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

Find The City Kid and more Christian books for teens and younger children on the Dernier Publishing facebook page!

John Ouma, the ‘City Kid’ himself, has been brought back to life! He has been given a new life in an e-reader, now available in the Amazon kindle store. 

Click her to buy the kindle book from Amazon.co.uk (£): The City Kid from Amazon UK

Click here to buy from Amazon.com (($): The City Kid from Amazon.com

How do I feel about this? Fantastic! He has been my fictional friend for over 40 years, although in recent years he has been rather forgotten. Okay, I admit it: he had been consigned to history.

It was way back in1970 when I first got the idea of writing a sort of African ‘prodigal son’ story, while I was teaching in a Ugandan secondary school. I can’t recall how I settled on the name ‘John Ouma’. Maybe it was suggested by a colleague of mine named Moses Ochwo. Anway, the name Ouma is a genuine Ugandan name commonly found in certain regions of the country.

I didn’t want an unusual name because the hero (or is he an anti-hero? – you decide!) of the story was meant to be a sort of Everyman figure. He was intended to embody attitudes and experiences which were, and are, common to so many people – especially the young as they face the choices and challenges of growing up.

At the same time, John Ouma is also a very particular young man, and I hope the new edition of The City Kid, which has been extensively rewritten since the first version back in the ‘70s, has given the main character a bit more depth and individuality. Yes, he is typical in many ways, but he is also his own man in very particular circumstances.

I’ve tried to bring this ‘city kid’ into the 21^st century. His office (unlike the one where he worked in the first edition) now has computers. Mobile telephone networks cover most of the country, even the upcountry village of Mkandu where he has grown up. But his ambitions remain the same: to make it ‘big’ in the city, to enjoy the company of girlfriends, to drive a sporty car and to make a financial success of his life. And the same fault lines appear: his weakness when faced with temptation, his proneness to overspending and debt and his reluctance to admit his need of God.

So here he is, John Ouma, the city kid, who was dead but is now alive again. Even if you have never seen or even heard of the first edition, please download your copy from Amazon and discover why this young man from a small African village can speak to all of us, in any continent and from any background. 

Click her to buy the kindle book from Amazon.co.uk (£): The City Kid from Amazon UK

Click here to buy from Amazon.com (($): The City Kid from Amazon.com

Clive Lewis (author)

 

The City Kid cover!

This is the brand new cover of the City Kid!

Hello! Janet Wilson here, founder of Dernier Publishing. Here at Dernier we produce Christian books for children and young people with the aim of encouraging and inspiring them in their faith, and to show non-church kids what they are missing!

I am delighted to welcome you to The City Kid blog - author Clive Lewis and I will both be bringing you information about the book - do read back at Clive's previous posts, with some lovely photos from the archives of a very young John Sentamu when the book was a play! Can you recognise him? :-) I understand he was excellent in both his roles (producer and lead actor)!

I was first alerted to the existence of The City Kid by a lady who knew the book from the '70s. Looking for Christian books for students, she stumbled upon Dernier, and wanted us to take a look. So we did . . . and I'm delighted that after discussions with Clive, we have now added The City Kid to our list of titles.

Clive has completely revised and updated The City Kid manuscript from the '70s original. We hope to be able to bring you the ebook version by the end of April, and will begin the paperback version as soon as finances allow, so please pray!

The City Kid is a story of redemption. A young lad moves from his quiet rural village to the city to find excitement. At first John has a great time; a good job with the government, nights in hotels with his beautiful girlfriend, a fast car - life is great. But as he falls into debt he gets caught up in corruption, and from then on his life starts to fall apart. Eventually, deserted by his girlfriend, jobless and penniless, John is in despair. But just as there seems to be no way forward, an old friend from school shares the good news of Jesus with John, who finds new life in Christ.

Young people need to hear this story of hope today as much as they ever did. I pray that many will be touched by the eternal message of salvation by God's grace.

Please pray with me and consider buying copies of this book for your young people's group - the harvest is ready. Be part of it.

Janet Wilson

Janet

P.S. Please follow the blog so we can keep you up to date with developments. Thank you!

Clive's testimony

MY CHRISTIAN BACKGROUND in brief

Brought up in a church-going family, I was familiar from a young age with Christian teaching, becoming a member of a local ‘Covenanters’ group and even trying out a spot of Sunday school teaching in my teens. However, I was becoming increasingly uneasy about Christian certainties, and, partly due to the influence of a brilliant but sceptical English teacher at school, I began to question the truth of the Gospel message. Faced with the prospect of going to university and, as I thought, encountering unanswerable challenges to my struggling faith, I asked God to make it plain that He existed or otherwise to withdraw quietly from the scene! I didn’t want to lose my faith but I feared that was the likely outcome.

Fortunately, when I went up to Cambridge, I fell in with a group of lively, committed Christians and in addition was able to hear sermons and talks that addressed my intellectual doubts. The Gospel really did make sense! That first year at university was crucial, and, although I cannot point to a particular time or place, I came to an assurance of Christ’s presence and a determination to follow him, as best I could, in the years ahead. That was over 50 years ago!

Going to Uganda after university began another formative period of my life. I learnt so much from the African Christians who befriended me and, during the years I was abroad, I managed to divest myself of some of my cultural narrowness. I also found (much to my surprise) that my creative instincts were being harnessed in God’s service.

The ongoing keynote of my Christian life can be summed up in the phrase “Work in Progress”. Discipleship isn’t a one-off and it’s not something bestowed on you like an honorary degree. So I am still pressing on, to use St Paul’s phrase (see Philippians 3.12-14), and still trying to grow in my knowledge of the Lord.

Clive Lewis

City Kid Genesis 2

It’s time for another riddle.

Question: WHAT IS THE LINK BETWEEN a YOUTH FESTIVAL, an ARCHBISHOP and man named EDWIN LUWASO?

Answer: It’s THE CITY KID again.

Somehow, the director of Scripture Union of Uganda, who was based in Kampala – a long way from the place where I lived – heard about The City Kid and listened to a recording we had made. By ‘recording’ I mean something on a very basic reel-to-reel recorder (forget about modern digital technology), using its built-in microphone. Despite the poor quality of the said recording, he was impressed by what he heard and had the idea of using it as the centre piece of a Christian youth festival, celebrating the work of Scripture Union and reaching out with the Gospel to the young people of Kampala and beyond. The festival, to be spread out over a long weekend, was to be held in an indoor stadium, normally used for sporting events. The programme was to include school-based choirs, competitions and evangelistic talks given by the Rev Festo Kivengere, a celebrated evangelist from western Uganda.

But there was a problem: how to bring The City Kid to a public stage, with a large audience, without it appearing like a lecture with musical breaks. So it was decided to adapt it as a drama, with the main parts being acted out, but still with a musical group to render the various songs during the performance.

This is where the ARCHBISHOP enters the stage. Well, he wasn’t an archbishop at the time. He was a student of law at the University of Makerere in Kampala and an active member of the Christian Union there. He accepted the challenge of adapting the story for the stage and directing the performance. He was also the one chosen to take on the lead role of John Ouma, the city kid. His name? JOHN SENTAMU. In case you haven’t heard, he is the current Archbishop of York – a man of many talents but, for the purpose of this account, someone with a great stage presence.

John Sentamu in the title role of The City Kid'

I had planned to be on leave in Britain during the weeks leading up to the Festival, so I wasn’t around to help with preparation. Actually, I was happy to hand over all the arrangements to the committee, and entrusted the dramatisation to John Sentamu and his friends. I did manage to see a performance of the play just a couple of days after I got back from leave (this was in June, 1971, in case you were wondering about dates). It was very well done and, according to later feed-back, made a strong impression on many people who attended the Festival.

Now I have to retrace my footsteps. In the year before the youth festival, I had been trying to adapt the simple storyline of The City Kid into a novel. It had been suggested to me that it would work as fiction, without the musical accompaniment. The first version was completed by the end of 1970 and the manuscript dispatched to the Africa Christian Press, which was (and still is) based in Achimota, Ghana.

This is where a man named EDWIN LUWASO makes an appearance. Well, actually he can’t appear because he, like the novel, is a fiction. I invented the name, adapting my own to make it sound a bit African. Why did I do that? I wished the novel to be read by the potential publishers as if coming from an African writer: if it was obviously from the hand of a mzungu (white person), it would have failed and best be forgotten. However, I never intended to maintain a deceit, and, once ACP had expressed an intention to publish, I came clean about my identity. They replied

We are sorry you are not a Ugandan but are still interested in publishing your manuscript because of the merit of the story.

In the end the pen-name Edwin Luwaso was retained on the cover of the novel, with an explanation that it was a nom de plume. The novel was published in 1973 during my final year of teaching in Uganda. The book was subsequently reprinted twice but eventually the publishers felt it was time to call it a day.

City Kid - Genesis

Clive Lewis

Question: WHAT IS THE LINK BETWEEN a CHEAP GUITAR, a PARABLE OF JESUS and a SCHOOL IN UGANDA?

Answer: THE CITY KID

Question: WHAT IS THE CITY KID?

Answer: It’s a novel for teenagers, soon to be published by Dernier Publishing. But let me explain a bit more…

First of all, the CHEAP GUITAR. It was a steel-stringed acoustic instrument, with a twangy tone, and not much to look at. But it was given to me – and you don’t look a gift horse etc. The problem was: I had never played a guitar before and was more or less clueless about music – except I liked to listen to a wide range, from Bach to rock’n’roll. So I taught myself some chords, practised a lot (in the midst of my teaching job), and eventually was able to accompany the choruses sung at the school’s Scripture Union group. Let me make it clear: I was pretty naff at that time but it was better than nothing (so they assured me.)

A word about the SCHOOL. It was in Uganda and bore the splendid name Kiira College, Butiki. It was on a hilltop, not too far from a source of the River Nile at a town named Jinja. And on a clear day you could see Lake Victoria in the distance. I had gone out to teach English and Literature for a couple of years (in the end I stayed for over seven years, but never mind that now) and, among other activities, I was put in charge of the small Scripture Union group which met on Sunday afternoons in one of the classrooms.

After a while my fingers got the itch – to compose my own Christian songs, that is. My first efforts were awful, partly because I knew so few chords! Also, the words I wrote to go with the music were too full of clichés – too many familiar phrases and expressions. I really wanted to write words and music that sounded a bit different from existing songs: material that would encourage people to listen and think about the content.

After my first two years in Uganda, I returned to the U.K. for a period of leave and then flew back to a different school in the east of the country. In my baggage was a brand new Spanish-style acoustic guitar. It had as much nicer tone than the old guitar and was much kinder to the fingers, especially if you wanted to go beyond strumming and develop finger-style. So I was all set – but for what?

This is where the PARABLE OF JESUS comes in. Not any parable but a particular one – the Prodigal Son: the story about the son who demands his share of the inheritance from his dad (who has plenty of years left in him) and goes and blows it all in wild living in the city. Finally, fed up (metaphorically) with eating pigs’ food, he comes to his senses and returns home, in a very contrite mood, expecting to become a servant in his dad’s household. Instead he gets a grand home-coming celebration. You must know the story – no need for any more detail.

Well, it struck me that the lure of city life was very powerful among the young people of Uganda. Most of the pupils whom I taught came from poor rural backgrounds and they knew that the best way to escape village life was a) to get a good education and b} to secure a well-paid job in a town. And the town that had the most opportunities was the capital city, Kampala. So most of the well-educated young men and women were attracted to work there, preferably in an office in one of the newly constructed high-rise blocks.

I struck me that The Prodigal Son parable had a lot of applications in the context of Uganda, which – in those heady post-independence days – was keen to recruit newly qualified young people to the ranks of the government and civil service. So I sat down to write a sort of Africanised version of Jesus’ parable. I decided to call it THE CITY KID. As I developed the idea, I somehow conceived the plan to compose songs that would fit the narrative. (I can’t recall the process now, but I’m sure God had a lot to do with it!). Eventually I had nine songs that would accompany the telling of the story. They’re not great songs and, if you heard them, you would quickly note a variety of influences in the music: from rock and country-and-western to folk and ballad. But the tunes were all original and the words complemented the experiences of young John Ouma, the name I gave to the African prodigal son.

So now I had a storyline and a set of songs. (By the way, I should mention that this was a long time ago, when I was in my twenties, but there’s no need to labour this point.) What next? I wondered. Fortunately, I had struck up a good friendship with a Ugandan colleague, named Moses, who was a much better guitarist than me. He helped me to choose a small group of senior students at the school with singing ability. Together we practised the songs – two guitars, an African drum and five or six voices - and at last we were ready for our first performance in front of a large proportion of the pupils at our school.

It went well, even though there was no acting involved: Moses and I took it in turns to read the narrative and, at key moments, we all burst into song, with the drum accentuating the rhythms of the music. Titles of the songs included Come In and Enjoy Yourself, No Way to Go, and the theme song The City Kid, which begins with the immortal (only joking) words:

You think that with your modern clothes

And the way you can dance,

With your miniskirted girlfriends -

that life’s game of chance…

The presentation lasted about an hour and was well received. Subsequently, the group performed it at neighbouring secondary schools until The City Kid became quite well known in the area.

The story of The City Kid might have ended there – and I would have been well pleased even if it had gone no further, because the story had presented a challenge to many school children in the part of Uganda where I lived. But it wasn’t the end of the story by any means.

It’s time for another riddle.

Question: WHAT IS THE LINK BETWEEN a YOUTH FESTIVAL, an ARCHBISHOP and man named EDWIN LUWASO?

More next time!