Dodie visit report #1 October 2026

Dodie is back visiting our friends in Uganda. She provides her first update from the trip below, and as usual, it is quite a journey… She says:

Where to start?!

I arrived at 11pm at night, very few on the plane so passport control was pretty quick. There was a taxi waiting to take me to Banana Village, a small but very adequate eco resort.

Then the following day, into the bank in Kampala to change money and then on to Mityana. Our hotel was very full and so I was given a room with no hot water, no shower and a loo that didn’t flush! A good start…I collect my suitcase from a dear friend who looks after it every year when I leave and found it has been broken into and my two bedside lights, an umbrella, my bible and some other things were missing. She had been to Germany to see her son and I imagine the maid had a go at the suitcase before she returned and the maid left to go home to look after her mother. A bit of a blow! Especially as every Sunday I preach when visiting a church.

After one night in Mityana, Fred and I headed for the western side of Mityana Diocese and visited three (of the ten) of our sponsored lay readers. A man called Emmanuel, and two ladies Jane and Kedrine. It is fascinating meeting them in their homes, being introduced to their families and hearing about their lives, some of them so hard. Inevitably, the women have children but no husband because he has either died or left her for a younger model! Sound familiar? They are so incredibly generous – giving us food – sometimes a full meal and then as we leave a huge bunch of plantain bananas and a cockerel to take with us. Kedrine had organized a tent, people from her church and her parents’ church to come and have a service followed by a lunch for everyone. A huge and costly undertaking.

Each of the lay readers we have met this week have tiny congregations and minute offerings, of which they only get 40%. This amounts to about £1.50 a week. They try and raise church funds with different projects, like planting coffee, but it is so difficult for them.

But to my great joy I have had the chance to meet up with lay readers I have taught over the last four years. This has been so good with the chance to catch up on what they are doing and where they are working.

Today one of them, Justus, invited us to his church and then to his home for lunch. We have been there before and his wife with her women’s support group, made up of ladies who are RCs, Pentecostals, Church of Uganda, Muslim, 7th day Adventists, made us lunch and then we could find out how they all were. We had given them about £50 each two years ago to start an income-generating project. Some were raising chickens, pigs or goats, one had a little shop. The first five (of ten) have paid the money back in full and the second five who began a year later, are trying to do the same. Now the first five want to re-invest the capital they started with. This is such a success story.
Back to Mityana tomorrow to teach and visit some schools.

As you will know I always say coming here resets my compass to North. I am beginning to think it does more than that. It means I re- think what life is really about, how these wonderful, humble, kind people trust in God when they have so very little and life is so hard and nothing is likely to change in their lives. The expectation dial firmly set on low and the possibility of change, chance or transformation pretty non-existent. Yet they are filled with hope, with the smallest gift bringing huge joy and they never close the door on the possibility of something better happening to them or their loved ones. For these people life is about hard work, unrelenting hard labour in the fields to grow enough food to live on. And yet they live life to the full and appreciate everything given to them as a bonus.

At Justus’s church the people were so appreciative of a half suitcase of clothes which was given to them last year when we visited. They were able to sell these to raise money for the church.

The hotel we are staying in is having a facelift, so we enter by the back entrance and the food tonight was cooked on a charcoal fire, we ordered and waited nearly two hours but it was delicious – boiled potatoes, fried fish, cabbage, fried tomatoes and onions. Delicious!

Off to bed now as we have another long journey tomorrow.