Colonizers liked to refer to Uganda as the “Pearl of Africa” because of its verdant, equatorial abundance. Soil scientists note that only about 8 percent of the African continent is arable, and a good portion of that land is found in East Africa, especially Uganda. The volcanic soil is rich. Mango, avocado, papaya, cassava, and coffee varietals flourish. Oil too is now being siphoned from beneath the earth of Murchison Falls National Park, fueling tensions of development as world powers grab for more access; the East African pipeline promises economic prosperity, but at what cost for Earth’s compromised ecosystems?

Colleagues in Uganda resent the way I phrased that last line because they know that some form of economic prosperity generated from within their own borders is the only way to maintain post-colonial sovereignty and a seat at the tables of power. Cash crops and tourism prove insufficient sources for increased participation in global power dynamics, especially when the country is without a seaport for enhancing movement of goods. Development, then, means finding ways to participate in global markets.

As in America, so too in Uganda: National Parks protect land (for a time)1 but require money to manage through taxation and tourism. If land fails to be “productive” for market demands, then what is the land for anyway? The pressures remain that land must yield profit through productivity, even if that productivity is intended in aesthetic terms: Behold the wonder and beauty of Glacier National Park and spend your hard-won cash to ensure we have enough capital to manage what is left.2

The habitat of the mountain gorilla in southwestern Uganda is preserved today only because because of the decision to “gazette”3 (that is, legally designate) what remained of the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. Additionally, such actions further dehumanized already marginalized Twa communities of forest dwellers accorded neither human status nor land (by law) until years after the process of being removed from the forest and disallowed to return for hunting or harvesting.

Actions taken to create a national park or World Heritage Site are fraught with both ecosystem complexities and dehumanizing potential. If we are to exercise solidarity with our fellow companions on the way, as Ignatius of Loyola would have us consider one another, then respecting sovereignty and self-rule is necessary. Ugandans decide what to do with their land and their ecosystems.

Four Ugandan priests provide their own model of enacting sovereignty that is inspired by Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ through the Bethany Land Institute: Father Emmanual Katongole, S.J., Father Tony Rweza, S.J. (R.I.P.), Father Cornelius Ssempala, S.J., Archbishop Paul Ssemogerere.4 Together they are renewing the earth through regenerative agriculture and reforestation on 300+ acres of forest and farmland northwest of Kampala. The Institute is above all an educational initiative to provide practical hope to youth. Youth unemployment is devastatingly high and tied to global images of the good life, which looks urban and sophisticated.

Unfortunately, few jobs are available in Kampala and most who try to pursue the good life promised in urban cosmopolitanism rather end up in the slums, detached from family and more capacious forms of belonging common in Uganda. Following the lead of Pope Francis, they call their students caretakers since they are caring for our common home. As caretakers, they learn how to create regenerative systems for soil renewal, reforest through removal of invasive species and restoration of native plants, and participate in economic initiatives through micro-finance and selling of their organic products in markets. Instead of opting for the sale of family land for the sake of moving to the city, caretakers are taught that they can renew their family land through circular agricultural practices. I’ve witnessed the youth empowerment that happens when caretakers learn they can feed themselves, their families, and create sustainable economic livelihoods by remaining with their communities and their soil.

The 19 Bethany Land Institute (BLI) calls its students caretakers because they are attending to our common home, Sister Earth, as an expression of care directed toward our threefold relationship with God, neighbor, and the earth.5 Circular, organic, small-scale farming practices allow caretakers to learn to live sustainably, responsibly, and in an economically viable way that avoids exploitative practices. For a country historically haunted by high rates of youth unemployment, the prospect of a sustainable livelihood rooting one in the dignity of labor and the beauty of belonging to the soil offers an hopeful practical initiative capable of inspiring new visionaries for the future. During my time with the Lane Center this year, collaboration with colleagues in Uganda has shaped what I could share with USF and other communities in the Bay Area. In March, I spent time at the Bethany Land Institute.

While traveling with Fr.Emmanuel in northwestern Uganda, he reminded us of a Lugandan term for soil: “taka.” In traditional African cosmology, a newborn’s umbilical cord would be buried in the soil (the taka) at the place of one’s birth in their ancestral soil, thereby connecting each human intergenerationally to all others, past and present, ever rooting them in the soil. A local, one who belongs to the soil, is thus a “mutaka” and the people so belonging collectively are the “bataka,” the community. An ancient African cosmological question would thus be: To whom do we belong? For Ugandans, we belong firstly and foundationally to the taka, the soil, Mother Earth, as children of the soil; mutual belonging is thus enmeshed with ensoilment.6

Inspired by Pope Francis, guided by Catholic Social Teaching, and enacting practical solutions for youth empowerment, our friends in Uganda are renewing the Pearl of Africa. The Apostolic Preferences of the Jesuits, especially the desire to provide hope for youth, is on full display, and you are welcome at any time to bring your healing hands to the soil to participate also as a wounded healer7 in the spirit of Ignatius.

1. Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are all undergoing changes in their protected regions to profit from oil- and mineral-rich land within those regions.

2. See Ken Burns, Advertising a National Park (https://wvia.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/advertising-a-national-park/ken-burns-the-national-parks-video/).

3. See Thomas G. Hart, Gazetting and Historic Preservation in Kenya (www.nps.gov/crps/CRMJournal/Winter2007/article.html).

4. https://bethanylandinstitute.org/

5. See Laudato Si’, par. 66 (www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papafrancesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html).

6. See Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, par.2 (https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html).

7. Carl Jung first used wounded healer. See Jung Carl. Fundamental Questions of Psychotherapy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1951.

CYRUS PAUL OLSEN III, DPhil. is the Lo Schiavo Chair in Catholic Social Thought in the Lane Center for Catholic Social Thought and the Ignatian Tradition at the University of San Francisco this academic year (2022–2023). He is also an Affiliate Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School through the Human Network Initiative and the Dhand Lab, a Clinical Neurology Lab specializing in stroke health. Together they are extending the Dhand Lab’s expertise in biopsychosocial health to Uganda through a Templeton World Charity Foundation grant for the next three years. The grant is titled Buffering, Porosity and Brain Health in Uganda and includes social network mapping for behavioral health that includes mapping cultural and spiritual factors influencing belonging. After this academic year, he returns to The University of Scranton as an associate professor of theology/religious Studies and affiliate faculty in health humanities.