Monday 16th – Sunday 22nd February 2009

Still struggling to get into a good habit of writing up blogs, sorry about that, but I am trying – in many ways I’ve been told.  This week gone we got stuck into a few things, but it is good that the pace in Uganda is slow as it was good to be working but not to be flat out.  We managed to visit both the water and the electricity boards to find the process of applying to get water and power to the site from its nearest location.  We also tried catching up for a review with the local Child Protection Officer, but she put us off until next week.  We sat down for a finance meeting with the VCCS treasurer, who has set up lots of good procedures for VCCS, including, Akanyijuka to operate by, but I am not sure how he will go with doing the book keeping and giving reports, not much happened when we were away.  He did say that he would manage, but we will see, as we are the ones to have to bring it up to date as it needs to be done sooner rather than later.  I got back into doing the shopping with Pamellah this week.

We did have what seemed like one major problem at Akanyijuka with one of the previous guardians wanting to take one of the children back.   But as usual things always seem a lot worse then they end up being and I think both parties ended up happy, with not too much changing at all, just a bit more visiting time back with the previous guardian in school holidays. 

We managed to visit the Drop-in a couple of times and caught up with the boys there that are not at school.  All the boys that went to school last year were sent back to school again, even though there was not commitment for sponsors for all of them, so there was a bit of concern about where the money will come from, but all those that sponsored last year helped out again and all the needed funds to put the 11 boys back into school for a second year has come in.  Now we are looking at trying to get some of the others into a home that can help provide for them by keeping them off the streets and give them the opportunity to go to school also. 

In an attempt to save money on car maintenance and fuel costs I had a lesson this week with Ben Ward on how to ride a motorcycle, or should I say he told me how the gears worked and a few other little things and left me to ride around.  Later in the week I borrowed Edward’s bike, as now the Roberts have left he uses his car a lot more and the bike was just sitting around.  Even in my limited experience with motorcycles I can tell that it leaves a lot to be desired, but it is easier to ride than Frank’s – the one I learnt on.

Our garden patch in the yard is now stocked of seedlings and seeds ready for the wet season, which is just coming on now. Graeme and Lisa left the avocado tree fully stocked and a bed of literally hundreds of carrots which were harvested and given to Akanyijuka.  The good thing about the avocado tree is that although there are loads of ripe avocados, there are also some not far and again there are some baby ones coming on. 

We had the Wards over for dinner one night this week to catch up with them, which was great and also went to Maria’s place for dinner one night.  Maria is a lady who is in Kabale with the U.S. Peace Core.  As usual she dished up a great feast and invited a stack of people, again a few new ones that we previously didn’t know and a couple we did not know to well.  Maria has been here about one year and it is good to see she has really started to fit in with life here, the heater in her bathroom had boiled over and water was spurting onto the bathroom floor and spreading to other rooms.  It was only when power went out that we heard the noise and knew something was happening, but while others were a bit stressed about it, Maria was too concerned with just carrying on with dinner and conversation to worry.  When she finally got up to look at it, she simply said somthing like ‘Ohh, there is a lot of water isn’t there?  It’s a nice foot bath though!’

Saturday afternoon I went to sit outside and read a little when Junior came over and we started to give each other language lessons, mostly counting, though it was interesting as he only knew English up to 10 and I knew no numbers in Rukiga.  But we struggled on and I got up to 100, or how it should go, down on paper and can go over it later when I get a chance.