GOD WANTS NO ONE POOR

Bugonga, Entebbe, 1996, a small fishing village sat on the shores of Lake Victoria, with no electricity, but flickering candles, with only one dusty rugged road that led nowhere except to makeshift and half empty fish stalls. Little boys with half stitched pants frequented the beach with hooks and worms in hand, ready to catch some fish, of which they would keep some for the family dinner while the rest was sold to make a living. In this little enclave poverty smelt on everyone that lived here.

I was born and raised in the old Kitasa quarters not far from Bugonga, our home was at the monumental House A8, which was old, decrepit, and unsightly, it hung on a smooth plateau in the middle of the notorious fire quarters estate, the house’s exterior rendering had weathered, the uninviting paint had long faded, revealing a patchwork of cracked plaster. The clay tiled roof had a few broken shingles, the windows were cracked, half the panes had broken slates and the other half had eroded putty, the floor screed underfoot had mangled leaving behind a trail of patches, the house’s front and rear doors creaked as breaths of wind caused them to move on their rusty hinges. Its only bedroom was small and cramped up. It was clear that the occupants of this house were struggling to make ends meet.

For over a decade, my parents raised me and my siblings in this house, the old colonial quarters were a clumsy yet very social housing estate, almost all the occupants of the over 100 houses in this quarters suffered the same fate, old houses, broken sewage systems, cracked tarmac roads, all but a sign of poverty. Many years after people were forcefully evicted from this estate when the government of Uganda set up the area around the old Entebbe airport as a security buffer, I returned to this house sometime in July 2012 and what I saw reduced me to tears, nothing had changed, the same grim picture of hardship and destituteness we endured growing up was flashed in my face. To imagine that a family of eight with twice as many relatives, crammed up in this house was devastating, how would we change clothes, how would we even breath? That evening I was angered and disappointed at the same time, I stood on the edge of the road in front of the house, close to the gigantic mango tree that formed part of the estates meeting arena, my heart pounding in my chest.

The world around me seemed to hold its breath, The air was thick with disgust, charged with a mix of rage and resentment, my mind only whispered one thing, poverty is a terrible experience, a scourge of unequal proportions, when I walked off the property enroute to Kitoro, I knew that I needed to do something to escape the hard shackles of poverty, never to return into its inviting arms ever again.

God did not intend for us to be poor, we were created to rule and have dominion, all things we desire, have been created by God for us who has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness'' (2 Peter 1:3).

In the beginning, God made all things and declared them good and then HE put man in charge as stewards, dominate and multiply or create new things from what He had given them. That doesn’t sound like someone who wants you poor. Producing more out of this world was surely God’s intention for us to live in abundance.