Monday 22nd October

We had a lovely supper with the Sisters of Grace and Compassion last night. The convent was only established in Irundu three years ago. Sister Julian was at the much larger house in Kenya before coming to establish the one in Irundu. There are four sisters, two or three postulants and two or three aspirants. The Sisters run the village nursery school and help with various community duties. The postulants and aspirants sang and danced beautifully for us at the end of the evening.

This morning was mostly spent making school visits. The nursery school has 75 boys and girls. It seems fairly well set up, although teaching resources are limited. The children seemed to be getting on well with their alphabet, reading, writing and maths. They are taught in English, with explanations in their mother tongue. There is a good little shop at the school site, which sells a variety of religious items, household goods such washing powder and a few vestments.

The primary school has about a thousand pupils and has been growing fast. Two of the nine classrooms have been built by the local pharmacist who is Austrian and plainly a great help. They could really do with a lot more resources of many kinds. As everywhere, we were greeted very warmly by staff and children alike. Joseph, the Headmaster, is very passionate about his school and pupils. He is frustrated by his lack of facilities and would really like to develop the school further. Theo, Zoe and Peter helped the children to make a lovely collage which we will bring back and display at Worth. Football seems to be a popular theme for the pictures! The same was true in the vocational/secondary school and I was equally impressed by Robert, who is the Headmaster there and teaches mathematics. There are many things to think about in terms of the educational needs of the village.

We also went to see two small Christian communities. These are close-ish to the nature of the Worth house groups, but rather more significant in the nature of the people's involvement and in the impact on people's lives. They consist of groups of families and are the building blocks of the parish. Four to six communities form a Sub Centre where people worship under the leadership of a catechist and have Masses from time to time. Several Sub Centres form a parish Centre. There are six parish Centres in the parish. We met one community of some 40 people and learned that they pray together as well as helping each other with agriculture and brick-making. They have also started farming fish and have specific agricultural projects for their young people. Although individual families have their own land, the community runs these projects in common so that they have capacity to support those in difficulty. The chairman of this community fled from the fighting in Soroti in the 1980's and had to start from scratch again in Irundu. The community presented Father James with a gift of a cockerel.

The second small Christian community we saw was holding one of their weekly meetings. The individuals were impressive for the seriousness of their faith commitment and for the clear articulation of their faith. They started the meeting with lectio divina. We contributed in English while they spoke Lusogo and Lugandan. One of the participants was Richard, a Centre catechist. What an impressively committed man he was! He does his parish work completely voluntarily and it took him two years of full-time study to train for it. He works three days a week for the parish. On one day he visits the Sub Centres. On Saturdays he gives catechesis and on Sundays he leads worship in one of the Sub Centres on a rotation basis. Sometimes he will take Holy Communion but as his Centre is ten miles away from where he lives and he only has a bicycle this is difficult. A motorbike would be very useful to him. They were grateful for our visit and gave Father James more poultry, this time a hen!
George