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| Desks for students because of Montgomery Catholic |
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| Street market |
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| child resting at the goods market |
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Day 7
I am not sure if I mentioned it or not, but today we were
supposed to go on safari, but decided against it because there was too many
things that we wanted to finish and Father’s vehicle was really suffering. He kept saying that he wanted to go, but we
were pretty adamant about that not happening.
Instead, Jeff called a driver and Jeff, Nap and Francis and
I went down to the cathedral and went to Mass there. The bodies of a very saintly Monsignor and
Sister are kept there and their causes for beatification are being handled by
two cannon lawyers here, one that we are now pretty good friends with. Fr. Henry we call the boss and Fr. Bono we
call the miracle worker because of all of the work that he did on the school
for us.
We stayed through Mass, toured the church and the shrine at
the base of the church hill, and then we met up with Moses. Moses had his new soccer proposal and the
beginnings of a budget for us and it was so nice to see people taking the
initiative and doing a great job.
It was funny because once they children started noticing us,
they started following us, and then when we sat down, they sat down a few feet
away. So once I got busy with Moses reviewing
his work, Jeff pulled out some packs of silly bands and passed them out very
judicially. And then when I pulled out
my laptop to show Moses something, we were suddenly surrounded. The kids came running over to see pictures,
to see what a laptop looks like and what it does. Moses told me to play music, and then they
wanted to see what my children look like, we started going through all of my
pictures, while we waited for John to come pick us up. Then Jeff did the same thing, and although
some were fascinated by his pictures and his children, some of them were just
fascinated by his arm hair. He said that
they just kept running their hands up and down his arm and even tried pulling
it. The little girl that planted herself
next to me kept pulling on my braid and stick their fingers in my hair.
After a while John arrived (in a truck where I sat in the
front and Nap and Jeff sat in the bed) with the plan to take us to see the pig
pens that had been built at peoples’ houses and meet the families he had chosen
to receive the piglets. The pig program
was a program where we purchased and bred pigs and kept them at the delta
center in pens. We would have enough
pigs where we could breed them and sell some to keep it self sustainable and use
the rest to help villagers. We would choose
villagers in need, who could receive training, have a pen built with room for
expansion, and be given 2 piglets. John
went throughout the villages around Masaka anad interviewed a lot of families
until 3 found his 3 most deserving that met the criteria.
The first family was a couple that were in their late 70’s. They had several children, and all but 1 was
deceased. However, the couple was
raising the 6 grandchildren who had been orphaned. The only child came back to live with his
parents and help raise the children.
There house was very small, and the couple was very very gracious and
thankful. The pen looked amazing – a cement
slab and cement feeder, on a tilt for drainage, with wood pole walls and a zinc
sheet roof. Not only does Anawim supply
the materials and build the pen, they pay for training, and they leave sand and
brick for expanding the pen. It was amazing
to see. From there, we went to a woman’s
house who was in her late 50’s. She was
a widow and she had taken in an orphan girl so she had a daughter. She had the absolute largest banana trees we
had ever seen. And not only that, but
there was a couple going through her banana trees and cutting them down and
bringing them home to replant them in their own garden. She said she gives several away at a time, it
thins the area out and she can help other people. Amazing.
The third family consisted of a man in his 70s. He had fallen and broken his femur but the
hospital could not set it right, so once the bone was healed together (very
incorrectly) they send him home. And the
strain of taking care of everything made his wife very sick and she died. Because the father cannot even walk without
using a stick – oh and cannot use his hand properly because he has three
fingers and two thumbs on one hand.
Their only child still alive was a like named son, Vincent, who was
34. He moved back home from Entebbe to
take care of his dad. They had built a
pen in their back area that looked nice.
Humbling.
After this experience, we went back to the delta center
where Maria and Suzann were waiting for us.
They hopped in the bed of the
truck and we headed off to the village market.
We wanted to go shopping and hang out and see life in the town, and try
to shop, but every place we went , they would Jack up the price on Maria
because she was with Muzingos. And then
it looked like the heavens were about to pour.
So we left Maria to shop in the market to get what she needed. (The cupboards were looking pretty bare and
we wanted to leave them in good standing.)
Meanwhile we started walking to the Children’s Craft store. There is a group in Denmark that runs
orphanages in Uganda. They have the kids
do art projects, to learn skills they can use and profit from as adults. Then they sell the art work in their shop
that is connected to a restaurant. It is
a great system and they had lots of little trinkets, jewelry, art, nativity
sets, Christmas ornaments, scarves, etc.
I bought as much as I could on the schillings that I had
left because there is a sale in Montgomery Alabama called, “Shop for a Cause.” Anawim Uganda will have a table, and be able
to sell the goods we have and all of our profits stay with us. It is an amazing idea. The sale will be at Landmark Church on
November 27th, and is organized by a wonderful woman named
Betsy. Betsy and Chad have 3 boys, and
have adopted a beautiful daughter Addy.
Betsy has a beautiful heart and we should all say prayers of thanks for
her and her family. Anawim will
hopefully be blessed by this event!
People can come and shop for $5 a person at the door, and the money goes
towards the church’s adoption fund.
In order to get to the shop, before the heavens opened up,
we decided to take boda bodas the few remaining miles. I love it when Jeff asks me “On a scale of
1-10…” Ahhhh. The one thing I did not
want to do was ride those crazy things….oh and eat grasshoppers. Anyway, it was fine, and none of us
died. We went and shopped for a bit, and
I found things that would suit our needs.
Jeff and Nap sat in the café and waited for the ladies to finish
up. By the time we were done, it was
pouring. We sat and had drinks and
waited for the rain to subside. Maria
and Suzann ate lunch before we went our separate ways. Suzann went back to town, Maria brought the
vegetables back to the Center, and Nap, Jeff, and I walked back to the hotel. And it was then that we saw one of our
favorite things from one last time – Giant Malibu Storks, as Father calls them,
eating out of the dumpster. It is so
crazy.
Oh, and that is Trip Note #7: There are very few garbage cans in the city,
and nobody has garbage bags. People
literally just throw their stuff in piles everywhere. When we passed out candy at the school, they threw
the wrappers on the grass. One day on
the way back to the car at the school, I asked the teacher for a trash bag so I
could clean up and she looked at me as if I were nuts, and smiled and said, “Where
would we throw the trash bag when it was full?” Well duh, moron. They have no trash pick up – it just gets
dumped all over the city on public lands.
Yuck, double yuck.
I had some packing to do, and writing, so I uploaded all of
Naps and Jeff''s pictures to my laptop and went to my room, and Jeff went off to
find mattresses and mosquito nets for the Delta Center. We had to make an executive decision
regarding the mosquito nets and mattresses.
There were too many wire frames with no mattresses and we are morally
responsible for making an effort to buy mosquito nets to protect the
children. We spent 200,000 ush for 20
mosquito nets, and 660,000 for 11 mattresses.
We had gone from room to room to make an assessment of the desperate
needs, and took care of them.
Nap got a call regarding the desks; he had drawn up the
designs and wrote out the measurements and we order them through . We
had enough money remaining after the concrete floors and the drain pipes to
purchase 17 desks. And when I say desks,
I mean the long table/bench pieces that can fit 3 -4 children comfortably. The desk design was upgraded to include book
shelves, which is something that we had not seen. Before, they had 7 benches per classroom, so
this will work well.
We were kind of hanging out waiting to hear from Fr.
Michael. He had dropped off his car in
the morning to have the shocks replaced.
Late last night there was a serious shaking and squealing and thunking coming
from the front of the car and we knew we would not make it to Kampala to fly
home unless we get it fixed. He had to
catch a ride to a more remote village that morning where he said a First
Communion Mass for 150 children. Their
Mass was outdoors because of the numbers and it had rained through part of it
so we knew the Mass would take much longer than expected.
Father Henry called to let us know that he could pick us up
and drive us to dinner. The restaurant he
suggested was called 10 tables. The menu
was very different from other places in town.
They had one appetizer, 2 courses to choose from, and one dessert per
day. It was just down the street from
another restaurant we saw that day.
Except, at the restaurant down the street, per were waiting in line
while the dishwasher washed the dishes in the gutter . We saw dishes go straight from the gutter to
the table. Nasty. Anyway, our meal was good. After a little bit, Father Michael joined us,
and then Father Boni (contractor extraordinaire). Jeff said it was the first time he had ever
gone out to dinner with 3 priests, and what a lively bunch. Fr. Henry and Fr. Michael referred to Nap as
either “His Holiness” or the “Catholic Godfather”. It was a lot of fun to be around such humble,
lively, funny, loud, earnest, priests.
Their vocation is their joy and we shall all be blessed by it.
We parted ways and headed back to the Maria Flo to pack and
get some sleep, so that we can be up and ready to go at 6 AM. Father had wanted to go on a safari, but
since we had better uses of our time, we decided that a quick tour at a
National Park might be more sensible and certainly much cheaper. Besides, we had to leave something to do for next
time we came. We paid for our hotel
room tonight because we did not want to wait for someone to work the front desk
that next morning. For 6 nights at the Maria,
it was $120. Yep – you get what you pay
for. The room had not been cleaned the
whole time we were there, I got shocked every time I turned on the shower head,
everything in the whole place was damp and smelled. And when I used the laundry service,
everything came back damp, took four days to get back, and I have 2 dresses
missing. However, it cost me only 8,000
ush so I cannot complain too much. If
you want a fan, or AC, or a toilet that flushes more than once a day (yes, my
toilet only flushed once a day), then this would not be your place. But if you are young and spunky, like the 3
of us, it would not kill you.
Only 2 more days to go.
See you soon.
Allie
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