Celebrating Alice

As with all the best stories, it started with a cake. Picture the scene: a group of women gathered around, assessing the first batch of sweet-smelling treats emerging from the oven as together, they set up their new café. But Alice’s story isn’t the idyllic tale of a group of friends fulfilling a long-awaited dream. Jambo café was born out of necessity – and the journey to success certainly wasn’t easy.

Alice lives in Kasese, a town in Western Uganda. It’s home, but that doesn’t mean life there is without its challenges. Those challenges are ones Alice sees up close through her husband Alphonse’s work as a pastor. “Alphonse does a great job,” explains Alice. “He works with people on the streets, like those who get drunk. And sometimes he works with street children, helping them.”

A typical night for Alphonse might look like transporting people under the influence of alcohol or drugs back to a safe space at his church to recover, or getting accommodation and a means of income to children on the street who had been orphaned or who had run away from home. That’s in between his day job of equipping pastors to share the Bible. “When I look at him, I can really see that God gives some people to do tasks that you can’t manage,” says Alice.

It’s this same work ethic displayed by Alphonse that infuses all that Alice has achieved too. In fact, Alphonse’s work is intricately tied up with Alice’s plans to start the café at the centre of this story. Although Alice was already selling beaded jewellery at home and working as a mother to six children, with Alphonse’s work as a pastor taking up much of his time, money was hard to come by. Alice could see other hardworking women at her church struggling to make an income too.

“To tell you the truth, we didn’t have that culture of saving,” explains Alice. “I was doing my crafts and I would get customers once in a while. So you’re always hungry. There was never enough money and there are a lot of things you would love to have.”

It was BMS World Mission worker Bethan Shrubsole who first changed Alice’s mind about what she could do with even a limited amount of savings. Bethan (now serving with BMS in Chad) was at that time serving in Uganda, and soon a group of women formed around her, looking for a business idea to invest in. “So when Bethan came up with the idea of a café, I saw it as an opportunity,” says Alice. “I could sell my crafts from there, and indeed it happened. I’ve been selling crafts since Jambo was started.”

Crafts weren’t the only thing available at Jambo Café. Alice’s menu was filled with mouth-watering treats, from her famous chocolate brownies and pumpkin pie to pizza and cookies. While a grant from BMS supporters bought Alice her oven, it was savings from the ladies themselves that purchased the fridge, plates, cutlery and cups for Jambo’s grand opening. It wasn’t long before traditional Ugandan fare like matoke and pilau made it onto the menu too, making the café truly accessible for locals as well as for tourists and passers-through. More recently, Alice has also offered a service making wedding and celebration cakes, a favourite with families from Kasese.

When you ask Alice what makes Jambo special, the answers are wide-ranging. Perhaps it’s the chocolate brownies, the only ones available in the whole western region of Uganda. Perhaps it’s the warm welcome you receive from the Jambo team, always with smiles on their faces and a listening ear. Perhaps it’s the Alpha course she was able to run at the café with the help of Alphonse. “Because of what I have seen, how I’ve been loved, how I have good friends, that’s why I share my faith,” she adds. But for International Women’s Day, we’d like to focus in on another aspect of what makes Jambo Café so special: the way Alice has used her proceeds to bless others.

“We saw that other women had helped us to begin Jambo. So, we thought that skill should continue to help others also,” Alice explains. “Like recently, there was a widow whose husband used to stay here in Kasese before he passed on last year, in July. So she had a hard time because when her husband died, he had children from another woman.” When Alice and her team saw the situation this young widow was in, with four children to look after, their hearts went out to her. “She had no help from the husband’s side, so we sat down and thought that it would be better to help her. She’s only 26.” Alice saw the young lady had tailoring skills, so together, the women of Jambo Café purchased her enough fabrics to get started. Helping this young lady reminded Alice of how she started out with Jambo Café. “If it wasn’t for BMS supporters, then we wouldn’t have been helped. If it wasn’t for Jambo, then the young widow wouldn’t have been helped. Even she is also going to help others now… That’s the blessing of giving help,” Alice explains.

As Alice reflects on her hopes for the future, she talks about the sunflowers she hopes to plant outside of Jambo Café, and the wish she has for every woman in Uganda to have the chance to earn something for herself. Her final words, however, are for BMS supporters. “To the people in the UK, I say thank you for your good hearts,” says Alice. “If it wasn’t for BMS, Bethan wouldn’t have come to share this idea with us. Now women [in Kasese] have seen that there is nothing even a small money can’t make possible.”