Spending two weeks in the village of Kyarusozi in western Uganda = one of the best decisions I’ve made in this country. I met the wonderful team members of Let Us Move Mountains and had such quality time with my new dear friend Katie. Here, meet the Ugandan members of LUMM’s executive team! Katie will be upcoming.
In short, LUMM (Let Us Move Mountains) is a non-profit organization which partners with local Ugandan organizations to improve education, agriculture, and employment. For more information about LUMM you can go here to their website: https://letusmovemountains.org/.
LUMM brought me joy because of the team’s self-awareness about development, their compassion, and the spirituality about the work they do as ministry. Like so many people in Uganda, these guys made me feel right at home!
Buka – Part-time Project Coordinator
Weekend student studying Public Administration and Management at Mountains of the Moon University
Why did you decide to join Let Us Move Mountains?
Firstly, LUMM is paying for my school fees. Besides that, it gave me a chance to work with it. Not everyone gets a chance like this or they don’t take use of the chances. Actually, we have so many people on the Ugandan streets who are qualified but they never get jobs. And I knew Katie some years before. I trusted her so much. When she came with that idea of recruiting me as a LUMM employee, I had to say yes. I just believe in Katie.
Some of LUMM’s best characteristics are that it is being registered with the local district. That means it’s a very credible organization. And I have always appreciated that LUMM is flexible. I am studying – weekend students are ever working, and some tend to miss Friday lessons. LUMM gives freedom for us to prepare ourselves for classes when they start, while we are being productive in other days of the week.
Tell us about one of your best days at work.
The day when we got our organization’s constitution done [last Tuesday!]. That was the most tiresome day and I was very excited to be finished! As a team we really worked hard on that. The difficult part of it all was that we had to overthink the words so much in order to protect LUMM and its employees in the future. That was the hard part of it for the team. I felt successful because we did it when we had the CDO [Community Development Officer] around, and he said we did it excellently. So everyone appreciated our work.
What is one hope you have for your future?
After I’m employed for some years, I want to start up some of my own projects. When I’m settled with them and earning income from them, that way I can then start a family.
What is one thing you think Americans should know about Uganda?
Ugandans are hard-working if you give them something to do. We have so many qualified people on the streets. They have the potential to work, but they are lacking the opportunity to do it. So most people are idle just because they are not employed or they don’t have start-up capital. That is most of us here.
Emma – Part-time Finance Manager
Weekend student studying Business Administration, specialty in Accounting, at Mountains of the Moon University
Why did you decide to join Let Us Move Mountains?
Well at first I was reluctant. I was already doing a weekend program, and for the rest of the days I was just there at school. Then Katie asked, can you boys [Ezra, Buka, and Emma] join us as LUMM, and we make a team to work for the community? And I saw it might be a back-up for myself to be employed while studying. And when LUMM is sponsoring me I have high hopes of getting employed in future.
The best thing about LUMM is that it does not underlook people. Whether you are poor, whether you can’t manage taking care of yourself. For LUMM it just listens to you and works with you. It does not mind about the background of the individual. For example, we are working with the Young Positives [children with HIV/AIDS]. We do not mind about the background of someone.
Tell me about one of your best days at work.
My best time I have ever had with LUMM was when we traveled to Rukunjiri district for training. We moved as a team. We had a training course for the boda [motorcycle] maintenance and riding. We observed another team from the US. We even had workouts together, and we just really enjoyed the week.
There we learned how to utilize the resources that we have. We also had tours of the other organization [Unified in Mission] which works with the community. They took us to their business, where they are using entrepreneur skills to bake cakes and grow passionfruits, with just the little resources they are having. They made use of the infertile soil, however much it was not looking good, but they tried by all means to make sure they could do something on their own land. They have creativity in them. They were so innovative.
What is one hope you have for your future?
To be a very famous business guy in my country. And I am really hopeful that I will acquire that goal as long as I continue working with LUMM. In other words, I want to become an international businessman.
What is one thing you think Americans should know about Uganda?
Our economy is still lacking a lot and it is still behind. I believe Americans already know this because of the continuous statistics circulating about that. Uganda is one of the countries known in a developing process compared to America which is a developed country.
But our leadership is still poor, and it is leadership that leads a country to be developed. They lead by example. If leaders lead and you see something is not moving positively – if instead, it is even going backwards – it means they are not doing their real job. And here someone may go into leadership and does not want to come out… while there are young men who are having good objectives for the country or for the district, but they have no chance to show them up. There is no opportunity for the youth to portray their potential talents.
Ezra – Part-time Farm Manager
Weekend student studying Organic Agriculture at Mountains of the Moon University
Why did you decide to join Let Us Move Mountains?
I decided to join because it was really helping me in my education. Naturally, I love agriculture. And then LUMM came with the goal of helping people to sustain their own agriculture and projects. This made me pick up the interest of joining LUMM.
One of the best things about LUMM is that is good at decision-making. It is good at deciding and implementing what is best. If we base on our local people here, we can see they are benefiting very much. Most of them are picking up the organic agriculture practices, what we call Farming God’s Way.
Tell me about one of your best days at work.
The first one was the day I was training people about Farming God’s Way. It was good because I was interpreting my theory into practice from my workshop. I was interpreting and imparting knowledge to other people.
Another day was when they sent me to that workshop to study about Farming God’s Way at Kira Farm, in Kampala-Gayaza. When I first heard of Farming God’s Way, I wondered what was involved in that type of farming. There I learned that we can use our own local materials to boost our soil, to change the pH of our soil. For example we have cow dung, chicken droppings, goat dung, and rabbit urine that can all be decomposed for our use. It can really make the crops grow with a lot of vigor.
What is one hope that you have for your future?
To see myself owning my personal land, with a house of course. And I want to earn a master’s degree in organic agriculture.
What is one thing you think Americans should know about Uganda?
Uganda is blessed with two seasons which supports agriculture in all of the country. We have the rainy and dry seasons. However, the technology of farming is still poor compared to other countries. Ugandans are still very poor because of subsistence farming. Therefore a lot of training and demonstrations are needed in order to curb this problem.
Learn more about LUMM and their partnerships at letusmovemountains.org ! Special thanks to the team for these interviews.
Joy in Jinja 