acceptance of defeat is the declaration that this is victory. ‘Therefore God has greatly exalted him and given him the title, which every creature will have to confess, the Lord.’ ‘Lord’ in the earliest Christian confessions was not (as it is in so much modern piety) a label to state a believer’s humility or affection or devotion; it is an affirmation of his victorious relation to the powers of the cosmos. That ancient hymn, which since it could be incorporated as a block in the apostolic writings is one of the earliest snatches of Christian worship on record, is thus affirming that the dominion of God over history has made use of the apparent historical failure of Jesus as a mover of human events.

We said before that this text affirms a philosophy of history in which renunciation and suffering are meaningful. After the further ground our thoughts have covered we can affirm still more roundly that for the apostle this renunciation must have been seen as profoundly linked to the human career of Jesus, who did concretely renounce the power offered to him by the tempter and by the Zealots. This hymn is then not, as some would make it, simply a Hellenistic mystery-religion text about a mythical Christ figure, coming down from heaven and returning thither; it is at the same time the account of the human Jesus whose death was the very political death of the cross. The renunciation of the claim to govern history was not made only be the second person of the Trinity taking upon himself the demand of an eternal divine decree; it was also made by a poor, tired rabbi when he came from Galilee to Jerusalem to be rejected.

This Gospel concept of the cross of the Christian does not mean that suffering is thought of as in itself redemptive or that martyrdom is a value to be sought after. Nor does it refer uniquely to being persecuted for ‘religious’ reasons by an outspokenly pagan government. What Jesus refers to in his call to cross-bearing is rather the seeming defeat of that strategy of obedience which is no strategy, the inevitable suffering of those whose only goal is to be faithful to that love which puts one at the mercy of one’s neighbor, which abandons claims to justice for oneself and for one’s own in an overriding concern for the reconciling of the adversary and the estranged. 1 Peter 2 thus draws direct social consequences from the fact that Christ ‘when he suffered did not threaten but trusted him who judges justly.’” (This is from pages 234 to 236 if you have my version of this book. Otherwise look at Chapter 12, subsection called “War of the Lamb”).

There are other books I am reading (as well as other good parts of the books I quoted). This is intended to just give a taste, not be extensive. Plus it’s already probably too long. I wanted to type some quotes from We Have Never Been Modern by Bruno Latour, another good book I have read. It is neither the simplest book nor the easiest to quote: his definitions/concepts build in such a way that to just quote them out of context, without reading how he’s defines them, would be too hard to understand. Despite this, you should read it. The Next Christendom by Philip Jenkins is another good book, although I basically just started it.

Education Issues in Uganda

I was talking with a teacher about problems with the education system in Uganda, comparing them with education issues in the United States. He gave some interesting insights that I figure I would share. I am clearly not an expert on the topic and only know how to talk about these issues skin-deep. Someone who has more expertise on Ugandan education than me or anyone else who disagrees can feel free to critique. I am mostly summarizing points made by a teacher. A little context, the teacher teaches at the secondary school here. There are three schools on Cornerstone’s property here: a primary, a secondary, and then advanced leadership school (advanced means the last two years of secondary, see my other blog post on Uganda’s education system). I teach at the leadership school. I don’t feel like I understand the education system here in Uganda enough to talk about it freely, but I wanted to say something, so I am summarizing points made by someone else.

            What he said was that university scholarships and admissions are based purely off of one’s scores on national exams. In the U.S. we don’t have national exams in the same way they do. We have the non-required (but basically are if one wants to go to college) SATS or ACTS. These are important for college admissions but not the only thing that is looked at. GPA, extracurriculars, etc. are also important. In Uganda, the national exams are standardized tests that function more like finals – as summations of the classes they are taking – and they are basically the only qualification that university admissions look at.

            Someone else said that this is not exactly true. There are some exceptions where they consider other thing. The government introduced the Quarter System in university admissions. This selects quotas from different regions in Uganda to ensure equal admissions access for different regions and tribes. I think the U.S. equivalent would be race-based scholarships and/or affirmative action, which is not as regionally/geographically-orientated (maybe I am wrong but this seems correct). This it seems is more a reflection of the fact that different groups in the U.S. are primarily not divided into different areas of the United States (maybe into different parts of a city but not different parts of the U.S.). There are also some scholarships given to the physically-disabled and some athletic scholarships. I was told the athletic scholarships are very small, nothing like they are in the U.S. admissions.  

What he said was that the rich are the only ones who can afford to go to good schools. Poorer people are either forced to drop out and work or go to much cheaper government schools. The rich can afford to pay for better quality, private schools. At these schools they are able to learn enough to be able to do well on their exams, something that the usually under-funded public schools can’t provide (discussed in more detail in the previous blog about the Ugandan school system). Thus government scholarships for the universities, which remember are based on national exam scores, are heavily biased towards the rich, private-schooled children. Quite literally the government has a certain number of scholarships it will award and gives them to the best exam scores. No scholarship means no university, which prevents access to many “high class” jobs. This is sort of true in the U.S., except that a significant number of the middle class go to universities without financial aid (very few have all their expenses paid and seem to have them partially paid, with the rest of the cost paid by loans), something that I am unsure anyone, except maybe the very rich, can afford to do here. People who get accepted to universities without scholarships often try to work to pay, but people in this situation usually drop out. (The common age for a college student, based on my observations, that is by asking the college students I met their ages or when people attended universities, is around 26. This is because many have to work for a while first.) This produces a cycle of inequality, as education is strongly correlated with income and university education is becoming increasingly necessary for many jobs. That is the topic of my next paragraph.

            Jobs are few and hard to find, and competition for them is driving the amount of education needed to get them, from secondary, to undergraduate, and now to graduate degrees, an issue in the U.S. as well. This was something I noticed in Kampala: I stayed at my organization’s headquarters where there were many Ugandans in their twenties who were college educated (or finishing their universities) who were looking for jobs and/or being pushed into further studies. One friend in particular reminds me of this. He was in his late twenties or thirty (I can’t remember) and had been in what I call school-work for ten years. He first went to university but found his field no longer open and had to go back, but before he could do that he had to work for a few years. He then had a similar issue with graduate school.

            The next issue he discussed was that educated Ugandans are opposed to doing physical work. They expect to do white collar jobs. One of his goals as a teacher is to help his students have a more realistic attitude about blue collar jobs. This reminds me of the teachers I met in Kamwenge last year, as they expressed the same concern and goal. This expectation of non-physical work among the educated is also present in the U.S., but it seems significantly different here. I don’t know enough to know the details of this attitude here but know enough that is it different and it seems more extreme in intensity. The teacher said that many college-educated people would rather beg on the streets of Kampala than do blue collar jobs. I think one significant difference is that in the U.S., by and large, most jobs actually are white collar. Blue collar jobs have been declining for years, for better or worse (a little bit of an oversimplification I know). The decline or outsourcing of the manufacturing sector to actually make the materials we consume is the best example of that. In Uganda, most jobs are blue collar. The economy is primarily based on agriculture (he supplied the percent of Uganda’s GDP is agriculture, the figure I now forget, but is more than half). It may be apparent that the differences between the two countries reflect other more complicated macro-level forces, that I won’t get into, not only because they are off-topic but because they are far too complicated for me to understand enough to discuss intelligently. But an economy so focused on physical, particularly farming, jobs with rather competitive, white collar employment prospects, and educated groups expecting to get these jobs create tensions.