UCEglobal blog

Fidelity, chastity weapons vs AIDS

2011-12-13T02:54:00.000-08:00

By LESLIE ANN G. AQUINO

December 4, 2011

MANILA, Philippines — What is the effective way to battle the spread of the human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)? For the Catholic Church, it’s not condom use, but chastity and fidelity to one’s partner. “The best solution is chastity and fidelity.

There is a need to educate people about chastity to avoid irresponsible sexual behavior, and at the same time fidelity to one’s spouse or family,” said Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo, chairman of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines National Secretariat for Social Action (CBCP-NASSA), in an interview. “That’s why our call here today is ‘stay true and be true,’ Stay true to your spouse, family, stay true to the teachings of the Church, especially about the sacredness of sex,” he said. The bishop-advisor of the Philippine Catholic HIV and AIDS Network (PhilCHAN) was referring to the theme of Sunday’s National AIDS Sunday celebration at the University of Santo Tomas (UST) in Manila, “Getting to Zero: Be true. Stay true.”

Pabillo said the report that the Philippines is one of the countries with steadily increasing number of HIV-AIDS cases, stressed the need for a more intensive information drive against the dreaded disease.

“It means many are not listening, but that should not stop us from our campaign. We remain to what is the proper teaching. It’s another calling to us to intensify more this campaign of chastity, fidelity,” he said. Read entire story previously posted by Manila Bulletin Publishing Corporation HERE

In another story covering the same event, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported...The Catholic Church says there is another “C” that’s more effective in curbing the spread of the deadly HIV-AIDS virus: Chastity, not condoms.

Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo on Sunday said the Church was advocating chastity and fidelity among couples as the best way to stop the spread of the sexually transmitted HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) in the country.“There is a need to educate the people about chastity to avoid irresponsible sexual behavior and fidelity to one’s spouse or family,” said Pabillo following the formation of a giant human “AIDS Ribbon” at the University of Sto. Tomas in Manila Sunday....to read entire article click HERE

(photo credit: Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo. INQUIRER file photo)

Agape Meal and All-night Prayer Vigil

2011-11-19T13:08:00.000-08:00

Forty percent of new HIV cases worldwide occur in young people aged 15-24. Thirty-three million people in the world are infected with HIV and two-thirds of them live in Sub-Saharan Africa. Prayer is needed on Thursday December 1st, 2011 World AIDS Day

6:30pm Agape Meal led by Rev. Dr. Brad Munroe
7:30pm "Hope for the Future" speaker Michael Bahinyoza
A graduate sociologist, trained teacher and media practitioner, Mr. Bahinyoza was the voice of 'Radio West' for years, and a driving force in the success against HIV in Uganda, Africa, where prevalence rates dropped from 21% (1991) to 6.7% (2005). He will discuss the role of chastity in the Ugandan success, as well as his own experience with Universal Chastity Education, explaining how this translates to a message of hope for all cultures.
8:30pm-7:30am Msgr. Tom Adrians opens the vigil. Choose an hour to come and pray during the night.
Friday December 2nd 7:30am Mass ends vigil, Bishop Fernando Isern presiding

Where: (all events)
Christ the King Parish
1708 Horseshoe Drive Pueblo CO 81001
You are welcome at all or part of these events
Please RSVP 542-9248 ext. 21 (Michelle)

Who is invited:
Everyone is invited to pray with us. If you are unable to be present with us, we ask that you remember those suffering from HIV/AIDS in prayer from wherever you are.

The UCE Board of Directors (Don Banner, Dom Cingoranelli, Ephraim Radner, Kim and Ken Dernovsek) thank you for your prayers and support of this ministry. We appreciate all those involved in hosting, speaking, coordinating, planning, cooking, praying...God Bless you all.

To learn more about what Universal Chastity Education (UCE) is doing to end AIDS, visit our UCEglobal website

UCE welcomes your donations. To give online, please click HERE. Checks can also be mailed to UCE, c/o Eskew CPA PC, 511 W. 10th St. Ste B, Pueblo CO 81003

Universal Chastity Education, Inc. (UCE) is an 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization established in 2004 whose purpose is to promote through education sexual abstinence until marriage and marital fidelity as healthy lifestyles free from sexually transmitted diseases including HIV and AIDS. UCE operates in Pueblo, CO, USA and Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania AFRICA.

A Christian response to the HIV pandemic

2011-11-06T17:11:00.000-08:00

Today's Catholic
November 2011

...Ugandans reduced their HIV prevalence rate from 15 percent in 1991 to 5 percent in 2001. A publication by USAID later called this success, “The most significant decline of HIV prevalence of any country in the world.” How did this happen? The Ugandan people came together as a united group in a vast grassroots campaign that included churches, schools, the government and community leaders. Their goal was to change behavior. They taught abstinence until marriage and faithfulness in marriage. The Ugandans and others across sub-Saharan Africa, where two-thirds of the 33 million people affected by HIV reside, have been fighting this pandemic for the past four decades. The Ugandans have shown signs of winning their fight, and their message gives an entire continent hope for the future. (Chieftain photo, used with permission)

On December 1 at 6:30 p.m. in Christ the King parish hall, Universal Chastity Education (UCE) will share this message of hope, and host the sixth annual World AIDS Day Agape Meal and Prayer Vigil. The light prayerful agape meal will be followed by a presentation at 7:30 p.m. by Michael Birungi Bahinyoza entitled, “Hope for the Future.” Mr. Bahinyoza, a graduate sociologist, trained teacher and media practitioner, was, for 10 years, the voice of “Radio West” in Uganda, and was a driving force in the original success against HIV/AIDS in Uganda. He served from 2004 to 2010 as the Uganda National Coordinator for Universal Chastity Education (UCE), a non-profit organization which promotes, through education, healthy Christian lifestyles to prevent HIV/AIDS/STDs.

At the conclusion of the presentation, Msgr. Tom Adrians will open the all-night prayer vigil. On Friday, December 2, at 7:30 a.m. Bishop Fernando Isern will celebrate mass at Christ the King to close the prayer vigil. Come, stay awake one hour, and pray for our brothers and sisters in Africa. This is a free event open to all, but please RSVP for the Agape Meal and to schedule your prayer time with Michelle at (719) 542-9248 ext. 21. To learn more about the UCE ministry visit www.uceglobal.org.

Read complete story at http://tinyurl.com/co2szcw

Battling AIDS through chastity education

2011-03-24T15:46:00.000-07:00

Today’s Catholic

Over 68 percent of all the people affected by HIV/AIDS live in sub-Saharan Africa. Most people have heard statistics like this one before and are aware of the profound impact HIV/AIDS has on African society. What most have not heard, however, is that chastity education is making huge strides in decreasing HIV/AIDS. In a time when a quick-fix is often desired, chastity education might sound absurd and impractical, and yet, this is exactly what is happening with great success in the African country of Uganda. Through its own government and citizen initiatives, Uganda has been successful in the reduction of HIV through promoting lifestyle changes focused on chastity.

These behavioral changes do not include the distribution of contraception, but rather come through education in chastity. Chastity, however, is not just a virtue for those unmarried. While abstinence until marriage is certainly a part of their lifestyle-changing strategy, so too, is the emphasis on faithfulness in marriage. This two-fold plan has significantly reduced the prevalence of HIV in Uganda, singling the country out among its neighbors in leading the charge in a drastic AIDS reduction. Data from on-going studies shows that the percentage of Ugandans afflicted with HIV has dropped from over 20 percent in 1986 down to a mere 6 percent in 2005. Ugandans would say that success began on their knees; that it was first and foremost through the guidance of prayer that led to these achievements. In Uganda, more than 80 percent of Ugandans are Christian comprised primarily of a combination of Anglican and Roman Catholics. Drawing on familiar Scripture passages and the teachings of Jesus, efforts have been made to link their programs back to faith.

The country’s program is now being supported by the non-profit organization, Universal Chastity Education (UCE), which helps spread the message of chastity, provides financial resources and equips volunteers. The organization is a partnership of many Christians throughout the country, and now world, which was recently endorsed by Cardinal Emmanuel Wamala, retired archbishop of Kampala, Uganda. It has now expanded to the countries of Burundi and Tanzania….Click HERE for entire December 2010 article

USA Trends Towards Virginity

2011-03-03T21:09:00.000-08:00

During UCE outreaches in Africa, we are always asked, "Are there any virgins in the USA?" Those asking this question say that Americans are portrayed provocatively to them by the media and on the internet. Youth of the world, take note! What you see on the internet is a misrepresentation of the behavior of our American teens. (American high schoolers are aged 15-19)

Download the slide above from one of my recent presentations and get the word out! The slide shows data reported by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention); click here for the full report.

Another recent publication confirms those trends. Youth and young adults aged 15-24 were interviewed during 2006-2008 about their sexual behavior and their responses, when compared to interviews in 2002, showed that 7.2% more females and 5.7% more males had never had any opposite-sex sexual contact of any kind. You can see in the chart below that nearly 30% of both sexes in this older age group are virgins. PDF link of this study published on CDC website is here.

Eat, Pray, Learn on World AIDS Day 2010

2010-11-30T23:12:00.000-08:00

This is World AIDS Week and December 1st is World AIDS Day. Although global AIDS doesn't get much media attention, it is a crisis and Universal Chastity Education (UCE) will not give up.

Probably the big reason we don't hear much about AIDS here in the USA is that because in 2009, only 26,000 people in North America died of AIDS-related illness. We say "only" because in that same year, 1.3 million people died of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, UNAIDS has reported that young people between the ages of 15 and 24 account for 40% of new HIV infections....and, new infections are exceeding deaths (7123 new infections/day compared to 4932 deaths/day) so prevention is key.

Eat, pray, learn, in a variety of events that UCE is co-sponsoring during World AIDS Week, 2010. If you can't join us for these events, consider a donation. The Africans want to survive. Help reach youth with the message of abstinence until faithful marriage for a healthy life.
Read about the UCE co-sponsored World AIDS Week events here!

Embrace Universal Chastity Education

2010-11-04T21:48:00.000-07:00

Cardinal Wamala blessing the pupils and students at the Martyrs’ Basilica in Namugongo on October 13, 2010

...“Prepare calmly and go to the examination room with confidence and victory will come,” said Emmanuel Cardinal Wamala...The cardinal was leading a mass for candidates of Uganda Martyrs Secondary School Namugongo, Uganda Martyrs Boarding Primary School Namugongo and St. Kizito High School at the Martyrs’ Basilica in Namugongo in Wakiso district on Wednesday...Wamala asked the students to emulate St. Augustine. “Prayer and work should go together,” he noted. Wamala asked students and parents to embrace the government programmes of Universal Primary Education and Universal Secondary Education.

Wamala caused subdued murmurs among students when he urged them to also embrace the ‘Universal Chastity Education’ programme. “Do you know it (UCE)? If you are not married don’t engage in activities of married people. You have no right,” he said.

You can read the full article written by By Mark Owor published in The New Vision on Thursday October 14, 2010 entitled, Cardinal Wamala warns against exam malpractice

Wait to have sex until marriage-Cardinal Wamala

2010-10-11T23:32:00.000-07:00

By Johnbosco Mulyowa
BUKEDDE Saturday July 3, 2010

Cardinal Emmanuel Wamala has called upon people to support the work of an organization called Universal Chastity Education (UCE) that he himself supports. The organization promotes abstinence from sex until marriage.

While speaking, the cardinal wondered why people buy condoms and ARVS. “Why do we waste a lot of money buying condoms and ARVs yet UCE is here and free?” he asked.

He was speaking at celebrations to mark ten years of a vocational school called St. Agnes in a place called Biikira in Rakai district last Thursday.

(Bukedde photo shows Cardinal Wamala during the function.)

The cardinal warned that it is so expensive to treat AIDS and that even condom use is not good and that there are many people that do not use them correctly.

He called upon the government to stop thinking that condom use can prevent AIDS. Instead, condoms promote promiscuity. He advised government to mobilize youths to wait to have sex until marriage because it is the best option.

Ed. Note: This article has been translated from Lugandan. To read the original story from BUKEDDE, the sister newspaper of the NEW VISION, click here.

Affirming Love, Avoiding AIDS: What Africa Can Teach the West

2010-06-12T15:06:00.000-07:00

By Matthew Hanley and Jokin de Irala. Foreward by Edward C. Green (ISBN: 978-0-935372-56-4)

Universal Chastity Education (UCE) recommends this book in which the authors show, through a careful review of the epidemiological evidence, that the most successful programs at reducing the incidence of AIDS have been in those African countries which have stressed the importance of limiting sexual contacts and remaining faithful in marriage.

That's what UCE programs do in Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania. UCE has brought the message of abstinence until faithful marriage to over 80,000 youths in Africa and needs your help to do more. UCE has the unanimous endorsement of the Uganda Joint Christian Council which is co-chaired by the Archbishops of the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Uganda (Anglican) and the Orthodox Church. In Burundi and Tanzania, UCE is endorsed by lay and clergy leaders of the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran and other protestant denominations.

Please help UCE prevent AIDS in Africa by giving generously at DONATE

To purchase this book, click HERE

Into africa

2010-03-10T08:21:00.000-08:00

Puebloan tells of helping as a Peace Corps member
By JOHN NORTON
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

Andrew Dernovsek talks to students at Dolores Huerta Preparatory High on Monday (CHIEFTAIN PHOTO/MIKE SWEENEY)
During his 2 1/2 years living in a remote African village, Andrew Dernovsek’s mud hut contained a number of things that reminded him of his home and the U.S., but it wasn’t the flag and the keepsakes alone that accomplished that.

It was the work he did on a daily basis teaching children, working on community projects and putting to work the money and gifts that came from Pueblo.

Speaking Monday to Kevin Ferguson’s geography classes at Dolores Huerta Preparatory High, he told students: “Volunteerism is one of the things that makes ours a great country. We’re one of the few cultures that goes out and tries to make things better.”

Recently returned from service with the Peace Corps, he’s hoping to continue his career next with the U.S. Foreign Service, for which he’s already passed initial exams. Ironically, that’s one federal department that doesn’t give him preference for his Peace Corps service. But if that doesn’t work out, he's been accepted to a master’s program at the University of Denver.

Son of Pueblo physicians Ken and Kim Dernovsek, he’s a 2002 Centennial High School graduate and a 2006 graduate of the Virginia Military Institute. After college, he got a taste of what was to come with the Peace Corps, working in Uganda for Universal Chastity Education, the organization his parents formed to fight HIV through abstinence programs.

He continued that work in Lesotho, a landlocked mountainous country completely surrounded by South Africa. Dernovsek explained that the Peace Corps partners with local organizations and assigned him to work with the Lesotho Catholic Bishops Conference AIDS program.

With a 40 percent unemployment rate, many Lesotho men have had to find work in South African mines, bringing home HIV infections that have spread quickly through the country.

Dernovsek said more than 30 percent of the people in the country are believed to have HIV and from 2005 to 2009, the population dropped from 2 million to 1.8 million as 70 people die a day from the effects of AIDS.

In one of the 40 villages he was responsible for visiting, he said, 230 out of 250 people were infected.

According to Dernovsek, the communities were very receptive to abstinence. .. Click here to read entire article
ED. NOTE: Andrew spent 5 months volunteering with Universal Chastity Education in 2006-2007. You can read his posts about his experience right here on www.uceglobal.blogspot.com

The power of prayer

2009-11-28T12:46:00.000-08:00

AIDS activists invite community to learn about, help with efforts in Africa

by LORETTA SWORD
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN
November 28, 2009

Local AIDS activists and Ascension Episcopal Church invite the public to participate in a handful of events aimed at raising awareness about AIDS and helping to eradicate the disease in sub-Saharan Africa, where at least one-fourth of the population is infected. Pueblo physicians Kim and Ken Dernovsek, U.S. directors and educators with Universal Chastity Education, are the primary organizers...

Sunday marks the beginning of World AIDS Week and to launch local activities, there will be an agape meal beginning at 7 p.m. in the parish hall at Ascension, 18th Street and Grand Avenue. Following the meal, at 8 p.m., the Rev. Uju Patrick Okeahialam of Nigeria will speak about AIDS in Africa as a prelude to a 10-hour, overnight prayer vigil that will be led by Msgr. Tom Adrians of Christ the King Catholic Parish.

"When we first went to Uganda in 2003, we heard over and over from the people there that, 'Our success against AIDS began on our knees in prayer,’ ” Kim Dernovsek said. "When you're in funerals all the time, you begin to reflect on your life. They turned to God; they decided to change their lives. So we want to launch our events here with prayer, as well."

She said a number of Pueblo churches have committed to having at least two members at a time throughout the vigil - St. Anne's Church, Holy Family Parish, Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, St. Francis Xavier, Community of Acts Anglican Mission, Ascension and Christ the King.

Individuals and other churches are encouraged to sign up to pray for an hour during the event, she said. The vigil will end with a closing prayer at 7 a.m. Dec. 1 by the Rev. Andrew McMullen, Ascension pastor.

To sign up, or for more information, call UCE at 248-8828. At noon Tuesday in the Fortino Ballroom at Pueblo Community College, Kim Dernovsek will talk about the global AIDS crisis and UCE's success in Uganda. That success has prompted the spread of the UCE program to Tanzania and Burundi, where AIDS remains a major problem among rural Tanzanian youth and among couples in Burundi who practice serial relationships outside of marriage - a practice that contributes to the rapid spread of AIDS in that country.

PCC students with IDs will be admitted free; all others are asked to call Rachel Anderson, 549-306, for reservations. There will be a nominal fee for lunch, but those who don't want lunch will be admitted free.

At 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, the public is invited to dinner at Ascension Episcopal, where the Dernovseks will talk about Universal Chastity Education's mission of preventing HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases in Africa by encouraging abstinence until faithful marriage.

They also will speak about UCE programs in Uganda and Burundi and the recent launch of UCE in Tanzania by Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches through the efforts of Puebloan Joe Wodiuk. Wodiuk will share insights gathered during his travels to Tanzania.

The dinner is complimentary, but organizers will talk about how the evening's participants can partner with UCE financially to help further the organization's work in Africa.

Space is limited, so reservations are required and may be made by calling 248-8828.

The final AIDS Week event will be a men's breakfast at 8 a.m. Dec. 5 at at Patti’s restaurant, 241 S Santa Fe Ave. Ken Dernovsek will talk about UCE in Africa. Reservations are not necessary and diners will be responsible for their own meals.

"The idea behind starting World AIDS Week here this year was to begin the week in prayer and put together some other events to draw attention to what's happening in Africa. There are 33 million people infected worldwide, but two-thirds of the world's AIDS victims are still in Africa," Kim Dernovsek said.

"From prayer to financial help, we want to make people aware of the extent of the problem and how they can help." Click here to read entire article

Universal Chastity Education in Tanzania "The light at last has come among the youth"

2009-11-11T18:30:00.000-08:00

UCE-East Africa (Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania) thanks National Abstinence Clearinghouse for reporting in their newsletter about the amazing UCE start-up in Iringa, Tanzania. You can read about it in the October 2009 UCE Newsletter

Can you spare $10 to end AIDS in Africa?

2009-10-08T20:47:00.000-07:00

Your $10 donation will empower UCE in Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania to reach their youth with the abstinence until faithful marriage message and prevent HIV infections.

A $10 donation is enough and the donor does not need to be a member of facebook! Donate now by clicking HERE

If you are from AFRICA, send the above link to your western friends and ask for their support for AIDS prevention, the UCE way!

How this works: The Universal Chastity Education facebook cause is Choose Life and Live! and our cause has entered America's Giving Challenge. Through this effort, daily awards of $500 or $1000 are given for the most people donating in any 24-hour period. The other award being given is for the most number of unique donations by 2:59 pm EST on November 6th, 2009. You can give $10 each day and have each $10 count as a unique donation towards the overall award. Let's say you had been thinking about giving a $100 donation. With this challenge, what will be best is to give it as TEN $10 daily donations using the above link.

Please (1) post the above link on your blog (2) add the link to your personal email signature (3) cut and paste this to an email and forward it (4) link your blog to this specific blogpost. Spread the word and promote the UCE cause, Choose Life and Live!

Telling everyone about how UCE is preventing AIDS in Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania will help to build support and bring health and hope to Africa.

Proof that the Ugandan Success Against HIV/AIDS was Abstinence and Being Faithful (AB)

2009-07-31T11:54:00.000-07:00

The findings of Edward C Green and Rand L Stoneburner are rock solid and the facts speak for themselves. Condoms are not the answer for AIDS in Africa, as the scientific experts (Green and Stoneburner), the Ugandan community of faith (www.uceglobal.org), and the Pope have all concluded. Will those with financial resources now consider funding efforts that are both culturally appropriate and scientifically based?

The facts show that condoms did not play a big role in the Ugandan success of the 1990’s.The graphs published in SCIENCE (30 April 2004) show the evidence that the Ugandans had already changed their behavior to abstinence and faithfulness prior to 1995 when condoms began coming into Uganda along with the returning westerners for whom Uganda had been previously unsafe. (post Idi Amin and Milton Obote regimes).

Behavior change of abstinence and being faithful (AB) is substantiated by simple condom math, utilizing the data on actual numbers of condoms that came into Uganda as reported by Douglas Kirby (9/2008) as well as population estimates from 1990. From 1987 to 1995, each Ugandan man aged 15 or older had, at best, 2-5 condoms in a year that he had any condoms at all. (www.uceglobal.blogspot.com)

How can a scientist continue to claim that condoms played any significant role in the Ugandan success? It is time to listen to the words of Sam L. Ruteikara, co-chair of Uganda's National AIDS-Prevention Committee in an editorial to the Washington Post 6/30/08 “…Most HIV infections in Africa are spread by sex outside of marriage: casual sex and infidelity. The solution is faithful love. So hear my plea, HIV-AIDS profiteers. Let my people go. We understand that casual sex is dear to you, but staying alive is dear to us. Listen to African wisdom, and we will show you how to prevent AIDS.”

Can we be humble enough to fund the indigenous behavior change strategies that have worked in Uganda? If the scientific community cannot, maybe the rest of us can. Time is short and a race is at risk.

Kim K Dernovsek MD
The text above is the text of my online Letter to the Editor of Forbes commenting on the story “A Jihad on the AIDS Mafia” about Edward C Green in which Dr. Green asks, “How can a secod-or third-rate contraceptive be our best weapon in the war against AIDS?”

Abstinence eliminates the risk

2009-07-24T13:44:00.000-07:00

Preventing pregnancy
By BARBARA MUSSO
A CARING PREGNANCY CENTER

THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN
June 20, 2009
I have been on staff at A Caring Pregnancy Center for 13 years and have consulted with literally thousands of young people who have come in for services...My position has given me a unique perspective to observe what pregnant young women have actually learned from their sex ed classes.

These teens tell me that abstinence is mentioned but that “most of the class time is used discussing condoms.” They come away with the feeling that they can have sex safely as long as they use a condom. Yet, we know that those who choose to use condoms have higher failure rates at preventing pregnancy than those who choose to abstain. The comprehensive condom-centered sex ed program in the Pueblo City Schools has been a significant contributing factor to the high teen pregnancy rate in this city...True abstinence is not being taught.

The young women we see at A Caring Pregnancy Center are routinely asked if they have been using anything to prevent pregnancy - and if not, why not? I have never had a young woman tell me she did not know how to prevent pregnancy. They have consistently said one of the following:
•They were already on some type of birth control pill.
•They used a condom but it broke or fell off.
•They chose not to use a condom because they were “with” the same boy for a while.
•They “didn’t want to.”
•All these kids knew where and how to find birth control…

One of my greatest concerns is that the leadership in this community has lowered the bar to such an extent that our youth are behaving as expected - early onset of sexual activity with the natural outcome. Sexual activity (often with numerous partners) leads to pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, depression and wounded lives. Later, marriages are broken due to lack of bonding with the marriage partner as a consequence of numerous sexual partners prior to marriage; thus the breakdown of the family.

We must change the message from “abstain until you are ready to have sex, then use contraception” to the healthier alternative. Abstinence until marriage says, “We believe in you! You can use your own personal power, self-regulation, to wait until you have achieved important goals and are ready to choose a life mate. Then you’ll enjoy the best sex for the rest of your life!”

It deeply concerns me that we expect our children to behave as rutting animals unable to resist their basal urges when we know it is highly possible to resist and should be expected. We have been teaching to the lowest common denominator and we need to raise the bar for the sake of this generation and the next....Click here to read entire article

Barbara Musso is executive director of A Caring Pregnancy Center in Pueblo, Colorado.

Choose Life and Live!

2009-05-19T22:47:00.000-07:00

In Sub-Saharan Africa and many other areas of the world, HIV/AIDS has devastated families. A decision to abstain from sex until marriage and be faithful in marriage can be the difference between life and death. Show your support for the youth and couples who make this pledge. Universal Chastity Education (UCE) is now on facebook!

Click the facebook badge below and and become a FAN of Universal Chastity Education.

Universal Chastity Education's Facebook Page

Promote Your Page Too

Also, join our cause when you are at our page in facebook, by clicking the link on our wall...OR

simply click here: "Choose Life and Live!"

More than 35,000 young people in Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania have already made the commitment to chastity through UCE outreach programs. By becoming a fan of UCE and then joining our cause, you are showing them that you support and encourage them in their wise decision for health and life.

Kim K Dernovsek MD FAAD
Director and Medical Advisor
Universal Chastity Educatio
posted 19 May 2009

AIDS answer: abstinence

2009-02-18T01:20:00.000-08:00

So says Ugandan who has lost eight brothers to the disease

By GAYLE PEREZ
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN
December 01, 2008
A message of hope and the need to continue efforts to prevent the spread of the HIV virus was shared with the Pueblo Community College community on Monday as part of the annual World AIDS Day observance.

Michael Birungi Bahinyoza of Uganda, Africa, told of the efforts that are being made in his homeland that have reduced the HIV infection rate from 30 percent nearly 20 years ago to 6 percent in 2002.

CHIEFTAIN PHOTO/MIKE SWEENEY -- Michael Birungi Bahinyoza gestures as he lectures about the decline of AIDS in Uganda during a World AIDS Day presentation Monday at Pueblo Community College.

Bahinyoza spoke as part of PCC's observance of World AIDS Day, which is recognized each Dec. 1. Colorado State University-Pueblo also observed World AIDS Day with discussion by two HIV/AIDS victims as well as the quilt display of "The Face of AIDS," which honors AIDS victims. World AIDS Day was started in 1988 to raise awareness and focus attention on the global AIDS epidemic. Worldwide there are an estimated 33 million people infected with HIV and two-thirds of those live in Sub-Saharan Africa, said Bahinyoza. "Africa is the HIV epicenter," he said. "Last year alone, 76 percent of HIV-related deaths took place in Africa."

As a result of those startling statistics, Bahinyoza, who is staying in town with a Pueblo family, said that more needs to be done to reverse that trend, especially in Africa. In his homeland of Uganda, Bahinyoza said that aided by the government the number of people infected with HIV has significantly decreased in the past two decades. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the incidence of HIV in Uganda was "astronomical." "Virtually every family in Uganda is affected by HIV or AIDS," said Bahinyoza. He has lost eight brothers because of AIDS. He said the government of Uganda stepped up in an attempt to slow the rate of infection of the HIV virus among the citizens.

"We needed to do something or we would find ourselves in great trouble," he said. With support of the government, there was a push to encourage the young, single people to abstain from having sex and for married couples to be monogamous."It was a do-or-die situation, a make-or-break thing," he said. "It was tragic what was happening." Bahinyoza said the message of "making choices that matter that are for health and life" was constantly being promoted throughout the country.

"Uganda has experienced the most significant decline of HIV prevalence of any country in the world," he said. Bahinyoza said the rate has increased a little bit since 2002 to 6.7 percent following a strong push for natives to use condoms. He said the use of condoms provided a false sense of security and has led to an increase in HIV infections.

Again a campaign is being waged to promote abstinence and monogamy among the residents, he said. "It's something that's saved lives," he said of the campaign. "We remind people to make healthy choices for life. "In the face of what's happened in Uganda," he said, "there is hope."

The Pueblo Chieftain link to article here

A RACE at RISK

2009-02-17T20:00:00.000-08:00

Ugandans, Americans join to halt AIDS in Africa

By LORETTA SWORD  THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN
November 22, 2008

Ignorance may feel like bliss, but where AIDS is concerned, it breeds death.

Nowhere is that more true than in sub-Saharan Africa, where up to 39 percent of the population of some countries is infected with the virus that causes AIDS.

Michael Birungi Bahinyoza is one of 33 children of a polygamous family - not an unusual statistic in his homeland of Uganda. More sobering is this one: He has lost eight brothers to AIDS, and four of them died with their infected wives.

"And that is not the worst scenario. There are many worse cases than mine in our country," said the soft-spoken 38-year-old, his lilting English infused with the flavor of his native tongue. And yet Uganda is a shining success story among other sub-Saharan African countries, where the rampant infection among residents of child-bearing age has spawned more than 12 million orphans - some of whom won't live to adulthood because they were born with the HIV virus in their blood.

Through a mostly government-run program that started in 1986, the country's infection rate fell to a low of just under 7 percent in 2001, Bahinyoza said.

Bahinyoza is in Pueblo as the guest of Drs. Ken and Kim Dernovsek, who with their Ugandan friend in 2004 established Universal Chastity Education Inc., a nonprofit that is registered in Africa and the United States. Bahinyoza is the Ugandan coordinator, and Ken Dernovsek is the American director and medical adviser. The trio met in 2003, when the Dernovseks (she is a dermatologist and he is an endocrinologist) traveled to Uganda for dual purposes. He taught at Mulago Hospital in Kampala while she set about satisfying two requirements of a grant she had received from the American Women's Dermatological Society...

CHIEFTAIN PHOTO/GEORGE HEYMANN -- Drs. Kim and Ken Dernovsek (left and right) and Michael Birungi Bahinyoza are founders and leaders of Universal Chastity Education Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to stopping the spread of AIDS in Africa.

Condoms decrease the spread of AIDS, but they aren't foolproof, she said. And they are virtually worthless against other sexually transmitted diseases that send patients to dermatologists for treatment of resulting skin problems.

Everywhere she lectured and toured, she said, she asked for the names of contacts who could teach her more about Uganda's approach to slowing the spread of the disease, which was conceived during a period when Westerners had been banned from the country and there was little or no access to condoms.

She and her husband met Bahinyoza by chance at All Saints Cathedral in Kampala, where they had stopped on a Saturday while trying to choose a place to worship while away from Pueblo's Ascension Episcopal Church.

Bahinyoza was an usher there. As the Dernovseks soon learned, he also was an active proponent of the national effort to convince Ugandans that the best way to protect themselves from AIDS (or to prevent infecting someone else) is through abstinence until marriage, and through fidelity within marriage.

Although Bahinyoza has converted from the faith of his family to the Anglican faith, he stresses that the message he shares with college students and at churches and schools across the Ugandan countryside is not a moral or religious one.

"It is knowledge. It is information about how to remain healthy," he said. "We also teach life skills and the importance of choosing carefully your companions, and where you spend your time."

COURTESY PHOTO -- Michael Birungi Bahinyoza talks with a group of students in rural Uganda about how to protect themselves from the virus that causes AIDS.

Sadly, he said, Uganda has begun to see AIDS infection rates creeping up in some areas where Western influence has increased in the past five years.

Condoms are available again, and are frequently advertised on the radio. Residents of urban areas also are aware of anti-viral drugs that can slow the progression of HIV to full-blown AIDS and prolong lives, but they see the drugs as a cure and some are losing their fear of the disease.

"In some areas, there is a false belief that condoms prevent AIDS, and that there is a cure for it," Bahinyoza said. "People are becoming complacent. But still, we can teach them to change their behavior."

But millions of people live beyond the cities' borders and have no access to radio, TV or news of treatment for AIDS. Those are the prime targets Bahinyoza and the Dernovseks hope to reach with their foundation. Their efforts have been endorsed by the highest-ranking bishops of the Anglican and Catholic churches in Africa, as well as by government and education leaders.

Ken Dernovsek said the materials used, and the way they're presented, are acceptable to Catholics because they stress abstinence ...."It's a matter of providing information about how to protect themselves and others in a way that honors their health" while changing behavior that ultimately results in honoring themselves and others as human beings, he said.

The Dernovseks hope Americans will donate cash to the cause, which would go toward travel expenses and the publication of newsletters and follow-up programs for youngsters 13-19 years old.

They also hope that a similar approach to abstinence and chastity will catch on in the United States, where AIDS rates have declined since their peak in the early 1990s, but where other STDs, and teen pregnancy, are rampant in many areas.

Although their message is one of education, Bahinyoza and the Dernovseks remain fervent in their belief that prayer is a great healer.

Of the 33 million people worldwide who are infected with the HIV virus, Kim Dernovsek said, two-thirds of them live in sub-Saharan Africa. "Basically, an entire race is at risk, and we want to...click here to read entire article

How to Prevent AIDS

2008-07-16T19:13:00.000-07:00

Read an excerpt from the words of the co-chair of Uganda's National AIDS-Prevention Committee, recently published by the Washington Post:

“...Indeed, the loudest HIV-prevention message in Africa is "universal access" to condoms, testing, anti-retroviral treatment, and assorted other drugs and devices. All these commodities must be transported, stored, distributed, advertised and resupplied endlessly. Meanwhile, effective HIV prevention methods, such as urging Africans to stick to one partner, don't qualify for lucrative universal-access status.

Do not misunderstand me: Treatment is good. But for every African who gains access to HIV treatment, six become newly infected. To treat one AIDS patient with life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs costs more than $1,000 a year. Our successful ABC campaign cost just 29 cents per person each year.

International suppliers make broad, oversimplified statements such as "You can't change Africans' sexual behavior." While it's true that you can't change everybody, you don't have to. If the share of men having three or more sexual partners in a year drops from 15 percent to 3 percent, as happened in Uganda between 1989 and 1995, HIV infection rates will plunge. It is that simple.

We, the poor of Africa, remain silenced in the global dialogue. Our wisdom about our own culture is ignored. Telling men and women to keep sex sacred -- to save sex for marriage and then remain faithful -- is telling them to love one another deeply with their whole hearts. Most HIV infections in Africa are spread by sex outside of marriage: casual sex and infidelity. The solution is faithful love. So hear my plea, HIV-AIDS profiteers. Let my people go. We understand that casual sex is dear to you, but staying alive is dear to us. Listen to African wisdom, and we will show you how to prevent AIDS." The Rev. Sam L. Ruteikara, co-chair of Uganda's National AIDS-Prevention Committee, Washington Post, June 30, 2008, in an editorial entitled, "Let My People Go, AIDS Profiteers"

Let's listen to African wisdom and learn how to prevent AIDS. Getting behind Universal Chasity Education (UCE) financially is a way the people of faith here help the people of faith there encourage their youth to, as said above by Fr. Ruteikara, “keep sex sacred -- to save sex for marriage and then remain faithful” Please consider supporting UCE. UCE operates in Uganda and Burundi, AFRICA and is endorsed by the Uganda Joint Christian Council. Help save lives in Africa by funding the Ugandan success against AIDS. Please visit the UCE website and make a tax-deductible donation to UCE. Thank you and God Bless you.
Kim K Dernovsek MD
Director and Medical Advisor
Universal Chastity Education
www.uceglobal.org

What Works Best in AIDS Prevention

2008-07-11T14:41:00.000-07:00

“What the churches are inclined to do anyway turns out to be what works best in AIDS prevention.”
AIDS and the Churches: Getting the Story Right
by Edward C. Green and Allison Herling Ruark
Copyright (c) 2008 First Things (April 2008)

Responses to the global HIV/AIDS epidemic are often driven not by evidence but by ideology, stereotypes, and false assumptions. Referring to the hyperepidemics of Africa, an article in The Lancet this fall named “ten myths” that impede prevention efforts—including “Poverty and discrimination are the problem,” “Condoms are the answer,” and “Sexual behavior will not change.” Yet such myths are held as self-evident truths by many in the AIDS establishment. And they result in efforts that are at best ineffective and at worst harmful, while the AIDS epidemic continues to spread and exact a devastating toll in human lives.

Consider this fact: In every African country in which HIV infections have declined, this decline has been associated with a decrease in the proportion of men and women reporting more than one sex partner over the course of a year—which is exactly what fidelity programs promote. The same association with HIV decline cannot be said for condom use, coverage of HIV testing, treatment for curable sexually transmitted infections, provision of antiretroviral drugs, or any other intervention or behavior. The other behavior that has often been associated with a decline in HIV prevalence is a decrease in premarital sex among young people.

If AIDS prevention is to be based on evidence rather than ideology or bias, then fidelity and abstinence programs need to be at the center of programs for general populations. Outside Uganda, we have few good models of how to promote fidelity, since attempts to advocate deep changes in behavior have been almost entirely absent from programs supported by the major Western donors and by AIDS celebrities. Yet Christian churches—indeed, most faith communities—have a comparative advantage in promoting the needed types of behavior change, since these behaviors conform to their moral, ethical, and scriptural teachings. What the churches are inclined to do anyway turns out to be what works best in AIDS prevention….If we are to progress beyond science-by-popular-acclaim, we must accept that the evidence is much stronger for fidelity or partner reduction than for any of the standard-package HIV-prevention measures—in Africa at least—and so we need to rethink and reprogram AIDS-prevention interventions.

Admittedly, changing direction is hard when there has been massive investment in these “best practices.” It is not in the interest of a multibillion-dollar global AIDS industry to endorse interventions that are low-cost and homegrown and that rely on simple behavior change rather than medical products or services provided by outside experts. And so the major donors of AIDS programs continue to do the same things, expecting different results….Link to entire article

Edward C. Green is the director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, where Allison Herling Ruark is a research fellow.

Ed. note from Kim K Dernovsek MD: Those looking for a way to financially support the faith-based Ugandan effort against AIDS, can make a donation to Universal Chastity Education (UCE) at www.uceglobal.org or by clicking here

NO to condoms YES to faithfulness

2008-03-29T22:44:00.000-07:00

This post is from the online journal of Andrew Dernovsek, currently volunteering as a Peace Corps HIV/AIDS advisor in Ketane, Lesotho, AFRICA and is not intended as a representation of the views of the United States Peace Corps.*

We went to a mission outpost today. I have continued speaking on HIV at the villages, and this was another chance for me to speak to a large group of people. The church was located in the second gorgeous valley of Ketane. This is also the valley that hosts Quasing Falls, one of the landmark waterfalls of Lesotho.

The church itself is perched above the intersection of two large gorges that twist and turn their way through the otherwise flat valley. Coming into the valley you can see a lone building surveying the vastness of the conjoining river canyons below.

It was a wonderful sight, and it was almost as wonderful to watch the people trickling into the church from the gorges and all sides of the church. There are many places here at Ketane, which I feel words and even pictures cannot fully capture. This is one of those places.

I spoke at the end of mass, as usual. My Sesotho has been getting better albeit slowly. I gave my full HIV presentation, and was able to field simple questions on abstinence and faithfulness in marriage.

The people at this Church said they understand the idea of faithfulness, but struggle in practice. Abstinence I can understand is very difficult and a hard struggle, but it absolutely bewilders my mind to have married people say they struggle with faithfulness. Leaving all religion completely out of it, I think that human beings naturally are monogamous, and that even the most morally corrupt person will feel the pain of a cheating lover. This is the first and only time I encountered this, and hopefully they were just giving me a hard time, I offered up advice and encouragement as best I could.

Some of you reading this might say, well yes then you should teach about condoms. To this I say no, and I say come to Quasing, come to Ha Sekhola, come to Ketane, see it, live it. If, and I mean a serious if, you can get a steady supply of five condoms per couple per week to these places thirteen hours in the middle of nowhere. Then guarantee that these condoms are not expired. Then, guarantee that they have not been exposed to harsh heat or cold along the way. Finally, make sure that every single person in these areas is educated on exactly how to a condom properly, risks and dangers, get them to understand that there is no substitute for a condom (some try to use a plastic bag), and that they must be used properly each and every time. If you could guarantee all this, then and only then can we even begin the debate on whether condoms should actually be here.

To debate you can show me the countries that have had success with condoms. Thailand being the only one, and this was only among commercial sex workers. To respond I will tell you of Uganda who lowered their HIV prevalence rate from 21% in 1991 to 6.7% in 2005. Dr. Edward Green author of “Rethinking AIDS Prevention: Learning from Successes in Developing Countries,” says that “The most important determinant of the reduction in HIV incidence in Uganda appears to be a decrease in multiple sexual partnerships and networks.”

Guess what? According to the Lesotho Ministry of Health 88% of HIV positive people in Lesotho are or have been married. Now, what does that tell the discerning thinker? If you still aren’t convinced I will have you talk to some of the Bo-Me (women) here at Ketane, and they will tell you how condoms are directly hurting their culture. Obviously, it’s a debatable point, but here at Ketane and thirteen hours in the middle of nowhere condoms are not plausible, feasible, or 100% effective. So we teach to wait until marriage and to remain faithful to your spouse in marriage.

We give the people strategies, methods, encouragement, and hopefully the strength to fight the HIV pandemic in the cheapest and most effective way possible. Get married, have lots of sex and lots of babies with that one person.

If anyone would be happy to challenge me on these points I would be happy to open a discussion with you, and give you a more in depth understanding of what exactly I do here at Ketane.

Andrew Dernovsek aka Thabo Nohana
23 September 2007
News from Lesotho 13 February 2008
*Note: republication/distribution of this post must include the disclaimer.

Easy as A-B-C

2008-01-02T19:42:00.001-08:00

Pueblo couple backs Ugandan bid to combat AIDS

By MARVIN READ
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN
December 15, 2007

A Pueblo married couple, Kim and Ken Dernovsek, have a ministry that reaches from Colorado to Uganda and nearby Burundi.

In an era when “just say yes” is a fairly typical approach to sexual activity outside of marriage, the Dernovseks are big on “just say no.”

What the Dernovseks - both are physicians - are principally taking aim at is HIV and AIDS, and they have become deeply involved in a spirited movement in Uganda, where there’s a cooperation between church and state that intends to reduce the incidence of the sexually transmitted disease.

That secular-religious partnership has been so effective that statistics reveal a significant decline from an alarming 21 percent prevalence in 1991 to a far more comfortable rate of 6.7 percent in 2005, according to the World Health Organization and an AIDS-focused United Nations agency.

“Uganda has experienced the most significant decline in HIV prevalence of any country in the world,” noted Edward Green, author of “Rethinking AIDS Prevention: Learning from Successes in Developing Countries.”

Green told the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS in 2002 that, “The most important determinant of the reduction in HIV incidence in Uganda appears to be a decrease in multiple sexual partnerships and networks” and that the effect of the interventions, particularly a reduction in the number of partners, “appears to have had a similar impact as a potential medical vaccine of 80 percent efficacy.”

The Dernovseks became aware of the Ugandan successes and formed a group, Universal Chastity Education Inc., to support the Africans. "The Ugandans have successfully promoted to their youth a lifestyle of respect for sexuality and saving sex only for a faithful marriage - chastity," Kim Dernovsek said.

"UCE's vision is to maintain that success for them and share it elsewhere."

Ken Dernovsek said the efforts began under Gen. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, who became president in January 1986.

"When the new president realized that a huge number of his military troops were HIV-positive or had AIDS, an effort was made to get the government, the schools and the churches - both Anglican and Catholic - onto the same page to address the issues involved here."

The result, Kim Dernovsek said, was "a concerted and coordinated effort to promote abstinence for the unmarried and lifelong faithfulness for the married."

The campaign often is summarized as A-B-C: Abstinence, Be faithful and Commitment.

“ ‘Where are you with God?’ is a popular question that is asked of Ugandans, even in the secular and governmental sphere," she said.

Dr. Ken Dernovsek (right) scans queries submitted during a Ugandan outreach session.

Kim Dernovsek, a dermatologist and venereologist, has been lecturing professionally, in the medical arena, since 2001 about the need for abstinence and fidelity as the only way to directly address issues related to STDs and AIDS: No contact, no problems.

The couple has been involved with Uganda and Burundi projects since founding UCE in 2003. They've made three visits to Africa since then. Dr. Kim Dernovsek received a grant from the Women's Dermatologic Society that supported her effort to analyze the Ugandan HIV reduction strategy.

It has become the couple's own priority to tie science and faith together for the purpose of saving lives and avoiding illness.

"It's too bad that, often, good, scientific approaches seem to lose credibility just because they also have a faith component," Kim Dernovsek said.

"In Uganda, when certain factions came into the nation promoting the use of condoms to stave off the diseases and AIDS, the rate of infection went up," she said.

"That's not good application of science," said Ken Dernovsek, an endocrinologist.

While both doctors - fairly conservative Episcopalians - are swayed by moral issues involved with nonmarital sex, they are as adamant that the conviction to remain abstinent until marriage, and remain faithful and committed during marriage is an effective medical solution to the problems, and the Uganda experience is proof of the validity of the stance.

The UCE's board of directors is composed of Puebloans and includes the Rev. Ephraim Radner, a former Puebloan who was rector of the Dernovsek's parish, Ascension, and now is a university professor in Toronto.

Endorsees of the UCE program in Uganda and its related efforts in Burundi include 14 Anglican bishops, a handful of Catholic bishops and government officials, too.

"Chastity is an inexpensive prevention for the worldwide HIV/AIDS/STD pandemic, and it does not separate an individual from their faith, but rather it empowers it within them," Kim Dernovsek said.

Among the governmental outreach programs is one involving college-age (but not necessarily college-educated) youngsters who are permitted to go into the school arena for two to three hours to talk about the efficacy of the abstinence approach. The targeted audience for the abstinence program is children of middle-school age through vocational-school age.

Ken Dernovsek recalled a session when, after the lectures, youngsters were invited to submit written questions to the lecturers.

"The questions from the children demonstrated the whole range of possibility, from abject ignorance to eye-popping sophistication," he said, adding "that the older students couldn't get to all the questions to answer them at the session."

Kim Dernovsek said that, eventually, UCE hopes to put together a booklet of the most frequently asked of that sort of question for a reference for the kids.

"I think there's a message for us in the United States. We need to take the time to think about AIDS, and pray about it," she said, saluting the recent Dec. 1 World AIDS Day commemorations at her parish and other locations.

She said, "We can learn from the Ugandans the role of prayer, of doing - as they try to do - God's will first, not our own. And I think we can be inspired by what can happen when all the various components of a community get on the same page and take a holistic approach to solving a problem."...Source: The Pueblo Chieftain Online

Ed. Note from Kim Dernovsek MD FAAD:
1. The Ugandan campaign has been generally known as A-B-C; Abstinence, Be faithful and condoms, however the Ugandans themselves emphasize the A and B, often referring to the as “little c”, i.e. the smaller portion of the campaign for HIV sero-discordant couples or for those who refuse to follow A and B. Yet even among sero-discordant couples, some choose abstinence to fully protect the other partner from getting HIV. Ugandans also describe the success as “AB/STOP! or AB/Full STOP!” (Pastor Martin Ssempa 2006), Abstinence is the Best Choice (Uganda Youth Forum 2003), or say that the C is for Commitment. Since for many Christ is the source of strength and empowerment to achieve the self-discipline of AB, “AB thru Christ” is the inspired definition of ABC.

2. UCE is not a governmental outreach program and the UCE team are generally all college graduates; as such they are outstanding role models and youth educators.

Armor Up Against AIDS and Complacency

2007-11-02T16:02:00.000-07:00

Preparing for World AIDS Day December 1, 2007

In October of 2002, while researching a lecture at a national medical meeting, I came across what is now known as a landmark report to USAID entitled “What Happened in Uganda?” It described what is still cited as the most dramatic success against AIDS of anywhere in the world. The Ugandans had reduced their HIV prevalence from 21% in 1991 to 5% in 2001. As of 2005, it stands at 6.7% and is still considered the hope and the proof that community-wide awareness and prevention can change the grim AIDS statistics.

What was extra remarkable about this success was that this was coming from Uganda, East Africa. A developing world nation had come up with an effective strategy for AIDS reduction! It was in the post-Idi Amin, post-Milton Obote years, when American and European organizations were no longer on-site to lead the Ugandans, to fund an “effort” or provide the “solution”. The Ugandan community joined together and the people of faith played a key role.

Prevention of sexually transmitted disease via behavior is my academic interest, so I traveled to Uganda in 2003 and then spent a second month there in 2004. What I found in Uganda were churches that were overflowing, no matter the denomination. People described how when nearly 1 of every 3 people had AIDS, they were in church “all the time” already, with funerals…for without medication a person with AIDS lives about six years. They said, “We went to our knees”. And, regardless of the person’s walk of life-whether cab driver, doctor, church leader, school teacher or political leader, young, old, male or female- all spoke of tackling AIDS. They spoke of “getting tested”, supporting each other as results came in, telling youth to abstain from sex until marriage and of faithfulness in marriage… to one spouse. Introductions not infrequently began, “Hello. I am <full name>. I come from <region>. I am Christian. I am the husband of one wife.” I recall provoking enthusiastic laughter when I introduced myself likewise, as “the wife of one husband”.

We must not forget our brothers and sisters as they continue to battle the HIV/AIDS enemy. Media influences extolling life-styles not conducive to sexual health, Internet pornography, and condom social marketing abound in Africa. The AIDS crisis is not to be minimized. Nor should we minimize the duty that we have, as the people of faith who are financially blessed, to help the people of faith across the globe as they face the enemy of AIDS daily. As they put on, each morning, the full armor of God, let us stand behind and support them.

Kim K Dernovsek MD FAAD
Universal Chastity Education
www.uceglobal.org

"Use every piece of God's armor to resist the enemy in the time of evil, so that after the battle you will still be standing firm. Stand your ground, putting on the sturdy belt of truth and the body armor of God's righteousness. For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the Good News, so that you will be fully prepared. In every battle you will need faith as your shield to stop the fiery arrows aimed at you by Satan. Put on salvation as your helmet, and take the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Pray at all times and on every occasion in the power of the Holy Spirit. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all Christians everywhere." Ephesians 6:13-18 NLT
Ed. Note:
Graphic of the armor of God courtesy of www.pegsplace.us/armor.html

Episcopalian rector to take teaching post

2007-08-01T16:31:00.000-07:00

June 16, 2007
By MARVIN READ
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

After a decade of service to Pueblo's Episcopal community, the Rev. Ephraim Radner has resigned his position as rector of Ascension Episcopal Church.

He will leave the Pueblo post after services on Aug. 19 to begin new duties as professor of historical theology at Wycliffe College, an Anglican seminary at the University of Toronto.

Radner, 51, has been pastor in Pueblo since being called here from Stamford, Conn., in June 1997. His wife, the Rev. Annette Brownlee, also has had pastoral duties at Ascension. She will remain at the parish as "priest-in-charge" until late November, when she also will relocate to Wycliffe, where she will become seminary chaplain.

Radner will leave Pueblo with his 14-year-old son, Isaac, then be joined later by Brownlee. Their daughter, Hannah, 17, will finish high school in Colorado Springs, then rejoin her family in Canada.

The priest-couple gave a lecture at Wycliffe, "The Shape of the Preacher’s Life: How We Apprehend the Word," as part of a master preaching series in January 2006.

The move will mean the departure of a priest who, arguably, is one of the most accomplished and theologically noteworthy clergymen ever to serve in the city. He was among five candidates to be considered in 2003 to head the Colorado Diocese. Radner already had gained worldwide respect as a theologian and author by the time he was chosen earlier this year by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to be a part of an international panel asked to design a "covenant" for all the world's Anglican churches. The aim was to create a working agreement among members of a church riven when American Episcopalians - a part of the Anglican community - ordained an openly gay man as bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.

Radner had been a delegate to the August 2003 general convention in Minneapolis, which ratified the New Hampshire diocese's selection as bishop of Eugene Robinson - a divorced father of two who had lived with his male partner for 13 years.

Radner left the convention in protest, claiming that the meeting had forfeited "its authority, according to the traditional understanding that church council which act either illegitimately or heretically are no longer valid councils."

He said that, "ultimately, some means within the larger Anglican communion must be brought to bear in order to adjudicate this matter."

It made sense, then, that he serve on the international panel, as one of only two Americans thus invited. The gay-bishop and other issues have divided parishes, dioceses and the worldwide community of Anglicans, which numbers 77 million adherents.

Individual worshippers, some American parishes and dioceses have all but quit the Episcopalian community and re-aligned themselves with a coalition of Anglicans headed by Archbishop Peter Akinola, head of the Nigerian Anglican church. He has at once earned disdain and gratitude for his involvement with American Episcopalian conservatives.

Radner and the other panelists offered a "covenant" proposal to the February meeting of bishops - held in Da es Salaam, Tanzania. Their hope was to provide a vehicle for compromise - not one that would solve the irreconcilable theological differences - but would allow both sides to live in some sort of harmony and tolerance, rather than tumble into schism.

Radner, who holds a doctorate in theology from Yale University, has said on frequent occasion that, while maintaining his opposition to the confirmation and ordination of Robinson, he is more focused on the Episcopalians' and Anglicans' efforts to retain church unity.

His departure to the Canadian school of Wycliffe, however, puts him in a context associated with the wider Anglican group and somewhat more removed from the American Episcopal conflict.

But, he told The Pueblo Chieftain, "I am not leaving the Episcopal Church. I will remain 'canonically resident' within it, subject to an Episcopal bishop, even while receiving permission to function as a priest within the Anglican Church of Canada."

The evangelical and ecumenically associated Wycliffe College is the largest Anglican seminary in Canada and is linked to seven other seminaries of different denominations, including Roman Catholic and Protestant, including Pentecostals....
source: The Pueblo Chieftain Online

Ed Note: The Universal Chastity Education (UCE) Board of Directors becomes international with the Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner's move to Canada. UCE congratulates him on his appointment as Professor of Historical Theology at Wycliffe College, Toronto, Canada.

Bound for AFRICA

2007-07-31T15:25:00.000-07:00

Puebloan heads to Lesotho to do more HIV education

By MARY JEAN PORTER
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN
12 June 2007

A Pueblo man is returning to Africa to continue his work fighting the spread of HIV.

Andrew Dernovsek, 23, left for the Peace Corps and Lesotho in southeast Africa on Monday. He'd been visiting family here for about two months.
Dernovsek said he's not sure what his work will entail other than it will be HIV prevention. The HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in Lesotho is 29 percent, one of the highest in the world and expected to climb higher, according to the U.S. Department of State.

"I'll find out when I get there," he said during a recent interview. "My understanding is most volunteers go through three months of in-country training, learn the language and practices and then are placed in a rural village. I'll have the opportunity to do other secondary projects to help the community."

The kind of HIV-prevention education Dernovsek does will depend on the country of Lesotho and his personality, he said. In Uganda, where he spent five months working for the faith-based Universal Chastity Education organization, he talked to girls and boys at high schools and at large outreach gatherings. In Burundi, where he helped start a branch of UCE, they have seminars of 50 students and then those students are sent out to teach others about preventing HIV by being chaste until marriage and then being faithful to one's spouse.

Uganda's first lady, Janet Museveni, was the first person there to talk about chastity as a way to combat the spread of HIV, according to Dernovsek. The idea caught on with the Ugandan people, some of whom started Universal Chastity Education, a private, nonprofit organization that receives private funding from Americans.

Dernovsek said some Americans might wonder about the program's emphasis on chastity, but it's really about purity.

"Purity in your whole life. Remaining abstinent until you marry. Being faithful to your spouse," he said. "There was a lot of polygamy (before) this movement caught on. The people were very, very receptive (to the message). Everyone talks about it. It's a huge movement. They are very receptive when we come to the schools."

UCE is one of many approaches Uganda is using to try to reduce its HIV rate. The World Health Organization says the country's rare success at reducing the infection rate is the result of a high-level commitment involving all sectors of society, from President Yoweri Museveni on down.

The HIV infection rate among pregnant women in the capital city of Kampala dropped to 14 percent in 1998 from 31 percent in 1993, according to the WHO. Still, the AIDS epidemic has caused the death of the mother or both parents of more than 1.5 million children in Uganda...
source: The Pueblo Chieftain Online

Ed. Note: The UCE Board and other volunteers thank Andrew for five months of service in Uganda and Burundi and we wish him well in Lesotho. To read more about his experiences volunteering with UCE, go to the link, Andrew's Posts

The Hope of Chastity and Faithfulness

2007-07-29T21:57:00.000-07:00

21 July 2007
Dear Readers,
After a month with Universal Chastity Education (UCE) in Africa, and over eleven outreach events, I have gained new perspectives about sexuality in the context of faith, purpose and discipline. I have come to realize that the strictly medical perspective on sexuality is simplistic and incomplete since it is based on physical health without emphasis on the spiritual. There is no doubt that a chaste life guarantees protection from STDs/HIV/AIDS. But the Ugandans teach their youth a broader spiritual perspective that adds deep significance to the choice of abstinence until marriage and faithfulness thereafter.

Faith/spirituality/belief in God are not to be swept aside, as though irrelevant to this topic of sexuality. Rather, the Ugandans bring it to the forefront, since how we are to behave in relationship to others relates directly to our purpose, our creation, our very being. During a UCE outreach, questions that are addressed first by the team are the essential ones: Who are we? We are created beings, “fearfully and wonderfully made” By whom? By God-who cares about us and loves us more than any human will ever be able to. When we understand this, then the need to search for “love” in other places or in meaningless relationships that for the moment feel like “love”, is replaced by the desire to grow in relationship with God, understand His purpose for our life and seek to do His will.

Then the UCE team asks the kids rhetorically, “what is TRUE love?” and responds: “If someone truly loves you then he cares for you, your future, your life and will do what is best for you…he appreciates that you are made by God for a purpose…that is TRUE love. TRUE love is patient.” The UCE facilitator points at a young man and asks, “If your sister came home pregnant and could not finish her studies, would you be happy or sad?” Without hesitation, the boy would firmly respond, “sad”. The UCE facilitator then states, “Boys, look around you at these girls… They are someone’s sisters. They have families that would be disturbed to have their goals cut short…they have a future… we are all brothers and sisters, we are each other’s responsibility.” A sense of community and caring for each other is created by the UCE team as they explain our purpose to the youth: to love one another and to realize that TRUE love waits.

The medical reasons of avoiding disease are valid, but they are secondary benefits to caring enough about another human being to want what is best for them in this one fragile life that we each have. Fragility of life seems to be well understood in this Ugandan culture. Our lives and our purpose are not, as the team explains to the kids, “disposable… for life does not have spare parts.” As the kids begin to nod, intently listening, the team knows that they understand that this is important teaching, this is what God wants, that chastity is about seeking the purpose of God which involves loving each other more than ourselves. As the team leader says, “This is serious stuff”.

“How then are we to do this?” the UCE facilitator continues, and then answers: “This takes discipline…What is discipline? You have discipline already: When you are hungry and you pass by a market, do you steal the food?” The kids shake their heads. “NO, of course, you do not. This is discipline. We all can be disciplined when we choose to be and God will give us the strength when we feel weak. We can get support from each other.”

Then he inspires with his personal statement, “I abstained from sex and will keep abstaining until I am married. You can do it too. I said “NO” to sex before marriage. Does anyone here want to say NO to sex before marriage? Does anyone here want to say YES to abstinence?” Hands shoot up everywhere. The kids are convinced. God, in his wisdom knows how they can stay healthy; He wants what is best for each of them, loves them unconditionally and the facilitator elaborates with Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” The students scribble down the reference, to search for it later in their Bibles.

The UCE team loves these youth, these youth that are the future of Uganda. They want the best for them; they want them healthy. The genuineness of the message is certain. As each team member comes forward and shares their story, their perspective, the kids draw hope, as from a deep well. Muzungo (foreigner) Ken catches the UCE spirit and introduces me as his “one and only wife, we are faithful to each other for 30 years” and the kids break out in cheers and applause. Little do they realize that we draw inspiration ourselves from the UCE team.

We are inspired more than ever to seek a greater closeness to God and place our lives in God’s hands. Our ears are opened as the UCE facilitator goes on… “Chastity is purity…purity in what we see, what we hear, what we do.” He challenges us on issues of our current culture: media and pornography and influences that are far from holy. He inspires the boys and men to seek higher purpose and renounce lust and fantasizing.

I hear this message through my woman’s ears and know that each boy that strengthens his resolve to seek this TRUE love will not view a girl as an object for momentary fulfillment. The girls are strengthened with the hope that a “no” with resolve will be heard and understood and valued. There is wisdom, mutual protection and vision for a future, lacing this message through and through.

Thank you UCE for inspiring the youth of Uganda to seek the purity in love-chastity… and in so doing bring hope for us all.
Kim

UCE Message Yields Enthusiastic Response

2007-07-28T10:54:00.000-07:00

20 July 2007
Dear Readers,
Day #4 of our Universal Chastity Education (UCE) youth outreach experience brought two “small” school groups of about 400 students each. Both were mixed (girls and boys) and very rural (poor). We were humbled to see how both schools had prepared and waited for today’s visit of the UCE Team. We arrived at the first school and the headmaster greeted us with a prepared speech. All of the students at the school came forward to claim chastity or renew their pledge to abstain and be faithful. Then the school’s choir had prepared a song thanking UCE and it’s Uganda national director, Michael Bahinyoza, by name, in the chorus that repeated five or six times. By the third chorus, the UCE keyboardist, with his outstanding ear, had picked up the melody and was accompanying the singers. Following this, the students returned to classes and this poor school asked us to sit for some refreshments as they served us cake and soda pop. Understand that a soda costs USX 500 and is therefore a very special treat. The UCE team never requests anything to drink or eat at these outreach events, knowing how very poor the schools are. Yet on a few occasions, they have been graced by something special like this which is so very welcome after sharing the educational message of UCE in dusty, hot, generally uncomfortable settings. The director of this school made a plea to us Americans for a partner school in which the kids could exchange letters and understand something about each other’s lives. See the above school objectives. Are there any schools out there that would like to partner with this school in rural Uganda?

The afternoon school had also been waiting for this special visit to them from the UCE team. Likewise very poor, the team set up outside since there was not an assembly hall to accommodate the students. Most of the administrators and teachers were gone due to a funeral of one of the staff’s parents; nevertheless they had the kids there waiting for us all day because they didn’t want them to miss the educational message. This group of students sat avidly under rain clouds building overhead, intently listening to the words brought to them by the UCE team. The degree of attentiveness and nods of agreement made it obvious that this would be an enthusiastic group to receive encouragement for abstinence until marriage. Sure enough, when the UCE team set up a line of chairs and told all who wanted to pledge chastity or start today with a new commitment of chastity, every single one of them stood up and ran behind the chairs. They all wanted to be counted as accepting this message of sexual health. And, just as the group finished signing the cards, the thunderclouds broke and it began to rain. The UCE team scrambled into high gear packing up the equipment and heading out just before the downpour struck. We marveled at God’s mercy in allowing all of these youth to be reached with the message of abstinence to ensure well-being in the fight against HIV/AIDS/STDs.
Until tomorrow,
Kim

UCE Day #3: Calypso and Club

2007-07-27T11:30:00.000-07:00

19 July 2007
Hello,
When Ken and I scheduled ourselves to join the UCE team for a whole week of rural outreaches, we thought that it might get repetitive or that we would soon feel that “if you’d seen one, you’d seen them all”. Rather, I am amazed at how each school’s response has been unique, different than outreaches we had seen so far and the UCE team, who has visited over 100 schools, confirms that no two UCE outreaches have ever been the same.

This is not surprising given that the UCE current project strategy has been to visit every school in the Iganga (Eastern Uganda) region, whether mixed (girls and boys), single sex, private or public (government) or religious (Anglican, Roman Catholic or Muslim), day-school or boarding. In addition to these basic differences in the schools, the other thing that seems to make each situation unique is how isolated or rural the school is-which seems to generally correlate with it being poorer. You can see this difference in the uniforms- some schools the kids all have variations of the uniform, shoes and sox with fancier additions, like ties or vests whereas in the poorer schools, some students may not have uniforms or the complete uniform. The other way the difference is apparent is the building(s), which may vary in type of roof, whether windows are present, the finish of the floor (dust-covered concrete) or painted (sealed).

The teachers participation has varied too-from formal precise introduction of UCE, with all teachers sitting at the front with us, listening and supporting the message throughout the entire presentation-to a stumbling unrehearsed introduction by an administrator or staff member who then leaves us with the students for the 2-3 hours. So when large schools are scheduled, there is palpable apprehension about whether the PA system will function, whether the room can (somewhat) accommodate all the students or whether they will be crowded at the windows or maybe we will be outside, and will the weather hold up or the ground be too wet to sit on, etc… Given all of this, I have a better understanding for why our day begins with prayer. Today, outreach day #3 for Universal Chastity Education (UCE) in Uganda was scheduled for two very large schools, 800 students in the morning and 1000 students in the afternoon. What would the day bring?

The morning school was a mixed government school with an active partnership with the UK. We set up outside due to the large student body and lack of a room big enough for all. All of the teachers and administrators welcomed us and sat in front with the UCE team for the entire outreach. The students listened avidly and all but a few came forward to claim abstinence and to sign a chastity card. One of the teachers quietly approached the UCE director, asking to be born again; that he and his “wife” would be married in the church. They prayed.

Meanwhile, the head teacher grabbed the microphone, congratulated the students on the wisdom of their decision to abstain and then praising God, fell to his knees. The other teachers, equally inspired, came forth, joining in song and the students clapped and cheered. The praying and song was jubilant and as the teachers clapped and jumped about, they began to calypso to the beat…“our school is changed forever, all praises be to God!”

The afternoon brought us an even larger school, with a huge dark assembly hall. The somber atmosphere motivated the UCE team to open the session with a different song, one that asked for the presence of God. This mixed group of students in this private school was older, asked provocative questions about sexuality, abstinence, diseases, masturbation and pornography. From the tone and types of the questions, it seemed best to tell this group that those who wanted to choose abstinence or start over and “renew” abstinence, would later register that commitment. (Recall from a previous blog that the team sometimes does this to ensure the sincerity of the commitment.)

On that note, we finished the outreach, and then to our surprise we were “mobbed” by the older boy students who said they wanted to abstain and begin a “club” and that they and their school needed this. So in a role reversal of sorts, the UCE team made a commitment to THEM, the students, to return and help them form a UCE club to sustain them and motivate other students. Even in this large, dark school, these young leaders had heard the life-saving truth in this healthy message of abstinence and faithfulness. The UCE team left renewed and praising God for His presence truly had been in that place.

Kim

UCE Outreach Day Two: Power Challenges

2007-07-25T04:51:00.000-07:00

18 July 2007

Dear Readers,
Tuesday was a particularly trying day for the Universal Chastity Education (UCE) Team who dealt all day with “power” issues. I’ve mentioned before that on the equator, in Uganda, the sun is our alarm clock. It can be depended upon to shine each day at 7am, day after day and promptly set at 7pm. But today we would have liked to have the sun a lot earlier since we needed to get up at 6am because our first school was further out in the country. But, alas-no power means no light…stumbling around in an unfamiliar hotel room with flashlights is tricky enough, but add to that showering in the bathroom which is simply a large tiled room with a showerhead coming out of the wall a few feet to the side of a porcelain hole in the floor for a toilet. In other words, if you don’t stand in the correct place to shower, you may end up with one foot in the toilet. Well, somehow we adapted and arrived on time to our morning meeting, which Michael, the UCE national coordinator, aptly described as a great accomplishment for all, having “met a challenging morning in the dark”.

We set out for the first school, deep in rural eastern Uganda, a small co-educational private school with only 120 students. I don’t believe that I’ve ever explained the nuts and bolts of setting up a UCE outreach. A four wheel drive vehicle, sturdy, for unpaved roads is rented in Kampala and then carries the team of 5-7 facilitators AND the generator, loudspeakers, musical keyboard, PA system and microphones. In addition to being HIV/AIDS educators, the team also serves as musicians, drivers, counselors, and, as we found out today, electricians. We had begun the day without power back at the hotel, only to find that when we arrived at the first school, we had no power from the generator. The ever-adaptable team, thankfully noted that it was a small group of students and the session went on without amplification or keyboard music. It proved to be a successful outreach with students enthusiastically taking an abstinence stance.

But the afternoon was set for an open-air assembly at an Anglican school of ONE-THOUSAND students. The imperative for power meant that the team would have to solve the generator problem. Skills were combined and lunchtime was sacrificed as everyone worked on the problem (except me, I photographed the happening). The problem didn’t seem to be the generator itself for some particular reason and the culprit was thought to be either the plug or the cord. The nearest town had no new cords for sale, so in an extraordinary feat of multi-tasking, the UCE team became electricians and did a wire-splicing job at the plug level. Voila! Power!

The UCE team set off for this large school and had a highly successful outreach in a magnificent setting under a huge mango tree. The sound system worked great and nearly the entire group present committed to abstinence. After seeing this Uganda UCE team in action meeting the challenges of today, I was so impressed at how they overcame the obstacles of the rough dirty roads, the heat, the hunger-- all to bring this life-saving message of abstinence until faithful marriage to the youth of rural Uganda. The team would never take the glory. The day begins in prayer and ends in prayer and I knew that at the end of this day, the UCE team would give the glory to God, for as they say, “God is good…all the time.”
May God also bless you today,
Kim

UCE Outreach Monday: Day of Contrast

2007-07-24T13:10:00.000-07:00

17 July 2007
Hello,
I must begin by apologizing to those of you trying to follow this blog: We just can’t get to the internet café every day and while we are in Iganga, it is particularly challenging because the internet in this small town is so slow. It’s cheap, about 2000 USX per hour, but so time consuming, for example to load pictures. I just loaded pictures on to the last three blog postings, so you may want to go back and check those out. The other frustration is that “load shedding” is affecting us here also, with power unpredictably going out back at the hotel so that I’m really glad that I have a back up battery for my laptop. When we get up in the morning, we set up for immediately charging the laptop if we have power. We have about two hours to charge through breakfast of a hard-boiled egg, piece of bread and African tea and the early am Universal Chastity Education (UCE) team meeting, during which we sing, pray for the youth reached yesterday and those to be taught today, and Michael, the UCE national coordinator, has a scripture reading to share. My goal is to keep writing and then I’ll post these all at once when I get back to Kampala, where we have a high speed internet café down the street from headquarters.

Our first of the eleven school outreaches was at a Roman Catholic girl’s school of 140 well-disciplined, uniformed students, who greeted us by singing the national anthem, the regional anthem (Busoga) and the school song. This turned out to be the ideal school to start with as we first worked together as a UCE team. As the team members introduce themselves, they describe who they are, where they are from and the educational level they have completed. This universally causes a cheer from the students, since these young Ugandans come from backgrounds like them, but are very accomplished academically. But the reason that this was the ideal school to start with is that after the cheers for the accomplishments, each Ugandan then further states, “and, I am abstinent…I am waiting to for sex until I am married.” At this Roman Catholic school it was crystal clear that all of these students had already been solidly instructed in abstinence because they broke out in unified loud cheers and applause at these statements. As each team member stated the same thing, the applause became louder. So at this school, in a “pep rally” atmosphere, we could see that our job was to reaffirm the message that the youth already believed. Not unexpectedly, every student immediately presented to the front to commit to the abstinence pledge. They came to the front and sang the prayer of St. Francis as a blessing on us.

The second school for that first day in the afternoon was clearly different. That school was very large, around 600 students of mixed faiths (Church of Uganda-Anglican, Roman Catholic, Evangelical, Islamic and animist) poorer-many without uniforms, and there were little groups of students that were disruptive-making noises, etc. They would not settle and quiet even for their headmaster. At that school, there were only tiny pockets of cheering admixed with laughter and catcall type sounds when each on the Ugandan team proudly described their abstinence. Then, as the team members got into their presentations as to WHY they had chosen abstinence until marriage, the crowd began to settle and pay attention. They became totally quiet and avidly listened as one of the UCE team described his experience, probably not unlike many of theirs: a polygamous home, 30 brothers and sisters, and the death of four of those brothers from AIDS, along with their wives—and how he had chosen for himself a new way. The sexual boldness of the questions the students asked indicated that many in this group not only had been sexually active, but had been exposed to pornography and had been misinformed about condom effectiveness. They knew virtually nothing about any other STDs other than syphilis, gonorrhea and HIV/AIDS. The UCE team presented the grim local statistics on teen pregnancy which had recently been published in the local newspaper, and answered numerous questions. The tone changed to total silence and attentiveness from these students. It was clear that they were considering abstinence. At this school, the UCE team leader opted to not pass out the commitment cards, but instead told the students that those who wanted to change their sexual lifestyle to abstinence, or continue abstaining, would have a chance on a later date to register that decision. Later, the team explained to us that when they get this type of response from students, signing the cards on a different day allows those who choose abstinence to do so based on certain commitment and without adverse peer pressure. So next week, a UCE team member will return alone and receive commitments from students who have registered.

So our first day with the Uganda UCE team was a day of contrast. At the first school, we affirmed teachings and helped the girls to strengthen their resolve and renew their commitments by making formal pledges. At the second school, we were introducing a “new way”, and UCE will sit back and wait to see what those kids choose to do. Ken and I pondered that the team likely had a greater effect on the second school even though we returned without a single signed card.
Kim

On the Road with the Uganda UCE Team

2007-07-21T10:32:00.000-07:00

July 20, 2007

Dear Readers,
I write to you from Iganga, Uganda where we have been stationed with the Universal Chastity Education (UCE) team, and from where we head out into surrounding rural areas each morning and afternoon to educate the youth on prevention of HIV/AIDS/STDs. Each day, bringing two different schools, has also brought different experiences.

First, I should tell you what being with the Uganda UCE team is like generally. Each evening, we meet together in a separate room in the hotel, where the team sets up the musical keyboard and we recount how each visit went and see what inspired us, what could have been done more effectively and share any thoughts we have about the visits. Then we review the next day’s schedule, charting carefully the timetable that will be required to travel to the venue, set up and do the UCE presentation. Since some schools are many kilometers apart and roads often poor, we need to be careful in this travel planning, always allowing for extra time that may be necessary if problems come our way. Then the songs for each of the schools are chosen, rehearsed, and the meeting closes in prayer both for the students that we have just visited and for those that will be seen in the next day of activities. We retire for the evening at about 930 pm and each night Ken and I have fallen asleep immediately and sleep soundly until awakening at 6am. We have a hotel room with our own bathroom; whereas most of the others are in rooms with shared toilets, showers and sinks in an area outside of the hotel. So even though our toilet is a hole in the floor, we feel thankful. It is clean, the bathroom is a single room with a shower, toilet hole and sink. There have been no bugs or spiders that we have seen and even though we seem to be having an early rainy season, the mosquitos are not around. We do use mosquito nets just to be safe and we both are taking our malarone. We are thankful to not have had any illnesses, and our entire team has been healthy. After getting up in the morning, which is sometimes a challenge in the dark, if the “load shedding” is such that we have no electricity, we meet at 715 am as a team, to review the songs for the day, be certain that each has rested well and that there are no needs, to pray for the children and to share any specific thing that has been put on one’s heart. Then we depart for the venue, and once again, I can say that each day has been very different.

A bit about the sounds and sights around me: I am now sitting in the hotel restaurant and the radio is playing evangelical Christian music, like “Blessed be the name of the Lord”. Sometimes country music, Hank Williams specifically, is playing. When the Ugandans sing with their keyboard, it is a beautiful harmonious and disharmonious medley of voices. One person, usually Maureen, begins with the lead in words for that voice and then that is what everyone sings off of. The voices are deep and loud and the rhythm comes off of the keyboard. One of the songs that they have sung quite regularly is “Touch me Today”, which is rich and beautiful with their voices; and they use it to begin the outreaches.
Bye for now,
Kim

Back in Kampala, Uganda

2007-07-21T10:29:00.000-07:00

July 15, 2007
Hello again,
We arrived last evening in Kampala (Entebbe airport), about an hour late due to a late departure from Nairobi airport. Jude, the Universal Chastity Education (UCE) mobilizer, was there to meet us and take us back to the new UCE headquarters which are located in Ntinda, (a section of Kampala). It felt good to be back at our homebase and we settled in for a good night’s rest. The next morning we went to the 9 am service at St Luke’s Church, which is Church of Uganda (Anglican) and which was an English speaking service, as opposed to Lugandan. It was a full house (as, by the way, have been every service we attended since arrival (Roman Catholic in Mbarara, Anglican in Burundi, and this one in Uganda). Just like the others it was alive and praise-filled, and this one overflowed outside the structure to a big seating area under tents set up next door. It was great to understand the readings, the sermon (which was on appreciation of elders and the wisdom that they had accumulated over the years) and to be able to sing with all the Ugandans. We were the only wazungu there, which meant that we were obvious, and were introduced at announcements time. The service was exactly 2 hours and we had communion, which we were fortunate to get in on, since that is a difference with Anglican services here: communion is only once a month. All of these services had in common a feeling of being “alive” with people jamming the pews, dressed in their very best clothes and very glad to be in church. The “Praise the Lord’s” and “Amen’s” are spontaneous and joyful and overall church in East Africa feels probably a bit more like Baptist services back in the USA. At one point the priest said that we were not singing loud enough and we needed to start over and all be singing loudly and joyfully for our God. So the exuberance of song escalated from loud to very loud. It is absolutely a marvelous experience to feel so jammed into a church where everyone is so happy to be worshipping.
After the service we headed back to get packed and join the UCE team heading out into the eastern Uganda area where a schedule was set for us to visit 11 schools and bring the message of abstinence and faithfulness to that region of rural Uganda. A large 8 seater four wheel drive vehicle with driver was all rented for the 5 person Ugandan UCE team along with Ken and I to bring this life-saving message to the students and teachers.
Until then,
Kim

Burundi Youth Commit to Abstinence

2007-07-21T10:25:00.000-07:00

July 13, 2007
Dear Readers,
Yesterday the Universal Chastity Education (UCE) Youth Seminar finished with a flourish.
The event ended in a fantastic dance performance by the Makamba diocese dancers who did the traditional dance of Makamba for us, the UCE Burundi team and for all the students who had committed with their signatures to abstinence until a faithful marriage. It was a phenomenal display of dance, singing and acrobatics, all in traditional costume. A proud day for the youth leaders who had been selected from 12 schools in the area, and who, after completing three days seminar about HIV/AIDS, STDs, biblical study on abstinence, discussion of cultural issues and pressures, all (45) made the pledge of abstinence and would be going back to their schools and friends to bring this message of good health to them. On the final day, the group gathered in front of the diocesan youth center with the UCE Burundi team for a picture.
For us, the day ended with the Bishop and his wife, Emily, presenting to Ken and I Burundi clothes, which included the beautiful Burundi dress which had been under construction by the local tailor. We had a great dinner together and Ken and I donned our new clothes and we posed together for this picture. We had been so welcome in Burundi and felt privileged to enjoy the time with the Bishop and his wife, the UCE team and the Burundi students. We pray that God will bless UCE Burundi as it grows; may many young lives be saved.
Tomorrow we fly back to Uganda. On our way back to the Bujumbura airport, we had taken the “Pharisee car” and this time it held up just fine. We stopped on the way in Matana diocese where we could see exactly where our priest, Ephraim Radner had taught many years ago while a missionary priest. We met another student of his, saw the old cathedral there and then traveled to the source of the Nile and the continental divide. The mountain drive was spectacular, green and lush.
I’ll write again after I get back to Uganda.
Kim

The Voice of Angels

2007-07-15T02:43:00.000-07:00

July 12, 2007
Hello,
Thus far, we have attended several Sunday church services, one Roman Catholic and one Anglican as well as the 3-day session for UCE in Makamba, Burundi. All of them included singing. This wasn’t just singing as we are used to, but singing in simple harmonies with call-and-answer with full rhythm accompaniment. The first Sunday, at the Roman Catholic service, we were seated with the choir, which was a marvelous experience. Unlike the services back in the US, the entire church sang with full voice. And when there are close to a thousand voices, it makes for a wonderful and joyous sound unto the Lord. Our second Sunday occurred in Burundi, with Bishop Martin Nyaboho. He had us sit in the front with him so that he could translate for us into English from Kirundi. There, each of the 8 choirs sang at least 2 songs each. As each of them began, it was like electricity entering the church. Though we had no understanding of the Kirundi words, the meaning was still apparent. It felt like Pentecost where “each of them heard the words in their own tongue”. But again, the bishop translated for us. The lead voice often soared and sometimes the chorus dominated. The choirs all had movements with their respective songs. There was a background of drums with rhythm accompaniment of intricate clapping. A few of the pieces had electric guitar accompaniment that I believe our son, David the guitarist would have enjoyed.
During the Three days of the UCE seminar involving 45 youth, the day and often breaks, were initiated by songs with which everyone participated in full voice. Clapping began, which separated into three or four intricate clapping rhythms within one or two measures. This set the stage for all the teaching and discussion that was to follow. It truly created an atmosphere of joy and holiness of all the subsequent activities. I felt blessed to be allowed to participate in all of this. I felt like I was hearing the voices of angels.
Blessings from Burundi,
Ken

Education Universelle a la Chastete (EUC)

2007-07-15T02:42:00.000-07:00

July 11, 2007

Today I write to you from day #2 of Universal Chastity Education (UCE) in Burundi. I thought I would title this blog in French since that is the language we primarily are speaking here. The UCE team alternates between French and Kirundi for the students and then Bishop Martin Nyaboho translates for Ken and I. I try to always say something in French so that they know that I am really trying, I am really interested in their language. Today all morning, the students have been working in two groups-boys and girls and they are going to develop skits. The girls will present a skit to us on what will happen to a person who chooses abstinence and the boys are developing a skit on what will happen to one who chooses not to abstain. After working all morning we were all fed a feast at lunchtime; as the Bishop says, keeping well fed is important to their learning. Then after lunch the skits were presented and all the kids were given an opportunity to comment on them. In the girls’ skits, a young schoolgirl resisted the temptations of a young man that was courting her with ill intentions and she prayed to God to give her the right young man after she had completed her studies and she graduates and then later finds him. The boys presented a skit of a young woman who goes with a shopkeeper who tempts her with the gift of a cellphone for sexual favors and then she doesn’t feel well, visits the doctor and finds that she has HIV/AIDS. She wants the doctor to tell her that he has confused her with someone else or that she has some other maladies, but he cannot and so she eventually describes her futureless life. One thing that is rather disconcerting is to realize that the negative aspects of our culture are the primary things that they see of westernization. The way US women and girls dress for example: midriff showing, short skirts, shoulders revealed is all very similar to the way prostitutes in Burundi would dress. So I’m gaining greater insight into why I had been asked if any youth pray in America. The Burundians are modest people and this is reflected in their clothing. I am glad to have longer dresses and skirts here, shoulders covered and the cross around my neck visible. When I was in Uganda in 2004 I bought a traditional Ugandan dress and turban. So one of the delights of today was going to the tailor to be fit for my Burundian dress. The Bishop picked out a traditional Burundi design and I was measured and the cloth was selected to go with my white complexion, green eyes and brown hair. When I return home, I will wear this dress to church and to other fund-raising activities that we may have for UCE. Also while the kids were preparing the skits, the Bishop took us around Makamba diocese and showed us various projects that he had started: churches, schools and his dream of having a diocesan visitors center, with a high quality guest house that could be used by many who visit this area as neat, modern and with a beautiful view of the mountains of Burundi. After our stay at the local 1-star guesthouse, you can be sure that we agree with his dream; it would be a wonderful project for a generous donor to sponsor. There are so many wonderful things anyone generous could do here to build up the diocese of Makamba, the youth and UCE. A dream that the Bishop has is that the UCE team adults accompany 2 boy and 2 girl youth leaders, to make a team of six Burundians that would go to a huge youth conference being held in early September in which they will share hopes and dreams and motivate and inspire each other in abstinence and in growing in their Christian lives. Another way that one could encourage the Africans to network and share ideas and vision would be by sponsoring the UCE-Uganda team to visit the UCE Burundi team, in Burundi, for a youth training event. It is so inspiring for us to be able to relay to UCE here in Africa that the donor base is growing and that the people of faith in the USA are there, do care, and have contributed to the dream of inspiring this simple, low-cost way of fighting HIV/AIDS with behavior change of abstinence and faithfulness. Please know how very grateful they are for the generous gifts you have made to UCE in both Uganda and Burundi.
God Bless you all,
Kim

Praying Youth Invited to Burundi

2007-07-15T02:41:00.000-07:00

July 10, 2007

Dear Readers,
Bishop Martin has a beautiful large youth facility that was opened and inaugurated by the President of Burundi, himself. He had made a generous donation of ten bags of cement to construct the floor and the Bishop had other donations available to complete the building. He purchased plastic chairs and tables and it makes quite a complete facility for a seminar. 45 youth leaders, representing 12 different Makamba diocese secondary schools had been invited to this three-day event. They are on “summer vacation” now, so a UCE educational seminar was ideal for time that would otherwise be free. Each student had at their desk, a few sheets of paper, a small notebook, a pen, and a detailed conference schedule for the three days. Bishop Martin opened with introductions (of all of us, including the students) and then prayed for the seminar and the students. Singing with clapping was led by the students at various intervals. They either all knew all the words, or all could pick up on the words very easily. The Bishop told us that, in addition to representing different schools, they also represented various faiths, Anglican, Roman Catholic and various evangelical faiths. There was a Muslim school represented, however the Bishop said that did not necessarily mean that the three students were Muslim since all faiths will attend schools that are sponsored by various denominations. After the Bishop introduced the “Education Universelle a la Chastete (EUC)” aka, Universal Chastity Education program, the UCE team, Annonciate, Claire, Revs Charles and Gatoto made outstanding presentations, covering very completely the medical aspects of HIV/AIDS and its effect on the person, family and country. Time was given for the youth to divide into groups and address each of these areas. What the Bible says about abstinence/faithfulness (chastity) was addressed in a very thorough presentation and the social risk factors consistent with the Burundian culture were also thoroughly reviewed. (payment of school fees, temptation of western things-like fancy cellphones, perfumes) Surprising emphasis was given on the risks of boys being tempted by widows and study of the story of Joseph being repeatedly tempted by Potipher’s wife and then finally tricked to make it appear that he had been with her, even though he had not. Joseph had remained totally abstinent, even to the point of lies she made about him, and even imprisoned over her lies. Yet he remained true to God, had remained chaste, and ultimately God rewarded him greatly. The youth were reminded that the rewards did not come immediately to Joseph, but rather long after. Throughout, the kids asked their questions and we were fortunate to have Bishop Martin to translate the days activities for us so that we could understand, and comment ourselves when appropriate. The day ended with a surprise by Bishop Martin who brought out all of the church Burundi drums and let the kids “have at it.” The sounds of the Burundi drums are soul-clutching and powerful. I was thrilled when offered a chance to give it a try. Here you see me trying to follow the lead drummer in the center. I couldn’t help but imagine that our son’s good friend, “Wilzy” would have absolutely loved this drumming session, especially as the kids asked me whether we had any one who could play the drums like this in America. As I assured them, “yes, yes, I know someone who could get this beat,” they proceeded on to the next question which I thought I was not understanding. I got the Bishop to be sure that I was understanding the question, because I could not believe my ears. “And do you have any youth who PRAY in the United States?” My heart sank to believe that our media had so successfully permeated the rural Burundi area as to have these kids ask me if we had ANY kids who PRAY in the USA. “Bring them to us, we want to meet them and pray with them.” So there, Christian, praying youth of America, is your invitation to come to Burundi.
Blessings from Burundi,
Kim

UCE Introduced to Hundreds at Makamba

2007-07-15T02:40:00.000-07:00

July 9, 2007

Dear Readers,
We keep hoping for a chance to get to a computer with an internet connection, but it isn’t looking like that will happen while we are in Burundi. So, I’ve resolved to keep writing and then, whenever I can, I will post to you all at once. Today I start out by wishing my sister a Happy Birthday!

Yesterday was a magnificent Sunday. We went to church as the Bishop’s honored guests and as such sat with him up at the front, right next to him in the Bishop’s chair. The service began at 9 am and went until 1230 pm. It didn’t feel that long at all; he enjoyed the singing-eight separate choirs performed and we following along as the Bishop translated the songs, scripture readings, sermons and explained the service in general. I lost count somewhere over 750 in attendance, so it may have been closer to 1000. The sermon was given by Fr Gatoto Hermes, who is also a member of the Universal Chastity Education (UCE) team in Burundi. He spoke about “keeping one’s word”, following through on promises made, in both small and big things, in church and in the world outside. He gave many examples from scripture about this and then ended with an “alter call” where the front of the church was filled with people seeking forgiveness for having failed in this way. All were forgiven, blessed and refreshed to start anew. We enjoyed seeing the similarities and differences between our services at home and the service here. For example, there is the “offertory”, but rather than passing the plate for donations, each person individually, comes up and puts their donation in one of two big baskets at the front. When in Mbarara, we had attended the Roman Catholic church there and found that custom to be the same. There’s something very deliberate about giving in that way; you feel a sense that each person has clearly thought about what they are giving and is approaching the front with that specific gift. It was extra humbling knowing that in virtually every case, by American standards, what was being given was likely something akin to the widow’s mite. The other thing that was so interesting was to hear the choirs in Kirundi and to have the translation from the Bishop that this was a song of praise, that was a song of glory to God, etc. and to get a feeling for how the sounds, music and words fit. During the announcements, Ken and I were welcomed and introduced and asked to describe the upcoming three-day seminar for the youth and the vision of Universal Chastity Education (UCE). We also told them about how the Bishop had been in our home, that we were the parents of Andrew, who had visited them in January and that our priests, Revs. Radner and Brownlee and their children had been there in Burundi last summer. We thanked them for welcoming us. We told them about the history of UCE, and they responded with vigorous applause. Afterwards we toured the diocesan offices and met many of the church leaders. Everyone is excited about us being here and for the UCE program for the youth.
Blessings,
Kim

The Boxcar Kids

2007-07-15T02:33:00.000-07:00

8 July 07
Hello again,
Makamba, Burundi is a city of 8000 population, located up in the mountains of Burundi. It is cool and comfortable here. We are truly Bazungu (pl. Mazungu) here and the cries of “Mazungu, Mazungu” (foreigner) are everywhere when we are noticed. We are now relocated to a guesthouse that the Bishop had arranged for us since apparently the UN guesthouse no longer will accept visitors who are not there on official UN business. Where we are now is the best in this tiny mountain rural African town. They saved the best room for us; because rare Bazungu would tolerate the real local guesthouse situation, which generally means either an outhouse or shared sink toilet facilities at the end of a long hall. I think that frequently rooms are shared. Anyway, for us to have a room, large, with our own shower/toilet/sink with mirror is quite elite. We have a gecko on the wall and a daddy-long-legs busy across the wall and we let them do their thing. The nasty looking 3-inch spider that we found when we settled in went to an early death. Other than this “natural” environment, the room is clean and with a mosquito net that has no holes, so trust that we are in adequate quarters. But by American standards, it is definitely poverty level. Concrete floor, walls badly in need of plastering and paint, no shower curtain, no toilet seat, no hot water, and very rarely have we found a faucet that works beyond décor-here, like so many other places you have to turn the water on by turning a valve under the sink. They offered me hot water, which I readily set up to be delivered to our room at 630 am each day. The little man brings a washbasin full of steaming hot water and then I mix the cold water from the other big container with it. Can you believe that, me, the queen of hot showers and baths, has accustomed herself to an efficient little shower of sorts using a single large plastic washbasin? And, that includes washing my hair! Well, I’ve had practice ever since I did at church fund-raisers, the “I’m going to wash that man right out of my hair”. But, never did I imagine that life here in Burundi would imitate my attempts at stage song and performance. The whole thing reminds me of my favorite book as a child, “The Boxcar Kids”. It’s a book about kids who find a boxcar with a few old broken cups and scant supplies and they make a home of that boxcar and then enjoy living in it. I’m so thankful to have the hot water, to feel clean, to collapse into bed each night, especially when I think about that many in this country are cooking around open flames, bathing in cold water, using outhouses, and who knows how else they must live. Today the little hotel man served us fresh pineapple when we returned mid afternoon. Bishop Martin was concerned about us being in a “one-star hotel”, but I told him that with freshly made hot water each morning and sliced fresh pineapple mid-afternoon, the hotel had “five-star service”. So I assured him that we are well, feeling good and glad to be hosted here with such tender care. We go for three meals a day at the Bishop’s house and are well fed in the morning with honey, bread, and a large flat omelet that you fold up and put in the bread, hot tea and then twice later eat the Burundi staples of rice, plantain, potatoes, spinach, beans, peas and beef. Today we had a delightful fruit cocktail for dessert: bananas, fruit de Japon (something like a kiwi), mango, orange, pineapple. All is fresh from the market; oh, I shouldn’t forget to tell you the bread is quite good, reflecting their French roots in little baguettes.
Until tomorrow,
Kim

The Back of the Bus

2007-07-15T02:26:00.000-07:00

7 July 07
Dear Readers,
Our trip from the airport at Bujumbura turned out to be a six-hour journey. We were reminded that travel in Africa is never to be taken for granted and it truly a blessing to reach your destination safely. It started out without problem; we were very comfortable in the Bishop’s “new” used Toyota Land Cruiser. It was spacious, air-conditioned and the Bishop explained what a great vehicle it was to have because Toyota parts are widely available in Burundi.

We headed out along the paved two-lane highway that runs along beautiful Lake Tanganyika, the longest lake in Africa. It is like one of our great lakes in that in any direction one looks, the shore cannot be seen. They have two beautiful recreational beaches and a third under construction. A “must-see” tourist stop was at the site where Stanley, after searching years for Dr Livingstone, finally met up with him with the famous introduction, “Dr Livingstone, I presume?” There is a large rock marking this site with the inscription of their names and the date they met: November 25, 1871. The Bishop always stops along the way for the Japanese mandarin oranges that his eight children love. The roadside marketers run up to the vehicle or you can pull up to a stand and pop out of the car and pick out your fruit. On a somber note, we were reminded of the civil war that Burundi has only recently been through as we passed the gravesite of the Papal Nuncio of Burundi, who in 2003 was ambushed and killed after attending peace talks; the grave inscription reading, “He gave his life for peace”.

So our first hour of travel was a comfortable travelogue. Then the Bishop’s driver began to speak to him in Kirundi and was pointing at the dashboard. The Bishop turned back to us and said, “I think we are about to have a problem with the vehicle” and moments later, the driver, going up a hill could not make it go into gear…the clutch was gone. I recalled that we had begun our trip with a travel prayer.

Here was the plan: The driver was to pick up a ride forward to the next village for a taxi to come and get the Bishop, Ken and me, because there was no hope of this being a simple repair. Once we were headed off, the driver would then go the other way, back to Bujumbura to locate a new clutch and a repairman for serious roadside work that would need to be done the next day. Upon reviewing the plan with us, the Bishop said, my daughter would call this a “Pharisee car: good on the outside and bad on the inside.” So the driver left, and we waited and we waited…

Finally after at least an hour along the road, I began to become more relaxed with the passersby. These two precious girls were headed back home with their unsold Japanese mandarin oranges stashed on their backs and on their heads. The Bishop suggested we tour the nearby soap factory, so we watched the women sorting the palm nuts that have oil in them, from which they make soap. Then as he repeatedly checked his watch, I could sense the tension of the situation, only completely understanding this all later…The sun sets at 6pm and we had yet to make it to Makamba diocese, up a mountain road with hairpin turns.

Finally at about 4:30 pm, a taxi showed up to get us to the next town. It was a broken down little station wagon filled with fumes of burning oil. I was so relieved to hear we were only taking that to the local bus stop and was worried about whether it would even make it that far. We got out and then I realized what we were about to do. The minibus we were to take was a nineteen seater that was full. Three across the front with the driver, then four rows of four behind. Except this is not a bus like you would ever imagine. The seats on the left side lift up to create a miniature aisle, then when you get in, the aisle disappears when the seats are put down and all the people get in. The first to buy their tickets get to sit in the front, and so on, with the last to buy their tickets in the back…There were only three seats left in the very last row of the bus.

Ken went in first, then me, then the Bishop. As we squeezed in, we crammed against the little guy who was already in our row next to the window. We were all arms and legs with nowhere to go. Ken sat straight, I leaned in towards him and the Bishop wedged himself in with his arm across the back of my “seat”. It was warm and as I realized everyone was now going to get back in and close off the aisle, I felt feelings of panic at being closed in. I hope this picture gives you just a little idea of what it felt like. Add the heat, the smells and the difficulty of seeing out a window. I thought about how my sister said she couldn’t stand the idea of being stuck on a tarmac in an airplane and I could strongly sense that I had to somehow let go of these feelings or in a moment I would be crying or screaming to get out. I closed my eyes…I listened to the Bishop, his jovial voice and presence talking about “this is the life of the common man”, and that we have only one hour on this bus. I glanced over at Ken and he didn’t seem panicked so I closed my eyes again, kept them closed and prayed that the feelings would pass and that I could relax and just “enjoy” this bus ride. I could feel Ken next to me on the right and the Bishop on my left, his strong arm around me across the top of the seat. I prayed and began to try opening my eyes. Slowly, I began to relax and the claustrophobic need to scream or get out passed. I began to think about that I was not in control of this situation, and really am not in control of as many things in my life as I think I am. This one I would have to let go of and trust someone else, and trust God.

We stopped in every little town along the way and each time people got off I felt momentary relief. But then there were people who got on, and those were not all who wanted to make it onto that bus, surely one of the last ones to begin back up the mountain. We finally got to Makamba diocese, switchback turns at dusk and city outskirts in the dark. The pre-arranged guesthouse had not saved our room, so once again, there was “no room in the inn” for us. After a number of calls, the Bishop was able to get us in at the UN guesthouse, which had a room 6 ft by 8 ft with small private shower-sink-toilet. We dropped into bed sacks and gave “out like a light” a new meaning. We slept straight through until sunrise at 6 am. Reaffirmed for us was that travel in Africa is never to be taken for granted. We rested well and were and are thankful to be “safe and sound” in Makamba, those words, “safe and sound”, also having a new deeper meaning to us.
Kim

Entebbe, Uganda to Bujumbura, Burundi

2007-07-15T02:19:00.000-07:00

7 July 07

Hello Everyone,
I’m sorry that I haven’t written as often as I had intended. Our activities with Universal Chastity Education (UCE) have kept us so very busy that we haven’t had a quiet moment to just sit and think, which is what I need to “blog” properly.

We had two days of very productive meetings with the Uganda-UCE team in which they presented their latest data on the now over 20,000 chastity pledge cards signed by the youth of Uganda. We worked through the budget for the upcoming year, reviewed the progress to date on the UCE HIV/AIDS manual and came up with a new idea of the team doing their own Uganda newsletter that will go back to the schools visited to keep the youth (and teachers) reminded and encouraged in the pledge of abstinence that they have made. You might be surprised that teachers sometimes make this pledge. When single teachers make this pledge, publicly, to their students it creates a school environment of trust. This is especially important for the students to know since regrettably there have been cases of defilement of students in the promise of better grades. It is sad to think that this would ever occur but it does. So the message of chastity which the UCE team brings is really a message that is heard also by adults and when it is, it creates a truly “safe” environment.

I did a laptop PowerPoint presentation for them tracing the history of UCE. Members of this very UCE team had already played a big role in the Uganda success against AIDS by speaking at youth rallies about abstinence and on radio broadcasts via RadioWest, Uganda, before they formally named themselves UCE in 2003-giving “birth” to UCE as an entity. It is always good to retrace steps and recall history to realize how very far a dream has come.

So, Ken and I have literally fallen into bed exhausted each night. In the first days of our trip when we were still in Mbarara, we both picked up a stomach bug but thankfully a few days of Ciprofloxacin took care of that and we have been well since. Our internal time clocks also are now totally on African time. It’s that adjustment to time, to eating and drinking safely that takes me about a week. Now I can say that we are truly “settled in” to Africa.

We left Kampala in heavy downpour with Jude, the UCE mobilizer, who traveled with us by “special hire” (individual taxi) to the airport in Entebbe and flew via Ethiopian airlines into Bujumbura, Burundi. It was a huge airplane, we were joining a flight already in progress from Washington DC to Rome to Entebbe, Uganda to Burundi. We entered the country to find a clean and nicely landscaped airport and were waiting for baggage when Bishop Martin walked in with a warm welcome and big smile. It was great to see him, for us it was the third time meeting him. The first two were on trips to Pueblo Colorado where he had visited our home parish, Church of the Ascension, primarily to spend time with Fr. Ephraim Radner, our priest there. Fr Radner had been a missionary priest years ago at the seminary in Burundi and the then young Martin Nyaboho had been his seminary student, and was not yet a priest. Now he is the energetic Bishop of the growing diocese of Makamba, Burundi and the National Director of UCE-Burundi. Bishop Nyaboho has studied in Kentucky and his English is outstanding.

So, to see Bishop Martin there at the airport was a joy indeed and Ken knew for certain once again that he would not be totally dependent on my meager French and translation to try and understand. I’ll write more soon.
Kim

God is Good

2007-07-06T11:01:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,
Now I am sure that we are back in Uganda again...Reminded everywhere that God is Good everywhere we go. Can you see on the vehicle in front of us that that is the message across the back? (Had to upload tiny pictures to get them on this page!)We had a very busy four days in Mbarara area with the dermatology and then headed back to Kampala to join the UCE team.
We made the stop on the Equator where we had the road side experiment demonstrate before our eyes that water really swirls in different directions (counterclockwise vs clockwise)if you are on the north compared to the south. Then directly on the equator the water just jets straight down this little home-made funnel in which the Ugandan sets a delicate flower on the water in the funnel to demonstrate which way if flows down the funnel...and, of course, we signed the Uganda Equator Guestbook. Signing guestbooks is customary in every office and home that we have ever visited in Uganda. Even the Equator!
When we arrived in Kampala we were greeted by UCE-Uganda and have spent the last two days in planning sessions for the 2007-08 year of youth outreach activities.
We presented the team with the tee shirts that we had designed before leaving Pueblo and they were really happy with them. Tomorrow we are flying to Burundi for a week with UCE-Burundi.
We will do our best to keep you posted.
Kim

Ray of Light in Uganda

2007-06-30T02:46:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,
We have arrived safely in Uganda, Africa! This trip we made on American Airlines, the advantage of which were that we could check our bags in at the airport in Colorado Springs all the way to Entebbe. We never had to go pick them up and transfer to an international flight, which we recall on past trips to be a huge additional travel burden. Four 50# bags is a lot to cart around from terminal to terminal. Correction make that 3 fifty pound bags and one 70# bag…that’s my bag, which you may recall I was still packing at four in the morning before departing, when I last blogged to you. In the wee hours when time is ticking, a 25 dollar surcharge doesn’t sound too bad. The other advantage was that we arrived at 1030 pm last night and headed off straight to bed after arriving at the hotel.
We had a layover in the Brussels airport and that’s me with one of the few outlets I could find.
When we arrived in Entebbe, our bags were among the last off the plane; so you can imagine that we had just a moment of wondering about how we would manage if they didn’t arrive. I had it all figured that I would buy lots of Ugandan and Burundi dresses; a marvelous excuse to dress in the beautiful tradition that I love anyway!
The hotel was there to greet us and they took us to their other branch because there were no rooms at the inn where we were reserved at the HVO volunteer rate. Instead, we were sitting in the lap of luxury at this phenomenal hotel which was newly constructed in 2004, the last year we had been in Uganda. We slept soundly and I awoke to a thin bright ray of light that was entering the room from the top of the curtain. I thought about how well our trip had went, how very comfortable we were in this luxury hotel and how it was a nice transition of rest before heading out to Mbarara. We had a full breakfast and now I’m using the high speed internet in the business office while waiting for our ride to Mbarara University of Science and Technology. It will be a four hour drive. That’s all for now; rest assured that we are safe and sound in Uganda and off to a good start.
Kim

A Wonderful Send-off!

2007-06-28T03:10:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,
We leave in two hours for Africa! Yes, I've been up all night trying to finish whatever; Ken has all the bags in the car except mine and he is sleeping soundly. These pictures tell you about the wonderful send-off we had. Last weekend, a travel blessing from the Rev. Annette Brownlee, who herself went to Burundi at about this time last year.

Tonight, we took a break from the packing to look outside just after a big electrical storm we had. What a rainbow, coming out of the dark, lit by rays of sun. We thought, what a way to head off to Uganda and Burundi!
We will write again when we can, but it may not be for a few days.
Kim

London Redeemed....somewhat!

2007-03-24T16:34:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dr. Autumn Dawn

Hello Everyone,
Well, London has redeemed itself...somewhat*. The hotel issue has been resolved to my satisfaction because the manager’s response to my complaint was to give us our room for half-price and to give me a free bottle of wine. So that was a good start. Plus we had a fantastic breakfast this morning…simple continental breakfast, but somehow everything in Europe seems to taste so much better than at home. The butter is so flavorful, the jam is fantastic, and the bread is so fresh. The kids ate so much fruit I thought they were going to explode. But they haven’t been eating much fruit in Uganda because we were trying to be careful not to get sick. So they really enjoyed it today. In addition, since we arrived in London, I have had a bottle of Evian, a Dr. Pepper, and a Starbucks – so this city fully qualifies as civilization in my book. I’ve had my three addictions satisfied for now, and I am happy.

We bought tickets for a hop-on-hop-off shuttle bus because we wanted to see as much as possible in the one day we have here. And we did see a lot – everything from Big Ben to the London Bridge (which is really quite boring) to the London Eye. And we went into the London Dungeon (way too scary for Ellie – don’t take your little kids if you’re ever here with them) and the Tower of London (perfect for both kids – we could have stayed there all day long!). We ate fish and chips at the Sherlock Holmes Pub and we all three decided that fish and chips are fine, but vinegar on them is just foul. I usually try to at least be respectful of other people/culture’s tastes in food – but that is just awful. And it should be illegal to mistreat a perfectly good plateful of fish and chips that way! We had a great time all the way around – and both kids were significantly less whiny than they have been at some other points on this trip.

The one major problem, yet again, was that of clothes. I did put us all in long pants, long sleeves, and sweaters. But it was COLD – MUCH colder than it was last night. And we were very, very uncomfortable all day. We were laughing at dinner about how hot we have been for the past three weeks in Uganda. We didn’t think it was possible to be so cold so soon! The kids were shivering, hiding behind me to get out of the wind, and generally miserable from a physical standpoint all day long. At some point, Coggin helpfully said, “If Dad were here, we wouldn’t be so cold.” I said something about Dad being able to carry you and help you stay warm. And Coggin said, “No, I mean Dad wouldn’t have brought us out in this weather without jackets. He would have made sure we were dressed warmer.” I was thinking, “Thanks a lot!” But the sad part is that it’s completely true! David is a lot better at these things than I am. All the more reason why we’re so glad that we’ll be home to see David tomorrow night!

Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org
Ed. note: Be sure to read yesterday's incredible post, Readers Choice: Title this Blog Post, and then go to the right sidebar and select a title (or create a better one!)

Hakuna Matata!

2007-03-23T16:01:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dr. Autum Dawn

Ed. Note to READERS: Have FUN, you get to title this blog entry! See the poll (it's in the right sidebar about half-way down) and vote for the title and in a month the winning title will be added to this entry. You only get one vote. You can make up your own title and enter it!

Ed.Note: The winner is Hakuna Matata!

Hello Again, (literally)
I said that yesterday would be my last entry, but I changed my mind. Our travel from Uganda to London and its attendant complications proved to be worth writing about! We left the Micklers’ house this morning at 7 am Uganda time to travel with a driver to the Entebbe airport. We arrived there, checked in, ate breakfast at the café, and boarded our plane, all without difficulty. The flight was fine – a bit of turbulence, but no major issues. THEN we arrived in London. I should mention the fact that we had major complications trying to get to our day room during our 12 hour layover in London on the way to Uganda. And this London experience was actually worse than that one. We got off the plane, went through passport control, got our luggage and went through customs….And then we went out to purchase tickets for the HotelLink shuttle to take us to our hotel. This process was frustrating and complicated, essentially because the man behind the counter didn’t know what he was doing. But 35 minutes and 4 (yes, 4!) phone calls to his supervisor later, we had three standard adult/child tickets for the shuttle bus! When we first walked up to the counter, I had told him that we had theater tickets at 7:30 and I asked him whether there would be delay in traveling via the shuttle because that would mean that I needed to travel by taxi (it was about 4:30 pm at that point). He assured me in very obsequious tones that there would most certainly not be any delay, and that his bus was so much cheaper than a taxi, etc, etc. So I was frustrated after it took 35 minutes just to get our tickets. I reminded him that time was getting away from us and that we had to get to our hotel, check in, change, and get to the theater…..He assured me again that there would be no problem because the shuttle would be there to pick us up in only 30 minutes. “THIRTY MINUTES?????” I said. “We’ve already been standing here for 35 minutes!!” He was again very reassuring and solicitous as he explained many, many details about how many stops the shuttle makes, and a great deal of other information that I was not particularly interested in. I told him again that we had to be at the theater before 7:30….that our tickets said we would not be seated if we arrived late. He assured me there would be no problem whatsoever. So we went to the Starbucks next door and got a drink and sandwich, realizing that we would not have time for dinner after arriving at the hotel.

You are intelligent readers and you have probably already guessed that the shuttle did not come in 30 minutes…..It came at ten minutes after 6:00 pm. I almost got a taxi numerous times during the almost 1-1/2 hours that we waited. But every time I started to head for the taxi line, the shuttle bus sales guy would call the bus (looking back on it, I don’t think he was really calling anyone….just pretending) and he would tell me that the bus would arrive between 2 and 5 minutes…that I just needed to wait a few more minutes. He also told me numerous times that our hotel would be the first stop the bus would make so the bus ride would only be a few minutes. “You have plenty of time” was somewhat of a refrain during this waiting time. Then the bus driver arrived. I asked him how long it would take to get to our hotel and he said, “Ages!” When I responded a bit negatively to this, he proceeded to explain that it was rush hour traffic, it takes at least 40 minutes to get into the city, blah, blah, blah. I said, “Can you give me an HONEST answer to this question: At this point, will it be any faster if I get a cab?” He said, “No.” I have no idea whether this was the truth or not, but I had to choose, without any basis for the decision, whether or not to believe him. I chose to believe him (partly since I had already paid 80 pounds for these shuttle tickets!) and we got on the shuttle.

We did get to the hotel in 40 minutes…..the only thing I have been told in London thus far which actually proved to be true. The problem upon our arrival: the hotel, where I had made a reservation about 3 weeks ago, was boarded up with a “Closed for Renovations” sign on the door. The bus driver was actually getting our 7 suitcases out of the back and setting them on the sidewalk, telling me we would just have to walk round the corner and we would find a number of hotels where we could inquire about vacancies. I protested that there was no way that I could carry 7 bags, keep up with two kids, and find my way around a strange city on foot in the dark. He didn’t seem too concerned until the kids both started to cry – pretty much hysterically. Maybe he’s a father because that seemed to touch him. He put our bags back in the car and said he would call his company to ask what to do. He also told me I should call the hotel and complain – which I thought was funny in light of how his own company had treated me, as well. Anyway, he called his company’s office who told him that all reservations for our hotel had been re-routed to the Phoenix Hotel around the corner and that he should take us there.

We drove around the corner to the Phoenix Hotel, where they confirmed that all reservations from the other hotel had been transferred there, but they informed me that I did not have a reservation and that they did not have any rooms available. I showed them the confirmation number that I had from the other hotel, and the woman at the desk told me “That is not a Comfort Inn Hyde Park confirmation number. You must have called a different hotel." At this point, I was pretty close to joining the kids in their hysteria, and the bus driver kept telling me to stay calm because I was making the kids upset…..Easy for him to say! So we climbed back on the bus and I was about to lose it completely. Coggin asked if we were going to make it to The Lion King….At that point, it was 7:05 and we had no hotel to check into. I said I didn’t think we were going to make it. And they kids went over the edge.

There was only one other passenger on the shuttle bus during all this…a young woman who looked to be in her late 20’s. At this point, she came forward, introduced herself, and told me that she had a hotel reservation and that she would be more than happy for the bus driver to drop the three of us off at the theater, then she and he would take all our bags to her hotel room. After the show, we could take a cab to her hotel room, and then either check into our own room at her hotel, if one was available, or we could just share hers for the night. It’s probably illustrative of my mental state at that point that I was actually considering this offer! But just about that time, the driver got a call from the Phoenix Hotel telling him that they had found my reservation.

So back to the Phoenix we went….At this point, it was 7:25. I was trying to resign myself to missing the show and just flushing all the money I had spent on those tickets….Then the young lady on the bus had another idea. She suggested that we just dump our bags at the hotel, have the bus driver take us to the theater dressed as we were, and come back to the hotel afterwards to check in. We decided to go with this plan. It’s worth mentioning here that we had left Uganda that morning, where the temperature was in the 90’s, and at this point in London, it was in the low 40’s. I was in shorts and a t-shirt. Ellie and Coggin at least had on pants and long sleeves, but no jackets. We were dressed inappropriately in every way. Plus we were filthy from being on the plane all day…but off we went for our London theater experience.

The bus driver dropped us off at the theater at 7:50 (I really hope he doesn’t get in trouble for getting back to the airport so late after driving us all around town!). Before we walked in, I reminded the kids that our tickets said that late entry was not allowed, so there was still a chance it wouldn’t work. But we walked in and asked. I guess we looked pretty pitiful because the usher was very kind and said that he would make sure that we were able to go in. He led us up to the entrance near our seats. At this point, I told the kids, “We need to thank God for taking care of us and helping us find a hotel and getting us into the theater.” Coggin replied, “I’ve been praying that we would be able to get into The Lion King the whole time.” So we paused in the hallway and thanked God for getting us in. And we went in to see the show. The show was incredible. Coggin was glued to the stage the entire time. Ellie slept through most of it, unfortunately – but it was 2:00 am to us by the time the show was over. I loved the show, but was really, really tired.

We left the show very tired, but very happy that we had been able to go, and VERY much looking forward to checking into our hotel and going to sleep. As we walked out, there were bike taxis (a bike with a large trailer behind it that has a seat) waiting. I should have gotten a regular cab. But our hotel was actually very close by, and I thought the kids would enjoy riding the bike taxi. So we got into one, whose driver assured me that he could take us to the Phoenix Hotel. And off we went. A few minutes later, he turned to me and asked me the address of the Phoenix Hotel. You will remember that I was not supposed to stay at the Phoenix Hotel. We had arrived there in the dark. We had not even checked in yet, so we had no paperwork from the hotel at all. I suddenly realized that I had no idea where the hotel was. And the driver didn’t either. So there we were in summer clothes in 40 degree weather sitting on a bench behind a bike - and, as it turned out, we were in for a long, long ride. The guy stopped to ask people directions 4 or 5 times, and he went down street after street. I felt badly for him because he was peddling and pulling us all that way…and I tried to think of other options, but I had no idea what to do. He had asked a number of cabbies how to get to the Phoenix Hotel and none of them seemed to know. So I figured leaving the bike in favor of a cab would only make us warmer, but not any closer to our destination. I never came up with a plan that I was certain was better….so we just kept riding with the guy and stopping to ask directions. He finally found a cabbie who knew where the hotel was, and he finally got us there. We had been in the seat behind the bike for an hour and 15 minutes. We were frozen and bone-tired. And then this very helpful guy who had pulled us all over town – which, in my view, was due to the fact that he told me he could take us to the Phoenix Hotel when he in fact had no idea where it was – charged us 40 pounds (over $80 US!!!!). Unbelievable. But I was too tired to argue. I just paid it and went inside.

We got checked into the hotel….though I intend to talk to the manager tomorrow to get a discounted rate after everything we have been through! But what’s important for tonight is that we are here. It’s warm. And we have beds. Good night!!

Dr. Autum Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org

River Nile Family Float

2007-03-22T11:02:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dr. Autumn Dawn

Hello All,
It’s hard to believe that in less than 12 hours we will leave Africa, where I have been a volunteer with Universal Chastity Education (UCE) in Uganda. I hope that we will be able to return at some point, but as we depart, I have no idea if we will come back, much less when. So it’s bittersweet to leave.

Of course, we are all extremely anxious to get home to David – I’m not sure who’s more ready to see him – the kids or me! And it will be great to be at home in our own beds again and to get back into our normal routine (though I imagine that it won’t take many days of school and work before we’re wishing we were in Africa again!).

We are out of our element here – and mostly, out of our community. Three weeks is long enough to acclimate, but not long enough to build community or relationships. So we will enjoy returning to our community of friends, neighbors, and colleagues. But somehow it feels as if we are leaving the depth of relationship and freedom of schedule that we have observed among the community here in order to return to the business of day to day life in the States, with all that that entails – overloaded schedules, responsibility to others whose values might not jibe with ours, bills, superficial interactions with one another because the tyranny of the urgent saps our lives of depth and vulnerability. I hope and pray that, having been here, we will return to do a better job of managing our lives in a way that creates space for the things we have seen here.

We are going out in style having spent our last day rafting on River Nile, as the Ugandans call it. We drove from Kampala to Jinja with Downie and her two oldest girls. And the six of us got on a giant raft for the “Family Float” trip down the Nile (which, of course, is really up the Nile since it runs from South to North). Coggin has been anxiously awaiting this activity for the entire three weeks, as he has been studying Egypt and the Nile River in history class all year. And the trip did not disappoint. We rafted for about 2-1/2 hours – which included a lot of time to get out and swim in the river, as well as the actual rafting. The Nile River, as many of you have emailed to warn me, has many rough rapids (grades 5 and 6)*, but the Family Float trip does not go down the rough ones. We went down only grades 1 and 2. But that was enough for us with four kids on board.

We took some gorgeous pictures* of the river and the riverbank, which I unfortunately can’t download for you because my camera batteries are dead. I’ll do it when I get home. There were plants growing out from the banks that looked like what I’ve always imagined rushes would look like, so we got a picture of the type of setting Moses would have been hidden in as a baby among the plants in the river. In addition, as we were getting out of the raft at the end of the trip, there was a nude Ugandan woman bathing at the riverbank – so we got a picture of what Pharaoh’s daughter might have looked like when she found Moses (we weren’t necessarily as quick to point out that object lesson to the kids!).

Getting out at the end of the trip was funny because, in addition to the woman bathing, there were a number of women on the riverbank washing their clothes. I couldn’t help but wonder what they must think to see a bunch of Americans who have enough disposable income to pay money for someone to take them down the river on a raft – just for fun. I imagine that fun isn’t something she knows a lot about or has had much opportunity to experience. And while she is at the river doing her work, which no one will do for her and from which she never gets a vacation, we were laughing and playing and completely without immediate responsibility or work to do. Our lives are so far apart that I’m sure she can’t even begin to imagine life on the other side of that chasm.

On a different note, it probably goes without saying, but we’re all three sunburned despite liberal applications of SPF 50. This is just standard for the Galbreath family, unfortunately…..Actually, now that I think about it, I think it’s actually the Eudaly genes that the three of us share that lead to this unfortunate propensity. Despite the sunburn, though, it was a great trip overall and a true grand finale to our trip to Africa!

After rafting, we had Mexican food at the only Mexican restaurant in the country of Uganda – which actually proved to be very good. Not having had Mexican food for three weeks, we were more than happy to tag along with Downie and her girls, who, as Mexican-food-deprived San Antonians, go to this restaurant every chance they get. The other thing we have really missed while we have been here is Orderup food….so the kids have extracted a promise that we can eat dinner at Orderup on Monday night!

Since the kids missed two weeks of school to come on this trip, they brought along a large volume of work to do in order to keep up with their classes at school. Unfortunately, but true to form, we have managed to procrastinate and now we find ourselves with only a few days left in our trip, but a great deal of homework remaining. We began work on it last night in earnest, with me keeping time on each page and spurring them forward, closer to completion. Apparently, while we are gone, Coggin’s class is learning capital letters in cursive because he has not done this before, but there are some worksheets on this topic included in his stack of homework. Rather than being incredibly focused and task-oriented in getting his work done, he spent a lot of time tonight jeering at the shapes of cursive capital letters. And I must admit, many of them really are rather strange. In particular, he pronounced the capital cursive G “ridiculous” and the capital cursive Q, which you will recall is essentially a large number 2, “the silliest letter I have ever seen.” I had a renewed confirmation that I did not miss my calling as an elementary school teacher, because all I could do was laugh.

We leave early tomorrow morning for the airport to bid our goodbyes to Uganda and fly to London. We will spend two days in London before returning home on Sunday night. I’m not sure that we’ll have internet access in London – and this blog is supposed to be about Uganda anyway – so I think this is probably my last entry. If you have actually read all of this, you deserve some sort of award. It has been a great trip for us, but these things are usually not nearly as interesting second-hand! However, if you dare to feign interest, be warned – you have only had a sampling here. We have over 1000 pictures, and we will use them. So brace yourself for a long, tedious evening of looking at our travel pictures when we see you at home!

Love to you all!
Autumn Dawn (with Coggin and Ellie)
volunteer@uceglobal.org
*Ed. note: For a description of the Grade 5 River Nile rapids, go to the right sidebar index to Andrew's post entitled, Rafting the Nile in Uganda. There are pictures posted here which are similar to what Dr. Autumn Dawn describes above, because that was the only time he could safely get photos.

UCE Volunteer Links Up with Compassion International Child

2007-03-21T20:08:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dr. Autumn Dawn

Dear Readers,
I am cognizant of the fact that I came here with one non-governmental organization (NGO), Universal Chastity Education (UCE) and am staying with friends who work for another NGO, Food for the Hungry, but I’m still going to take this opportunity to talk about yet a third NGO – Compassion International.
Today we had the opportunity to meet the Ugandan child whom we have sponsored through Compassion International for the past 9 years. His name is Samiru Bukkumune and he lives in a village in the far eastern part of Uganda. We began sponsoring him as part of a Sunday School class we were involved in - he was 9 years old at the time.

David was responsible for collecting the offering in Sunday School and sending it in to Compassion. At some point, we moved on to a different Sunday School class, but David continued the sponsorship and continued to write letters to Samiru. Samiru is now 18 years old and is about to complete “Senior 4” which is the last year of “Ordinary level” education in Uganda. He will sit for exams for his “Uganda Certificate of Education,” which is somewhat similar to a high school diploma, later this spring. Then, if he is accepted, he hopes to go on to “Advanced level” education which includes grades “Senior 5 and Senior 6.” These are like 12th and 13th grade….still high school, but they have an extra year of high school compared to us. After completing Advanced level, a person is eligible to apply for University here, which Samiru hopes to do, as well. Anyway, when I knew that we were coming to Uganda, I contacted Compassion to find out whether or not it would be possible to meet Samiru while we were here. They were most accommodating and they actually brought Samiru from his village to Kampala to spend the day with us.

He came with one of the Compassion Child Development Officers from the project in his area (Godfrey). They met up with a Kampala-based Compassion staff person (Christopher), and the three of them came to meet us near the Micklers’ house. We did a number of things together, including Uganda Museum and Kasubi tombs (Uganda’s version of the Egyptian pyramids…the structure is very different, but it is where some of the former kings of Buganda are buried). In addition, we went to Garden City Mall, which is an American style shopping mall. We ate in the food court, which proved to be overwhelming for all of us….It looks like an American food court, but instead of walking up to each counter, ordering, paying, and taking away your food, you walk into the area and are mobbed by representatives from every restaurant carrying menus and telling you to order from their place. You sit at one of the tables and all the waiters follow you there and wave their menus and their fingers in your face and try to out-shout one another in offering you their suggestions for your order. Ultimately, I had to ask them all to leave so that we could think about what we wanted. Then we ordered our food and they brought it to our table. Samiru’s village does not even have one restaurant, so I’m sure that he was overwhelmed by this experience!

But the food court paled in comparison to the bookstore. The overarching theme of Samiru’s letters has always been education and how important it is to him. So I wanted to take him to the bookstore in the mall and let him choose a book. The volume of merchandise available was beyond anything he had ever seen, I think. But he found his way to the textbook section and had a very difficult time deciding between a chemistry textbook, a geography of North America textbook and a water sanitation textbook.

During his deliberations, I visited with him and learned that he only owns one book – The Bible, which he got from the Compassion program – and his school has no books at all.I couldn’t stop myself from purchasing all three of the books for him. If, in the face of such variety, my own kids ask for three textbooks when they are 18 years old, I will promptly purchase those, too!

Several of the Universal Chastity Education (UCE) volunteers that I have met here work as Child Development Officers for Compassion International. Between them and the two people who accompanied Samiru today, I have learned a great deal more about Compassion’s program, and I have been thoroughly impressed. It is an amazingly well-run program that adds such value to the villages and families it serves. Children are chosen for the program based on verified need. Then sponsors are sought for them (And every Compassion project site has at least some kids who are currently without sponsors, by the way. Take this as a hint.) Once kids are enrolled in the program, they attend all-day training at the project site in their village every single Saturday. At their training, they are fed three well-balanced, hot meals. They play games and do fun activities. They are taught hygiene and life skills. And they are taught vocational skills – they can choose which trade they want to learn (carpentry, tailoring, brick-making, and others). By the time they finish primary school (which goes through our 7th grade), they know basic self-care skills and they have basic skills in a vocation which they can use to earn money. Then if they continue in school for secondary school, they can remain in the program and further develop these skills. All the while, the Child Development Officers are also available for counseling and loving relationships, which the kids desperately need since many of them are HIV orphans. There is also a Compassion program called the Leadership Development Program which is for kids who continue on to University…so it’s actually possible to sponsor a child from when he is little all the way up through a bachelor’s degree. I have been very impressed with the way in which the money from sponsors is used to train these kids in ways that will benefit them for life – not only to provide food or clothes.

I have also been very impressed with the quality of the Compassion International staff members whom I have met and with what I have learned about the staff selection process. To apply for a job as a Child Development Officer, one must have a bachelor’s degree and then sit for a test administered by Compassion. It is a written test on Bible knowledge, and it is universally acknowledged by Ugandans to be very, very difficult and comprehensive. Upon passing this test, there are still several stages of personal interviews that one has to successfully complete in order to obtain a job with Compassion. The organization is clearly very careful about the people whom it places in the villages to care for these kids. And the staff members themselves are really passionate about their work.

I am leaving Uganda feeling very glad that we became involved with Compassion International, albeit through the suggestion of someone else in our Sunday School class. And I am hopeful that we will be able to sponsor other children. It is really a small amount of money for Americans to give each month, and the impact that I have seen is incredible. Truly the money is multiplied many, many times as it crosses the Atlantic Ocean on its way to Africa. I hope that every person reading this will consider signing up as a sponsor! Otherwise, we all continue to do well.

Both kids, but I think particularly Coggin, found it meaningful to spend the day with Samiru. As he told us about his school (700 kids, no books at all, brick building with concrete floors) and his house (2-room brick construction but not “cemented” – that is, not mortared together – with openings for windows and doors, but no panes or doors in the openings, 1⁄4 kilometer from the bore hole where they get water), I hope they caught a glimpse of how different the lives of African children are from ours. Both kids were very quiet with Samiru, but they listened a lot. I think it was a meaningful day for all of us.

Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org
PS Coggin’s Nairobi eye is stable, or maybe slightly improved. (See today's picture) I am fervently hoping that it will be completely cleared up by the time we get home!

Diagnosis: Nairobi Eye in Uganda

2007-03-20T21:00:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dr. Autumn Dawn

One more thing,
Later in the afternoon today, we went to the outdoor craft market to shop for Ugandan souvenirs. The kids had a great time there and had an introduction to the concept of flexible prices and bargaining.

None of us has been ill until the last couple of days when Coggin started getting a strange rash on his face. Around his mouth, it looks like impetigo. But it also includes a very swollen, red, painful left eyelid and a long streak of blistery-looking skin down the middle of his forehead. We went by the home of a friend of Downie’s who is a physician from the UK and who has lived here for a long time. She immediately diagnosed the rash as “Nairobi Eye” which is an irritation that comes from a certain type of bug here. Apparently Coggin got tangled up with this bug without his realizing it. And the bug secretes an acid which then causes inflammation on the skin. So apparently he got the acid on his hands and rubbed a lot of places on his face, including his eye. There’s also the chance that he might simultaneously have impetigo, so we thought he should start on some antibiotics just in case. I’m attaching his picture. It looks like he has been in a serious fight, but in reality, it’s all due to a very small flying ant just a fraction of his size!

Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org

Ed. Note: Looking at Coggin's picture, it appears to me as a dermatologist, that the diagnosis of Nairobi Eye, aka, "blister beetle dermatitis" of beetles of the genus Paederus (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae), is 100% correct, as is the treatment. There is a type of blister beetle here in the USA also. One summer I made the diagnosis on the feet of a few kids at a summer camp in northern Michigan. Physician readers may want to click here for an informative article on Nairobi Eye. And, for you, Coggin, assuming that you are a bug-lover like my boys were, here is a picture (from the same site, author: Steve Schofield, Medical Entomologist) of the "critter" so that you can try to avoid him next time!
Kim K Dernovsek MD, FAAD

UCE Volunteer Tours Uganda Hospitals

2007-03-20T20:03:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dr. Autumn Dawn

Hello Everyone,
Today I had the opportunity to tour several medical facilities in Kampala, Uganda. A friend of Bobby and Downie’s works for Uganda’s only health insurance company – Microcare – and he arranged for me to tag along with one of their case managers while she was making rounds on inpatients in Kampala hospitals. I did not see them all by any means, but I am told that I saw a representative sample.

First, we went to Paragon hospital, which is a brand new facility that just opened about a month ago. It will ultimately be a 400 bed hospital, but it’s being built in phases. Phase I is completed and contains 50 beds. The grounds and the building are absolutely beautiful. The landscaping was the prettiest I have seen in Uganda – which is a reasonably small contest because most places are not landscaped at all. The grounds have winding walkways surrounded by lush tropical vegetation. The buildings are bright white stucco. Everything is spotlessly clean and freshly built. Each and every bed in the hospital is in a private room, and there are some VIP suites that are two rooms so that a family member can sleep in the second one. They also told me that they are the only hospital in Kampala that does not require patients to bring their own bed sheets – the hospital always provides them. It’s a hospital that, in appearance, actually rivals hospitals in the US. I had the opportunity to look at a lot of their equipment as well, including ICU monitors, xray equipment and lab equipment. It’s not cutting-edge by US standards, but it is certainly acceptable and fully on par with what an average US hospital would use. They even have a 32 slice CT scanner. The hospital director told me that their major focus is infection control and that they intend to be the leaders in Uganda in this area. To that end, they have a large surgical scrub sink right at the front door of the hospital building and everyone is required to wash hands upon entering and upon leaving the building. They also gave us some rubber slippers to wear while we were touring the hospital. However, I think that their biggest challenge in this regard is the fact that the building, just like almost all buildings here, is not air-conditioned, so the windows are open all the time. The major thing that looked strange to me in each hospital room was the mosquito net hanging over the bed. Cost: 70,000 to 80,000 Uganda shillings per night.

The other hospital I visited was Kibuli Muslim hospital, which my guide told me is a much more representative example of Ugandan hospitals. She told me several times that Paragon is “exaggerated” and that I should not form my view of healthcare in Uganda based upon Paragon. And it was totally different from what I saw at Paragon. I am attaching the picture I took of the nursing students at the Muslim hospital.
Rather than private, or even semi-private, rooms, patients are in beds on open bay wards, with 7 to 10 beds in a large open room. Every patient was in the bed fully dressed and it was quite obvious that Kibuli does not provide bed sheets. Each patient had brought his/her own sheets, which were all different from each other and which were mostly quite dirty. Even in the labor and delivery suite, there were three beds in a row, so three women could labor and deliver in that room simultaneously (and using their own sheets). There are two private post-partum rooms in the hospital – the only private rooms, as far as I know. A bed on the general ward costs 7,000 Uganda shillings per night while a private room costs 30,000. I am attaching the picture I took of the nursing students at Kibuli Muslim hospital.

I was not able to tour Mulago Hospital, which is the public hospital here in Kampala. But I was told that it is very similar to Kibuli’s open ward layout, only much, much bigger and much, much, much more crowded. All the beds on the wards are usually full and there are usually patients on mats on the floor between each of the beds, as well. Care at that hospital is free.

We also toured three outpatient clinic facilities, which, other than the materials of which they were built and the state of cleanliness they were in, were not much different from outpatient exam rooms at home. I was not able to take any pictures to speak of at these facilities because we were being toured around by hospital staff at each place and it just didn’t seem appropriate.

Somehow I managed to wear flip-flops for the whole of this hospital tour. I was wearing them around the house this morning, intending to change to dress shoes when the driver arrived for me. But I guess I have gotten so used to them after essentially wearing them non-stop for over 2 weeks that I didn’t realize I was wearing them when I walked out the door. I’m sure that this wasn’t appropriate footwear for the visiting doctor on tour at the hospitals! Hopefully they will chalk it up to American eccentricity…..

After the hospital tours, I went to the Universal Chastity Education (UCE) office for a few hours to work again on plans and timeline for the UCE HIV resource manual. I think that this is going to be a fun project to continue working on after I get home.

Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org

Reflections of a UCE Volunteer in Uganda

2007-03-20T19:52:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dr. Autumn Dawn

Readers,
I have spent a lot of the past two days reflecting on my experiences at the Universal Chastity Education (UCE) outreach last week in Kaliro, Uganda – and specifically thinking about why the experience was as stretching for me as it was.

I have traveled in Latin America a lot, so poverty in a developing country is not an entirely new thing for me. African poverty looks different from Latin American poverty (grass-thatched huts instead of cardboard shacks, for example), but I’m not sure that the magnitude of it is really enough greater to account for the overwhelmed feeling I had all of last week.

I have finally come to the conclusion that the major factor (not the only factor, but the major one) in my response to all that I saw last week was my aloneness in it. In my previous firsthand experiences with deep poverty, I have always been in a group – a mission team from my suburban American church, my own family visiting my grandparents on the mission field, etc.

I have never been the only white person I saw for days on end.
I have never been the only one to whom every sight and sound was foreign.
I have never been the only one who did not understand the culture or the implications of what I said or did in that culture.
I have never been with people whom I did not know.

There was a sense of vulnerability and loneliness that I have not experienced before in my travels in developing countries. All of this combined to make me dramatically more aware of all that I saw and heard. There were no side conversations about American sports or politics or music, no peers or family members to distract me, nothing to numb the force of poverty’s impact on all of my senses. So I experienced it with heightened awareness of every sight and smell and sound. And I have described my responses to you in previous entries.

It was overwhelming.
It was shocking.
And most of all, it was deeply convicting.

I’m really grateful for this experience - in the same way that I have been “grateful” for a speeding ticket that served to warn me of my dangerous speeds.

Gratitude is not always my first response to stretching experiences, but it proves to be my best response in the end as I reflect on the impact in my life.

Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org

A Day at the ZooEntebbe, Uganda

2007-03-19T19:44:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dr. Autumn Dawn

Hello all,
Today, my kids and I went to Entebbe to the zoo, which was meant to be a relaxing day together with mom after the past week of being apart. It was a day with mom, so I delivered on that part. But it was not particularly relaxing.

The zoo is quite different from American zoos. Rather than paved sidewalks and walkways that take you from one exhibit to the next, there are dirt paths. This would be fine if not for two things: 1) These paths are maintained very similarly to the Ugandan roads, so they are rutted and ridged and have a number of potholes which are full of mud waiting to suck down your shoes; and 2) The area where the zoo is located is really quite hilly. So the kids and I decided that this particular zoo trip was a cross between going to the San Antonio zoo and going hiking at Enchanted Rock – with the animals of the former and the physical exertion of the latter.

A third fascinating characteristic of this zoo is that the vervet monkeys are not in cages. I initially thought that they had escaped from their cages, but one of the zoo staff assured me that they are intentionally left loose because “they are not harmful.” This was a lot of fun initially because we found a group of them sitting atop a trash can outside the coffee shop gorging themselves on pineapple and watermelon rinds, and affording us a perfect up-close photo opportunity.

Many of them (it seemed like about half) had tiny babies holding onto their stomachs, which added to the fun. But at some point I guess we got too close to them because Ellie inadvertently stepped on one of their tails. That one, understandably, took offense at this and reached over to grab Ellie’s shoe. He was not able to get her shoe off and we got away from him quickly, so the danger was small. But the experience was rather startling for Ellie and made the remainder of the zoo trip less cheerful than the earlier part had been.

Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org

Uganda Dance Troupe Amazing

2007-03-18T19:32:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dr. Autumn Dawn

Hello once again,
Tonight we had a Ugandan cultural experience at the Ndere Cultural Center, which is a cultural center dedicated to Ugandan music and dance. They have a dinner theater type format where you can eat dinner while you watch the show. So we sat outdoors at dusk (wearing plenty of bug spray!), ate African food (chicken, chappati, sweet potato, cassava, and samosas), and watched/listened to this amazing performance. The troupe includes about 30 musicians and dancers of a wide range of ages. The youngest looked about 5 or 6 years old, and the oldest was probably in his 40s by my best guess. They played traditional songs on traditional instruments from each region of Uganda, and they did the traditional dances that went along with the songs.

It was culturally informative, but it was also really funny with a master of ceremonies whose presentation was one long stream of jokes about Uganda and its people. In addition, it was very interactive. There was a time for the kids in the audience to go onstage and dance, which all of our kids loved.

The grand finale was an incredible dance by the ladies in the troupe which called upon the incredible skill of balancing things on their heads which I have described in previous entries. They did an extremely difficult-looking dance balancing a clay pot on their heads. Then every few minutes they would stack another clay pot on top of the existing ones, till they reached a stack that was ten pots high, with each pot being somewhere between 8 and 12 inches tall. It was amazing – really beyond words to describe – definitely worth seeing if you are ever here. Unfortunately, it was hard to get good pictures because of the increasing darkness as the sun went down. I’m attaching one that I was able to take at an earlier point in the show, when it was still light out.

Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org

International Worship Time Glorifies God

2007-03-18T19:22:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dr. Autumn Dawn

Hello Everyone,
Today, Sunday, we attended church with the Micklers at Kampala International Church, which was a really neat experience.

The church is, not surprisingly, very international – about a third Ugandans and about two-thirds expatriates from other countries who live here now. They had a skit during the service for which they called upon 6 volunteers among whom 4 countries were represented: England, Germany, South Africa, and Uganda. Then there were musicians from Ireland, a worship team that included Americans and others, announcements by a British woman, scripture reading by an Asian-American, and a sermon by a British guy. We loved the church and were so happy to have a first hand glimpse of the community that the Micklers are a part of.

I was particularly moved by the worship time, which once again reminded me of heaven. Looking around seeing the black, white, and brown skin of Africans, Americans, Europeans, Asians, and Latin Americans as they all raised their voices in song together.....it was a very powerful experience. I really hope that we still have our skin color and our accents when we get to heaven because I want to stand around the throne and sing with a representative group of all the nations and peoples that comprise God's children - and I want to hear and see the differences even as we stand and celebrate the similarity that brings us together. Such unity will only be possible in heaven, so I hope that it's physically tangible there.

Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org

PS-I have been back in Kampala for two days now – not doing a whole lot. I had the opportunity to attend a wonderful dinner on Saturday evening which was about half Ugandan parliament members and about half American and British people who live here. It was fascinating to get to talk to these folks.

The picture of Ellie was taking during a concert performed this evening by the 5 eldest Mickler-Galbreath children. It has nothing to do with anything I have written about, but I just had to include it. I’m sure you can see why!

An Unbalanced Equation

2007-03-17T20:40:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dr. Autumn Dawn

Dear Readers,
I had a long conversation about marriage customs with several of the Universal Chastity Education (UCE) team members last night, while in Kaliro, Uganda. The whole American concept of dating is really beyond their belief.

That a guy and a girl are allowed spend time together “when they are only two” (i.e. – alone, just the two of them) is anathema to them. There is no dating here. Young men and women know one another from school or church, and when they become romantically interested in one another, the young man has to have a formal introduction to the woman’s family, and he has to pay the bride price. Only then can the two of them spend time together, and even then, they cannot spend time together alone…they have to be with other people or in very public places. Until he pays the bride price, a young man is “a stranger” in the girl’s family’s house…He cannot go there to spend time with her or her family.

The bride price is a very interesting custom. I wrote about it several days ago, mostly focusing on the negative aspects. In some settings and among some families, this custom has deteriorated into a girl’s family effectively selling her to a suitor. But, according to the team, the original intent of this custom is still in place in other settings – that is, the young man has to tangibly demonstrate his interest in and commitment to the young woman, as well as his respect for her parents.

The team members, especially the males, could not believe that young men “are so easily wed” in the USA. They asked me, “What does a man have to do if he wants to marry a woman?” I told them that he is sometimes expected to ask her father for permission, and then he is expected to propose to her and give her a diamond ring. Their response was an incredulous “Nothing more than that?” They seemed to think that marriages in the US must necessarily be less committed if a man has such a low barrier to entry into the relationship.

I will be back at the UCE office briefly next week to work on a couple of things, and I will continue the work on the HIV manual via email after I leave Uganda. But the majority of my work with the UCE team is over.
Here is the list of what I have given during this time:

participation in presentations and Q&A sessions at 7 schools
training to the staff and volunteers
some participation on the HIV manual (to continue after my departure)

Here is the list of what I have received:

hospitality and friendship
an amazing education about the people, culture, and food of Uganda
their model of passionate service to others and to God
a renewal of my own faith as it is manifested in my day to day life
a new sense of stewardship of the material things which God has entrusted to me

If you are thinking that this equation looks very unbalanced, you are right.
I have certainly received more than I have given.

Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org

Pit Stop in Rural Uganda

2007-03-17T20:39:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dr. Autumn Dawn

Dear Readers,
I rode back to Kampala today with one of the Universal Chastity Education (UCE) team members. I felt badly that he insisted on leaving the outreach in rural Uganda early in order to accompany me since I had a driver to bring me back here. But when we had car trouble* halfway back, I was glad that he was there after all. The car actually ran out of gas, but getting it started again was a laborious endeavor that ultimately involved a walk to a petro station, a jug of fuel, a funnel made from a water bottle, a battery from a nearby tractor, jumper cables, and 10 Ugandan men who ran out of the sugar cane fields to help us, plus the two men with whom I was traveling. As these 12 men were surrounding the car having an animated conversation in Lusoga (their local language), I was really glad that I knew one of them. It just felt weird to be sitting there surrounded by strange men speaking a language I did not understand (except the occasional words “battery,” “automatic,” and “petro” that peppered the conversation). I was, however, really impressed with how helpful these men were to immediately drop their work and come over to help us…..that is, until we got the car started again, at which point they asked for money for their services. Another animated conversation ensued, which I gathered was a discussion of how much would be a fair payment for the efforts they had expended.

As we pulled into the Kampala city limits, I was glad again for the UCE team member who was with me. The plan had been to drop me off at one place in Kampala, drop my bags off at another place in Kampala, and drop Jude and the bags that were with him at yet a third place in Kampala. And apparently as we were driving into town, the driver decided that he didn’t like that plan after all. I heard him and Jude talking heatedly in Lusoga, with the driver angrily repeating “Garden City” (where I was supposed to go), “Nyangweso” (where my bags were supposed to go), and “Ntinda” (where Jude was supposed to go). They argued for what seemed to me to be a long time. And then finally they quieted down. I asked Jude if there was a problem, and he said, “We have worked it out.” I think this was an understatement, given how upset the driver seemed to be…but anyway, my bags and I got where we were supposed to go. I have not talked to Jude tonight, but I trust that he and the other bags reached their destination, as well.

Jude’s response reminds me of another point that I have failed to make over these two weeks. The Ugandans speak extremely formal English. I think it’s probably somewhat similar to British English, but it’s a great deal more formal than the way we speak in the US. A great example of this is a conversation I had with Jude several days ago. We were talking about sports and he was telling me about a soccer player who committed what sounds like a technical foul and was thrown out of a game. Only his phrasing was: “He was rejected from the remainder of the match because he had inflicted pain on his colleague.” If American men would describe sports this intellectually, their wives might not mind them watching so much!

Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org
*Reminder the breakdown on the way to the outreach, also!-see post entitled, How Long to get to Iganga, Uganda?

A Glimpse of Heaven

2007-03-17T20:30:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dr. Autumn Dawn

Dear Readers,
This morning was my last time to worship with the Universal Chastity Education (UCE) team. I think that the worship times in the mornings and evenings may have been my favorite part of this outreach week in rural Uganda. It has been an almost-indescribable experience to sing with this group.

Listening to their incredible musical talent has been wonderful. And I think that sitting in the group singing praise songs, my American voice blending with their Ugandan ones, is what Heaven will be like. It’s a really moving experience to hear their accents and voices – so different from mine, yet singing the same songs of praise to the same God all the way around the globe from San Antonio, Texas.

I have been reminded a number of times this week of a contemporary Christian song that I love (recorded by the Newsboys, for those who are interested):

It’s the song of the redeemed, rising from the African plain.
It’s the song of the forgiven, drowning out the Amazon rain.
The song of Asian believers, filled with God’s holy fire.
It’s every tribe, every tongue, every nation.
A love song born of a grateful choir.
It’s all God’s children singing “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah. He reigns!”

In fact, I was so strongly reminded that I tried to explain the connection to the team and I said that they could listen to this wonderful song on my iPod. We got very far off-track because I had to explain what an iPod is and how it works….and we missed the spiritual point I was trying to make. Technology does not always work to our benefit, clearly.

Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org

UCE Team Welcomed in Uganda Schools

2007-03-16T22:55:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dr. Autumn Dawn

Readers,
Another interesting feature of the schools in Kaliro district, Uganda, is the similarity in the way they receive us. When we arrive at a school, we have to check with the head teacher or deputy head teacher and sign a visitors book – and they want every Universal Chastity Education (UCE) team member to sign individually, not one entry for the whole team. Then they take us to our location and we set up our equipment.

Once we are set up and the students have arrived, we first give the microphone to the head teacher. He then stands up and invariably says, “Good morning, students. How are you? We are very privileged to have visitors this morning from UCE. I anticipate that you will present yourselves disciplined and attentive to our visitors. ”

Then he invariably turns to us and says, “Our dear visitors, it is our privilege to receive you this morning at [name of school]. You are most welcome here. We are so grateful that you have come and we are grateful to you for making the journey here from Kampala to speak to our students and to give them information that they need to know.” It really is amazing – it’s like they all have a script that they are reading from – exactly the same words school after school after school…..It’s always very formal.He ultimately passes the microphone to us and we do our presentation, which consists of introductions, a song, a personal testimony from one of the UCE team members about abstinence, the perspective from the US from me, a message about HIV/AIDS/STDs and abstinence, a Q&A period, and the opportunity for the students to sign pledges of abstinence. This is all very formal, as well. And at the end, the microphone always goes back to the head teacher, who thanks us formally and profusely and who invariably invites us back as often as we can come. He then repeats a number of the things we have said and commends the message to the students. He then tells us again that we have been very welcome and tells the students that the presentation is concluded. The flow is very, very different from similar presentations I have made at US schools.

An additional component that is sometimes, but not always, included with the introduction and welcome from the head teacher is the singing of the Uganda national anthem. This seems pretty familiar to me, but it is sometimes followed by a pledge of allegiance that was initially very hard for me to understand. It’s not a pledge of allegiance to Uganda or its flag. It’s a pledge of allegiance to the king of Busoga. Needless to say, I was thoroughly confused the first time I heard this. The team explained to me that Uganda, prior to colonization by the British, was a series of African tribes, each of which had its own language and was ruled over by a hereditary monarchy, just like the ones we learn about in Europe. A number of these tribes were brought together to form the country of Uganda under the British, but the kings and royal families are still around and people are still very loyal to them. They are mostly figureheads now, but they are very respected and it is not uncommon to find students saying pledges of allegiance to them. These kings become important in politics because their support for a candidate, party, or issue is very valuable in rallying the people in their kingdom (which are now called “regions”) to support it as well. Interestingly, these regions still speak the original languages of their kingdoms. English is a second language for essentially all Ugandans, who learn their regional (kingdom) language as children. This was a fascinating bit of Ugandan culture and history to me.

Tomorrow is the last day of the outreach, but I will miss the one school for tomorrow because I will be heading back to Kampala to attend a dinner there. So my field work with the team is actually over at this point….

Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org

Volunteer Describes Teaching in Uganda

2007-03-16T22:15:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dr Autumn Dawn

Dear Readers,
I realized today that I have never described the schools to you in all this talk about the Universal Chastity Education (UCE) outreach presentations here in Kaliro district, Uganda. Most of the schools we have been going to, with one exception, have been rural schools without any glass windows or electricity at all. The buildings are usually locally made red brick which is roughly mortared together. There are usually two or three buildings, none of which have doors or windows – just openings in the walls. The roofs are generally made of corrugated tin. The schools appear to me to be greatly undersized for the numbers of kids attending. The classrooms have small chalkboards which are usually suspended by a rope from the ceiling at the front of class. The condition of the chalkboards is very, very poor – I can’t understand how a student any further back than the second or third row would be able to see anything that is written on them. I’m going to try to put a picture of the blackboard next to this so you can see it.

The schools all require uniforms, which can vary a lot. Some of them are similar to what we think of as school uniforms. But some of them can actually be very brightly colored. The thing that they all have in common are that the girls are always in skirts (never pants) and that most of the kids are wearing uniforms which are extremely dirty and often torn. The other thing I have noticed at every single school we have been to is that there is a significant portion of the kids (ranging from 10 to 50%) who are not in uniform. Apparently, this is because they cannot afford to buy the uniforms. I have been trying to figure out what argument the parents use to justify this, in hopes of presenting that argument to Geneva when my kids outgrow their current uniforms….Just kidding! I don’t mean to make light of what is really a very sad thing. These kids’ families have somehow scraped together the money for tuition and books (remember that school is not free here), but that’s all they can manage. The good news is that the schools don’t turn this into a barrier for these kids who would otherwise not be able to access any education at all.

Books are another issue altogether. I feel like I should put the word books in quotes, because I have not seen a single thing that we would normally call a book. The kids have small, thin, worn notebooks – like a spiral notebook, only with a different kind of binding. They write notes in these notebooks while listening to lectures. And this becomes their book for that class. There are no text books.

And since the chalkboards are so bad, a lot of the teaching becomes oral in nature. So the teachers have a really interesting style. They say something, then repeat it but they end with “what?” the second time around, and then they answer their own question. This method seems to be intended to reiterate the important parts of a lecture. For example, a health teacher might be talking about the importance of not sharing toothbrushes to avoid spreading germs. He would say, “Please be attentive, students. We are here to learn. Today we are learning about what? About toothbrushes. And it is very important that you have your own toothbrush as sharing toothbrushes can be a way to acquire a disease. If you do not have your own what? Toothbrush. If you do not have your own toothbrush, you can make one out of (some certain kind of) stick. So if you do not have a toothbrush of your own, you can what? Make one. Out of what? A stick. And you should never what? Share with your friend.” And periodically, he will throw in a question: “Are we together?” to which the students respond, “Yes, sir.”

It has a cadence to it that is very unusual to American ears, but I can see how it would be effective in a learning environment in which there is nothing to fall back on. If a student misses what the teacher says, he has missed it…there’s nowhere to go to look it up.

More later,
Dr Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org

French Flies and Forged Water Bottles

2007-03-16T21:06:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dr Autumn Dawn

Hello Again,
I've noticed that the Ugandans have a tendency to reverse the letters “r” and “l” when they speak English. This tendency led to an amusing misunderstanding last night at dinner. On the menu at the restaurant where we were eating, there was a section called “American Food” in which was a menu item that included “French Fries.” Several of the team members laughingly handed me the menu and asked “Do you really eat #20?” Number 20 said “grilled chicken with French fries,” so I responded affirmatively. Their reaction was so strong that it took my by surprise. It took a few minutes for me to figure out that they were reading this as “French flies” – in fact, it was only when one of them asked me how we catch them to cook them that I figured out that they did not understand what French fries were!

I think that the team has decided that I am a very picky eater, which is funny to me because I am actually quite adventurous and love trying new things. But I have not been eating very much this week for a number of reasons: I think that the malaria prophylaxis has impacted my appetite, for one.

In addition, I have had a hard time eating the very, very heavy African cuisine in this heat. Their food consists of meat stews accompanied by large quantities of rice, matoke (which is a fruit like a plantain that is boiled and then mashed and served in a gigantic heap on your plate), and posho (similar to cornbread in a way, but made with cornstarch instead of cornmeal). The quantities are all very, very large and the food is hot and heavy and I just haven’t been able to clean my plate at every meal.

Finally, I have completely lost faith in the sanitation in the restaurant at the hotel where we are staying. I told you previously about the forged water bottles.* In addition to this, I have been keeping an eye on the chicken bones which have been under one of the tables for 3 days now, and I am quite certain that the tablecloths have not been changed or washed since we arrived on Monday.

This is all adding up to a significant reduction in my appetite, which has concerned the team a lot. I realized today that I have been reinforcing their concerns about my appetite inadvertently. At many of the meals this week, one of the team members has asked me about my food: “Is it sweet?” Since nothing I have ever been eating when asked this question has been sweet, but rather quite salty, I have always answered that no, it is not sweet. I just found out today that “Is it sweet?” is like asking “Is it good?” or “Do you like it?” So I have been telling them all week that I did not like my food……There can be significant communication barriers even when everyone speaks the same language!

Bye for now,
Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org
*see previous post entitled Why Do Muzungu Tell Us to Use Condoms and Our Fellow Ugandans Tell Us to Abstain?

Why Do Muzungu Tell Us to Use Condoms and Our Fellow Ugandans Tell Us to Abstain?

2007-03-15T22:13:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dr Autumn Dawn

Dear Readers,
I have decided that the bottled water they are selling us at the hotel is “forged,” which is what the Ugandans call water bottles that have been used, refilled with tap water, and re-sealed to look new.

The first day that we were here I had a bottle of water that had a complete plastic seal on the outside of the cap, but inside that plastic seal, there were drops of water that had leaked out of the bottle and the cap was not firmly attached. I thought this was suspicious, but I decided that that bottle must have been hit or jostled a lot during shipment and the cap had gotten loose inside the wrapper. However, when I got the second and third bottles that were exactly the same, I decided not to drink that water anymore. So I have been subsisting all week on Cokes, morning, noon, and night. Since that time, several of the team members have also noted bottles of water with loose caps, and three of the team members are now ill with stomach complaints, with one of them feeling quite ill and not able to participate in the outreach activities. So I am glad that I decided to play it safe and not drink the water….I’m really looking forward to a big glass of water when I get back to the Micklers’ house. I guess that the fact that I’m drinking so many Cokes seems funny to the rest of the team, because at lunch today one team member asked me, “Do they have sodas in the US?” Apparently she thought that sodas were a new experience for me and that I wanted to drink all I could before leaving Uganda.

Today, my experience was opposite from what it has been at other schools…the students at this morning’s school responded negatively to my being there. Some even sent notes up saying that they could not understand my accent and that they wanted someone else to speak. It’s funny to go from being the center of attention to causing frustration. One of the questions that the Universal Chastity Education (UCE) team got at the youth outreach this morning in Kaliro district, Uganda was “Why do muzungu (foreigners) always come here and tell us to use condoms and you, our fellow Ugandans, are telling us to abstain?” That’s not a very proud legacy for the USA!

It remains incredibly hot here, and there is no way to cool off…no air conditioning anywhere – not in cars or buildings. And cold drinks are not even a guarantee because if the power has been off, the drinks will be warm. Overall, I will be glad for a break from the heat, dust, and exhaust when we get back to Kampala on Saturday.

Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org

Skin, Music, Time and Tacos in Uganda

2007-03-14T21:10:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dr Autumn Dawn

Dear Readers,
This is my third day of outreach with the Universal Chastity Education (UCE) in Kamuli district, Uganda. This is really exhausting work. We drive on the Ugandan roads for 1 to 2 hours to get to a school, quickly set up a PA system, give our presentations, answer questions for an hour or more, and give kids the opportunity to make a pledge of abstinence. Then we pack everything back up, drive another 30 minutes to 1 hour to the second school and do it all over again – all in the blazing hot sun. I find that I am physically not rising to the task as well as the others. I am blaming it on not be accustomed to the climate, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it may have more to do with being really out of shape!

I have been amazed at the lack of racial tension that I have observed here. Since Uganda was a British colony, I had expected a history of racial divide and a present environment that included some racial tension – maybe at the level of what we experience in the US. However, this is not the case at all. People here say things very openly that at home we would dance around a lot – like making comments about how light or dark a black person’s skin is, or commenting on my white skin. Even the fact that they call people “black” and “white” feels a little uncomfortable to me because I am so conditioned to say “African American” and “Caucasian.” But there’s not really any political correctness here, as such…and it’s not because there is a lot of political incorrectness. It’s simply because they call things what they are and state the obvious without any overlay of discomfort. It’s rather refreshing, really. It is nice to be able to talk openly about the differences between black skin and white skin (ex: my sunburn, which I described in earlier entries) without worrying about offending someone. The local newspaper today ran an article about Barak Obama which I think had originally run in the paper in San Francisco. The article is about some group of African Americans saying that Obama is “not black enough” to represent black people as President. This has been discussed openly here and the Ugandans actually seem to have found it very amusing. One of them said, “How can someone be white enough or black enough to be President? Isn’t the question whether or not he has the right policies and will encourage development and make the nation a better place?” Very refreshing, indeed. (NOTE: This is not an endorsement or a criticism of Obama himself….simply an example of how race relations are different here from at home)

Another striking thing about Ugandan culture is its punctuality. I had expected it to be similar to Latin America for some reason. So I have been very surprised to learn that people are extremely punctual here. In fact, they tend to be early….so our team meetings are usually well in session if I arrive on time, because the others have arrived 10 to 15 minutes early.

The Ugandans are also incredibly musically talented. Our team sings a series of praise songs at every team meeting, and it’s unbelievable to listen to the others. Often I don’t sing because it’s so moving just to listen. They sing some songs that I don’t know, as well as some hymns and some songs that we often consider kids Sunday School songs. But they sing them all in 3 or 4 part harmony which is spontaneous and flawless. In fact, most mornings, the singing wafting through the halls of the hotel has been my cue that the meeting had begun, since they mostly begin early. For example, this morning we were supposed to meet at 8:00, but at 7:45 I heard the most gorgeous rendition of “Give Me Oil in my Lamp” floating down the hall, and I knew that I was missing the beginning of the meeting.

The funny story of the day today is related to food. African food is very, very heavy and is served in enormous portions. They eat a lot of stewed meat, accompanied by very large quantities of rice and matoke, which is a local starch similar to a plantain, but which is boiled and mashed and served like mashed potatoes. It’s all heavy and also hot, which makes it hard for me to eat in this hot weather. Anyway, this morning at breakfast we were talking about different types of food, and one of the team members began talking about a previous UCE volunteer from the US who taught them how to make Mexican food. He said, “You make a flat round bread that is similar to a chapatti (which is a tortilla-like bread that they eat here), then you heat it up and you can put many different things on top of it – meat, cheese, beans, or whatever you want. Then you fold it into a “U” shape and you just eat it like that….You have to turn your head to take bites of it.” Of course, he was talking about tacos. I have never thought about how you would describe a taco to someone who has never seen one before, but I think this description conveys the very essence of a taco!

More tomorrow,
Dr. Autumn Dawn volunteer@uceglobal.org

Muzungu or Gringa or Guera, That's Me!

2007-03-13T23:00:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dr Autumn Dawn

PS Once Again,

I am quite an oddity here. I am not sure whether or not these kids have ever seen a white person, but, if they have, they found it to be an amazing experience because they can’t seem to get enough. The young kids follow me everywhere I go during the outreaches. And I was actually banned from passing out question papers or pledge cards because the kids only wanted one from me, so I got mobbed by a bunch of kids, while the other team members were standing by with stacks of cards.

They call white people “muzungu,” which is like “gringa” or “guera” for you Texans, and they seem to think that everything I do or say is hilariously funny. They point at me as we drive down the road, then turn to say something to a friend, and then burst into laughter. I even had one bunch of children today ask if they could have my shoes. It’s a strange experience to go from being relatively mainstream in appearance to being a complete curiosity. It doesn’t bother me that much, but it will be nice not to be such a focal point once we get back to Kampala.

I talked to the kids tonight and it seems that Ellie is having a hard time with me gone. I imagine that there is an element of culture shock for them, as there has been for me. And she is accustomed to being in our home with things in our usual routine….so trying to incorporate herself into another family’s routine is difficult for her. Downie is unbelievable to be spending the week caring for 7 children – her own 5 plus my 2. I really believe that this trip will be a once-in-a-lifetime sort of experience for my children, and I am so glad that the three of us were able to come. But it is difficult being away from them and it is difficult for them to be away from me, as well as David and home. I am praying that they will be able to relax and truly enjoy their experience here, even during this week while I am away.

Dr Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org

Parable of the Talents Backwards

2007-03-13T21:36:00.000-07:00

Posted by: Dr. Autumn Dawn

PS:
I said I was dumbfounded at the level of poverty here in Kaliro district, Uganda, AFRICA, and it’s true. I really don’t know what to say. I feel completely inadequate and overwhelmed and I can’t even begin to imagine how one would go about making inroads into the needs here.
You could bring a hunger relief program, but that doesn’t solve the fact that they have no money.
You can bring jobs, but that doesn’t solve the fact that they don’t have houses or clothes and so cannot reliably work at a job.
You can bring housing, but that doesn’t change the polygamy and the related cycle of poverty.
You can bring roads, but there are no cars for them.
You can bring anything you can think of, and it feels like just a drop in the ocean.
I feel like I have so little to offer. It is clear to me that I am being fundamentally changed by this experience and that my perspective cannot ever be the same. And it’s equally clear to me that whatever I have brought here is woefully insufficient.
I hope and pray that I can at least provide encouragement to the Universal Chastity Education (UCE) team as they continue in their work. However, even that seems disingenuous because in a week and a half, I will go home to my air-conditioned house and all of these experiences will be memories for me.
Meanwhile,
they will continue to toil away in this effort,
school by school
and
village by village.
We have the parable of the talents backwards. I am the one with the five talents, but rather than invest them, I have buried them in the ground (or at least in Starbucks vanilla lattes and other luxuries in which I indulge from day to day). Meanwhile these with the one talent have invested it wisely and are reaping great return.*

Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org Click HERE to read the Parable of the Talents

*Read Dr's last blog entitled Uganda Youth Choose Abstinence and her recent blog entitled The Passion Behind Fighting AIDS in Africa

Uganda Youth Choose Abstinence

2007-03-13T20:17:00.000-07:00

Posted by: Dr Autumn Dawn

Dear Readers,
The Universal Chastity Education (UCE) team drove about an hour today to get to the schools for the outreach. On the trip, I noticed something that I have noticed almost every time I have been in a car in Uganda – fires. I have no idea what they burn, but there are fires everywhere. Big fires in fields, small fires behind homes….I guess they burn trash as well as old plants in fields they want to clear. Whatever it is that they are burning, it makes an incredible amount of choking smoke that comes in the car windows, which are, of course, open because there is no air conditioning in the cars.

We went to two schools on the outreach today, both secondary “O level” schools, which, as far as I can tell, means 7th through 10th grades. As we drove deep into the rural area where these schools are located, I was dumbfounded by the poverty.One schoolroom building for 600 students! It felt like we took a trip back into Old Testament times. People were using manual hoes and ox plows to plow huge fields in preparation for planting rice. And most of the houses we saw were grass-thatched huts. We saw children everywhere – all in tattered clothing, and some without much clothing on at all.

To further the feeling of being back in the days of Father Abraham, I learned today that in this region of Uganda, men inherit wives when their brothers or other male relatives die. In addition, you have to factor in the underlying polygamy…and you can end up with a situation in which two brothers have 3 wives each, one of them dies, and the other one has 6 wives and all the children (30, 40, 50 or 60 children). They live in grass huts, plow a field by hand to plant a meager crop, and hope that they can feed and clothe their kids. Then imagine the impact if one of the adults in this scenario contracts HIV. Next thing you know, an entire family is wiped out. In fact, at the first school we went to today, the deputy head teacher (equivalent to an assistant headmaster) told me that fully 75% of the children at the school have been orphaned by HIV. So the message of abstinence, monogamy, and faithfulness in one marriage relationship is a critical one for these kids. The path that has been laid out for them is a path to destruction and they need the information that the UCE team brings to them if they are going to have any chance of living productive, healthy lives.

I was amazed at the openness of the outreaches. I have given these sorts of lectures in a number of schools in San Antonio, and I always feel like I am walking in egg shells trying not to offend anyone or to cross the line and not get invited back. But here, the message is strongly delivered and, for the most part, well-received.

Each outreach consists of introductions, a series of short talks about HIV, abstinence, etc, and then a lengthy question and answer period in which the students write down their questions and pass them up for us to answer. The questions we received were amazing: “What is a menstrual period?” “Is it true that the HIV virus sleeps at 2 pm so it is safe to have sex at that time?” “Is it true that if you wash yourself with a soda after sex you will not become pregnant?” “My parents have died and my aunt who takes care of me is forcing me to get married. What can I do?” and most sad of all, “Can we get HIV from our parents at home?”

At the end of the outreach, the students have an opportunity to sign pledges of abstinence until marriage. It’s interesting to watch because it’s clear that it is completely counter-culture to do this, and yet, almost 3⁄4 of the students at both schools came forward to sign a card. It’s hard to convey in black and white here, but it really was clear to me that this wasn’t just a bandwagon to get on because there was a lot of concern about telling other people, including their parents, that they had made this decision for abstinence.

I would not have been able to fully understand before I got here just how unusual a decision like this is in this culture. I guess the flagrant sexual behaviors in the culture are what set the stage for such a strong and open message. It has to be strongly presented in order to get through the layers of history, personal experience, parental modeling, and all the other influences on these kids.

And if any of you reading this are thinking that a more traditional US “safe sex” message would be a more reasonable way to go, I won’t even debate the relative merits of abstinence versus “safe sex.” I will simply tell you that there is no way on God’s earth that these people can, or will ever be able to, afford a condom, and there is no way you can give away enough condoms to solve this problem. The only answer here is choice on an individual level to rise above the lifestyle around them and to engage in a different lifestyle.

Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org

Sweating Hot Africa

2007-03-13T20:06:00.000-07:00

Posted by: Dr Autumn Dawn

Good Morning,
Today, I am wearing the world’s most expensive sunscreen. I woke up this morning and my left arm was about the color of a lobster. From my considerable experience with sunburns, I estimate that this one is just one step away from blisters. And my right arm and upper chest are actually sunburned, as well.

I guess that happened while I was standing outside the car when it broke down yesterday. Unfortunately, I do not have any sunblock with me…..It’s amazing, but true. I stood in my room at the Micklers’ house yesterday morning and thought, “I will leave the sunblock and bug spray here for the kids to use while I am away.” Of course, in retrospect this makes no sense because Downie has about 3 million bottles each of sunscreen and bug spray. But here I am without them.

Clearly, my arms, particularly the left, cannot take anymore sun, so this morning I covered up as much of my body as I possibly could with clothes, which meant wearing a cotton cardigan sweater in what Ellie calls “sweating hot Africa.” So I have been melting all day – but I figured that was better than broiling. But even after getting dressed, I was still left with the problem of the exposed areas of my skin. I ended up covering them with a generous coating of Lancome Absolue moisturizer, which costs about a million dollars an ounce, but which has SPF 15 protection in it. So I am well-moisturized, well-covered, and very, very hot – but without further sunburn.

In addition to leaving the sunscreen and bug spray at the Micklers’ house, I have realized that I also left my antibiotics that I brought to Africa “just in case.” I am very, very sorry to have left them because the idea of traveler’s GI distress with this bathroom facility* is more than I can even think about. Thankfully, I have had no signs of such thus far. I am praying that this will continue – at least until I get back to my medicine in Kampala!

Dr Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org
*see previous post Amazing Grace in Uganda, Africa

Amazing Grace in Uganda, AFRICA

2007-03-12T18:44:00.000-07:00

Posted by: Dr Autumn Dawn

Hello Everyone,
I really need to tell you about the hotel here in Iganga, Uganda, Africa. As we were traveling here, the Universal Chastity Education (UCE) youth outreach team was telling me how nice this hotel is compared to where they usually stay….as I recall, the term “VIP treatment” was used. So I had a picture in my mind before we arrived – which is always dangerous. As it turns out, the hotel is a small, clean establishment right across the street from a shanty-town-type area of Iganga. It does have a restaurant/bar in the front, where very loud music is currently playing…(I am hoping that at some reasonable hour, the music goes off.) And I do have my own room with private bathroom.

So it could be a lot worse. But I have to confess that I have never before associated “VIP treatment” with a bathroom that has a hole in the floor instead of a toilet. And it appears that for the next 5 days I will have the opportunity to learn to use a hole in the floor. I fervently hope that this is not a skill that my future will call upon often, but if it is, then I should be ready. I must confess to having felt panicked and overwhelmed when I saw the bathroom….not because the hole in the floor is the end of the world, but because seeing that hole was the moment when I suddenly realized “Here I am, a lone and conspicuous white female, in the middle of rural Uganda about to go out to a bunch of schools to talk about things that, in reality, I am not in any way equipped to talk about, traveling with people whom I hardly know, and having left my kids behind in Kampala and my husband behind in the US. What am I doing here?” For the first time during the trip, I started to freak out. I felt like I was going to cry and I was afraid that if I started, I wouldn’t be able to stop. So I did what I always do when I feel like I am going to cry at inconvenient times – I took some deep breaths, prayed, and tried to pull myself together. And it worked as well as it always works – I kept myself from crying, but just barely.

I was still teetering on the edge of breakdown. We had a team meeting at 7:30 tonight, so after I had pulled myself together as well as I could, I went over to the room where our team meeting was to be held. The team meeting was to prepare details for tomorrow’s outreaches, but we started it with a worship time of singing together. And as I sat singing “Amazing Grace” with these 8 African brothers and sisters and thinking about the awesomeness of worshipping the same God day after day and week after week when we are halfway around the world from each other, I started to cry. And when we got to “Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come; twas grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home” I pretty much lost it completely. I was trying not to sob out loud because I didn’t know how the team would respond and I didn’t want to upset them. But it was such a beautiful, incredible experience sitting in that room (whose bathroom is also a hole in the floor) and singing alongside my 8 fellow team members. I don’t think it’s something that I can really put into words. But, unlike my own previous attempts to “pull myself together,” this experience was a deeply spiritual one in which I felt a sense of unity with these new friends and a sense of peace and presence from God.

I am going to bed in a much calmer state of mind and much more prepared for the day’s work tomorrow. I still wish I had a toilet instead of a hole in the floor, but I have a much different perspective than I did earlier in the evening.

Goodnight to all,
Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org

The Passion Behind Fighting AIDS in Uganda

2007-03-12T08:01:00.000-07:00

Posted by: Dr Autumn Dawn

Hello once again,
I was deeply impressed with the Universal Chastity Education (UCE) team’s response to these very frustrating events. There was not one word of complaint throughout the entire ordeal (unless you count the ones inside my head, but since no one heard those, I’m not counting them). The team simply did each task that needed to be done and not only managed not to get frustrated, but were actually cheerful the entire time. I think that there are a number of times in the US when similar setbacks would have caused some of us to cancel the outreach and head back home…but that’s because we completely lack the passion of these people.

Their passion is on two accounts, which are actually interrelated. First, the UCE staff and volunteers are Ugandans who come from the rural villages and towns that are affected by the cultural phenomena that I described in my previous entry, such that...

This is a personal mission for the Ugandans. They do not play at abstinence education and HIV prevention. Their brothers and sisters have died from HIV. They are caring for their orphaned nieces and nephews. They grew up with polygamous fathers. Their cousins have been threatened with murder by their husbands’ concubines. This is real for these people. They have escaped the self-defeating patterns that many in the Ugandan countryside follow, and they want others to experience the same freedom from bondage. It’s obvious to me today that this is not a job or a do-good project for them…this is truly a mission in every sense of the word. I am completely humbled to have ever thought that I, the “knowledgeable American,” could have much to offer these people. They may not have the resources that are at our disposal at home, but they are doing more and are more committed to work with the little that they have than we can even imagine being. In the midst of all the car issues, as Michael was moving people and things between cars, he smilingly said, “Well, God has given us one car today. We will do our best work with what He has entrusted to us.” Which leads me to the other reason for the passion that I see…..

The Ugandans are an intensely spiritual people. Their history before Christian missionaries came was intensely spiritual, as well. They have deep spiritual roots as a people (mostly in witchcraft and tribal religions) and they see the world through spiritual lenses. This spirituality, when directed toward broken cisterns that are empty of spiritual power, becomes a source of great fear, superstition, and pain. In fact, when the HIV epidemic began here, it was initially ignored as a medical problem because it was believed to be the effect of witchcraft on those who were affected. But the people beside whom I am privileged to serve this week have found a cistern of living water in the Christian faith and they have seen it literally change lives in their villages. When I asked what is stemming the spread of HIV, what is making gradual inroads into the traditions of polygamy and the bride price, they resoundingly answered that it is the church. As Christ comes into the life of a village in a real way, the village begins to change. Men begin to leave their adulterous lifestyles. Parents begin to value the personhood of their daughters. HIV begins to decrease.

This group of Ugandans has a faith that permeates all that they do and knows no compartmentalization. I am both awed and humbled as I look forward to seeing the way their lives and message as Christ-followers impact the students with whom we interact this week.

Dr Autumn Dawn Galbreath
volunteer@uceglobal.org

How Long to get to Iganga, Uganda?

2007-03-12T07:25:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers,
The Universal Chastity Education (UCE) youth outreach team has arrived at our hotel in Iganga Town, in the district of Iganga, Uganda. This hotel will serve as our base for the outreach week. Each day, we will drive from here (taking our lives in our hands with bravery that deserves medals of great honor) to 2 different schools in the district of Kaliro, just to the north of here. Kaliro is a new district that encompasses what used to be the southeastern part of the district of Kamuli. We will go to one school each morning and one each afternoon, set up our PA system and generator, and give our presentations.

As we were leaving Kampala this morning, I asked how long it would take to get to Iganga. Kenneth told me, “You can’t measure it in hours because you don’t know what will happen along the way. We shall be driving in the jungle and an elephant can cross the road. When this happens, you are meant to sit and wait for it to cross.’ Needless to say, I was pretty excited about having to stop to wait for an elephant – something which does not happen to me every day. I figured if that were to happen, I would have enough material for my own version of To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street (that’s Dr. Seuss, for those of you without kids). Unfortunately, however, we were not stopped by an elephant, nor did we have a smooth, uneventful drive. We were in two cars – both rented, as UCE does not own its own vehicle at this point (Of note, my strong feeling is that this is one of UCE’s top needs, for anyone with money who is looking for a place to donate it).

I was in the first van, which held 4 team members, myself included, along with the PA system and much of our luggage. The vehicle behind us held the other 5 team members and the rest of the gear. As we drove along, I noted that we were driving extremely slowly for a trip that is too long to be safely measured in hours – between 20 and 60 kilometers per hour, which, if I remember my metric conversions correctly is about 10-30 miles per hour…MUCH too slow for me.

I was trying to settle in for the long, long drive at this pace, when I began to realize that our slow speeds were not voluntary on Michael’s part. My first clue on this was when the van started to make a really loud noise – something between a bump and a rattle – every time he pushed on the accelerator. Anyway, to try to make a long story short, we overheated, tried to put water into the radiator and were met by a geyser of water that spewed all over the interior of the car, and ended up not being able to re-start the car anyway. So we had to do all kinds of gyrations involving transferring luggage, calling mechanics from Kampala, and renting taxis to get all of us and all of our luggage to Iganga.

Meanwhile, while we were standing on the side of the road with all the passersby pointing and laughing at the unusual sight of one very white person and 8 Ugandans peering into a broken down van, one of the large trucks I have previously described drove by at record speeds and blew a tire just as it passed us. It was a bit hair-raising to hear a sudden, loud noise that sounded suspiciously like a gunshot and then look up and see a big, overloaded truck swerving toward us…..but he regained control in the nick of time and just kept right on going without his tire.

I am making light of all of this, but I have actually spent the 2 hours since we arrived at the hotel musing about it. Those musings will follow in the next post.
Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org

Autumn Dawn’s Top Ten List of Things Learned about Uganda

2007-03-12T05:58:00.000-07:00

10) If you ever find yourself in a Ugandan restaurant at the end of the typical lunch or dinner hour(s), do not, repeat DO NOT, order fish stew. Apparently, fish stew is made from very large fish which are scaled, gutted, and cut into thirds – the tail third, the middle third, and the head third. These pieces of fish are then cooked in a very nice broth to make a tasty fish stew. The helpful hint to travelers here is that, not surprisingly, the fully intact head is the least popular piece of meat in this stew. Therefore, all the tails and middles are served first…..which means that if you get there at the end of the pot, you get a very large fish head with eyeballs and a mouth looking up at you and you have to have a lesson in how to get the meat out. Sooooo if you are really stubborn and you refuse to take this advice, at a minimum, be sure that there is a Ugandan with you who can teach you how to get the meat out of the fish head.

9) Every single table at every single Ugandan restaurant has a very helpful round plastic container of toothpicks sitting in the middle of it. So if you are ever in dire need of a toothpick, hopefully you will be in Uganda, where toothpicks are most plentiful.

8) “You are very welcome” is the most commonly used Ugandan greeting in my experience to date. Regardless of where you are (or how unwelcome you might actually be), you are always greeted with “Hello. You are very welcome here.”

7) They really and truly do not accept US money older than 2000 here in Uganda. Despite having been told this very, very clearly by two different people, I still managed to end up here with some $100 bills dated 1996 – and I can vouch for the fact that they cannot be spent or changed in this country. If you come here, please double-check your bills before you leave your driveway to go to the airport in the US.

6) Tea grows on extraordinarily verdant plants that are only about 2-3 feet tall. They are incredibly uniform in height, so a field of tea plants is like a rolling sea of a gorgeous green color. I took a picture, but there’s no way it can do justice to the tea fields…they are one of my favorite sights here. I also learned that tea is harvested by hand by people carrying long burlap bags slug over their shoulders, much like cotton used to be harvested in the Southern US.

5) Dark skin actually does not sunburn at all. I had never thought about this much before, but I guess I assumed that it was less likely to sunburn – I was shocked to learn that it does not sunburn. My glowingly neon white skin, on the other hand, sunburns quite easily. Currently, my entire left arm – from shoulder to wrist – is moderately sunburned from resting it on the car window during our several hour drive this morning. Some of the team members are fascinated by the fact that one of my arms is red and the other is white. They wondered how the sun could do this, and when I did my best to explain, their next question was, “Does it pain?” Oh what wouldn’t I give to honestly not know what a sunburn feels like!!

4) My earlier estimate about the number and size of potholes on the roads in Uganda was made prior to my experiencing the road from Kampala to Iganga. My descriptions were GROSSLY inaccurate. There are, in fact, no words in the English language to describe the roads here. Imagine the very worst dirt ranch road you have ever driven on in your life, and then imagine a small (2-3 feet wide) strip of old broken pavement down the middle of it and you will have a very limited idea of the experience. If you want a more accurate picture, add several dozen trucks driving very fast down the middle of the road with live animals and/or 100-pound bags of grain or gravel tied to the top and sides (often spewing their contents as the truck bumps along). And imagine that it’s a video game in which you have to swerve one way to avoid the trucks while simultaneously swerving the other way to avoid the potholes…

3) There are hundreds of thousands (my very rough estimate) of schools in Uganda. As I have ridden along various highways, I have seen sign after sign after sign after sign for schools. They are everywhere – in the towns and even in the very rural villages. And most of them specify “Day and Boarding” which implies that there are some students who go to the rural villages for boarding school. I was initially impressed by the value that Ugandans put on education, as evidenced by the number of schools. But when I commented on this, I was told that education is, for the most part, a for-profit business. So all of these schools have an owner who has to choose each day whether to buy supplies with the tuition he has received, or to pocket it as profit for himself. Not surprisingly, the educational standards in some of the schools are apparently quite low. The government has recently enacted Universal Primary Education and Universal Secondary Education, which are new programs designed to provide free primary and secondary education to all Ugandan children. I brightened up a bit upon being told this, as it sounded like progress. But I was told that, as a result of the free tuition, the educational standard of the government schools has gone down quite a bit, so all Ugandan children now theoretically have access to education, but the overall quality of the education that is available has decreased significantly. I said that this sounded familiar.

2) If you are a Ugandan child, especially in a very rural area, your father is likely to have quite a number of children by quite a number of women – some of whom may be “official wives” and others of whom may be “concubines.” You are likely to know about these other families that your father has, and sometimes you may even live together with some of them. On the other hand, if your father has a job that requires him to travel, his other families may be in other “ports” (figuratively speaking) and you might not know abut them. However, even if you do not know about them, they are sure to show up asking for their share of the inheritance if/when your father dies. In fact, there have been reports of official wives being murdered by other wives or by concubines who want to get the official wife “out of the way” so that they can access the husband’s material goods. As one UCE team member who grew up in a polygamous home put it, “polygamous homes are an edited version of hell.” The impact on the cycle of poverty is striking when you think about one man with one income having to divide it to support 2 or 3 or even 5 or 6 households, and up to 30+ children altogether. In addition, imagine the role that this cultural phenomenon plays in the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

1) If you are an adolescent Ugandan girl in a rural village, your marriage will bring a “bride price” to your parents. This tradition began as a gift, or a sign of honor and respect, from the groom’s family to the bride’s. But it has deteriorated into what sounds to me like the sale of young girls by their parents. The bride’s parents typically ask for some number of cows in payment for their daughter’s hand in marriage – a number ranging from 2 or 3 up to 80. I will leave to your imagination the very graphic descriptions I heard today of what this does to the personal value of young girls in this culture. When a person becomes a commodity, she will quickly be treated as such, with no regard for her personal rights to control her own body. Again, this has incredible implications for the spread of HIV/AIDS.

Dr. Autumn Dawn Galbreath
volunteer@uceglobal.org

Hardships of Life in Uganda

2007-03-11T18:29:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers,
Today we drove back to Kampala and had another opportunity to experience the Ugandan roads. The roads are dumbfounding in their inconsistency – with some stretches of highway rivaling highways in the States, and then with no warning turning into a dirt road with holes and ruts all through it. But we made it back in one piece.

Another cultural difference I have noticed between Ugandan and the US is the value of the individual versus the value of the community or the system. I first began to reflect on this a couple of weeks before I left the US when I heard a report on NPR about a Ugandan couple who went to a hospital for the birth of their first child. There were complications and ultimately the baby was delivered via C-section. The father was then told that his wife was on the operating table and that the hospital staff would use one of the two stitches that they had in stock to stitch her up as soon as he paid the bill. Till then, she would have to wait and hope that he paid in time. So the father ran back to his village and made some rapid transactions there (sold some goats, as I recall), then ran back to the hospital to pay the bill so that his wife could be stitched up. Sadly, though, he arrived with the money too late and she had already bled to death. This is a really depressing story and my first response was outrage that something like this could ever happen…but as I continued to listen to the report, the NPR reporter interviewed a member of the hospital staff and asked how they could let someone bleed to death over a hospital bill. The staff member replied that there were only two stitches in stock to take are of anyone who ever came into the hospital and needed them. And if they used on stitch on someone who did not pay, they would not have a way to get any more, which would leave them with only one stitch….So, in fact, this story is not a story of heartless disregard for human life, as it seems to our American perspective. Instead, it’s a story of a deep regard for the life of the community, which is valued more highly than the life of the individual. This is a very different value structure than what we hold in the US, but then, we have never been in a position as nation/culture to have to choose between using our scarce resources to save the individual OR save the community. We are almost always able to do both. I have wondered what we would do if we were truly forced to choose.

I have experienced this difference in value structure in very small ways during this trip – nothing to even begin to compare to the story I related above. But in little things such as how service is delivered in restaurants and hotels, this difference is apparent to me. And my natural instinct is to be irritated by the things that are done differently….so I remind myself of what I perceive to be a fundamental difference in perspective between these two cultures, and the irritations turn out to be a lesson in diversity and appreciation of the hardship under which the Ugandans, and others in developing countries, are forced to live.

Tomorrow I leave for the outreach with the Universal Chastity Education (UCE) team. I am looking forward to the opportunity to observe and experience more of these cultural nuances that make the Ugandan culture unique.

Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org

Indescribable Beauty of Uganda

2007-03-10T18:09:00.000-08:00

Hello,

Today we drove along the volcanic craters at the edge of Queen Elizabeth National Park. There is no way to capture the beauty in either words or photographs, so I won’t even try. Suffice it to say, you need to come and see it for yourself.

Along the way, we saw more Kob, waterbuck, water buffalo, warthogs, and vervet monkeys, as well as a number of beautiful birds (hawks, a secretary bird, and others) and a whole mongoose family. We drove up to baboon cliffs, but we didn’t see any baboons there. For the afternoon, we went on a boat launch to see the hippos, which was really amazing. There were dozens of hippos and they were right next to out boat. In addition, they were right next to the little fishing canoes of the Ugandan villagers who live in the fishing villages inside Queen Elizabeth Park.I have always heard that hippos are quite dangerous, so it made me wonder about the day to day life of a Ugandan fisherman who has to go out in a little defenseless boat within a few feet of an enormous hippo! On the boat trip, we also saw crocodiles and lots and lots of different kinds of birds.
One thing I have found difficult to get used to is the Ugandans seeming reluctance to give a negative answer to any question – even when that is the answer. Whenever we ask for anything, we are told “yes” but the “yes” answer doesn’t seem to be reliable…many times we don’t get what we asked for and the contradiction doesn’t seem to bother anyone but us. Once we even had a server tell us that we had been served the popcorn she had agreed to get us, when it had, in fact, never been served. It’s an interesting cultural difference and I find it rather disconcerting. I would certainly rather be told that I will not be receiving something than to be told that I will when someone knows that the reality is that I will not. I suppose that one might eventually become accustomed to this, but I think it would take a while.

To date, we have all remained well, and, in fact, we have essentially not seen any mosquitoes, much less been bitten by them – for which we are thankful.

Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org

Safari in Queen Elizabeth Park, Uganda

2007-03-09T21:42:00.000-08:00

Hello Readers,

We saw quite a number of animals today – dozens and dozens of Ugandan Kob (an antelope-looking animal), water buffalo, waterbuck (another antelope-type thing), warthogs which the kids think look just like Pumba from The Lion King, baboons (one of which showed some interest in joining us in the car), vervet monkeys, a leopard which only gave us the briefest glimpse of itself, one hippo which was out the water grazing, and many, many elephants – elephant mothers and babies, and even one elephant that got angry at our photographic efforts and charged our car. I wasn’t all that relieved to be told, “Don’t worry….he’s not big enough to roll us.” But we were easily able to drive away. The kids had a great time standing on the middle console with their heads and shoulders out the top of the car looking for animals.

We went back to the lodge for dinner, swimming, and falling asleep with the windows open in the middle of a rainstorm.
A lovely day altogether.

Dr Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org

On the Road in Uganda

2007-03-08T05:07:00.000-08:00

Hello,
Today we are on safari. I will not be at the Universal Chastity Education (UCE) office again until we leave for the outreach trip on Monday. Instead, my kids and I, along with the Mickler mom and kids, traveled westward across Uganda to Queen Elizabeth National Park. It was about a 5 hour drive, though we managed to stretch it out quite a bit with a number of stops. We stopped on the equator and took pictures of ourselves in both hemispheres. And there was a fair amount of stopping due to the 5 children in our car.

As we drove into the park, we saw a few animals – Ugandan Kob, water buffalo, Waterbuck, and a group of baboons with two moms carrying babies. One of the baboons came across the road to our car and acted like it was thinking about joining us for a ride, but we discouraged this idea pretty quickly.

We passed through many, many rural Ugandan villages and saw a great deal of traditional Ugandan life as we drove. The most amazing part to me was the children carrying very large plastic bottles of water (maybe between 2 and 4 gallons) balanced on their heads. They seem to carry just about anything on their heads – from large bundles of firewood to large bunches of bananas (or a banana-like fruit called matoke) to bags/baskets of miscellaneous stuff. But the water was what really impressed me. I know how heavy a several-gallon bottle of water is and the thought of carrying it on my head, even at my adult size, makes my neck and shoulders hurt. I can’t imagine having to do that as a child of 5 or 6 years. And apparently the children here do this regularly – it’s their role in the family and they have to carry water from the village water source up to the house 2 or 3 times per day.

The poverty is also a striking aspect of the rural part of Uganda: houses made of sheets of tin and plywood; choking dust in the air; people barefoot; open-air markets and butcher shops without all the health controls that we take for granted. And yet, the people seem very happy and they wave and smile at cars as we drive by on the highway through town. It makes me wonder how much of the “necessities” of life in the US are really burdens in the form of stuff that we have to take care of. Not that I am thinking of taking away my children’s shoes and having them begin to carry water for us….but it gives me pause and makes me think a great deal about ways in which we can and should simplify our lives to make room to just enjoy being together and the small pleasures that the “highway through town” brings our way.

My third and last observation for the day (try to stifle your sighs of relief!) regards the Ugandan roads. I used the term “highway” in the previous paragraph, but take that word with a grain of salt. The roads here are amazing in their inconsistency. You can drive on a very smooth, paved road that looks like a small US highway for a number of miles, then all of a sudden one side of the road will change to very bumpy red dirt road. In addition, rather than speed limit signs to encourage you to slow down as you enter a village, there are speed bumps that appear suddenly and with no signage or warning. We hit a “speed mountain” today that just about sent us all flying through the windshield. And it was in the middle of a major highway with no speed limit reduction sign or speed bump warning sign. I think we were actually airborne for a little way after hitting the bump, it was so big. We were very thankful that the car suffered no apparent damage from its short flight.

Tonight we stay at a lovely place called Kingfisher Lodge, which is up high on one of the Rwenzori Mountains, overlooking the entire Queen Elizabeth Park. It’s a gorgeous setting with a more gorgeous view. And tomorrow we go into the park to look for animals.

Until then,
Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org

Uganda HIV/AIDS Manual Underway

2007-03-07T17:15:00.000-08:00

Dear Readers,
Sorry for the episodic and delayed nature of these blog postings. The power rationing makes the internet access quite variable. It works well when it is working, but there’s no way to predict when the power will go off and the internet will be unavailable. And once it’s unavailable, there’s no way to predict when the power will come back on. So if you want to do anything else while there is power (eg: bathe, cook, read, etc), you run the risk of missing your chance to work on the computer and access the internet. So I am writing one blog entry per day, but I suspect they will be posted 4 or 5 at a time every 4 or 5 days….To make matters worse, we will not have any internet access for the next four days while we are on safari…

Anyway, today I worked at the Universal Chasitity Education (UCE) office again. I met with the core team of UCE staff and volunteers to talk about the HIV/AIDS manual/resource they are working on. The plan is to complete this project, with content based on the written questions they receive from students at the outreaches, and then publish it and leave it at the schools after outreaches. This will give both students and teachers a resource to go to when they have questions or need additional information. We met for several hours to discuss the format and content of the manual, and I was struck by the difference in the flow of the meeting here, versus how the same meeting would have taken place at home. Here, the pace is slower and there is a great deal more collaboration and politeness among the group members. All the team members were quick to thank one another for their input and ideas and communication (particularly disagreement) seems to be less direct than it would be at home. Those of you who know me are wondering how I was able to interact collaboratively and indirectly, as this is not my usual style, I fear. But I think I did OK….You would have to ask the rest of the team to be sure! Anyway, regardless of my contribution, we ended up with a great product at the end of the discussion. I think the manual is going to be really good.

After work, I went back to the Micklers house where we had dinner (with no power) with several guests who either work for the same organization as the Micklers, or who are here checking things out because they are considering moving h ere. I have been struck in the few days I have been here with the number of Americans and Europeans who live and work here and by the number of different things they do. Some are missionaries or are here with relief organizations, and some are here working for various organizations – everything from Clear Channel Communications to the British consulate. There are pilots, teachers, social workers, physicians, attorneys, and everything in between. I did not previously have a concept of the wide variety of roles ex-pats play here.

Meanwhile, I talked at length with the folks at UCE about the unemployment rate in Uganda, which they say is 60%. They said that it typically takes about 2 years for a university graduate to find a job after graduation. I asked what people do to support themselves in the meantime – they said that often educated people move out of Uganda because there are no jobs here. We talked at length about the impact that this “brain drain” has on the country and its future. There is clearly a need not just for relief, but also for employment opportunities. By the passion in their conversation and by the readiness with which they brought up this topic, I think it’s fair to say that the UCE team feels this is imperative to the future growth and development of Uganda as a nation. I don’t have a way of knowing how representative they are of Ugandans in general, but my guess would be that they are a fairly representative sample of educated Ugandan people.

Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org

Volunteer Meets UCE Uganda Team

2007-03-06T03:47:00.000-08:00

Hello all,
I had a wonderful day at the Universal Chastity Education (UCE) office here in Kampala, Uganda, Africa, today. The hospitality of the staff and volunteers was amazing and I thoroughly enjoyed the chance to begin to get to know them. I was driven to the office by Michael Bahinyoza, national coordinator for UCE. We were met there by the other two staff members, Kenneth Rukundo, Programs Officer, and Jude Tadeo, mobilization assistant, as well as a number of Ugandan UCE volunteers, including Alex, Rose, Maureen, Pamela, and Anita. My daughter, Ellie, came along and the UCE team welcomed us.

We had a lovely conversation about UCE's mission and history, and talked quite a bit about what we will be doing on the outreach next week. We will present at 10 schools in the district, which seems like quite a lot to me. The system is very well-organized and the team has received permission and/or an invitation from each of these schools prior to going. We will present in a wide variety of schools, including "public schools" (which are different from US public schools, but that’s the best name I can think of), Christian schools, private college-prep-type schools, and Muslim schools as well. It seems that the HIV epidemic is enough to unite even Muslims and Christians in the cause of abstinence. The team tells me that the Muslim schools are extremely welcoming and happy to have people come to bring such a message to their students.

Interestingly, when we go to the schools, we have to take not only our own PA system (that didn't really surprise me), but our own generator as well. The power supply is extremely unreliable, as there is not enough power to support the entire city of Kampala, so they have "rolling blackouts" - just like California! (I guess the US and Uganda are not so different after all!) But in addition to the power supply issue, the team tells me that it would be extremely impolite to go to a school and connect our PA system and use a lot of their power. This would cause an expense to the school and would not be considered appropriate for a visiting team to do. I listened amazed at how much I take for granted at home!

The UCE offices moved to a new location recently and are now located in a lovely home in an area of Kampala called Ntinda. The home has 4 bedrooms, 3 of which are
being used as offices and one of which is for storage of the PA system.

In addition, it has a lovely back house which has a bedroom, bath, and kitchenette area, where volunteers will stay in the future (Who's next, by the way? All you have to do is go to the "Volunteer" section of the website to sign up!)

There is a greenway in the backyard of the headquarters:

Tomorrow I will spend the day at the UCE office again, working on the educational manual they are preparing for print and which they intend to leave with each school after future outreaches. Then Thursday through Sunday, I go on safari (you can't come to Africa without a safari, even on a volunteer trip!). And on Monday, we leave for our week-long UCE youth outreach in the district of Kaliro, Uganda.

Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org

Uganda Volunteer Arrives Safely

2007-03-05T19:13:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone,
We made it!! We are pretty wiped out, but we got here safely with all of our bags...The kids did unbelievably well on the plane. They really are amazing travelers! They entertained themselves reading their books, opening the gifts from their grandmother, listening to music and watching movies on the plane's entertainment system. They only argued a bit every so often. At one point on the last flight, my son,Coggin, got really frustrated with my daughter, Ellie, and he turned to me and said, "Mom, this last leg of our flight is badly bruised." I just about died laughing. I have no idea where he got that, but it was so funny!

We have spent this first day with our friends, the Micklers - mostly trying to stay awake till nighttime! We went to the school to pick their daughter up this afternoon...The school is incredible. The campus is much nicer than many, if not most, American school campuses. And their house is really nice, too. They have some wonderful little shops - a gelato place owned by some Italian expatriates, a patisserie owned by Belgians who make killer French pastries, an outdoor market where local farmers sell produce, and a butcher shop where everything is incredibly fresh. They are definitely living and eating better than a lot of Americans!

Tomorrow I go to the Universal Chastity Education (UCE) office for a couple of hours to learn my schedule, what I'll be doing, etc. And, in addition to the work I will be doing, we are going to get to do some neat touristy things while we're here - safari this weekend, trip to the chimpanzee park, rafting on the Nile River.

It's weird how you can tell this is Africa even before the plane really starts to descend, It's completely different from any place I have ever been before - miles and miles of green jungle out the window. And it's steaming hot and muggy, just as you would expect. The dirt is everywhere and it's dark, dark red. It gets on your feet, clothes, car...even the plants as you drive down the road don't look green because they are covered with a thick layer of red dust. The roads are mostly all dirt and you've never felt such bumps in your life. The potholes are so big that the word "pothole" doesn't really do them justice. It's a good thing the Micklers have a big car, because some of these potholes are big enough to do some serious damage to a small one. Your teeth just bang together as you drive down the road. And there's not a single stoplight in the entire city of Kampala, which is the capital city of Uganda....so I assume there's not a single stoplight in all of Uganda. It's amazing and overwhelming and really, really cool. I feel like we're living in a movie scene! About halfway between the airport and the Mickler's house, Coggin looked all around him and spontaneously said, "OK, I'm not sorry I'm missing the Jog-a-thon (referring to an event at his school that will happen while we are here). This is better than the Jog-a-thon AND a visit from the 8th graders out together!"

The Mickler's daughter and Coggin were talking about sleeping earlier...I'm not sure what the beginning of the conversation was, but I heard her say, "Oh, yeah. I forgot about that....I guess we didn't have mosquito nets on our beds in America." Their daughter is also quite a nature-lover. She collects "interesting" African bugs, and she has a pet chameleon (a real chameleon with the marbly eyeballs that roll around completely and that changes colors) and she takes it to school with her everyday and plays with it at recess!

We are completely exhausted tonight and hitting the sack at about 8:30 pm, which is really early for me.....but given that it's only 11:30 am at home and I haven't really slept for two nights, I guess it's all a wash anyway. I will go to the UCE office tomorrow and meet the UCE staff and volunteers and get a better idea of what I will be doing with them while I am here.

Dr. Autumn Dawn
volunteer@uceglobal.org