A Hungarian missionary in Africa – "I came face-to-face with such cruelty I was unable to process"

 "What Africa needs is not for us to ignore everything and go there and fix things and save people, but to be humble, to get to know and understand the people there and to love them." Zsófi started our conversation with these thoughts. At the age of fourteen, she already knew she wanted to be involved in aid work after listening to the presentation of a UN peacekeeper invited to her school.

As a child, she learned from her parents what it means to donate and how to support people in need. She studied political science and international relations, and even during her university years she did an internship with an NGO working on Africa. Seven years ago, she went with them to Uganda for the first time, but was disappointed by the way the organisation was running there. 

"What I saw was incompatible with my own values, and I was angry that the donations were not going where they were most needed. I didn't want to assist in this, but I wanted to continue the work in the village I already knew, Manafwa.

At first I helped as an independent activist, starting a blog called Africa Born in My Heart, but then more and more people wanted to support the initiative.

To make my work more sustainable and transparent, I founded the association with friends and people I knew, and it was officially registered four years ago," she says about the difficult beginnings, but nothing could deter her from the task. 

"I've been preparing for this for ten years, and as soon as I got off the plane, I felt I was where I was supposed to be. Even though it took a day to get from the airport to Manafwa, the roads were in such bad state. The settlements are not laid out in any regular way, and people are registered on a tribal basis. A tribe covers a large area and its members live in clans, several large families together. English is the official language in the country, but almost nobody in the villages speaks it. The tribal languages are so different that they do not understand each other.

I have already learned to say hello in Lugisu. "Mulembe!" means good afternoon. And in Karamojong language I introduce myself as "Araj Aka Kiro Sophie". Also because of the language barrier, Flavia is a great help for me, she is our local help, she is educated, knows the culture, helps us to be accepted, very good friend. Our programmes, in which we come into contact with 1,000 to 1,500 people, are developed in close cooperation with the locals, because that's the only way they accept help ," says Zsófi, who believes that generational poverty can be broken through education.

Thanks to the association's activities, Manafwa now has a primary school with six classes, a nursery and three kindergarten groups. As there is no free education in Uganda, and families in rural areas, often with five to ten children, cannot afford the school fees, one of the main aims of the association is to provide access to education to as many people as possible. 

"The children can get an education with the support of Hungarian helpers – symbolic 'adopting parents' – who give six thousand forints (approx. 15 USD) a month . This pays for qualified local teachers, two meals a day, school supplies and medical care." 

"There is a very real connection between the symbolic adoptive parents and their Ugandan child, they send letters and photos to each other. When a Hungarian family sponsors a Ugandan youth of the same age as their child, it is also crucial for the social sensitisation of the "Hungarian siblings". More than 200 children already have a sponsor, but there are at least as many more in need in this area, " says Zsófi.

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At a community school in an isolated tribal area in the poorest region of Uganda, on October 2023, Karamoja, Uganda – Photo: Dorina László

"In these villages, families live in mud-patched, one-room houses, but cook and clean outside. In the patriarchal community, most families have only one bed and it is used by the father. Therefore, as part of the child support programme, mattresses and bedding can be donated for the children. Another important issue is the situation of women. They work extremely hard and do not have the right to self-determination. Even today, in the villages, there are still men who have several wives, even though polygamy is already prohibited by law in Uganda. But customary law is stronger than the written law.

The other region in Uganda where we work is Karamoja, the poorest part of the country.

Here, it's often the women who ask the husband to take another wife, because there is so much work that they can't do it alone. It's women who build the houses, put up the fences, cook and raise the children, while the men look after the animals.

The cow is the most valuable. The value of a woman is also determined by how many cows you can ask for her when she is married off."
 

In Manafwa, next to the school, the Zsófi and her team built a three-room building, which became a meeting and training place for the girls and women. Part of the women's programme is to help them understand how their bodies work, to teach them about conscious family planning and to eliminate and reduce menstrual poverty. The programme is called Eighty-Four Days because research has shown that girls and women in this sub-Saharan region miss an average of eighty-four days of school or work each year because they are unable to leave their homes during their periods due to lack of washing facilities and sanitation.

In addition, many men in Manafwa still believe that women are cleansed of their sins during the monthly bleeding. Sometimes, the wife has to leave home during these days to avoid bringing a curse on the house. 

"We have also found that even adult women don't see a link between menstruation, fertility and pregnancy, so we have included training on this in our programmes. But they also make traditional handicrafts, jewellery from recycled paper beads, sewn canvas bags with African motifs. These are popular with tourists and can be bought for donation at the events organised by the assiciation in Hungary."

Asked how the changing circumstances of women affect men, Zsófi sums up, "As women's economic and financial independence increases, men's attitudes change. In Manafwa, they are more open and participate in the awareness-raising sessions held for them. And we build everything on local traditions." 

"We don't want to change their cultural life, we just want to help them see that there are other ways beyond the tribal patterns that have been ingrained over the centuries to create better living conditions for themselves, " the expert says.

Medical missions also play an important role in the organisation's projects. During the two- to four-week intensive period, in addition to medical treatment and screening tests – malaria, HIV – they provide preventive training, vaccinations and practical help such as the installation of mosquito nets to save lives. The association was set up with twelve founding members and now has twenty to twenty-five active volunteers, with five to six people travelling to Africa each year. Each trip has a different goal, and can last from three to five weeks. To be eligible to go on a mission, you must have been actively involved in the organisation's activities in Hungary for at least a year.

They have ongoing trainings, including psychological training, but those travelling to Africa must have adequate knowledge of the country and the place, as well as basic safety information and health education. Despite thorough preparation, even the most well-informed volunteer can have an emotionally stressful experience that he or she can only cope with with the help of the association's psychologist.

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Photo: Dorina László

"We started working in Kenya a year and a half ago in a slum and in a coastal region of the country. Unfortunately, sex tourism and human trafficking are commonplace in this area.

During our stay here, I came face-to-face with such cruelty that I was unable to process. I was close to burnout during the very intense, almost one month I spent there, and it was terribly difficult to maintain the energy with which I had been doing the work of helping for years.

But that's when we started working in Karamoja, where so many women are victims of human trafficking. I found new partners among the locals and I got my energy back because we were able to work a lot with the young girls there, and they needed us," Zsófi recalls the stressful period.

Zsófi believes that "if there is only one person whose life is better because of our work, it's worth doing it". She considers sustainable help important, as they do not want to make people dependent on it. "We need to create opportunities for them to develop their skills and improve their lives themselves with the knowledge they have gained," says the founder of the association, but adds that it is not easy to operate as an NGO from Hungary, as the donation is used in Africa. At the same time, she believes that people who are socially sensitive do not ask why the aid is going to these far-off countries, but rather look at how they could help.

Long journeys often make it hard for Zsófi to leave her husband, her parents and her team behind, but she says that her second home, her "family" in Manafwa, is waiting for her. Flavia's mother's stone house without running water and electricity, the power of nature, the ancient energies, all call her to this multi-faceted continent. Karamoja will be the main focus of their projects in the coming period, but they will also continue to be present in Manafwa and Kenya.