Thursday 31st July 2008

A day of visitations:

First visit: In the morning we had a visit from Pam, an Irish lady that is here near Kabale doing a six week stint helping some one else nearby that is trying to start a community based program to help orphaned children.  She visited Akanyijuka and Immanuel Drop-In Centre to see what we are doing in both places.  She was very impressed and asked if she could bring other people to visit to try and give them something to aim for.  It was a good encouragement for us.

Second visit: Edward and I visited the architect to see the plans he had come up with.  Now we are wondering if we have made the correct choice, though it was not entirely his fault.  The usual unplanned power interruption had caught him off guard, not having saved his work and he lost the information.  If he does not perform tomorrow then maybe someone else needs to get the job.

Third visit:  The third visit was totally unexpected.  An American lady had wandered in off the street and caught Edward off guard.  She had talked to locals about helping the street children she met in Kabale and was directed to VCCS’s offices, where Edward was and asked if she could help put a child into school.  She was a lovely lady and we are meeting again tomorrow to show her what we do at Akanyijuka and the Drop-In Centre.

Wednesday 30th July 2008 B & W

Wednesday 30th July 2008

Tuesday 29th July 2008

Today we celebrated Catherine Mbabazi’s birthday.

Monday 28th July 2008

Today was a day of mixed business.  First off the rank was a visit to the Sub-County Chief and other official people for the area that our land is in.  We payed them a visit to introduce ourselves and to see what requirements they wanted from us for building and setting up in their Sub-County.  Basically just a courtesy call, which went well as the Chief lives near Akanyijuka’s current location and knows Pastor Edward and what we have already done, so he was happy that we were moving to his Sub-County.

Secondly we chased up some children that we had been informed about, trying to find the most suitable children for our last two positions.  While we were on this trip we met a lady from Belgium, Eugenia, who was in Kabale for a visit.  She has a project for street children in Kisoro, and we may visit and network with them if we get the chance later in the year.

Edward and I went chasing around to find the best architect, if you can call them that here, to use to design site layouts, and building plans for development of Akanyijuka land.

Monday 21st – Saturday 26th July 2008

It’s hard to get back into the swing of writing again on a regular basis, after not doing it for a while.  Sorry, I will try to get back onto it.  I will try and sum up the week, or what I can remember anyway. 

Pastor Edward and I started to look more seriously into the future building of the school and houses on Akanyijuka land, looking into getting serious plans and quotes done.  Of course it would be great to say we did it and that is it, but it may be a lengthy process getting the right deal and getting what we need done, actually done.

 We had a long trip to the dentist on Friday, five children and one matron all getting work done.  I left them several times to go and do other things.  As always anything medical takes a long time, though it was all done for free with the recent program we were granted with by a local dentist.  The only thing we had to pay for was drugs for afterwards, the local anesthetic was included in the free treatment.

Kathryn had her second week of going through time management and other administration type things with our teaching staff on Saturday. 

Some of the girls’ hair is growing quickly after having them done for when the team from Australia came and so some started to get the designs pulled out on Saturday, the first was Prudence:

And here are a few other photos from the week:

Moses was happy to show off his dental work:

Then Kobusheshe, though he had nothing done, wanted to get in on the action:

Friday 18th – Sunday 20th July 2008

Words can never say what pictures can, but…….

…..pictures can never say what being on location can!

Wednesday 16th & Thursday 17th July 2008

Wednesday and Thursday were just normal run of the mill days with no great big news. I had left my camera with the hotel reception in Kampala, by mistake, but Frank arrived back Thursday morning from there and was kind enough to bring it home for me, so I am now posting some photos from the previous week at the National Park. Please enjoy, because we did!

Tuesday 15th July 2008

I had a very humbling experience today.  As I was doing a run down town in the car I passed a man crawling up one of the steepest roads in town, a hill that most try to avoid if possible, I am sure there are those who have never walked up this hill because it is so steep and long.  Ohh, you did hear correctly I passed a man CRAWLING up the hill.  He had an obvious disability with his legs and could only get around by crawling.  I stopped to offer him a lift, but he said to me ‘The only problem is that I am going up and you are going down.’  I said that I did not mind turning around and he gladly accepted the offer.  On the trip up we talked about what I was doing in Kabale and all he could say is that I was doing a good thing and that there are so many children in villages, like the one he came from that needed that sort of help.  Not once did this man, who had a lot to complain about, say anything about his problems or anything like that.  It was a very humbling experience because here was a man that had obvious problems but did not complain about them or anything actually; but when I think about myself, how different.  Practically nothing to complain about, but a lot of the time I have something to whinge about.

The whole day was not doom and gloom though, as Kathryn had made a cake for Onesimus’ birthday, here is a photo of the birthday boy:

Here is Moses showing off the new colour scheme the land lord seemed to think was good for 38 little children, good if you want them to get a little over stirred from time to time:

And this one I could not refuse to post:

Monday 14th July 2008

Today it was back to normal.  Kathryn went to school and I seemed to be chasing up things all day without seeing too much difference at the end of the day.  It is good to be back to our normal routine again.

Here is a photo of Teacher Kathryn:

And this is some of what she has to deal with: