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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