Tuesday 18th September 2007

Today we headed to Rukungiri to vist Henry’s family farm.  It was a long drive – only 2 and a half hours, but with the pot holes speed bumps and otherwise generally bad roads – it becomes a very long two hours.  It was great to get there and see the country side, very much like Malany area back in Queensland. 

The ladies there had cooked us a deliscious local meal, and it was great to have some beef that was cooked well.  The beef here is terrible – but somehow the locals can manage to make it ok.  We also had our first ever sampling of millet bread.  Here’s a picture of Phil with the Manzi’s:

Monday 17th September 2007

Today was a fairly quiet day, I had a drum lesson with Fred and then headed to catch the end of the drop in centre.  I caught up with a few people around town and bought a few things that were needed for Akanyijuka but not too much more.

The Week in Review

Sorry all, I have been busy and lazy, and we had no power mid-week so I failed to post for a bit.  I have posted the last week in one:

Saturday 8th Today was a normal Saturday; I had drum lessons with a couple of students and then in the evening had practice for tomorrow’s service.

Sunday 9th Jackson was still away in Kampala today and had asked for me to take care of the service, so I enlisted Phil to preach and we just looked after the music side of things.  Phil was good preaching and everything else went well with the service.

Monday 10^th  We went to drop Kathryn at Akanyijuka as normal, planning to visit the drop-in centre afterwards, only to run into Edward when we were there.  He took us to see some land about 10 km out of town.  The land had a slope to it and was not the best for building as it would require excavation, but there were some nice blocks attached to it that could be good for the future, so we decided to keep looking but to keep it in mind.

After this we took Prudence to the doctors as she has had heavy breathing since we took her in, and she had started to get some fungus type sores on her body and one on her face.  To my surprise we were seen by two local and one foreign doctor, which was good as we had been told to ask for a white doctor if we had children with breathing problems.  As it turned out Prude had a clear chest and no heart problems.  Both problems were put down to being from either the bad case of worms she had or to malnutrition, which could be good or bad.  Good if that is the case as both of these things are being taken care off; bad because this seems to be all they ever say.

Tuesday 11^th  Today was a great day for Kathryn & I, it was our anniversary and we visited Bushara Island Camp, an island on Lake Bunyonyi.  This was a great day out and cost us less than 30,000 shillings, that’s 21 dollars for a boat trip and lunch.  Here are a few photos of our trip to the Island:

 

  

Today we lost power at around 4:30 pm, this was the beginning of the longest outage that Pam and Eddie said they had ever seen, we think they are planning to keep power in Kampala and forget about the rest of the country while dignitaries are here for CHOGM and this week’s power outage was a test run!Wednesday 12^th  Prudence seems so much better today, so perhaps the doctors may have gotten it right!!!  Kathryn said that Prudence was happier and more active in class than she had ever seen her.
I planned, and managed to get to the drop-in centre today, and was dropped there when Erica was going there for an interview with a perspective matron.  Pam, Eddie and Pastor Edward are doing a great job with the boys there.  When I arrived, even though I had only been there three times at the most, I was greeted by a few of the boys with joyful hugs.  I think the boys are glad to have some people just love them and treat them like people that are valued.  Here are a few photos of the morning at the drop-in centre:

I walked to Akanyijuka to meet the rest of the team at 12:30 to wish Joyce a Happy Birthday.  Here are a few photos from the little celebration:

 

This afternoon when I went to pick up Kathryn we got a bit of a surprise.  About one week ago Erica had interviewed a matron and we were waiting to hear back from her Pastor to get a reference from them about this matron.  Edward knew the Pastor and had called for a reference before we made a decision, though we did think that she would be good.  When she was being interviewed she was told Pastor Edward would contact her to come if she got the job.  So in typical Ugandan style wires were crossed and the Pastor assumed that the call was to tell the lady that she had the job, so to everyone’s surprise she arrived this afternoon with a suitcase ready to start.  We told her that she could stay the evening and that we would let her know what was going on in the morning.

Sam came around in the afternoon for some drum lessons as the Wards were coming for dinner later.  It was encouraging to see that he had actually listened to some of the things I told him last time.  He is actually quite good on the drums, of course he plays local beats really well, but struggles a bit with rock beats, but gets them fairly easily when I show him.  The power came on for about an hour and a half in the afternoon also. Thursday  13^th Last night we had discussed the situation with the matron and this morning we decided that we would actually take two matrons at once.  The second one was the one that was interviewed yesterday morning; everyone involved in the interview process seemed to think she was really good.  We decided to take two as this would make training them and other logistical things easier.  So we hired them both and will train them over the next two weeks, while we prepare everything else for some new children.  We are now at our full limit as far as matrons go, we just have to give them all their full quoter of children.
There is a buzz in the air now, with the new matrons and an added urgency to getting some land to build a more purpose built property.  The place we have now is going to hold the children we are going to get but we will need somewhere bigger to make things easier for everyone, and to expand more.
In the early afternoon I went with Pastor Edward to get some bulk supplies, and the rest of the afternoon was spent setting up a room for the new matrons to stay in. Finally at around 8.30pm the power came back on and stayed on! Friday 14^th  Today we were getting Quinton to drop us at the drop-in centre after Kathryn was dropped at Akanyijuka, only to be greeted by Pastor Edward to go and look at another piece of property that he had found.  Today’s property looked good, it was level and almost ready to build on, but it was a bit small and was not on the road.  Being small is not a big problem as most plots are small and there is a good chance we could buy surrounding plots.  Being off the road is a problem as we would be in a fix, the people owning the property between us and the road would most likely sell, but would have us in a situation where they could ask for a higher price.  We decided to keep looking.

We did get back in time to spend a bit of time at the drop-in centre.  It is good to spend time with the boys, they seem to really enjoy us being there, and it is good to hear of different situations that the boys are in.  Not that it is good that they are on the streets, but that Pam and Eddie, and Pastor Edward are helping them, and that what we are doing is helping to prevent simular situations with the children we have helped so far. Saturday 15^th A normal Saturday again.  Drum lessons and practice.  Today though we also met with Pastor Edward and went to look at another block of land.  When we first got there I thought it was great, probably because it was on the hill on the other side of town from our house and we could see it from our place.  But after a think about things, it was not really very good at all.  There was no water nearby and we would have to truck water in, and the land needed some excavation, and looked a bit rocky. Sunday 16th It was fantastic to have Jackson back this weekend and to only have to play in church with no other worries!

Friday 7th September 2007

Finally I got to get down to spend the day in Kathryn’s class!!  This was great to get to spend time with all five young children.  I must of sturred things up a bit as Kathryn said they were a bit noisier than normal.  A job well done I say!!!  Then in the afternoon after school we took all the children up the road in the van to play in the field, it was great to see them running and playing unlimited by fences and such.  I think we have reached our limit of cramming children into the car though, any more and we’ll have to walk.

I posted some photo’s of the days activities on my flicker site.  Click on the flickr link in the sidebar or click this link to check out the new ones in a slide show:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/98141030@N00/sets/72157601789036037/show/

(NOTE there are some previous photos in that slide show also)

Thursday 6th September 2007

Today was a pretty low key day for me, although not for Kathryn.  She had to share at the ladies fellowship that her and Erica have been having with the matrons and some other ladies as well as preparing for another keyboard lesson.  I did not have to do a lesson for guitar tonight as Jackson is away at the moment and I even swindled my way out of doing dinner (it was Kathryn’s & my turn) by asking if Phil wanted to cook tonight.  This worked out really well as when Phil and I went down town to get supplies for that and a few other things we saw Henry and Harriet and invited them for dinner.  Man I am a shifty character indeed, because Henry must be one of the biggest eaters in Kabale.  I am glad also that it was not our turn, but the Siddans’, to do the dishes; although Phil is doing a fine job with cooking some good food, he certainly can leave a bit of mess behind as evidenced by the photo below (this was after already cleaning up the preparation dishes himself):

Tuesday 4th & Wednesday 5th September 2007

Tuesday

Today we met up with Edward to touch base after he had been away in Kampala for a while.  He was going away again till Friday so it was good to catch up with him.  Today I met with Pastor Emmanuel from PAG church and had my first lesson in a bible course I have enrolled in.

Wednesday

Fred came up for a drum lesson today and then in the afternoon I went for another lesson with Pastor Emmanuel at PAG.

Monday 3rd September 2007

What a waste of a day!!!  Today we headed to Mbarara to get our visa’s extended, the Siddans’ ran out tomorrow and our later in the week so we thought it would be good to just make one trip and all do it at once.  After our almost two hour trip we arrived at immigration only to discover that the only two people that can extend our visa’s are both in Kampala today and they will not be back till tomorrow.  One good thing that did happen was that we got to go to City Top Restaurant, our favourite local (within 300 Kms) Indian resaurant.

Saturday 1st & Sunday 2nd September 2007

Saturday morning Erica & Quinton headed down to Akanyijuka to interview the perspective new matron that Erica met yesterday.  Things seemed to go well, we are just waiting for Pastor Edward to get back from Kampala early this week sometime, and ask his opinion as he knows her also.  So we may have a new matron soon, which will mean that we will be taking in more children also. 

While I was down at PAG church giving drum lessons I ran into the Pastor there, Pastor James, and organised for myself to do some bible college course with him.  Jackson had talked to me about this course and I was interested but did not know if I could get on at all, so it worked out to my advantage that I was helping out Sam from his church.

In the evening on Saturday night Kathryn was going to go for a shower when she turned on the hot water for some reason nothing came out.  We didn’t know exactly where the problem was, so in the morning I tried fiddling with a few tapes on the hot water system.  Not to my surprise this did nothing, so I tried turning on the hot water in the bath tub and water came out quicker than ever before, and when it turned hot I tried switching it to the shower.  As it turns out we now have better hot water in the shower then ever before, not quite up to the Siddans’ standard, but we are happy with it.

Sunday was another busy day for us, Jackson was away, so we played and I was preaching, definitely not my best effort, but hopefully no one will hold it against me.  Pamela was down to lead the service, but was away as her mother was sick, so we talked Fred into doing it and it was good to see him step up to do the job.  There seemed to be a bit more seriousness to him than before, I guess some people just need a little nudge to see that they can actually do some things.