Wednesday 21st – Friday 23rd May 2008

We set out on what was planned to be a nice and easy day, before going to a seminar on Thursday and Friday.  The only major thing we had to do was take Pamellah shopping for Akanyijuka, buying bulk goods that need transportation in a car.  The day quickly changed from easy to crazy starting with being pried out of bed by Pastor Edward’s arrival to go and see some land.  The Local Chairman (LC1) for the area that our current land is, had told Edward that someone nearby was wanting to sell their plot.  We saw the land and Pastor Edward managed to reduce the asking price of 6M UGX to a buying price of 2.5M UGX.  The block is only small, but it was decided that the land would be advantageous for the future so we decided to buy it.  So we got arrangements together for going to the lawyer to write up a contract, though it could not be signed today as the owner’s wife was in Kampala and she needed to sign for the contract to be legal.  The contract was signed on Friday when the owner’s wife arrived from Kampala. 

It had been arranged for an American lady, Linda Ikeda, involved in the seminar, to come to Akanyijuka to talk with the matrons about helping the children to associate with new parents and other counselling topics relating to orphans or adopted children.  Pastor Frank rang this morning while we were at the lawyers to arrange for them to come this afternoon at 2 pm also.  Edward and I have also been trying to arrange for a temporary/cheap structure to be built at our house for housing some chickens in an attempt to get some eggs and chickens for Akanyijuka happening; attempting to reduce running costs a little.  So after we had been at the lawyers we were busy trying to gather the required resources for a cheap, locally designed mud building.  By the time we got home with a supply of poles we had commandered from Henry for a low price, i.e. free, it was about time to head off to pick up Linda Ikeda from her hotel and head to Akanyijuka for her to speak with the matrons.

I was the lucky one who got to attempt to look after 32 children that I have a big problem communicating with, while the others sat in and listened.  It turns out that all things went smoothly, I had brought some printouts with school work on and they were all happy with that, though at one stage they got a bit noisy and Benalita had to come and tell them to be quiet.  Oops!  The talk that the matrons had was really good also, everyone said that the material was all really good, and we were given a lot of photocopies that covered a lot of other issues etc. that will be compiled for future sessions.

By the time we left there it was after 5:30 pm and we still had to take Pamellah shopping, so eventually once we had finished that it was around 6:45 pm and we thought that it would be easier to just go out for dinner, as we had not even gotten the things needed to make dinner, let alone having the desire to do so.  So that was another easy day gone crazy, hopefully not too many more of those.

Thursday and Friday we attended the seminar, which was good.  I managed to get myself utilised as a taxi for a couple of ladies that were doing other things around town.  This was ok though as the other things included counselling and other stuff for the drop-in centre and also again at Akanyijuka on Friday.  On Friday night we headed to Pastor Frank’s place and had a light dinner with the ladies from the seminar, who then left on Saturday.