One of The Way Home’s guest-servants this week, blogs about his second day on the roads to photo journal our granny families with Heather:
OUR SECOND DAY ON THE BACKROADS
Fred writes: We spent another day on the backroads of Uganda visiting with 13 grannies at their homes. We observed several fine gardens being prepared for planting. They’re prepping the planting holes now and will plant the seed in another week or two when the next semi-annual rainy season begins. We also prayed with each one that their garden would produce abundantly. No all of them have gardens – we’ve met a few who are blind and one today wasn’t able to get up from her mat on the floor – but some of them we’ve seen have been astounding. While the grand kids are away at school the grannies work on preparing and maintaining their gardens. The idea is that they will be able to raise enough crop to not only feed their family but also enough extra to sell so they can pay the kids’ school fees. If you can’t pay, you don’t go to school here.
We’re learning many things about how to best to help people in other cultures work their way out of poverty. It’s so easy as westerners to want to just put together a team, write a check, and fix the problem. We can see, though, the dependency problems that creates. As we ride the bodas through the little towns along the way we can hear the kids calling out for money from the mzungus. When we pull into the villages it’s like the circus just pulled into town. People come from all around the village to see what we have brought for them. It’s encouraging to see how The Way Home Africa is working to break that cycle with the people they serve. They’re working hard to fade into the background as they train up more and more Ugandans to do the work on the ground. They’re also willing to apply tough love in situations where the recipients sit back on their hands expecting the work to be done for them.
Well tomorrow it’s back to the bush on our trusty bodas and will be joined on our journey for a day by Tim Johnson. Please continue to pray for us and for the work of The Way Home Africa.
