By Adele Wickett

THE MAGNETIC ATTRACTION between Vancouver Island and Uganda must be terrific.

I’ll bet you know someone from here who’s helped out in Uganda – a missionary, a kid on a gap year with some charity, maybe a senior who’s just come back from a few weeks on a building project.

Consider education

Garry and I visited our daughter in Masaka, Uganda for the month of October. An islander born in Chemainus, raised in Victoria and educated at UVic, Lizabee is working with a team from Pacific Academy (okay, that’s in Surrey) to create a school for academically gifted girls. These students will live at the Timothy Girls College for their last two years of high school (‘A’ levels), and qualify for university on graduation.

This project has sprung from the 20 years that Pacific Academy Outreach Society (PAOS) has operated the Kibaale Community School. Every one of the 800 students in this pre-school to grade 10 facility is provided with school fees, uniforms and school supplies, because the area is so economically depressed. Yet Lizabee has been interviewing bright, university-educated prospective teachers from among the graduates of this remote village school.

We were privileged to visit the Kibaale student we sponsor, on her 15th birthday. Mangadalene walks an hour each way between school and the small mud-and-wattle home she shares with her grandparents and four younger siblings.

We came with a few gifts, including a solar lamp so she can study in the evenings – because, this close to the equator, night falls at about 6:30 pm all year round.

Significantly, one of Lizabee’s colleagues, Arlene Bucholz, has been requested by the Ugandan Department of Education to set up a teachers’ college for the country. That’s for the future, but it holds a world of promise.

Think about water

You may know of another Island-based mission: Africa Community Technical Services (ACTS). Based in Courtenay, ACTS specializes in vitally important water projects, as well as running a beautiful eco-lodge (that we wish we’d seen).

We did get to meet Tim Spetch and his wife. Tim and Joanne have been with ACTS in Mbarara for a number of years, and we were entrusted with a gift for their children from a friend in Victoria. We arranged to meet Tim at a well-known intersection one day, when he was driving by on his way to Kampala. This corner is a favoured hang-out of the boda (motorcycle taxi) drivers waiting for customers.

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But that morning, Lizabee got a call from a friend: “Don’t go near that intersection today. The boda drivers are demonstrating because someone has stolen a motorcycle and murdered the driver. They are blaming the police for not doing anything about several crimes like that.”

Sure enough, we could hear motorcycles roaring up and down the road in front of the Timothy Centre. The drivers had apparently murdered the presumed culprit, beat up his wife, destroyed his house, killed his livestock and slashed down his garden.

We called Tim and told him to drive right on by that day, and said we’d meet tomorrow, a little way down the road. That worked, and we had a delightful conversation with this water provider.

Then there’s agriculture

Equip has its Canadian base on Vancouver island, too. Best known for its courses in missionary medicine and community development at The Knoll in Shawnigan Lake, Equip also sends missionaries like Chris Sperling. He works in Uganda with some 100 subsistence farmers.

Chris is one of only two people in Uganda licensed to teach ‘Farming God’s Way’ (FGW). The other is Karl Bucholz of the Timothy Centre, husband of Arlene.

Years of burning off humus and depleting soil nutrients can reduce a family’s food supply below sustenance level. FGW is a sensible system of zero tillage, no burning, deep mulching, spacing of seeds, selective watering, serious weeding, targeted manuring, and saving good seeds for the next crop. A lifestyle of prayer and Christian behaviour is encouraged too.

The results appear almost immediately. We visited a small farm with Chris, where the maize and bean crops were already significantly improved in their first season of FGW.

Joking and teaching in Luganda, Chris was in his element talking to the whole family about how to raise enough food for themselves – and have some extra to sell for cash.

Finally, medical services

Yet another Island-based mission in Uganda is International Christian Medical Institute (ICMI). This niche organization teaches administrative skills to medical personnel who manage hospitals or clinics. ICMI’s program, unique in East Africa, has graduated over 1,000 professionals with diplomas and several hundred with degrees.

We toured the ICMI building on the beautiful Uganda Christian University campus, and came away impressed with the quality and importance of their work.

Education, water, agriculture, and medicine: huge needs, and Islanders are making a huge difference.

December 2010