We are very grateful to  The Most Reverend & Right Honourable Dr. John Sentamu, Archbishop of York for this foreword to The City Kid:

"It was back in 1971 when I first heard of The City Kid. At the time I was studying for a law degree at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. I had been active in the university Christian group and, together with other fellow-students, used to help with Scripture Union activities in local secondary schools.

The director of Scripture Union in Uganda at that time, Albert Taylor, had the idea of holding a Christian Youth Festival over a long weekend. The main speaker was to be Rev. Festo Kivengere, a well-known and highly respected Ugandan evangelist. In addition, there was to be a musical presentation entitled The City Kid, which had been written by a young British teacher working in the east of the country. His name was Clive Lewis, though few, if any, of us in Kampala knew anything about him. But he had written a powerful story, with accompanying songs, about a Ugandan who, on leaving school, moves to the capital and finds that he cannot cope with the temptations of city life. The ‘high life’ that he leads paves the way to debt, broken relationships and corruption in high places.

The story – a loose adaptation of the Prodigal Son parable in the Gospels – seemed to be very relevant to the lives of young people in Africa, but the problem was: how to present it on a stage. It existed only as a prose narrative with songs. It fell to me and a small group of friends to adapt it for the stage, and I had the privilege of acting the lead role, John Ouma a.k.a. the City Kid. So you could say that John Sentamu was the original City Kid – but only as an actor!

The staging of The City Kid in Lugogo Stadium, Kampala, in June 1971 is still a vivid memory for me – and, I’m sure, for many others who participated in the production or who were present in the audience at the Youth Festival.

Later on, Clive Lewis developed the story into a short novel, first published in 1973 and subsequently reprinted twice. The book was widely distributed in a number of African countries. Meanwhile, in Uganda, The City Kid drama took on a life of its own, being adapted for performance in a number of secondary schools over many years. Some of the accompanying songs are still remembered to this day.

I am delighted that the story is now being brought to a new generation of readers. The text has been updated and extensively rewritten, but the essential story remains the same – of a young man, brimming with ambition and self-confidence, who is overwhelmed by the temptations and problems of city life until he finds new hope in Jesus Christ. This is a fast-moving story with plenty of thrills and spills, but, more importantly, it confronts with honesty the harsh reality of surviving (or perhaps not surviving) in an unforgiving, dog-eat-dog environment. And, above all, it shows that apparently hopeless situations can be redeemed through the intervening love of Jesus Christ."

The Most Reverend & Right Honourable Dr. John Sentamu, Archbishop of York

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