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UGANDA: Church helping people rebuild after war
By John Newton
A Sister teaching children in Uganda, where the Church is helping people rebuild their lives.
The Church in Uganda is helping to rebuild peoples’ lives as they leave the camps they sheltered in during the country’s guerrilla war with rebel militia – but it is an uphill struggle, a priest from the country has told Aid to the Church in Need.
Father Paul Okello of Lira diocese in the north of the country said the Church had been encouraging reconciliation and the restoration of lost values, such as integrity, honesty, and fidelity.
While the country was more stable and peaceful than five years ago – most people have returned home from the camps and rebels have withdrawn from Uganda to the Democratic Republic of Congo – the Church had to help a generation rebuild their lives, said the priest.
Father Okello described how the Church has been at the forefront of advocacy for peace, reconciliation and social justice. He said: “The Church has encouraged everyone to see that guns cannot solve anything, that nobody wins when you use violence, that it is a vicious circle that no one can stop except God.”
According to the priest “morality had completely degenerated” because of life in the camps, where prostitution, infidelity, child abuse and substance abuse were rife.
Parents not only permitted but actually encouraged their children to become prostitutes “as it was seen as a means to a livelihood,” he said.
While the country has one of the lowest HIV/Aids rates in Africa, the spread of the disease in the camps was three times higher than among the rest of the population.
Father Okello described how the Church is responding to these challenges. He said: “As a Church we have been promoting fidelity in marriage and the proper place of sex – telling young people and adults about abstinence, and holistic behaviour change.
“Chastity and virginity: these are the values we promote in our teaching to people.”
Father Okello told Aid to the Church in Need that changing people’s sexual behaviour was no easy task.
He said: “It remains a big challenge when you have to tell people something that is true, yet not easy for them to follow.
“It is still more challenging for the Church to preach to someone on the brink of poverty, who has lost hope, someone who is starving, who would prefer to do what is not proper to fill his stomach.”
According to Father Okello, people could not carry out agricultural activities when they were living in the camps, as their farm land was too far away.
Father Okello said: “They got up in the morning and instead of working they just waited for food to come.”
The Church has been supplying food and agricultural equipment, and providing workshops to help train people. It has also organised peace seminars for people to understand “how God has created us to live in harmony and unity, and what Christ prayed for – that they may be one”.
People have now returned to cultivating fields and rearing animals, but wild and unpredictable weather means new challenges. Farmers can no longer rely on the stable cycle of wet season or dry seasons required to grow their crops.
Father Okello said: “Nowadays rain comes two to three days, or perhaps two to three weeks, then it just disappears and a scorching sun comes and burns crops – sometimes it’s the opposite, all of a sudden a storm comes and there’s a flood all over. It takes us back to point zero.”
He added how a big flood in northern Uganda greatly affected Lira diocese in July 2007.
In response to the diocese’s urgent request, Aid to the Church in Need provided more than £17,000 to buy seeds for distribution to returning farmers who had lost their crops to floods.
Thanking the charity’s benefactors for supporting his priestly training, Father Okello said: “I am particularly grateful to everyone who enabled my formation.”
He added: “This priesthood, fully understood, requires me to make a preferential option for the poor, suffering and persecuted – and obliges me to put myself entirely at their service.”