{"id":838,"date":"2013-04-28T04:08:45","date_gmt":"2013-04-28T04:08:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/?p=838"},"modified":"2013-05-14T14:35:45","modified_gmt":"2013-05-14T14:35:45","slug":"mfps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/mfps\/","title":{"rendered":"MFP\u2019s"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The

The road to Katakwi<\/p><\/div>\n

The road to Katakwi is about forty kilometers of washboard and potholes that will test the quality of your dental work.\u00a0 This is one reason why you\u00a0<\/span>don’t\u00a0want to think about driving in Uganda.\u00a0 Francis seems to have radar for parts of the road that seem innocent until you get right over them.\u00a0 As awful as the trip is, I have a special love for this road because of where it leads.\u00a0 Katakwi is the district that includes Usuk, the first IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camp I ever visited.\u00a0 Six years ago there were still several thousand people there, and there I preached my first sermon in Uganda, to several hundred hopeless farmers.\u00a0 I preached on the parable of the sower and the seed, and in my first words realized I had stumbled by God\u2019s grace into a text they all knew more deeply than I ever could; then I pulled out a couple of puppets and did a homily for about three hundred kids with simultaneous translation into Ateso.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Aboiboi-two-huts300\"The camp is gone now, and the people have almost all been resettled into traditional lands.\u00a0 Since then, Pilgrim has concentrated on the task of helping them become food-secure.\u00a0 There have been floods and\u00a0drought\u00a0and crippling financial pressures that made us pull staff from the fields.\u00a0 Somehow, by the grace of God, we have managed to keep going, and the original vision is at last slowly becoming a reality.<\/p>\n

The first element of the vision was to teach sustainable farming techniques and to help villagers recover their connections to their land.\u00a0 This has happened pretty effectively.\u00a0 Farming is practically second nature to Ugandans, and even university professors and bishops have gardens where they grow the staples of Ugandan life: cassava, groundnuts, sorghum, and millet.\u00a0 The next question was how to leverage these practices to help build the economic and social capital of the local communities.\u00a0 The answer lay in the MFP.<\/p>\n

\"Multi-Function

Multi-Function Platform<\/p><\/div>\n

A Multi-Function Platform is a diesel Lister engine from the colonial period.\u00a0 These British-made workhorses once powered a huge variety of machinery in East Africa from ferries to cotton gins. \u00a0Adapted to run on biofuel, they can be accessorized to perform the basic functions of food processing: grinding cassava into flour, pressing groundnuts into oil, and so forth.\u00a0 \u00a0Crops that have been minimally processed in this way are worth up to four times the value of the raw material.\u00a0 By organizing the farmers into co-operatives we also give them group power to negotiate higher prices for their product and help protect them from getting fleeced my middle men.\u00a0 The co-operatives have anywhere from twenty to a hundred forty members, and each is centered around an MFP, though some are not. The next two will be installed by students from Columbia University, through our partnership with Engineers Without Borders, or EWB.<\/p>\n

We are visiting the communities chosen as the next two sites.\u00a0 Ten communities were nominated by our field staff as having the potential to organize effectively.\u00a0 They were then visited and analyzed by a combined team from Pilgrim and EWB.\u00a0 The two which came to the top were unanimously chosen.<\/p>\n

\"Aboiboi-the-Meeting-Place300\"

The Meeting Place in Aboiboi<\/p><\/div>\n

Angella, our head of operations for Soroti, in the company of me, William and James Ochan, is our lead organizer on these visits.\u00a0 The first is a little community called Aboiboi.\u00a0 We pull off the main road after a couple of hours and follow a track through cassava fields and mango trees to the \u201cmeeting place\u201d\u2014a lovely shady little grove, where we are to meet the organizing committee.\u00a0 We are met by the committee chair, who sends runners to gather the others from their gardens.\u00a0 After a wait of about fifteen minutes, the entire group is assembled, the committee chair offers a prayer, crossing himself before and after, as do all in attendance, (Katakwi is heavily Roman Catholic) and this done, we begin the meeting.<\/p>\n

Meetings in Uganda, from the Ministry of Health in Kampala to the council of the smallest village in Teso, follow a ceremonious protocol that almost never varies:\u00a0 a prayer, introductions, a brief speech of welcome, a brief response from the guests, a series of remarks in careful order of precedence, and then closing formalities.\u00a0 I am always touched by these proceedings.\u00a0 They give the poor the same dignity as cabinet ministers or members of parliament.\u00a0 No one would ever dream of \u201ccutting to the chase\u201d.\u00a0 And in the course of things, a lot of business gets done.<\/p>\n

\"Angella

Angella Amuron, Pilgrim Africa Operations Officer<\/p><\/div>\n

The business today, from Angella\u2019s point of view, is to see how much progress the farmers of Aboiboi have made in holding up their end of the bargain.\u00a0 Pilgrim provides the initial installation of the engine; in return the community itself must provide the land, build the brick shelter for the MFP, organize a sustainable co-operative (complete with officers) by gathering enough subscribing members, and they must (among other things) choose a name for themselves.\u00a0 It has been ten days since the initial meeting with the group, and once we are all seated and her turn has come, Angella asks them a series of pointed questions.<\/p>\n

\"Aboiboi

Aboiboi MFP site and donor of the land<\/p><\/div>\n

She speaks entirely in Ateso, and James Ochan gives me a running translation. Have you identified the land for the shelter? <\/i>\u00a0Yes, and the man who is donating it is here, and a very dignified elder stands up.\u00a0 There is a round of applause and we all thank him profusely.\u00a0 Angella tells them to make sure he and they sign the necessary documents to legalize the transaction.\u00a0 She will follow up in another week. She then moves on. \u00a0How many subscribers do you have? <\/i>\u00a0The answer is twenty.\u00a0 How can you get more?<\/i>\u00a0 We are working on it.\u00a0 Some are reluctant to pay the subscription price of twenty thousand shillings (about eight dollars, no small change for a farmer).\u00a0 The farmers then push back a little.\u00a0 What happens if we cannot raise the funds we need to build the shelter?\u00a0 Angella holds firm.\u00a0 You understood the terms when we first met and you agreed to them.\u00a0 We believe you can do it.\u00a0 <\/i>The committee digests this.\u00a0 Then she asks, Have you chosen a name?<\/i> They demure, but by the smiles and the animation she is re-assured that this is an administrative problem more than anything.\u00a0 She goes over the schedule and the agreement, and she inspects their journal to make sure they are making progress, have duly recorded the membership and the fees collected so far.\u00a0 At some point in the middle of this the Bishop is introduced, and I do my best to support what Angella has laid out.\u00a0 James translates for me.\u00a0 After opening with the expected expressions of appreciation, I decide to address the two issues of the subscriptions and the name. I ask hypothetically, what would happen if Pilgrim just said, OK don\u2019t worry about the shortfall\u2014just raise what you can and we\u2019ll provide the rest?\u00a0 They all laugh and applaud.\u00a0 There would be great happiness,<\/i> they say.\u00a0 Yes, I say, perhaps, for about a month, but then what would happen?\u00a0 The smiles fade.\u00a0 \u00a0I point out there is an empty World Vision school near Dakabela, entirely paid for by Americans, and never occupied because the community had no stake in it; there is a diesel generator at the clinic in Amuria, German-made and paid for by British charities, that has never been fired up, for the same reason.\u00a0 Uganda is covered with rusting machinery bought by Westerners and never put into practice because the people themselves did not create it.\u00a0 If you\u00a0don’t\u00a0subscribe, I conclude, the thing may begin, but it will not continue.\u00a0 They nod their heads and several reinforce the point among themselves.<\/p>\n

\"Co-op

Co-op Officers<\/p><\/div>\n

Now about the name, I ventured.\u00a0 What would happen if you all just stopped naming your children?\u00a0 The babies grew up and all they heard was, \u201cHey you!\u00a0 Come here!\u201d\u00a0 Again, general laughter.\u00a0 There would be chaos,<\/i> says one young mother.\u00a0 Yes, I agreed, and more than that the children themselves would never really know who they were.\u00a0 If you are going to thrive in life, you have to know who you are, and that begins with a name.\u00a0 I look forward to hearing yours, so that I can remember you in my prayers when I return to the States.\u00a0 The meeting ends with a great deal of appreciation, and on our way out we stop by the intended site with the donor and the committee chair:\u00a0 It is perfect, under a lovely tree, centrally located, a piece of land well known by the community.\u00a0 Again, thanks, handshakes, murmurs of respect, and we\u2019re off.<\/p>\n

\"Talking

Talking with the officers in Angole-Kyere<\/p><\/div>\n

The next community is on the other side of Soroti, in Serere District, so we drive back the two hours to the town and head up a slightly less challenging road until we arrive at Angole-Kyere. \u00a0\u00a0The meeting here progresses in exactly the same sequence, except the prayer is an enthusiastic free-form invocation (everyone here is either Pentecostal or Church of Uganda).\u00a0 This community has clearly more capacity than the one in Katakwi.\u00a0 The entire session is conducted in English.\u00a0 They have raised one hundred forty-seven subscriptions.\u00a0 They have the land, again donated, and also donated bricks, lintels, and other materials.\u00a0 They have chosen the name Angole-Kyere Agricultural Co-operative.\u00a0 The meeting goes quickly.\u00a0 When it comes to me, to my surprise, I tell them about my first sermon in Uganda, the one in Usuk, about the sower and the seed.<\/p>\n

\"Angole-Kyere300\"I remind them that in those days there was utter hopelessness everywhere.\u00a0 People could not believe their suffering would ever end, or see how life could ever improve.\u00a0 I said that Teso had been through the path, the thorns and the stony ground; but that even in those days, God was planting the seed of his hope in the fertile ground of their hearts.\u00a0 He watered it through the years of affliction, and now we can see it growing in front of our eyes.\u00a0 As they nodded appreciatively, their eyes showed that they were recalling their own personal histories of hardship, and now saw that they stood in a place where a real future for them and their children, like good seed, finally was in their hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The road to Katakwi is about forty kilometers of washboard and potholes that will test the quality of your dental work.\u00a0 This is one reason why you\u00a0don’t\u00a0want to think about driving in Uganda.\u00a0 Francis seems to have radar for parts of the road that seem innocent until you get right over them.\u00a0 As awful as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pilgrim-africa"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s3rrkF-mfps","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=838"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":856,"href":"https:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838\/revisions\/856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.episcopalpgh.org\/bishopsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}