Rev. Canon Nkesiga wins Christian book competition

The Uganda Faith Association announced winners of their first  Christian writing competition at Ndere Troupe Centre, Kisasi, which started  from  August and ended in  November  last year.

Rev Diana M. Nkesiga, of St. Francis Chapel Makerere, Kabanyoro Agricultural College won the competitions with her manuscript "Woven in Spirals" taking away 550 dollars.   

Joy Ochwo, a lay leader at Kitezi Church of Uganda was the second in competition.  

Her manuscript "The Storm" won her 130 dollars while Lillian Tibasiima the third in competition a retired literature teacher earned 100 dollars with her  manuscript "Saving Love."

Rev. Nkesiga said the award encouraged her to write more books.

"It is a jump starter into becoming a real writer," Nkesiga revealed amidst excitement.

"Sometimes you don't have the confidence to start but once you are recognized you gain courage to write the story and to begin publishing."

Her manuscript revolves around women and ministry.  Being the ground breaker in the Anglican Church, Rev. Nkesiga says she has a story to tell that will help impact other women.

In the book she shares one time when she was discouraged by male church leaders to be on the pulpit because her pregnancy was very huge, which sent questions in her mind. 

Ochwo says her manuscript was birthed from people she counseled.

She was inspired to write because of the stories that traumatized her when she counseled them.

Someone encouraged her to write them if she wanted to release the trauma and stress that came out of such stories.

Ochwo hopes the book will inspire people to deal with their stress and losses in a healthy and acceptable way so that they can go one with their lives.

For Tibasiima, her fiction book bases on abortion books she read:  one of them being   Francis Rivers' ‘Redeeming Love,' which inspired her to write "Saving Love."

Another experience that helped her is the awful time she had at Mulago Referral Hospital, Kawempe when she miscarried and was taken to the theater.   

"The nurse told me to climb a bed, which was stained with blood," Tibasiima recalls.

"She then proceeded to carry out the operation with no tranquilizers." That painful experience formed the basis for her fiction story.

Lillian Tindyebwa, one of the organizers and founders of the Quiet Garden publishers says the competition was open to all Christians.

"We requested interested parties to hand in Christian manuscripts last year in an advert we ran in New Vision paper so that they can join the competition," she quipped.

Tindyebwa the author of "Recipe for Disaster," and also a literature lecturer at Kabale University says the winner of the competition would have been announced much earlier, but because of the Corona virus pandemic, it was impossible.

Besides that,  Precious Colette Kemigisha,  the  Editor and creative writing tutor at the association  reveals that the winning authors   won  because of  the originality of the  story , good language and dialogue in addition  to  appropriate use of  metaphors.

There was a reading from, Jason Turyahabwa, with his published book "A Journey of a Single Father," which caused a wave of laughter in the small audience. 

He gave sneak bits of how he met his girl friend in the garden uprooting huge cassava tubers and requesting readers to read the rest of the story from the book.

Uganda Faith Writer's Associations trains any person who wants to be a writer regardless of their back ground and encourages them to put down their stories.

"You don't have to have studied art subjects or courses, but also sciences people are encouraged to write," Tindyebwa said. 

The   competition was sponsored by Tyndale House Foundation, U.S.A.