With the Abayudaya - Ending and Beginning

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Rabbi Gershom Sizomu reads the last few verses of Torah on Simchat Torah.

Then Gershom's son Igaal reads the first verses of Genesis.

Endings and beginnings. The Jewish world in October celebrated Simchat Torah, when we mark the end of the yearly cycle of Torah reading by chanting the last few verses of the scroll and then beginning anew with the first few verses of Genesis. I joined the Abayudaya community Saturday night and Sunday morning in drumming, dancing and singing our hearts out.

My time at Nabugoye Hill is coming to an end. There are many threads to weave together in the next few days from my volunteer work over the past six months. On Shabbat I’m sponsoring a Kiddush lunch of rice, beans, goat and eggplant (including a token contribution from what survived in my garden). On Sunday, I’m going to Entebbe airport with JJ Keki, who is flying to Amsterdam with me before we separate – JJ to New York to begin his Kulanu-Abayudaya speaking tour (www.kulanu.org), and me back to Canada, first to Montreal, then based in Ottawa, with a week in Vancouver Nov 16-23. I’ll be Ottawa when JJ’s there Nov. 11 and in Vancouver when he speaks Nov. 19. I will be talking about my experiences Nov. 17 at Or Shalom in Vancouver.

And then a new beginning. God willing, I’ll return to Uganda around Dec. 1 to get settled in my new home in Kampala and begin working Dec. 15 as manager of publications and material development for the Uganda office of BRAC, world’s largest antipoverty group (www.brac.net). A great fringe benefit of the job is that with BRAC being Bangladesh-based, the lunch room serves yummy curries.

In Kampala, I’ve rented a brand-new three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment for $383 Canadian a month (Ugandans think that’s very, very expensive). It’s a 10-minute walk from my new office, which is about five kilometres south of downtown Kampala. In the ritzier sections of the city it would easily cost three times as much. There are cattle, chickens and small vegetable farms along the dirt road to my place. Unfurnished here means no fridge or stove so I’ll have some significant costs setting the place up. With no legislated tenant protection, landlords have free rein – six months’ rent in advance plus a month’s security deposit.

The High Holy Days were very high here with almost 300 people, many dressed in white, jamming the Moses Synagogue. Services were a combination of Abayadaya practices developed over the 90 years since their community began, and more familiar Conservative songs and prayers from Rabbi Gershom Sizomu’s training in that movement. I walked late into mincha (afternoon) services on Rosh Hashanah to hear something for the first time – Shirat Hayam, the Song of Moses, composed in Luganda by the founder of the Abayudaya, Semei Kakungulu. The rhythm was steady, almost plodding and the melody simple and repetitive, evoking the songs of Canadian First Nations peoples. For many years, this was the centrepiece of Abayudaya worship and everyone memorized it.

Another first was offering the Birkat Hacohanim (Priestly Blessing) by myself. I’m usually one of a number of descendents of the priestly tribe in the congregation. One Israeli visitor on Rosh Hashanah happened to be a Levi and helped me with the ritual handwashing. I also enjoyed being the Baal Tekiah, blowing the shofar that punctuates the services, and reading Torah on Yom Kippur. Friends and I felt very elevated in our full-length, white kanzu robes. The Yom Kippur fast went quite easily, except for when the sun beating down on the metal roof turned the synagogue into a steambath. We all broke the fast with cups of steaming porridge from a large vat.

After returning to Uganda, I’m planning to visit the Abayudaya one Shabbat a month. There’s no synagogue in Kampala. Almost all the 200 or so Israelis there are secular. There are some non-Israeli Jewish expatriates and a handful of Abayudaya students going to university. I love Shabbat and hope to create some kind of prayer/chant/communal opportunity.

When I come to visit Nabugoye Hill, I’ll be able to check on the orphans’ lunch program at Semei Kakungulu High School, which many of you generously helped launch and are sustaining for a few more months. I am always grateful for more help: Click to donate to my work in Uganda through PayPal or credit card. Back in Canada, I will look at the donations and how they’ve been spent and give you an accounting. I just used $55 of the donated funds for a makeshift shelter of branches, plastic and papyrus mats so the students have some protection in the heavy rains. They can’t really take their plates into classrooms where other students with little or no food are escaping the storms. Kulanu’s nutrition program continues to provide a daily cup of breakfast porridge and a chapatti three days a week for all students. 

I leave here with a sense of some accomplishments and some loose ends. Great news: A $5,000 US grant for cervical cancer screening for the Abayudaya women and their neighbours has been approved with the very real prospect of saving lives. The poultry project is back on track with the chicken coop virtually complete and day-old chicks ordered. Aaron Kintu Moses, headmaster of Hadassah Primary School and my best friend here, took back the project from the contractor, who had only worked two days in six weeks. I'm invited every Shabbat morning to lead my teacher Rabbi Shefa Gold's chant for Nishmat Kol Chai with the English part translated into Luganda. I think it will be part of the service. In Apac district I arranged to record songs of the new Jewish community there. In Namutumba, the synagogue has a sturdy bima table, thanks to your donations. 

The Mbale Spelling Challenge was a success even though MTN, the telecom giant, failed at the last minute to provide major sponsorship. But they did give us T-shirts that the students love. In the end, Mbale Secondary School won with 17 points, Hamdan Girls’ High School (a Muslim boarding school) earned 13 and our team racked up six. Still, our students came home in high spirits. They had enjoyed a special day with lunch at the guest house, transportation in a minivan taxi, the thrill of competition, plus the shirts and Certificates of Participation as rewards. Now, the schools know how to conduct a spelling contest and everyone wants them to continue. MTN is talking about a 15-school competition next year but I don’t know whether that’s more than talk.

The Abayudaya Jewish Cookbook project now has a good body of recipes and photographs from several villages. It has been a wonderful and often tasty experience to work with the women and get a glimpse into their lives. In the coming months, I intend to test the recipes in my own kitchen and turn the research into a book proposal to attract an agent who will interest a publisher. All profits will go to the Abayudaya Women’s Association. Let me know if you’ll also test a recipe or two after I’ve adjusted them from cooking by firewood or charcoal to a regular stove. 

In my last e-newsletter, I was critical of the broken promises I’ve experienced here. Over the High Holy Days I reflected on my own failures to deliver what I said I would, from the websites for Rabbi Gershom and the guest house, to your e-mails I haven’t yet returned.  

I am deeply grateful for your support over these six months. Just knowing that you’re reading my newsletters has helped me feel connected and not so alone in a strange land. I'm excited to see many of you over the next weeks.

 

  

 

Abayudaya deliver relief to famine-hit Ugandans

Abayudaya members, from left, Eria Muyamba, Esau Wanani and Igaal Sizomu deliver food relief to famine-stricken villagers in the remote Ugandan village Acegerekinei on July 29, 2009. (Lorne Mallin)

By Lorne Mallin · Jewish Telegraphic Agency · August 2, 2009

ACEGEREKINEI VILLAGE, Uganda (JTA) -- After four hours of driving on ever tinier roads this morning, our food truck becomes stuck in the sand and we have to push it out. We are following the packed pickup in Rabbi Gershom Sizomu's SUV -- four members of his Abayudaya Jewish congregation, two Ugandan TV reporters and me, a semi-retired Canadian journalist volunteering with the Abayudaya.

Just then we see thatch-roofed mud huts in the distance under a bright blue sky dotted with puffy clouds. We see people gathered under a large tree. The high-pitched trill of ululation greets our arrival at last in Acegerekinei, a remote village in northeastern Uganda.

We begin unloading the 2,420 pounds of food relief we have donated to hungry families among the estimated 3 million Ugandans facing starvation in a worsening famine. I was happy to have contributed 220 pounds of corn flour.

The Ugandan government says there are food shortages in 52 districts in the north and east brought on by drought and other factors. Nearly 40 people have died of hunger-related complications in the East African nation of about 32 million.

Rabbi Sizomu says he wants to act before the numbers grow worse, before a high death count is needed to trigger a response. He received ordination in the Conservative movement last summer after a year studying in Israel and four years at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. He became the first ordained black rabbi in sub-Saharan Africa.

"Central to our Jewish values is saving lives," he tells the 65 families sitting on the ground in the shade of the tree. "We wish you well and we pray that God brings this to an end."

Rabbi Sizomu is responding to a village elder who thanked the Abayudaya for coming "and for rescuing us." Acegerekinei is in Katakwi, one of the 17 hardest-hit districts that the government says are experiencing famine.

The villagers all clutch cards from the Ugandan Red Cross, which is helping coordinate relief, entitling them to a share of the corn flour and beans that the Abayudaya trucked north from their home in the Mbale district near the Kenyan border. The Abayudaya first embraced Judaism in the 1920s and now include about 1,000 members in several Ugandan villages.

The Red Cross chose the most vulnerable in Acegerekinei to receive relief -- the elderly, the disabled and those suffering from HIV/AIDS. They line up as best they can; some are in wheelchairs fashioned out of plastic lawn chairs.

Each receives about 33 pounds of corn flour to make corn porridge and the staple dish called posho, plus about 3.3 pounds of beans. Each pound of corn flour is about enough for a meal for three people.

“Our community responded overwhelmingly to the call to donate,” Rabbi Sizomu says. “Everybody wanted to help.”

The response is considerable from a community that mostly lives on subsistence farming. Though the Mbale district has less rain than normal, crops are still growing.

“I believe that life takes precedence over everything,” the rabbi says. “God is not going to stretch out His hand physically, so we are extensions of God's arm.”

I notice that we are here just hours before the Jewish holiday Tisha B'Av, when practicing Jews fast for a day. We have the luxury of turning on and turning off our food consumption.

The rabbi's son Igaal, 15, helps distribute the food we brought.

“It felt good to donate,” he says. “If we get hungry, maybe there would be others who would help us.”

More relief is coming; more food was collected than the truck could hold. And on this morning, students visiting the Abayudaya from the California Institute of the Arts of Los Angeles donated $190.

To contribute to the food relief, donate at http://www.kulanu.org on the Web site of Kulanu Inc., a U.S. nonprofit that supports development in the Abayudaya community; write "Uganda Emergency Fund" in the comments field.

(Lorne Mallin is a semi-retired Canadian journalist volunteering with the Abayudaya.)

Being of service: A Vancouverite goes to Africa

CITIZEN BYTES

Published Tuesday, July 7, 2009 | 02:28 PM ET

Submitted by Lorne Mallin

About/Bio: A lifelong journalist, I took early retirement at the end of 2006 from The Province newspaper in Vancouver where I was an editor. I then spent about two years doing newspaper travel writing on five continents. I'm 62, divorced, with one daughter, Lisa, 26, a masters student at Carleton in Ottawa.

My take: Volunteering for a year and a half in Africa is my answer to the recession. I based most of my retirement income on stocks and bonds in an investment management account. When the market nosedived, I decided to stop drawing income from the account and pursue a dream to volunteer in the developing world. It's a chance to let my investments recoup, I'm hoping, and do some good at the same time.

But to do what?

For years I've been intrigued by the Abayudaya of eastern Uganda, an African community of about 1,000 that first embraced Judaism in the 1920s. I'm a Jewish chant leader and they make beautiful music with Jewish prayers and African melodies. Last December I googled volunteer and Jewish and up popped the Abayudaya and Kulanu, a U.S. non-profit that supports their development. I applied to be a Kulanu volunteer for six months and studied teaching English at Greystone College in Vancouver for three months to prepare.

Since arriving April 21 I've been living in the new guest house at Nabugoye Hill, a village outside the town of Mbale. I focus on improving the written English of Grade 7s and 11s in the community's schools. My other initiatives include forming a spelling team, working with the Women's Association on an Abayudaya Jewish cookbook, helping Rabbi Gershom Sizomu develop his web site, reviving the Abayudaya Girls' Magazine, helping secure a grant to launch an egg farm, and coaching a community member, Athalia Nalongo, for a Kulanu-Abayudaya North American speaking tour. I pay all my expenses and live on about $1,000 a month.

I'm a city boy but I love the village life with its dirt paths and mango trees. Time is elastic. Chickens, goats and cattle forage for food everywhere. Lizards dart across the inner walls of the synagogue where I go to services Friday nights and Saturdays. The Abayudaya mainly survive on subsistence farming and cook outside over firewood or charcoal. I feel loved in their midst and have made good friends who I greet in the morning in Luganda: Wasuze otyanno? (How did you spend the night?). Children play, laugh and cry, and suffer malaria with frightening regularity.

I leave Oct. 18 and will spend some time with my daughter in Ottawa before heading to South Africa for all of 2010 at a black township high school outside of Cape Town, sponsored by Vancouver-based Education Without Borders.

Here are some of my photos:

Traditional singers, dancers and drummers perform in Mbale,
eastern Uganda. May 17, 2009.

Young musicians of the Abayudaya community practise their
songs at Nabugoye Hill, Mbale, Uganda. They have videos
posted on YouTube. April 30, 2009.

The main synagogue of the Abayudaya Congregation is
at Nabugoye Hill, Mbale, Uganda. April 23, 2009.

Athalia Nalongo and two of her daughters behind their
home in Namanyonyi, Mbale, Uganda. May 15, 2009.

Swinging a hammer helps rebuild swinging New Orleans

Father-daughter team Lisa and Lorne Mallin volunteer at a Habitat for Humanity house in New Orleans' Ninth Ward. Aleis Tusa photo

Volunteers Jessica Hopkins and, top, Mike Valdez work with New Orleans musician Jesse Moore building a Habitat for Humany house. Lisa Mallin photo

Volunteers work on putting up siding on a Habitat for Humanity house in New Orleans' flood-hit Ninth Ward. Lorne Mallin photo

Some of the homes built by Habitat for Humanity in the Musicians' Village in New Orleans' Ninth Ward. Lisa Mallin photo

Volunteer serves Christmas dinner to seniors at a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in suburban Harahan. Lisa Mallin photo

Chef Chiqui Collier introduces her half-day New Orleans Cooking Experience – a four-course gourmet meal that guests help prepare. Lisa Mallin photo

St. Louis Cathedral towers over the palm trees on a warm winter day in Jackson Square in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Lisa Mallin photo

The beautiful Houmas House Plantation and Gardens on the Mississippi River is less than an hour's drive from Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans. Lisa Mallin photo

The steamboat Natchez takes visitors on New Orleans-area cruises along the Mississippi River. Lorne Mallin photo

Trumpeter William Smith leads the 726 Jazz Band at the famed Preservation Hall in New Orleans' French Quarter. Lorne Mallin photo.

The historic French Quarter in New Orleans is famous for its nightlife, music and food. Lisa Mallin photo

Parade celebrating the Sugar Bowl brings more music and colour to the streets of the French Quarter in New Orleans. Lorne Mallin photo

Strolling the streets of New Orleans' French Quarter with its Spanish-influenced buildings. Lisa Mallin photo

One of the energy-efficient homes built well off the ground by Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. Lorne Mallin photo

Published April 4, 2009, in the

By Lorne Mallin

Voluntourism. Noun. Combines vacation travel with volunteering at the destination visited.

NEW ORLEANS, La. – Our building crew arrived as strangers from different directions in Canada and the U.S. but we were all spending part of our vacations helping this wonderful city recover from the still-visible scars of Hurricane Katrina.

"We wanted to come to New Orleans just because we've never been here and wanted to help out somehow," said Jessica Hopkins, 29, who flew here from Glendale, Calif., with her partner, Mike Valdez, 33.

That roughly parallels the motivation for my daughter, Lisa, 25, and me, plus the opportunity to see relatives we'd never met before – cousins whose shared ancestors' paths included Winnipeg.

We found a unique and welcoming metropolis, hurting to be sure but bouncing back and eager to show visitors the kind of good time the Big Easy (more easygoing than the Big Apple) has been famous for almost since it was founded by Montreal-born Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville in 1718.

We were marking my birthday at a Habitat for Humanity construction site in New Orleans' Ninth Ward, which was hard hit when 80 per cent of the city was flooded after Katrina swept in from the Gulf of Mexico on Aug. 29, 2005. When levees failed, at least 71 percent of the city's homes were damaged, many completely swept away, others ruined by water several metres high that stewed for weeks before it was pumped out.

More than a million voluntourists (volunteer tourists) have responded and more are needed. I signed up for the Habitat opportunity online (see If You Go) and at 7:15 a.m. we took a $10 taxi ride from the tourist-magnet French Quarter, passing hundreds of derelict and abandoned homes and an alarming number of weedy, vacant lots where families once lived. There were encouraging signs of new and restored homes and businesses bringing life back to the area.

We gathered with a few dozen other volunteers at a corner of the Musicians' Village, a visionary project of 72 homes conceived by Harry Connick, Jr. and Branford Marsalis after many of the city's beloved musicians were forced to flee by Katrina.

A Habitat supervisor assigned us to a crew of seven putting up siding at 2113 Louisa St., a typical single-level Habitat home of about 1,100 square feet on a 35-foot lot with three bedrooms and one bathroom.

Some of us were experienced but Lisa and I were pretty much novices. While measuring was challenging at first, the fiber cement siding was easy to cut and hammer and we got into the swing of it.

Everybody brought their own lunch and sat around on building materials in the warm 16C sun in the backyard getting to know each other, including musician and budding homeowner Jesse Moore, who was putting in part of his 350-hour sweat equity by working with us.

The homeowners' sweat equity constitutes their down payment and then they pay off the $75,000, 30-year, no-interest mortgage at about $600 a month.

Moore, a 61-year-old singer-songwriter, had been living in Austin, Texas, when he returned to New Orleans and was approved for the last available house in the village.

"I was very excited about that," he said. We were excited to hear Moore's music and most of the crew turned up the next night when he performed at a French Quarter pub.

Music is central to the New Orleans experience and helped make another opportunity to volunteer great fun. A local couple, Keith Crawford and Deborah Frydman, hosted a Christmas dinner for seniors and posted on the New Orleans craigslist site for 30 people to help serve. We signed up.

They hired caterers and a three-piece band that set a warm and lively tone for the 300 seniors who were bused into a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in suburban Harahan. We enjoyed chatting with the guests and serving the lunchtime meal.

That night we volunteered at a New Orleans Hornets NBA game after finding the chance online. We were given official Hornets shirts with "Volunteer" on the back to wear and keep, and assignments. I put temporary Hornets tattoos on young and old while Lisa coloured fans' hair with purple and gold hairspray.

By halftime we were sprung loose to watch the rest of the game, a 100-87 losing cause against the L.A. Lakers, but it was a thrill to see Kobe Bryant play.

Our tastiest "volunteering" was the New Orleans Cooking Experience, a half-day extravaganza with chef Chiqui Collier at the House on Bayou Road, a circa-1790s Creole plantation house. Guests pay $150 each for the privilege of helping prepare elements of a fabulous four-course meal, sipping on wine and then sitting down to enjoy the fruits of their and the chef's labours.

That's a great splurge. But eating here is a passion that doesn't need to break the bank. The brand-new Zagat guide credits New Orleans with the lowest average meal costs in the U.S. – $28.52 compared to the national average of $34.31.

We ate at the tony, venerable Galatoire's restaurant but also budget meals like splitting a heaping roast beef Po'Boy (like a sub) for $9.95 at Messina's. Another day we popped into Frank's Restaurant for takeout and carved the $13.75 Muffaletta, a massive sandwich with a round, flat bun of near-Frisbee proportions, into quarters for two meals.

On Christmas Day, we feasted on a Louisiana specialty, a deep-fried turkey dinner, for $9.50 at 13 Monaghan's in the Faubourg Marigny district, and later on I sipped a frozen Irish coffee for $4.50 at Molly's at the Market in the French Quarter. (Full disclosure: both places are run by my newfound family.)

As much as the food, people are drawn to New Orleans for the music, and more specifically the jazz. We sat on the floor of the famed Preservation Hall a few feet from hot trumpeter William Smith and the 726 Jazz Band. A few times we caught sizzling musicians at the Spotted Cat on Faubourg Marigny's Frenchman Street, which has better music than Bourbon Street.

A special treat was the gospel-oriented Christmas Eve midnight mass at St. Jude's Cathedral. Gospel in a Catholic church? That's because of New Orleans' history of slavery and French and Spanish rule. There's a Canadian element too here in the Cajuns (local pronunciation of Acadians) who were expelled from Nova Scotia in the 18th century.

New Orleanians love to celebrate. Mardi Gras, which falls this year on Feb. 24, is New Orleans' signature street party. I kept hearing that the city's Jazz Fest, April 24-26 and April 30-May 3, is unbeatable for music lovers.

Most celebrations emanate from the French Quarter with its narrow streets and Spanish-flavoured architecture. "Like Havana with newer cars," said my daughter Lisa. The Quarter is on higher ground and was not flooded.

We enjoyed browsing the antique-store treasures on St. Louis Street, café au lait with doughnut-like beignets dusted with icing sugar, pecan pralines at Aunt Sally's, touring grand old homes and cruising by the house that Brad Pitt and Angelina bought. Pitt's Make It Right Foundation is building homes in the Lower Ninth Ward.

Beyond the Quarter, we recommend a Cajun Encounters tour to get oriented to the city, the excellent National World War II Museum, the funky boutiques on Magazine Street, the powerful IMAX film "Hurricane on the Bayou", riding the vintage street cars down St. Charles Avenue for $1.25 and the state ferry across the Mississippi River for free.

And if you want to help New Orleans, the city wants you. "We have come a long way but we've still got a lot of work to do," Mayor Ray Nagin told me in an interview. "Come down, do some good and enjoy the city of New Orleans."

You'll feel good. "It almost felt like we were being ambassadors for Canada," said Lisa. "We were making a difference in people's lives."

IF YOU GO
• Getting there: Flights from Winnipeg connect through Chicago, Minneapolis and Denver
• Accommodation and food: Fodor's 2009 New Orleans guide is hot off the press, and you can get a free visitors' guide from www.neworleanscvb.com
• To volunteer: www.handsonneworleans.org and www.habitat-nola.org
• Thing globally, act locally: Habitat Winnipeg www.habitat.mb.ca
• What's happening: www.neworleansonline.com (also click through to "voluntourism")
• Get a feel for New Orleans in Brad Pitt's hit movie, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"