Journey to Uganda
By Ron Clark

In the process of conducting our work in Imago, Theresa and I developed a relationship with a Pastor of a local church. The Pastor and his wife and many of their staff experienced the "Getting the Love You Want Workshop" and decided to conduct their team efforts using a dialogical approach. I regularly met with the Pastor and during one of our meetings he challenged me to go on a church service mission to Uganda. I attended the mission trip with my 14 year old son. I was uncertain about the nature of the work that I would be doing and took the trip knowing that I would be helping an orphanage/ school full of children whose parents died from AIDS.

The "Humble Place" school has been operating since 2004 and helps 167 students at the present. The students start their day with labor intensive efforts to carry water by hand up a long hill to provide water for the day. My son said he would never complain about working hard again when he observed the hard work of the children many as young as 5 carrying heavy loads and performing various other physically challenging chores. The children eat 2 meals a day and have to contribute to the process of carrying and serving the food as well as studying and attending classroom lessons.

My contribution to the school consisted of helping develop a safer water system, helping to control the mosquito population and thereby cutting down on disease. Unfortunately, malaria and typhoid are all too common among the students. I was able to help the managers with a plan to keep the firewood covered to allow for cooking in the outside fire rings. When it rained the people could not cook because the firewood got wet. Sometimes it is hard to see the simple solutions to longtime problems and all I did was point out the obvious need for a tarp to cover the firewood.

The trip allowed me to teach and facilitate conflict resolution with the staff around administrative issues. In addition to teaching the dialogue process to the staff I was able to teach the dialogue process to 4th and 5th year students. The people enthusiastically learned the skills. The reception to the skills was so great that I was invited to work with a couple that had long term problems. Both members of the couple brought 3 people to act in their support. Using the dialogue process neither person had to use the support people and we had 6 silent witnesses to the couple's dialogue process!

The school has many projects and is working towards self sufficiency. Efforts towards self sufficiency include raising animals and growing rice and vegetables. The school is advancing plans to develop a welding shop and teaching crafts such as furniture and window making. The need is tremendous and each effort is costly and time consuming. Fortunately the local church plans to continue its partnership with the Humble Place school and I will continue my connections with the people I met in Uganda. I helped to change their world and they helped to change me.

Ron Clarke is a former US Marine, who now runs a successful Imago therapy and workshop practice with his wife Theresa, whilst also running a distributorship for pet control equipment. He is also Treasurer of Imago Relationships International.