Friday 31st July 2009

Immanuel Drop-In Centre

Thursday 30th July 2009

And then Esther arrived from Kampala.

Tuesday 28th & Wednesday 29th July 2009

Tuesday we met with Shawn and Primrose, the couple that is doing similar work to us and we visited the drop-in centre as they were interested in doing something like that also.  We had a little chat, but are meeting again on Friday to talk a bit more about different things.  Kathryn had her normal training with the staff and then in the afternoon it was Catherine Mbabazi’s birthday.

Wednesday we met at Akanyijuka to meet Isabella, a volunteer teacher that is helping us with the changes we need to make for the Inspector of Schools.  She is a nice lady, but I didn’t take a photo yet because she probably didn’t want a camera in her face on her first day, maybe I’ll give her until her second!

The rest of the day was spent chasing up a few things for building preparations.  Kathryn also had her usual ladies fellowship in the late afternoon.

Monday 27th July 2009

This morning it seemed to be the day for bumping into people. First we had our usual Monday morning meeting with VCCS staff/volunteers, then we dropped Pamellah at the hospital, where we met Pam Ward. We dropped her down town and them bumped into a Pastor we know from around town along with the people whom we met a few weeks ago that are doing a similar project to us. We are meeting them again tomorrow to show them the drop-in centre. After this, lastly we bumped into Judith, a Scottish volunteer on her way up the hill, so we gave her a lift.

In the evening we had a meeting with the VCCS Board to discuss how we shall go ahead with building. It was good and also scary at the same time. There were a couple of members at the meeting who have experience with building and controlling the building, so it was great to be able to put everything on the table and start talking. What is scary is that it is busy days ahead for us, especially me(David) as I have been nominated & voted in as the chairman of a building committee to represent the board’s interest in the building project.

Saturday 25th July 2009

Today we had a birthday, but not for one of our children.  Jeremiah, Tyler and Michelle’s son, was turning two today and we had cake for him at Akanyijuka.  He has become used to having cake for birthdays so he also needed it for his with all the children.  Of course no one else had complaints about that either:

Afterwards we had our normal music lessons.  I think slowly we are getting somewhere, though I don’t think they’ll be playing in front of people anytime soon.  But we will get there, I think?

Then in the evening we went to a local restaurant to welcome back Eddie Ward from his break back in the UK:

Here are a few random photos from today of the children:

Thursday 23rd & Friday 24th July 2009

Basically on these two days we set about trying to organise the limited space we have so that we can have extra class rooms for the new classes we need to run.  Moving beds and stuff, preparing for painting blackboards etc.  Also we set about trying to get some information for different projects that people back in Australia are wanting to fund raise money to get started for us.  For example how much a pig costs to buy, house and feed!

Wednesday 22nd July 2009

All I can say is that I am glad that I don’t dig the land every day.  Today we went to the land and dug up a relatively small crop of potatoes.  My hands are slowly toughening up; no blisters this time, the old ones are finally going hard.  Also our chickens are slowly starting to perform better, the younger ones are starting to lay a bit more seriously, not up to speed yet, but it is promising days ahead.

Late in the afternoon we went to Akanyijuka for Kathryn’s fellowship with the ladies and I hung out with the children and got some photos:

Afterwards we went for dinner with some Peace Corps volunteers.

Tuesday 21st July 2009

Just when you think all your troubles are about preparing for the building of the new houses, good old Uganda throws another curve ball.  Now that we’ve been running the school part for almost two years, the Inspector of Schools comes and tells us that we are not running legally.  That is by the law we cannot be a primary school or a nursery school.  A primary school needs a minimum of 80 pupils so that disqualifies us.  Running as a nursery school one can have smaller numbers, but needs to have all three levels of Nursery.  We only have one class, combined of Middle and Top levels.  We managed to get some leeway and are going to operate as a Nursery School, by splitting the Nursery class and getting a volunteer teacher to teach a few children from the nearby community in Baby Class.  Even though more than half of our children will be in Primary Grades, the Inspector is happy for it to be that way.

Monday 20th July 2009

Today we had our usual get together with all others affiliated with Victory Community Care Services, which went well. Pam was very excited that on Friday, Eddie will be back in Kabale again.  I sat down trying to prepare for a meeting with the VCCS Board to bang heads together, to figure out the best way ahead with the next stage of building, even though we are not sitting until Friday or even next Monday.  I don’t know what else to write about, except that we are getting excited about building.  I think in a couple of weeks we will have started, hopefully anyway.  My head is going round in circles at the moment trying to figure out how to do this or that etc.  I imagine that tomorrow will be much the same.  Ohh it was also good to run into a couple of our Peace Corps (volunteers from the US) friends - we were driving past and one said “What night are you coming over for dinner?” Then the other said “Yeah, I’ll cook!”  Beats having to do something ourselves, so Wednesday after Kathryn’s fellowship with the ladies, we can head straight over.

On a side note the people that are also doing a similar thing to us nearby have also just started building.  Edward caught up with them and had a little chat.  Hopefully we can soon get together and have a bigger talk about things.  To date, we have only met basically just to meet each other.

Sunday 5th to Saturday 18th July 2009

Quick catch up and then the good news!!

OK, two weeks is a long time to catch up on, but here goes.  Sunday 5th was my turn to share at church, as usual I was confident before hand, but when it came to sharing time I started thinking “Is what I am going to say going to make any difference to anyones lives?”  But it turned out to be one of the best times of sharing for me.  Although it was long by Australian standards, it was a bit below African standards at 1.5 hours. 

Monday 6th was bad news for Victory Community Cares Services, our covering NGO here in Uganda.  Their one big supporter for their entire ministry has decided to not send funds this year.  So although Akanyijuka is still covered, and the drop-in is partially still covered, all other parts of VCCS have to take a BIG cut back.  One might say they will be running on a shoe string, but I think more like on the smell of an oily rag!!

Tuesday 7th the Lawsons hit town and we headed out to dinner with them at the Little Ritz of Africa, a classy establishment indeed!  It was great to see Esther as usual, but especially good to see some new faces – Andrew and Marian.  We’ve almost had the whole family visit now.  We bumped into and ate with them from time to time during their stay in Kabale, they were staying with the Ward family this time. 

The rest of the two weeks went by as usual, staff meetings, car troubles (our guard washed the car and left an interior light on and we did not use the car for a day and a half so the battery was as flat as a tac), paper work, bulk food shopping, checking the chickens, harvesting crops – though they are almost finished now as dry season has well and truely set in now.  We did have an incident with the chickens, someone broke into the store house and stole most of the eggs that were there. 

Let me cut to Wednesday 15th now, it was Onesimus’s birthday and I did get photos, but unfortunately the card in my camera played up and I lost the photos.  He did have a good time though.  As usual Kathryn had her fellowship with the female staff while I made noise and generally wasted time with the children!

Thursday 16th was a big day.  It started with the good news!  I received an email telling us that we can now start building, funds have arrived and are waiting to be sent.  This caused lots of excitement, then it hit me, what we were now getting ourselves into.  A whole lot of frustrations and disappointments trying to get things going well.  But it’s great as we are now going to be moving forward again.  I sat straight down and tried getting as much paper work out of the way as possible so we can concentrate more on building.  Hopefully I can have some more things to write about, instead of the same types of things over and over again, this might mean more posts again, or at least that’s my intention. 

At lunch time we had a farewell for Susanna, the American volunteer that came to work with another school, but helped us out also.  We had a nice lunch and then the children did some presentations and gave some gifts (drawings they had done).  It was also the Lawsons last day in town so they came along to say farewell too.  Then we returned at 5 pm for the usual music lessons.  I was looking through my photos and found this one of Vastine on the drums:

Here is Susanna, she also has a blog of her experiences here in Kabale (http://susannakay.blogspot.com)- we got a few mentions also:

Susanna, thank you so much for visiting and helping with teaching, the children appreciated and so did we!

Here is the Lawsons on their last day in town:

They look happy in this photo, but I am sure they were not looking the same on Friday.  They travelled towards Kampala but didn’t quite make Mbarara.  Unfortunately Esther’s car had a mechanical breakdown at 8:30am, I was talking to her at about 7:30pm and it was almost ready to get going again.  So here I am on Saturday trying to get this post done and other things on my bomby old laptop that seems so slow, at least it goes with the internet!