Report from BHW Uganda Partnership Facilitator

I was not able to visit Timothy and Janepher at Katosi when I was in Uganda earlier this year due to some last-minute travel changes which were needed through circumstances outside our control (Ebola outbreak). I made arrangements to have a FaceTime call with him to talk about various aspects of the ministry and this is the report of that conversation. We talked for just over an hour and in some considerable detail on December 1, 2022.

Recent Events

Winners School

Winners School at Katosi presently has 638 primary students and 202 secondary students. Of these students, 312 are in the boarding section. This includes children who came down from the north and were unable to return home due to the brutal lockdown in Uganda for almost two years. Some of these were children who came with their mothers looking for jobs around the lake.

Timothy said that there are now 38 teachers at the school and that things are largely back to “normal”. I am not quite sure what he meant by that, and he was not able to elaborate but I think it means that there are no longer the same restrictions on teaching and schooling as there were under the COVID related lockdown. 

COVID

Timothy described that Covid had caused a huge setback to the community and schools. There is a large degree of uncertainty in the community and a great degree of fear of Covid. He described it as being too much and that, in fact, the fear was worse than the disease itself. During the Covid season other disease treatments were neglected and the focus was only on Covid. 

Marisara Babies Home

Timothy also talked about the Marisara Babies Home. He advised that there are presently 22 children, all of whom have been abandoned, in the home. The preschool on the same site, which functions on a commercial basis, has 82 children but does not provide enough income to support the babies home. There is a need for financial support for the feeding and support of the 22 babies. The establishment of a grinding mill (mentioned below) might provide some additional support both in terms of food resource, and also income, for the babies home to enable it to function better into the future.

Foundations for Farming

We talked about Foundations for Farming. There are at least four people, including Janepher, who are actively practising Foundations for Farming and doing well with it in Katosi. Janepher, their son Sam, and one other came from Katosi to the small conference that we held in Jinja which had a strong FfF focus. They are also teaching and passing on that knowledge to other people which is encouraging and is borne out by what I saw of Janepher’s farming when I was last there four years ago. It was definitely inspiring. Some of the produce also goes to support the school feeding programme.

Personal 

Timothy’s family is doing extremely well. He now has two grandchildren and remains closely connected to their own children. They are also actively farming and have piglets.

Ideas for the Future

1) Evangelism in the islands. This is an issue which has also been raised by other partners who have a burden for doing this. Timothy has started reaching out into the islands and has in fact planted a church there. He identified that they had needed a boat to be able to get to the islands. Apparently, they have acquired a boat, but now need an outboard motor to power the boat to the islands. There are 72 islands in Lake Victoria and evangelism happening on some, but no significant churches. 

2) Timothy wants to run pastoral training conferences in different areas. He identifies that most pastors in Uganda have no formal training. Therefore, mobile training and taking the training to those who need it most, is very important. I would be keen for us to support leadership training and development, particularly when it is delivered by someone with the calibre of Timothy. I have asked Timothy to provide a budget for these trainings.

3) Timothy is also wanting to run a youth camp from December 27-31, 2022 to promote unity among youth, abstinence and holy living. I don’t think we would be wanting to support this, but it is an admirable objective.

4) A grinding mill. This is something that I would like to support and will send through a proposal to the BHW Exec. I do not see that a grinding mill is going to necessarily lead to a reduction in our support for the school but what it would do is address the shortfall in the feeding programme, and also start to provide another source of income for the school, thus making it not so dependent on the vagaries of school fee payments, or external financial support. I would therefore recommend that we do make a one-off contribution to enable Timothy to set up and fund a grinding mill as an income stream for the school.

Current Issues and Challenges

Winners school still faces some quite big challenges. They have not been able to rebuild the block that was lost after the fire just prior to the start of the lockdown. Bedding and mattresses, the computer lab, and the library were all lost during the fire. All of these need replacing, and it would be good to find a donor who would be willing to assist in this regard.

The water at Winners School is still an issue. Timothy needs a pump to be replaced to provide better reticulation of the water to the school. He has also previously talked about a purification system to make the water cleaner and more palatable. 

Schools closed early this year because of the perceived Ebola threat. The year was shortened by two weeks on government advice. One of the difficulties faced by both schools is that the government has now increased teachers' salaries for those who teach in government run schools. This means that those who are running private schools have to match or exceed those salaries or run the risk of losing teachers. This is creating a difficulty in the budget. I do not think that BHW should be supporting additional funding for this given that our primary focus has been the feeding programme and support of the children. Teachers' salaries and the running costs of the school should largely be able to be funded by parents who have their own businesses or livelihoods. I did explain this to Timothy. I think he does get it, but he is probably so busy that this is very difficult for him to grasp.

Food costs and firewood costs have tripled, and Timothy does worry about how to feed the children now. 

Timothy is hugely appreciative of the more than 20 years of support from Bright Hope World and expressed his gratitude. That does not mean that there are not, however, significant challenges being faced by both schools in Katosi and Mbale Village as the economy in Uganda rebuilds. In brief they are:
1) Many students did not return after the lockdown. This is slowly changing.
2) Of those students that did return many of the parents had suffered extreme poverty, or an extreme downturn in their family fortunes as a result of Covid. This means that there is an ongoing issue with payment of school fees.
3) Costs of feeding and running a school have gone up significantly. In many cases the cost of feeding is now three or four times what it was before. Schools in Uganda feed the children, and this is a significant issue.
4) The government is continually introducing new taxes and also new compliance requirements on schools. This is posing a significant additional administrative burden on many schools. Timothy did not directly refer to this, but I do know this to be the case from discussions with other partners who are running schools. One partner said that there were now eight new taxes or charges imposed by the government on schools, which were not there at all prior to the Covid pandemic. 

Prayer and Praise Points

1) The school is doing quite well. Even though I was not able to visit there this year Timothy has not complained about all of the problems, but he has simply focused on what is going well. He has not expressed that there has been enormous hardship or difficulty and is often quite circumspect about the needs. Therefore, when he does ask for things then, if it is within the purview of BHW, we should consider it.

2) That most of the children have returned, and that the teaching complement is largely at its full number.

3) That there would be adequate funding to enable the school to meet the needs of the children, and also to increase teachers’ salaries to ensure that the teachers are being reasonably well paid, and competitively with state teachers.

4) For the vision that Timothy has for evangelism to the islands on the lake, which I understand to be extremely deprived communities, for successful church planting and wisdom.

5) For sound upcoming leadership to be developed among people and for those people to have integrity. 

6) For successful income generation projects. 

7) For funds to rebuild the computer lab and the library. 

Comments

Timothy and I had a really good chat, but you can see that the needs are extremely high, and he has a lot of things on his agenda at present.

Timothy is one of our partners who has big dreams and does not often make requests for assistance. However, he gave some very detailed requests this time and I will be presenting the Exec with the ones that I think that BHW could or should support.