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COVID-19 Lockdown Interview Series: Antonia McGrath

by Antonia McGrath on
Photo of Antonia McGrath.

COVID-19’s impact on educate. and life in Honduras

Tell us about yourself. What have you been doing and what are you working on during this COVID-19 lock-in. 

I’m one of the directors of a non-profit called educate. that supports community-driven educational projects in Honduras. We’re a volunteer-run charity, with a team in Honduras and a team in Amsterdam (where I live), so we are quite used to communicating digitally, but both sides of our work are being deeply affected by everything that’s going on at the moment. Here in Amsterdam, our fundraising has had to shift because we’ve had to call off all our fundraising events, and in Honduras many people in our community have lost their whole household incomes due to the lockdown, with no government safety net to provide support. Personally, I’m spending a lot of time on the phone with people across Honduras, especially our teachers and community project leaders, as well as supporting our Amsterdam team in shifting our work online. I also work as an au pair here in Amsterdam, so I’m doing home-schooling with three little kids on the side!

In Honduras, the government has imposed a strict and total lockdown: people are allowed outside once per week in a time block decided by their ID number, but the country has a 66% poverty rate and a huge informal sector, so for many people a lockdown means no way to put food on the table. That includes several members of our team in Honduras, so we sent some emergency funds over last week.

In general, though, I am struck by the positivity and resilience in the conversations I have with our community in Honduras. I think it comes from the fact that we work with a lot of teachers, and teachers are just the kind of people who are always supporting people, always looking for ways to rally together and make things work – especially a lot of the teachers we work with, who are used to working with limited resources and in tough conditions. They are endlessly driven and dedicated to the wellbeing and education of their students. Even without internet access and in some cases even electricity, teachers are making sure their students are safe and can continue learning even with everything that is going on.

Here in Amsterdam, things are, in many ways, more straightforward. We’ve have had to call off all our fundraising events for the upcoming months, but our team has been coming up with different ways to make sure we continue to raise the necessary funds for our ongoing projects, and to support our community through this time. I feel incredibly lucky to lead a team that has been so positive in coming together to make quick and often logistically difficult changes. Our grants team have expanded, our events team are taking our whole six-month event programme online, we’ve launched an emergency crowdfunding campaign that our community has been so generous in supporting, and our schools team who usually organise school-based service learning and fundraising partnerships, are working on a postcard project using student artwork from Honduras. I’m mostly focused on coordinating everything and leading our online communications across our different platforms – making sure we continue to share what we’re doing, telling stories from our projects, finding ways to raise awareness about the situation in Honduras, and promoting our fundraising campaigns and online events.

Which aspects of your work past and present might be particularly interesting for supporters of the Shiloh Project? 

At the moment, we are sharing a lot of videos on our social media channels from parents, teachers, students and project leaders from our community across Honduras, who are talking about their experiences, giving advice, and sharing some words of solidarity. For us it’s a great way not only to raise awareness about the situation in Honduras, but to strengthen our community through these shared stories on our platform.

We also have a blog that has some interesting articles on it about our work, which supporters of the Shiloh Project might find interesting.

How are you bearing up and what’s helping you most?

educate. is all about community and community leadership, so we’ve been finding ways to keep our community strong despite being physically isolated from one another. We’ve been talking with our student and teacher community across Honduras more than ever, asking people to share photos and videos about what they are up to, and making collaborative video messages to share.

One of the teachers at a school we work with in Honduras, in a small village called Las Lagunas, asked if we could make a video from our Amsterdam team for her students sharing some advice and words of encouragement, so we got all the Spanish speakers on our Amsterdam team to record a message and we put them together for the kids in Las Lagunas. We’ve had photos and videos back from several of the students and people there. So we’re really trying to stay connected, and make sure everyone knows they’re not alone in this, even though our experiences may be vastly different.

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COVID-19 Lockdown Series: Mmapula Kebaneilwe

by Mmapula Kebaneilwe on

A Bit about myself:

I am Mmapula Diana Kebaneilwe, a Womanist scholar and Senior Lecturer of Hebrew and Old Testament Studies at the University of Botswana. I did my PhD with the University of Murdoch in Western Australia, and completed in 2012. The title of my Thesis was “This Courageous Woman: A Socio-rhetorical Womanist Reading of Proverbs 31:10-31.” (The thesis can be found online here.) I have a wide range of research interests, including; women and the Bible; HIV, Aids, the Bible and women; women, gender and the Bible; the Bible and environmental issues; rape culture, gender and the Bible. Above all, my keen interest concerns gender justice and hence, researching on issues relating to women is important to me. The quest stems from my own context, which is patriarchal and marred by gender-based violence.

What I have been up-to during the COVID 19 Lock-in

To be honest, COVID 19 has left me confused, worried and without motivation or energy to do much. However, as the lock-in proceeds into the third week in my country (Botswana), I seem to be unstiffening a bit and I guess I am now getting accustomed to my ‘new normal’ of being just at home. I believe I am also getting to grips with the current reality and learning to live with the fact that the entire world is faced with a pandemic and everyone is affected in some way or other. On a more positive note, I have been doing what I enjoy most, which is gardening. I have started a small vegetable garden, which I have mixed with my usual plants and flowers that I tend every day. I find this very healing to my soul.

I also have a lot of academic work to do during this time (much of it is backlog from a few months ago). The work includes co-editing for a volume on ‘Mother Earth’, a book project, which is a collaboration with different scholars who presented papers at the 2019 Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, held in Gaborone, Botswana. I am also working on my book, which is adapted from my PhD thesis and which has come back from a second round of the review process, just a few days ago. I have also received back reviews for a chapter that I am contributing to a project on #Jesus Too, edited by Jayme Reaves and David Tombs.

Aspects of my work, past and present that might of interest to the Shiloh Project supporters?

I think some of my work that might be of interest to supporters of the Shiloh Project may include first, my PhD Thesis (2012). This is so because in that I explore some of the issues that relate to the intersection between, the Bible, culture (in this case Botswana culture) and women. Attention is paid to the portrayal of a woman in rather strong and affirmative ways in Proverbs 31:10-31. Such is not commonplace in the Bible. I bring the portrait into engagement with how women are treated in my culture, especially in relation to their male counterparts and in relation to marginalization and disadvantages for women on different levels. My conclusion is that the text of Proverbs 31:10-31 unapologetically advocates for gender equality.

Another of my past works that may be of interest is an article titled “The Vashti Paradigm: Resistance as a Strategy for Combating HIV.” Ecumenical Review 63/4 (2011): 378-384. As the title suggests, in this article I see Vashti, a female character in the biblical book of Esther, as a heroine. Her subversiveness and defiance in the face of male oppressive authority celebrates her dignity as a woman. I advocate that Vashti can speak also to those who find themselves in similar situations of oppression. My conclusion is that despite the potential danger in challenging oppressive systems, cultures and contexts, like Vashti did, ‘it is never too late to say no to oppression’. 

A forthcoming article might also be of interest, “The Untold Story of Mrs Noah: The Hebrew Bible, Gender and Media: An Intertextual Critical Discourse Analysis.” This is forthcoming in the BOLESWA Journal of Theology (2020 sometime). This piece is co-authored with a colleague and friend, Dr Sibonile  E. Ellece, from the English Department of the University of Botswana. We try to reconstruct the life story of the wife of Noah. We argue that because of its androcentric nature, the Bible tends to omit the stories of many women, including that of Noah’s wife. We call the otherwise unnamed woman ‘Mrs Noah’ in order to problematize the un-naming, which not only obscures but virtually erases her identity. Our conclusion is that in our patriarchal contexts, too, women often suffer from a lack of media coverage, conveying the sense that their stories do not really matter, at least not as much as men’s stories. But in reconstructing Mrs Noah’s story, using intertextual critical discourse analysis, we maintain that she was a woman of courage: a wife, a mother, a home-builder and Noah’s pillar. She, too, like her legendary husband, must have professed strong faith, ensuring her survival and that of her family, while most of the entire world perished.

What is helping me most during this unprecedented time of COVID 19?

Like I mentioned before, gardening and decorating my home is something I enjoy doing. I spent my first day of lockdown painting one of the rooms in the house. I love it. I then started spending mornings and evenings doing some gardening, which includes planting vegies, trimming duranta plants, cultivating the soil around my little roses and other flowers, and just cleaning the yard – stuff I often do not have much time to do under normal circumstances. I have since been doing some yoga and pilates each evening in order to stretch my otherwise aching joints. This has been very helpful and is making me feel good, both physically and emotionally. I have now added some skipping rope exercises where I do 300 skips a day and that makes me feel fantastic. Of course, I am also trying to stay away from frequent visits to the kitchen and the fridge for some nibbles, because though these are particularly accessible ‘places’ currently (given the stringent restrictions on movement) it is not such a good idea to spend too much time there.

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COVID-19 Lockdown Interview Series: Barbara Thiede

by Barbara Thiede on

Rabbi Dr. Barbara Thiede

When my university (University of North Carolina, Charlotte) went on spring break March 2, I made the decision to see if I could put all my classes online. Because I also teach online for ALEPH Ordination Programs (a Jewish seminary which ordains rabbis, cantors, and rabbinic pastors), doing so was not as difficult for me as for some of my colleagues. In the meantime, my spouse, Ralf, and I moved roomfuls of furniture around in our little ranch house to accommodate our son and daughter-in-love, who moved out of a tiny one-room studio apartment in Brooklyn, New York,  into our tiny home library (now outfitted with a bed, sitting area, and workspace!).  We joked about how much the room would go for on Airbnb and promptly dubbed it R&B (Ralf and Barbara). We’ve been alternating the cooking, so I’ve been treated to some real culinary variety.

Next, we started a huge project in our backyard, clearing away a veritable mini-forest of dead shrubbery that wisteria had marked, claimed, and devoured, and built three raised garden beds. This also necessitated digging up loads of mulchy dirt, moving it aside, creating the beds, refilling the beds with the dirt and home grown compost, and planting our vegetables. This explains the picture of me lying face down in the grass while our son grins up at his dad. His back is stronger. So far, everything is thriving and we look forward to the first products gracing our table.

For the first weeks, working was very difficult indeed. Finding a routine was challenging. My students have felt the stress and, since we take the time to check in, it is clear to me that they are facing a range of serious issues.  One is a refugee whose mother works at Wal-Mart; another is taking care of an elderly and sickly grandmother. I’ve known what it is to have students in vulnerable situations every semester of my teaching life, but now, I think it is fair to say, they all are vulnerable. One student has a daughter whose best friend died of Covid-19 — she was in her early thirties; another was clearly suicidal and needed connections with health care professionals. Sometimes, I start our check-ins with lighter questions just to relieve the stress: “A package just arrived at your door. It is perfectly safe to open it. What’s inside?” Answers included, of course, masks, cures, vaccine. And they included: “My mom!” “A puppy!” “A boat!”

Which aspects of your work past and present might be particularly interesting for supporters of the Shiloh Project?

My current book, Male Friendship, Homosociality, and Women in the Hebrew Bible: Malignant Fraternities, treats a set of texts that  demonstrate how male friendship depends on women’s bodies for its creation and sustenance. I am also preparing a paper for SBL entitled “Gang Rape, Murder, and Dismemberment in Judges 19-21 and Little Bee: How Biblical and Modern Authors Inflict Moral Injury.”

How are you bearing up and what’s helping you most? Am I behind in my work? Of course. Do I feel — all the time — that I can’t actually grasp the depth of dislocation the world is experiencing? I do. Do I sometimes resent the “we can get through all this” when so many won’t? Yes. Do I fear that we will not learn the lessons of this experience? I do. Humankind is notoriously insufficient at caring for humanity and the planet it lives on. 
I am bearing up by walking a lot, by gardening as much as I can, and by listening to a lot of Sephardic-Ladino-Iraqi-Turkish music. It reminds me to dance. And I hope and pray for humanity to pay attention to the obvious lesson, here. We share this world unequally. We suffer its pain unequally. We are obliged to flatten that curve, too.

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COVID-19 Lockdown Interview Series: Dawn Llewellyn

by Dawn Llewellyn on

I’ve never used the phrase ‘these are strange times’ as often as I have over the past few weeks! On the day my Department closed its doors, I went into my third year class at 2pm and when it ended at 3.30pm, I was told we were being sent home and had to leave the building by 6 o’clock. I quickly grabbed books and papers that I thought I might need, rescued my office plants, and colleagues and students said goodbye to each other without the usual hugging! For the final year undergraduates, they have been deprived of the traditional ‘end of year’ closure – the stress and celebrations that go along with writing up dissertations and their last assessments, and all  students felt the abrupt end to the academic term. In some ways, I’m enjoying working from home, pottering in our small back yard, undertaking a bit of DIY, doing on-line exercise classes, keeping up with household chores that never get done (yep, the skirting boards and shower tiles are gleaming), but I know it is a privilege to live with my partner, Bran, and for us to be relatively safe and secure, and to continue working. I am, of course, missing our lively Department and the bustle and business of term time, but we’re staying in touch with virtual coffee every day (we do this in real time too!). I’m so impressed and heartened by the way our students are adapting and coping with studying at home, some of them in challenging and very difficult circumstances during a very anxious time for them and their families. They are supporting each other and us  brilliantly,  and with good humour that brightens up the day. Yesterday, during a 3rd year catch up on TEAMS, two of them turned up with superimposed images of Trump and Johnson on their heads…they sort of know my left-leaning politics.

Like everyone, my usual routine is out of kilter. This coincided with the spring vacation, when I took some annual leave and switched off email, admin, and writing for a week or so.  In January, we had arranged to remodel our kitchen during March and April, and before the lockdown we had ripped out our existing cupboards and cabinets, and unplugged the dishwasher and oven; it’s a shell of a room at the moment. For five weeks we’ve been cooking on a two-ring camping stove on our living room floor, washing up outside, and contributing heavily to the local Chester foodie scene by relying on the places that are offering take-aways. I keep telling myself we’re glamping and it’s an ‘adventure’.

I’ve got a few projects on the go. I’m working on a chapter on methodology in the study of religion and gender for a Handbook edited by Emma Tomalin https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/philosophy/staff/142/professor-emma-tomalin and Caroline Starkey https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/philosophy/staff/1161/dr-caroline-starkey  – I’m a qualitative researcher so enjoy getting my methodological geek on. My new book, Motherhood, Voluntary Childlessness, and Christianity explores women’s religious reproductive agency in Christianity and their narratives and experiences of ‘choice’,  and I’ll be getting that finished for Bloomsbury during my research leave later on this year. I’m also working with Sian Hawthorne https://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff31080.php and Sonya Sharma https://www.kingston.ac.uk/staff/profile/dr-sonya-sharma-57/ on the Bloomsbury Studies in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality series https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/series/bloomsbury-studies-in-religion-gender-and-sexuality/ , and we’ve just launched a call for chapters for a new Bloomsbury Handbook on Religion, Gender, and Sexuality that we are editing together. We’d be delighted if Shiloh readers and members considered contributing! https://bloomsburyreligiongender.wordpress.com/

How am I coping? Well, I’m a swimmer and usually train about 4 times a week. April is the start of the open water swimming season when the rivers, lakes, and seas start to warm up enough to stretch out in ‘skins’ (just a swimming costume, no wetsuit). Normally, I’d be prepping for  5km and 10km events in the summer but instead I have taken up some surprising hobbies. I’ve started taking our friend’s dog, Sidney, for walks (they’ve just had a baby) and have found him to be an excellent listener as I talk at him (he’s great on career advice); I’ve discovered Radio 3; I have found out that I really like trashy TV (Making the Cut and Next in Fashion, anyone?); I’ve bought a hoola hoop; and I’ve completed a jigsaw. I barely know myself.

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COVID-19 Lockdown Interview: Susannah Cornwall

by Susannah Cornwall on

Tell us about yourself.

I’m Susannah Cornwall, Senior Lecturer in Constructive Theologies at the University of Exeter. I’m the author of various books on Christian theology, sexuality and gender, of which the most recent is Un/familiar Theology: Rethinking Sex, Reproduction and Generativity (Bloomsbury, 2017).

What have you been doing and are you able to work during this COVID-19 lock-in?

I’m Director of Education with responsibility for all our undergraduate and taught postgraduate programmes in Theology and Religion and Liberal Arts at Exeter, so this has been a spectacularly busy time, working out details of changes to assessments and exams, moving teaching online, and ever-changing contingency planning in response to the latest advice. We are also working out what will happen with admissions over the summer, and helping our students with a wide range of academic and pastoral issues raised or exacerbated by coronavirus. As ever, I’m in awe at their resilience, patience and good humour.

Work from home is really challenging now that it also involves full-time childcare: my husband (also an academic) and I are doing alternate work and childcare shifts. I’m fortunate to be in an institution that has made clear that it appreciates these are exceptional circumstances and that something has to give, and is encouraging us to prioritize our own and our dependents’ wellbeing. I have colleagues elsewhere who are being told that the expectation is that there’s no drop to their productivity during this time, which is terribly unrealistic and inhumane. However, there’s no getting around the fact that a constantly shifting mode and getting no uninterrupted time to work is going to have knock-on effects, and I hope institutions are going to take seriously the fact that there are equality, diversity and inclusion implications to all this that will impact on many academics’ pay, progression and job security for years to come.

Which aspects of your work past and present might be particularly interesting for supporters of the Shiloh Project?

I’m currently working on a constructive theology of gender diversity, and coronavirus is highlighting the fact that lots of the precarities trans people face are even more heightened in a pandemic. These are extreme times and big decisions are being made centrally for the sake of what we’re told is a common good, but of course there’s going to be collateral damage. This is a time when life looks almost unrecognizable, so there are all kinds of possibilities. People are learning about ways of life they didn’t know before; new relationships are being forged that didn’t exist before. So that’s exciting, but it also means there’s even more marginality and precarity than there was before.

But it’s an opportunity, too. When the world goes back to normal (will the world ever go back to normal?) what will gender look like? How will things be for trans and intersex people? What do all of us, cis and trans, endosex and intersex, want to carry over into our new world?

How are you bearing up and what’s helping you most?

I have it so much easier than many people: I have secure employment, a safe place to live, more than enough food, a garden, internet, and more. I live within walking distance of green fields and the edge of countryside. I’ve started running again. I’m enjoying doing more “slow cooking” (but not slow-cooking!) than normal, and my son is revelling in having everyone at home. He’s very used to one or other parent being away for several days or having had to leave early before he gets up in the morning. So I’m enjoying the fact that he’s enjoying it! I think I’ll also look back with gratitude at having had this unexpected extra time with him at home every day before he starts school in the autumn.

I love the small creative acts of kindness that people are doing around the neighbourhood: setting up WhatsApp groups to ensure everyone is okay and has enough shopping; some kids in the next road have set up a pop-up library (with hand sanitizer!) outside their house; people have been chalking murals and adventure trails on the pavement for children to enjoy during their walks; someone has made their front garden into a safari zoo with toy snakes, orangutans, birds and big cats to spot. All that said, I’m also finding it really hard. I feel sad that my son is missing out on so much time with his friends and amazing teachers. I’m feeling lethargic, powerless, and like I have only just enough energy to tread water and survive, when I somehow want to be making the most of this weird time. I’m feeling frustrated that I’m too exhausted to be creative or generative, or even think about grand schemes like “theology in the time of coronavirus”. I’m feeling angry that it’s taken this situation for people to realize how scandalous it is that nurses, care workers, supermarket workers, food producers and distributors are the people on whom society really relies and yet continue to be underpaid and badly treated.

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COVID-19 Lockdown Interview: Laurie Lyter Bright

by Laurie Lyter Bright on

Since shelter in place began in Wisconsin, I’ve been balancing pastoring a church through a virtual Lent and now Holy Week, executive directing a non-profit that supports peace-building through interfaith schools in Palestine and Israel, working on my dissertation, and keeping two very small children alive and happy. My husband’s a full time grad student in nursing, so our days are full. Work takes place in the margins around our new reality, and maybe that’s closer to where work should have always been in terms of priorities. I’m surprised by how the preciousness of time has been illuminated in this crisis.  When writing can only happen between the start of nap time and lunch, you learn to write very efficiently.

My dissertation work emphasizes the role of the Christian church (particularly U.S. manifestations thereof) in co-creating rape culture and is seeking ways for the church to be a part of disrupting rape culture instead. My new work in progress for the Shiloh Project series with Routledge Focus is exploring the role of the prophetic in both the #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter movements.  Getting to interview and collaborate with scholars in these fields has been an absolute privilege and I’m grateful for the access to technology that allows me to keep moving forward on both projects even in a time of lock-down!

I am running the full gamut of feelings in this season and allowing myself space for all of those emotions is what’s keeping me going.  I am profoundly thankful – that my family are healthy, that my kids are too young to be scared by what’s happening, that my partner is also my best friend, that my work can be reasonably accomplished remotely, etc.  I am profoundly sad – at the loss of life, the co-morbidity of the weight of poverty and racism in my country, the suffering that was preventable, and more. I am angry – at the pathetic excuse for leadership in my government, at our collective fear responses. I am proud – of the community spirit that rises above, the difficult but necessary questions and conversations that are rising to the surface.  And I am baking right up to the edge of an unhealthy amount of cookies.

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COVID-19 Lockdown Interview: Tom Muyunga Mukasa

by Johanna Stiebert on

Tom Muyunga Mukasa is originally from Uganda. He was resettled as a refugee in the USA. He is currently in Kenya. Tom is HIV Care and Global Health Specialist; Manager of the House of Rainbow HIV/AIDS Protection and Advocacy Consortium; and Co-founder of Advocacy Network Africa (AdNetA). He works towards enshrining human dignity by leading a number of campaigns. These are aimed at refugee integration and protection in host communities, the elimination of violence against women, the promotion of wellness that integrates Universal Health Coverage (UHC), and at ending TB, HIV & Malaria by 2030. AdNetA is also active in the campaign to end COVID-19.

  1. Tell us about yourself and about what you’re doing and what you’re working on and how, during this COVID-19 lock-in.

Thank you so much. Right now I am in Nairobi. In August 2019, I came here to Kenya as a student volunteer from St Mary’s College of California, USA. I went to do volunteer work in Nyeri Town, which is about 200 kilometers from Nairobi. I lived at St. Mary’s Boys’ Vocational Rescue Centre and Secondary School up to November 2019. This is a combined vocational and rehabilitation school for boys aged 3-20 years. I facilitated the establishment and development of community organisation frameworks that enable Lasallian Volunteers to participate in effective change activities during their African experience tours. (La Salle, or the Lasallians are a Catholic order established in 1679 by John Baptist de La Salle. Today the Lasallians minister to around 900,000 students in universities, schools, educational and welfare institutions in more than 80 countries all over the world.)

While working in Nyeri, my own focus was on the Secondary School and how its communities could engage the large youth population in sports, livelihood, vocational skills and other capacity-building. Together we came up with tailored programmes to provide younger people with opportunities to improve healthy and purposeful living, self-esteem and to avoid  drug-use due to peer pressure and other factors. The Lasallian volunteers helped facilitate these sessions.  I developed a strategic plan for 2019-2025 hinged on economic development, orphan support and rehabilitation. We presented this to the local government and they promised to support it fully. Alongside my volunteering, I was engaging in my own research work in drug-use disorders, conducting fieldwork in three informal settings in Mountain Kenya, Eastern and Central regions. Into this research, I incorporated queer refugee issues. I developed my findings into abstracts, which were accepted by the International AIDS Conference 2020 among other conferences.  I had worked on preparing twelve presenters, all, like me, queer refugees. All abstracts were accepted and we were rearing to go! But… COVID-19 restrictions are now in force here in Kenya and the conference will be held via virtual sessions.

Fast forward to lock-down, or lock-in here where I am now, in the Matasia zone of Ngong in Kajiado County on the outskirts of Nairobi. It is one of the largest, most urbanized and most densely populated areas of Kenya. Right now I am managing a community health awareness programme run by volunteer refugees. Some refugees are now resettled in Kenya, others are waiting to be resettled in a third party country. But, they agreed to work with me and have brought into the campaign their lovers, friends and acquaintances. Our campaign is growing in numbers! At the core are people I had earlier identified as key-Informants. While we were still able to do research work or data collection in the field, I found 7 persons living with TB whom I immediately connected to health care facilities. I had some little money on me and provided them with a month’s supply of food. All 7 are now 4 months along a steady healing process.  These 7 enabled us to penetrate deeper into their networks and we have linked more and more TB patients to care and hope to continue with this.

As a trained infectious diseases specialist, when I heard of this particular kind of infection, rumbling across from China to other places, I knew I had to act fast. There was no way Africa would escape! Given the health care facilities as the risks posed by increased hospital attendances, there was much to do, and fast. This is much on my mind.  We have been able to secure 4 months’ medication supply for the TB patients. Those who are HIV positive were also given the same amount of medication. This is called aligning medication supply. I connected patients to AMREF, Red Cross, different CSOs and local government hospitals where they are now getting more support beyond what I could provide. 

I am now embarking on training mobilisers to become Anti-TB Champions and I am integrating COVID-19 Response and Prevention into this campaign. What I have not yet mentioned is that I am connected with the Switzerland-based WHO division on TB. I engaged with them and advocated on behalf of TB patients back in November-December 2019 already. I did it because I felt my voice could add to finding ways to meet their needs. I even wrote a concept note on TB prevention. I felt I owed the communities I had visited during data collection. I wanted to give back in a small way. So, I have designed what we call the TB Prevention Communities of best practices. This is an iterative model with 15 steps that is both pedagogical and a heuristic.

The best practices are hinged on: Identification, Participation, Access, Hygiene, Adherence and Self-Esteem (IPAHAS). When a patient is identified, the Anti-TB Champions catalyze full participation of the person to be evaluated for TB, going through all the nine yards from testing to taking medication for the first crucial 8 weeks and then beyond. The Champions help with access to housing, nutrition, transport and with medication not being disrupted. Given the present situation, we have had to adapt, so I have shown them how to use WhatsApp groups and Facebook or Zoom to communicate, inform and educate. 

Most of our TB and HIV patients live in one-room houses.  We got lucky in that the organisations we linked patients to have provided food rations, masks and aromatic detergents, which they can use to wipe surfaces, clean toilets and bed pans or night pails. The practices for helping people with TB and compromised immunity also help with limiting the spread of COVID-19. I have come to note that COVID-19 restrictions are now making it easier for TB patients to be less stigmatised. Wearing masks no longer leads to stigma: it no longer signifies disease but precaution, self-care and care for others. The sweet-smelling detergents have made the dwelling places less unpleasant. Food is shared around in these hard times – because life is restricted and hard for everyone just now.  (I have written a short perspective report intimating  this tendency.) I am sure the Anti-TB Champions continue to be motivated, not least because they are receiving food rations too and they are helping one another, as well as relatives and friends. 

Personally, I am staying in, as instructed. I am concentrating my efforts and trying to keep expenses to a minimum. I am training my teams via zoom, video calls and email instructions. I continue my work as Social Justice Practitioner in whatever way I can. Motivated by the UN SDGs, I focus on a range of community activities, focusing most on conservation, Universal Health Coverage (UHC), elimination of violence against women and on ending TB, HIV, and Malaria by 2030. These are all connected. But now, I am also integrating COVID-19 into my work, because this is pressing. I make virtual work activities and share them online. I have become busier while I am following up my patients from home.

  • You have added COVID-19 to your earlier campaigns which included preventing transmission of TB, HIV and Malaria. You also have years of experience of advocacy for LGBT rights and you are passionate about ending gender-based and sexual violence. Tell us more. What drives you and what do you do?

Ha-ha! Professor Johanna, I am humbled by the statement and question. A long time ago in Uganda as a younger medical student I volunteered with the Rotary Club. We were taken to an island far into Lake Victoria to popularise immunization and digging and using latrines. You know, we were young and from the ivory tower. It was supposed to be a one-time thing. We were given this opportunity to see the world’s realities and to relate them to our book learning.  

I was touched and after my return asked to be included on a list of those who would volunteer regularly. Little did I know that this was preparing me to polish my social face of medicine! This was a time when almost everything was ‘medicalised’, if you get what I mean. There was an expectation that medication was the solution to so many things, a whole laundry-list of issues. Not all of these, however, actually required medication (tablets, drops, operations…) at all. They were health matters but what they needed was something else. I’m talking about such things as domestic abuse, sexual and gender-based violence, husbands using up their wives’ savings and giving the lame excuses of ‘I am the man of the house: I do as I like!’  I was a witness during a meeting in which a woman had brought a case against her husband. Guess what it was about, Professor? The woman had come to report the husband for not beating her when she made any mistake like when they had just met! No, seriously Professor! Her expectation was that when your husband beats you, it means they love you and when they ignore you, it means they have someone else who is special (enough to be beaten). 

I come from a family of nine mothers and many children. I know so many other families like mine. I think I was made an activist subconsciously, without realizing it, through my close relationships with women and children, who often suffer the brunt of patriarchal violence. Or, maybe, I am correcting things, or reconstructing things and it is just plain rebelliousness on my part! My passion about ending gender-based and sexual violence is rooted in what I grew up seeing at home, in my communities, in wider African society. It is rooted too in my joining the organizing committee of a San Francisco-based Women’s March, where I have served since 2013.

Professor, knowing you and how you guided us in sharing real lived stories [for the report, see here. Tom is in the picture, wearing a crown], I am dwelling so far on the positive side of things. Let me share how it might have begun as well. I knew I had to be part of the solution to put a stop to the mentality that women are regarded as inferior. But funnily enough, in my earlier days, being male, not White, and without money, in Africa, I met with the most vehement of barriers. Being a male, people, including women, called me names whenever I appeared in meetings on women’s and girl children’s rights. You should have been there! But hey, they did not know me that well. I am a very determined and different male but they did not know this at first. So, I just went on doing my work. Well, to cut a long story short I am here still and I am a social justice practitioner among many other hats I wear.

Thank you so much for supporting my work. You know and have seen me at the frontline where you have been as well. I am sure all your faculty colleagues are ‘radicals’ (ooooops, sshh, do not say I said this!) But, what I mean, is that on behalf of many others, thank you so much for coming into our lives. You asked what drives me. I enjoy passing on skills to others and to see them turn into self-driven actors too. This takes patience and guidance but when results start showing, I go to bed and sleep like a log. I have seen the people I train become the better version of who they could be. I have seen transformation manifest before me. I have witnessed people who gain the skills, change into adopting healthy practices and behaviours. They turned out to be recognised and this increased their being dependable and admired by others who work with them. It is this that drives me! Thanks.

  • How you bearing up and what is helping you, or would help you, most?

Professor, is this a trick question?  But, let me answer it as I feel it in my heart and belly. I am scared. My life has had so many turns and all of them following each other in sequence. I am not a biblical Job! I am just a Black male striving to be good. I want to be a scholar and not a raw field epidemiologist, for crying out loud.  I made a decision to improve myself scholarly-wise and chose to take on the discipline of Political Science. I hope to complete every requisite and to be taken on to a PhD programme (they write ‘program’, that other side of the Atlantic) at Princeton University. I was given a promissory letter and the conditions I need to fulfill. Part of my coming to Kenya to do community work, was to prepare me and give me an advantage to get into Princeton. I am competing with 45 others but I am not scared at all.

But now, COVID-19 has come along. I am wondering how I can return to the USA, say in December 2020! These things go on and on and they require vaccines. Nothing else can hurry things along! For now, I have tried to put all my worries aside and have engaged in anti-infection activities with which I am so very familiar, given my earlier, medical incarnation. I am helping a team here and more people, too, via phone. I have written perspective reports which are read widely and I am so happy there is a sector that asks for my opinion.

Professor,  I know I am going to be here until December. I have given myself that period. Keep the Shiloh Project moving please, we read it here. By the way, I also follow your University of Leeds Faculty colleagues via Twitter. I like the themes you cover. They are so heart-tugging, they make one realise how comfortable they have been to the point of exuding a self-righteous air about them, and they are so ‘radical’.  I realise I am slowly learning to effectively ask questions that make our society more involved in healing.  Maybe one day I shall ask to come there as an exchange student to sit down and get trained or just converse! Thank you.

[From Johanna: Tom, we need you here! You could give us a good dose of reality and maybe wake us up to and make us embarrassed about our self-righteous airs. Thank you for giving some insight into much greater struggles than most of us contend with. If you do come over as an exchange student, I will keep you busy with speaking engagements. Be well, be safe, and thank you so much for your words.]

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COVID-19 Lockdown Interview: Katie Edwards

by Katie Edwards on

Like everyone else, the COVID-19 pandemic terrifies me. I’m increasingly aware of my privilege and I veer between feeling extremely grateful and very guilty for all that I sometimes take for granted. I’m thinking a lot about the people for whom confinement in the home has horrific consequences. I worry about the implications for widespread serious mental health issues and the increase in domestic abuse and financial distress caused by the lockdown. I worry about the stories being buried under the avalanche of Coronavirus headlines. If I think about the pandemic and its implications for too long, or read the news too often, then I can spiral into panic. At one point I had updates flashing up on my mobile but I stopped those and over the last couple of weeks I’ve trained myself to listen to the news once a day so I can stay informed but manage the general anxiety triggered by a constant stream of awful news.

I’m a primary caregiver for my parents, who’re classed as vulnerable by the NHS. The pandemic has made me acutely aware of how much I depend on them. Despite my role as caregiver I rely on them for so much emotional support. I’ve lost a lot of sleep worrying about losing them – and sometimes I’ve experienced moments of breath-taking premature grief – but now I try to take each day as it comes and make sure I show them every day in some way how much I love and appreciate them. They’re my mates.

Another ritual I’ve developed during lockdown is to perform a show tune for my partner, Mat, each morning as soon as he wakes up. I sing and do an improvised dance routine. I know my performance energises him because he gets up as soon as I start singing and races to the shower. The neighbours love it too – they bang on the wall in appreciation of my powerful vocals. It’s so important to keep spirits high during difficult times.

My family, friends, and dogs, Minnie and Buster, keep me going every day of my life but I’ve become acutely aware of how much I take them for granted. I miss seeing and hugging my nieces and nephews.

Buster Edwards

Working collaboratively is a real saviour for me. I’m so grateful to work with such kind, supportive, fun, and super-intelligent people. My close friends Caroline Blyth and Johanna Stiebert, who co-direct The Shiloh Project with me, continue to be my life-line. We always message lots but we’re having regular virtual meetings and just hearing their voices improves my mood. As well as Caroline and Johanna, I’m working with journalist and theologian Rosie Dawson on the forthcoming Shiloh podcast. I always enjoy having a new project to think about and Rosie’s a perfect working partner. I often work closely with Chris Greenough, Dawn Llewelyn, Meredith Warren, Emily Colgan, and Minna Shkul too and we’re all keeping in touch during the lockdown. They’re a brilliant set of pals.

    When I’m working and the weather’s nice I try to sit in the garden so I can listen to the birds sing. The pandemic has triggered a renewed appreciation for birds, greenery, and nature more generally. I found the film The Road very disturbing when I saw it years ago and I had nightmares afterward. Sometimes scenes from the film come flashing into my mind when I’m loading the dishwasher or reading a book. I take care to appreciate the nature around me in these apocalyptic times – bird song sounds like life and happiness to me.

    One Walk a Day Photos

    I’m missing dear friends like Adriaan Van Klinken, Dom Mattos, Cheryl Exum, Francesca Stavrakopoulou, and Mmapula Kebaneilwe too. I’m so looking forward to seeing them when the lockdown comes to an end.

    Mat says I must finish by thanking him for his unending support, appreciation, and patience. He suggests that I say “something like.. he really is the best partner a person could have” and I am “so very lucky”.  He is a joy to behold and the show to my tunes.

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    COVID-19 Lockdown Interview Series: Rhiannon Graybill

    by Rhiannon Graybill on

    1. Tell us about yourself. What have you been doing and are you able to work during this COVID-19 lock-in? 
    I was already on sabbatical before social distancing started, so for me it’s been less of a change to my daily routine (especially since I was already doing my writing from home). I’m also at the point in my research where I’m mostly writing, rather than researching things, which is very lucky given that all the libraries are closed. I’m trying to stick to my pre-pandemic pattern of working on my book in the morning and then other projects in the afternoon or evening. Of course, I’ve been having trouble concentrating and getting work done, but I’m not being too hard on myself about that — we’re in a pandemic, these are not normal times! On a personal note, my husband is also an academic and working from home; we don’t have children and we’re not currently taking care of any family members (or home schooling!). This gives us a very different experience of shelter in place than other friends and colleagues, especially those with kids, and I’m very sympathetic to what they’re juggling right now. 

    2. Which aspects of your work past and present might be particularly interesting for supporters of the Shiloh Project? 
    Right now I am finishing up a book called Texts after Terror: Rape, Sexual Violence, and the Hebrew Bible, which is a study of biblical rape stories. I argue that the frameworks we use to talk about sexual violence in the Bible are dated and un-feminist, and that we need new models for reading and theorizing “rape stories” (a term I use to refer both to biblical texts about rape and to texts that involve rape culture more broadly). One model that I offer in the book is a framework for describing sexual violence as “fuzzy, messy, and icky” — fuzzy in that it’s not always that clear what happened or how it was remembered, messy in its consequences, as well as in the ways that sex and bodies are often messy, and icky in the ways that sexual violence fails to fit into neat patterns of evil perpetrators and innocent victims. I first developed this argument in a lecture I gave at the Shiloh Project’s inaugural rape culture and religion conference in 2018 in Sheffield; it’s even posted on the website! In  addition to this book project, I’m also finishing up an edited volume on Margaret Atwood and the Bible with my colleague Peter J. Sabo called “Who Knows What We’d Make Of It, If We Ever Got Our Hands On It?”: The Bible and Margaret Atwood  — the quote in the title is fromThe Handmaid’s Tale, a novel that I’m sure many Shiloh Project supporters know well. 

    3. How are you bearing up and what’s helping you most? 
    Like a lot of people, I’ve been video-chatting with friends and family, which has definitely helped. Yesterday, my niece turned one, and we all celebrated together on Zoom and watched her eat her first cupcake (she loved it!) I’ve also been reading a lot of murder mysteries, just to give myself a break. My family is all far away in Montana, and my friends are scattered all over the place, so there are a lot of people I’m worried about. 

    4. Send us a picture that captures your COVID-19 days.
    Here’s a picture of my research assistant helping me with my book project! 

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    COVID-19 Lockdown Interview Series: Ruth Everhart

    by Ruth Everhart on

    Tell us about yourself. What have you been doing and what are you working on during this COVID-19 lock-in.
    I’m an author and pastor, although I find it difficult to be both at once! This fall I’ll celebrate my 30th anniversary of ordination, and for the last nine years I’ve put a lot of energy into writing while pastoring part-time.
    Two of my three books could be classified as “spiritual memoir.” Chasing the Divine in the Holy Land (Eerdmans, 2012) takes the reader along on a transformative pilgrimage to Israel and Palestine. Ruined (Tyndale, 2016) tells the story of a traumatic experience of sexual violence when I was 20 years old, and explores how that shaped my life and faith through the next decade. 
    My new book (InterVarsity Press, Jan 2020) is The #MeToo Reckoning: Facing the Church’s Complicity in Sexual Abuse and Misconduct. In this book I widen my lens to tell other people’s stories as well as my own, and intertwine those stories with scripture. 
    So far during this Covid-19 lock-in, I’ve been following up on podcasts and articles related to my #MeToo book launch. My speaking engagements have been cancelled, of course, so I’m doing more videos and webinars than I had planned to do.
    I would love to begin to think about “the next thing” but it’s been challenging to find mental and emotional bandwidth during a time of global distress!

    2. Which aspects of your work past and present might be particularly interesting for supporters of the Shiloh Project?
    My memoir Ruined explores how my religious upbringing shaped my response to a brutal rape by two African-American strangers — and the response of the Calvinist faith community in which I was submerged. The title is a synonym for shame, which engulfed me. My viewpoint alternates between the 20-something Ruth who felt ruined, and the self who became a pastor and found healing in a larger faith tradition.
    My more recent book is The #MeToo Reckoning: Facing the Church’s Complicity in Sexual Abuse and Misconduct. The interplay between current and ancient stories of abuse may be of particular interest to the members of the Shiloh Project. In the introduction I itemize the lenses I bring to the work: “My interest in sexual assault and faith is not academic. I wrote this book because I felt called by God to do so, and could find no excuse to refuse (although I did search for one). I bring certain lenses along with me. As a rape survivor, I am passionate about justice for victims and accountability for victimizers. As a former “good girl,” I am conversant with the conservative subculture. As a committed Christian, I am tenacious about loving Jesus, who first loved me. As a pastor, I spend my days swimming in Scripture. As a wife, I am one half of what turned out to be an egalitarian marriage, thirty-five years and counting. As a mother, my heart walks around outside my body with two daughters, a fact that will keep me poking and prodding the church toward greater gender equality as long as I live. Most of all, as an author, the response to my earlier writing about assault has softened my heart and thickened my skin. I will not be bullied by blowback or made callous to the plight of my sister survivors, and brothers as well. It is time for a reckoning.”

    3. How are you bearing up and what’s helping you most?
    I am in a very fortunate situation. I am “locked-in” with my husband, with whom I am very companionable. There is plenty of room and quiet for each of us to pursue our own work. We are doing yoga each day and going for walks in the fresh air as often as possible.
    We are very grateful for technology which allows us to see the faces of our loved ones — our two grown daughters who each live alone about an hour’s drive from our home, and our two aged mothers, each living in a facility a great distance from us.
    Every one of us is living with a great deal of pain and loss right now, on a personal level and a societal level. I find that naming these losses — even trivial ones — and then naming that for which I am grateful, helps me feel more centered and settled during this most unusual Lent. Because I tend toward the contemplative, the practice of praying for others is also essential.
    I also look forward to a few ounces of tawny port and a dose of Netflix each evening!

    4. Send us a picture to capture you or your work in these COVID-19 days.
    I do quite a bit of supply preaching, and had agreed to help a local Presbyterian congregation for a few weeks, which turned out to be the beginning of lockdown. The picture, taken by my husband, is of me preaching via FB Live in my study, with an improvised worship space created by a purple stole, a cross on the wall, and a few sprigs of forsythia.

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