Growing up on a farm in southeast Kansas, Kelly Klubeck never gave much thought to traveling abroad.
And he’d certainly never even dreamed of helping support an entire generation of young women in need, thousands of miles away, in eastern Africa.
“But when God calls, you answer that call,” Klubeck said.
Klubeck, pastor at Iola’s First Church of the Nazarene, will speak Saturday about his work with the House of Grace, a center for unwed mothers and their children in Kabale, Uganda.
Saturday’s get-together will be held at the John Silas Bass North Community Center, 505 N. Buckeye St. A pulled pork dinner will start at 6 p.m., followed by Klubeck’s presentation at 7 o’clock. He’ll be joined by Victor Kukakira, the driving force behind the House of Grace’s launch a few years ago.
Uganda, a landlocked country in eastern Africa, is considered a developing country. It has the second-youngest population in the world, with more than three quarters of its people below the age of 35, according to the U.N. children’s agency.
Most students quit school as teens, simply to get jobs for menial tasks like busting rocks, simply to help support their families.
Most homes don’t own such necessities as refrigerators, “so if you get fresh meat, you better eat it that day,” Klubeck said.
In reality, meat is a luxury few can afford, with most families subsisting daily on porridge or corn mush.
“The thing is, their food actually tastes amazing,” Klubeck laughed.
THE UGANDAN society traditionally shuns women who get pregnant out of wedlock.
“Up until about six years ago, if you had an unwed mother, her parents had the right to kill them,” Klubeck noted, a practice only recently made illegal by the Ugandan government.
But even without capital punishment, the shame heaped upon those young women still is stifling. Many are rejected altogether from their families, banished to the street with little more than the clothes on their back.
That’s where the House of Grace comes in.
For the past several years, Kukakira has housed those mothers and children, giving them a place to live, get an education and find a route back into society.
But with limited space — the center is barely larger than the Nazarene Church’s fellowship hall — for upwards of 50 mothers, Kukakira decided to expand.
