The Village

So I had my first trip out to "the village" last week. Usually when someone is not from Mbale originally (as is the case for most people), they have family and friends back in their home area that they visit as regularly as possible, which they call the village. Tiffany said when she first arrived in Uganda, she thought that the village was an actual single place that everyone seemed to come from! So when Natasha invited me to go visit her village, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse. We arranged to meet in town and catch a matatu, but when she arrived, Natasha said it would be cheaper and easier to take a motorbike. I asked how far away the village was and she said it wasn’t far, so we got on the bike of a friend of hers. Well, I should know by now that when a Ugandan tells you something isn’t far away, that could mean that it’s anything between 2 minutes and two hours away. You can guess which one it was. So the two of us a sitting on the one bike, plus the driver, and off we go…and go….and go. Every time I thought “we must be almost there”, we’d take a turn and just keep on going. The worst part was, it had rained heavily the day before and once we got off the main road, the track was mud. Thick, slippery sludge. I think I prayed more in the one and three quarter hours that it took to get to the village than I have all year! The village is at the top of a mountain too, so we’re not only dealing with limited seating room and thick mud, but a decent incline too. We somehow managed to make it to the village in one piece, however, as we were coming slowly down the road to the house, the bike slipped on a thick patch of mud and tipped to side. Luckily, we were going slowly enough that we all put our left foot out and caught the bike before we came off or got squashed underneath. Unluckily though for me, as my left foot went down, my right ankle must have brushed the exhaust, which gets very hot after a long trip. It just looked like a scrape at the time, but the next day, a nice festering burn mark had appeared. Apologies to those who are squirmish, but a picture paints a thousand words (haha):

So we arrive at the house where Natasha grew up and I meet her mum, Sarah and one of her aunts. Then Violet, Natasha’s sister, comes running down the hill calling my name and dressed in traditional African attire. I have met Violet before and she is extremely lovely. She also lives in Namakwekwe (in Mbale) near Natasha, but she goes back home during school holidays. I didn’t realise she was going to be there, so it was a nice surprise! 

 Sarah made us African tea (milky and sweet) and we drank it with bread and freshly roasted and salted ground nuts (peanuts pretty much). We chatted for a bit and looked around the property and Natasha asked if it was okay for them to make us some matooke for lunch, which I replied was fine. Then Sarah asked if she should kill a chicken for me. Errrr. I told her I was more than happy without chicken for lunch, but then she asked if I knew how to hold a chicken if she gave me one for the ride home. I’m still not sure whether she meant a live one or not. Either way, I wasn’t about to add holding a dead/live chicken to the perils of getting back home again safely on a picky, so I told her if everyone would eat the chicken, she could kill it and we all eat it for lunch. So she killed the chicken. Luckily I didn’t see the act, but she did walk in at one point to say something to Natasha with the live chicken under one arm and a large knife in the other hand. I don’t think it saw it coming. 

While we were waiting for lunch to be ready, we wandered over to the local shops to get some more cooking oil and some tomatoes and said hello to all the locals who wanted to know who this funny white person was walking through their village. People have such an interest in other people here – I have been invited by total strangers to sit with them in their homes on numerous occasions and they’re always eager to learn where you come from and how long you’re in Uganda for and what you’re doing there. People here love to introduce themselves and tell you about their life or profession and are genuinely so happy to meet and greet you. I think I will really miss that when I return to western culture where people generally keep to themselves and don’t acknowledge the presence of strangers.

We headed back to the house and met some more of Natasha’s aunts along the way, took some photos and greeted some curious kids that I think were related to Natasha somehow. When lunch was ready we went inside and Sarah served us chicken stew and matooke, putting the ‘special’ plate in front of me. The special cut of chicken is reserved for special guests in Ugandan culture, which consists of the gizzard; a rubbery, brown coloured ring of grossness that comes from the chicken’s neck, which in this case was served with an unappetising chunk of chicken from the animals back. I had been warned about this tradition not long after arriving in Mbale, but had managed to avoid it thus far. Until now. When Sarah left the room, I switched plates so I had one with “normal” looking bits of meat in it. When Natasha saw I didn’t have the special plate, she insisted that we swap back but I told her that I was very thankful that they wanted to give me the ‘best’ part, but that I really didn’t want to eat it because it’s not the done thing in my culture. She eventually allowed me to keep my plate, but when Sarah came back in and noticed, she also tried to swap it back. I somehow managed to communicate that I didn’t want that plate without offending them, and so they eventually yielded….but then Sarah picks up the gizzard from the special plate and puts it on my plate saying ‘okay then, but at least you eat this part’. Kill me now. Thankfully, Natasha and Sarah both left the room and I was left alone with Ali, the picky driver, who was also eating with us. I managed to convince him to take the gizzard from me because I didn’t want to eat it, which he found quite amusing, but kindly let me dump it on his plate. I don’t think Natasha or Sarah noticed when they returned cause the room was a little dim and Ali and I were already half way through our meals. Saved! 

We decided to leave fairly soon after lunch, as the sky was indicating rain and that was the last thing we wanted on the way back down the mountain. We dropped in at the school where Natasha’s brother Victor lives/studies on our way back to Mbale and Violet joined us to that point. I had met Victor when I had dinner at Natasha’s a couple of months back and apparently he’s always asking about me and when I’m going to visit. So thankfully I did actually get to visit him before I left, otherwise I think he would have been extremely disappointed. We arrived at the school and greeted the teachers and I got wide eyed looks from most of the kids (but what’s new?). They told us Victor had something wrong with his feet and they were causing him pain, so we checked it out and the skin around the underside of his toes was all kinda skanky and hanging off. Natasha said it was some sort of parasite that causes it and Violet put a pin into part of his foot and something that looked like a white-ish worm or tube of puss came out – I’m not sure which one it was. Ick. Victor wasn’t his usual happy chatty self and the teachers didn’t seem too concerned about his condition. Natasha and Violet weren’t impressed with Victor’s feet, the lack of medical care and the general cleanliness of the school and clothes Victor was wearing. Most Ugandans take a lot of pride in their appearance and wearing clothes that are dirty or crumpled can be quite undignified for those who aren’t at the very bottom of the social ladder. So in front of a whole heap of his schoolmates (boys and girls), poor Victor was stripped naked and given a public bath by Violet with a whole lot of soap and scrubbing. She cleaned his feet and they put some sort of cream on them afterwards and I took some photos of Victor once he was clothed again! 

 The sky was darkening and suggesting rain, so I suggested we get going. We said goodbye to Victor and to Violet and we were on our picky again. Thankfully, the mud from the morning journey had mostly dried out with the days sunshine, so the trip back felt much safer and I could more fully appreciate the beauty of the scenery around me. We stopped at a few points to take photos and at one point, there was a family walking up the mountain, carrying a bunch of stuff – possibly all their possessions. I’m guessing they had been walking from the bottom which was a long way down, even on a motorbike. The woman asked Natasha for some of the water she was holding, so Natasha poured some into the woman’s container. There were kids walking with them and they didn’t even have water. Who knows how long they had been walking or how much longer they still had to go. 

 Life is just so rough for some people here. I used to find it a bit of a pain that I had to walk 15-20 minutes to the supermarket from my old place back in Melbourne, but seeing the distances that people walk here (often carrying bulky and/or heavy items) kind of puts that into perspective. People here are tough. I have realised here how much of my whinging about things in life is completely unnecessary. Not to say we don’t go through real troubles or encounter difficulties in First World nations, but much of what we complain about is laughable when you come to somewhere like Uganda and see how others live and what they have to face on a day to day basis. If nothing else, I will go home with a far greater appreciation of the “little” luxuries we so take for granted back home – running water, electricity (that doesn’t cut out every second night), drinkable tap water, free hospital care, affordable basic food items, access to credit, government benefits, roads free of massive potholes etc etc. I knew we had it good before I came to Africa, but after being here and hearing some people’s stories and seeing their homes, the way we live back home seems almost outrageous. 

I was chatting to one girl here about travelling and what countries I have been to. She asked why I went to each of these places, so I began to explain that some were jobs, some to study and some were just for a holiday. As I said this, she just kind of nodded and I realised how bizarre the idea of travelling just for fun must seem to someone who has never left their country of birth. I felt almost embarrassed to tell her that I had been to Thailand on a whim, just because I could. What I would have spent on that trip probably could have paid for her next three years of university tuition, her rent and all her living expenses to boot. Not to say that travelling for fun is evil and selfish, but those who can afford to do so are certainly in the world’s minority. Most Ugandans I have spoken to have never been outside Uganda and its neighbouring countries. 

I have been living with Leah for a week now and it’s been a lot of fun! Her place is small but pretty good in terms of housing here. She has running water and a western toilet and electricity (most of the time!). Her ‘house’ is a living room, bedroom and bathroom at the back of a compound with the main house at the front. I’ve been showering by tipping buckets of cold water on myself, but it’s actually better than at the house I was previously in, where I had to squat or sit in the bath to use the hand-held shower head! It uses a lot less water too. I will write some more about living in Maluku with Leah in my next post, along with my experiences of a village wedding with Rose and sleeping out in the middle of the African bush in a traditional banda! Stay tuned…

Lou :) 

 

                 

The Prodigal Daughter

Heyyyyyy. Apologies on my slackness in keeping you all updated. So this morning we found out that Rose (one of our Jenga staff) had called to say that her daughter Grace had been missing since the night before. She had been seen around 6pm but then Rose had been at a burial and had come home later not feeling too well and only noticed that Grace wasn’t home a bit later. Rose’s husband is blind, but he walked around the streets all night in the hope of finding her. No luck. No one had seen her and it was not like Grace to just go off and not come back. As you can imagine, the family were extremely worried. There is a team of 12 young people from the UK visiting at the moment, so all of us went to Rose’s to pray and look around for her daughter. We spend some time praying in Rose’s living room and people had a sense that Grace was alright and that she would be reunited with her family soon. We then walked around the area, asking people if they’d seen her. It was about midday by now and we regrouped outside Rose’s church nearby. A kid walking past had been asked if he’d seen Grace and he said that he had been told by some people in the next ‘suburb’ along that if someone from their area was looking for a lost child, to send them over there. So Sam borrowed a motorbike and raced over there to check it out. Sam returned with Grace on the front of the motorbike and the large group of kids, youth and adults that had gathered in waiting let out a huge cheer! Rose arrived within seconds of Grace’s return and it was a very emotional moment when she was reunited with her parents. Apparently she had just wandered off early in the evening and had gotten lost somehow and some random family took her in for the night. She was very lucky! Everyone was so relieved that she was okay and happy to have her back and we sang and danced around in celebration! Such a cool moment. 

 So what else has happened this week? Well, as I already mentioned, there is a team from the UK currently here in Mbale. They’re from an organisation called Onelife near London, that seeks to raise up Christian leaders in all spheres of life from church to politics to education to sports etc etc. They’re a really cool bunch of teens and young adults and it’s encouraging to see people only just out of high school stepping out of their comfort zones, preaching, teaching, encouraging, serving and just being I Africa! They ran a two day conference called ‘The Fight’ earlier this week for a couple of hundred young leaders from all over Mbale, based on 1 Timothy 4:12 (“Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity”). It was a very inspiring couple of days and there seems to be momentum building in Mbale, particularly through young people in the church. Watch this space!

I’m not sure if I even introduced you to one of our volunteers, Joel, but everyone is leaving soon! Joel is Italian (from Sicily) but has lived in London for a few years. Zoe will fly out this Sunday with the Onelife team back to the UK, Robby goes on a 6 month sabbatical next Friday, Phil flies out on the following Monday, Rozzie & Joel leave the week after, Megan will leave Mbale around the 21^st August, leaving me here until the 23^rd when I will take a bus to Mombasa, Kenya. Wowsers. This is my final week living in my current house – as of Monday I will be living with my “sista” Leah. She is hilarious. I will be sure to introduce you to her soon. Here's Zoe with George:

 Last Sunday I was invited to visit the church Moses goes to out in Kachumbala, where he lives. It’s maybe half an hour out of Mbale in a matatu (taxi van). Joel was the only other person who came with me cause the others had already made plans for church, so the two of us set off around 8am on Sunday morning to catch a matatu from the taxi park. The right one wasn’t there yet, so we waited a bit and then it arrived. We got in and sat for a bit but we were the only passengers. They then took off and I figured we’d pick up more people on the way, but it turns out they were just filling the tyres with air at the petrol station, then we drove back to the park! We sat there for almost an hour and no one else got on…and generally, matatu’s don’t leave until they’re CRAMMED full of people! We asked the driver if it was going to leave soon and he said we’d be better off getting pickies to the clock tower where there is another taxi bay that would have more taxi’s going in our direction. Grr. So we set off and were soon squished into a van with a million other people…okay maybe more like 20…and we were finally on our way! 

   Moses met us on the road side and we walked to his church, which was in a smallish rectangular brick building crammed full of people singing with all the richness of an African choir. We were welcomed very warmly and given seats of honour near the front. As is custom, we had to stand up in front of the church and publicly greet everyone (which I’m pretty much used to by now) and Joel shared a mini sermon on the prayer of Jabez, found in 1 Chronicles 4:10, which they loved. The pastor spoke about love and loving your enemies and doing good to those who harm you and being careful of what you say about other people. It was one of the best sermons I have heard in Uganda to date. At the end of the service, they announced that they had a special dance prepared for their visitors and the choir all went outside and then reappeared to some African dance music (a few of the guys had grass skirts tied around their waists) and the boogied around for us in their traditional way! It was a lot of fun and I took a short video I will try to upload on Facebook soon.

  Moses kindly invited us to his place afterwards for lunch and we met his beautiful wife, Harriet. They have been married for 14 years and they are super cute. They have no children, but I get the feeling they would really love to. We feasted on chips, rice, matooke, beef stew, peas, carrots and…liver. Not a huge fan. It’s really not the idea of liver that I don’t like, it’s the taste and the texture in your mouth – it looks like it should feel like beef when you bite into but it doesn’t! I felt bad about only have a tiny bit cause liver is quite a treat for Ugandans and I know Harriet and the women had gone to a lot of trouble to prepare a special meal for us. A common problem for us mzungus eating around Mbale! 

 We went to look at the plot of land Moses had bought to build their own house on (they’re renting at the moment) and the next door neighbours invited us to come and sit with them. They had those traditional ‘banda’ huts that are round mud brick with a thatched roof and they had a beautiful view of Mount Elgon from their side garden. They were very excited to have some foreign guests (there’s no white people in Kachumbala!) and they kindly brought seats out for us to sit on under the tree where they were eating their lunch of millet porridge. I noticed they had massive pumpkins growing in their garden so I asked Moses to ask the lady if I could buy one from them (she doesn’t speak English) and she went and got one and gave it to me. She said through translation that I could have it for free and that she wanted to give us chicken also, but they didn’t have any chickens at that time (thankfully!). Her generosity was very humbling as it was obvious they were not particularly well off, even for Ugandan standards. I asked Harriet what the pumpkin would cost in the market and she said about 3,000 shillings, so I gave that amount to the lady, which she tried to refuse but I insisted she take it. By now it was close to 5pm, so we said goodbye to everyone and flagged down a matatu heading back to Mbale. A good day!

 We have our day 4 of food storage training tomorrow in Namabasa and today I am sourcing bulk sugar from the industrial area here that can be packaged in bags of 1kg and sold for a profit through the storehouse. This will hopefully give the people some practical training in buying and selling and how to keep proper records of what comes and what goes out. The profit will go back into the storehouse to either buy more sugar or whatever the managers decide is best. I have also come across some simple equipment for small scale irrigation (hooray for Google) that has been used around Africa that I think could be very useful in Mbale, where everyone suffers when there is insufficient rain. There is a Dutch development organisation that sells them in Kampala, so I’m looking into getting the smallest pump for a trial run in Namabasa. I’ll keep you posted with updates!

Well, that’s about it from me, but let me introduce you to a couple more Jenga peeps. First up, the ever lovely Rose. Rose is amazing. And I don’t say that flippantly. She truly is an amazing woman that continues to blow me away. She has six children of her own – five boys and one girl and four adopted children who have all been orphaned. She also looks after Max, her nephew, whose mother has died and the father (Rose’s brother) lives in Soroti, further north, as well as her niece from her husbands’ side, Kristy. Her two younger brothers are also in her care – they are 17 and 24. Her husband, James, is blind (as I already mentioned) and is her second husband. Her first husband was killed several years back when there was trouble in their village further north – I think it was to do with the LRA. Rose is 38 years old. So, in total, Rose lives with fifteen other people (sometimes more when family visit) and she is the only person earning a wage in her family. There are sixteen people living together and she is the only one with a paying job. Can you even begin to imagine how difficult that must be for her?! She works full time for Jenga Monday to Friday, spends her Saturdays washing clothes and cleaning the house, then Sundays she spends going to church (where she is a women’s leader!) and looking after 12 children. I feel tired just typing those sentences! Yet, Rose is one of the most joyful people I have ever met. She laughs often and always has a smile on her face. She is often thrown into challenging situations (children going missing, people demanding money from her, accidents and sickness in the family etc etc) but she always remains faithful and is not shaken. She just keeps going on. She remains grateful for the good things and pushes through the bad. She remains joyful. I have learnt a lot from Rose. Probably far more than she knows, or that I could ever communicate to her. I asked Rose if there was anything she wanted to say to people through my blog, and she humbly asked that you could pray for her and her situation, that God’s hand would be working in her life and in all the myriad of issues that continually arise for her and her family. For those of you who pray, please send up one for Rose next time you’re in that place.

The next person I’ll introduce you to is Deborah. Deborah is just gorgeous, inside and out. I often find myself staring at her and her high cheekbones. She is tall, slim and looks like a Ugandan model to me! But more impressive than her physical beauty is her inner loveliness that is also very obvious. The day after I arrived in Mbale, we went to a wedding at Bethel Baptist Church, where Deborah is a  member. As soon as I met her, she welcomed me warmly, made sure I had one of the best seats at the wedding along with the other mzungus and basically spent the day making sure we had food and drink and that we were okay! She is such a sweetheart. She lives in Mooni with her daughter Trissa. I’m not sure of her background, but she is currently a single mother, which is not an easy thing anywhere in the world, let alone in a poor community. Tiffany is a bit of a matchmaker and is always on the lookout for eligible men for Deborah to marry! I hope she finds a worthy man someday soon J Deborah has a great sense of humour and is always very complimentary – she regularly makes positive remarks on my clothes and if she thinks an outfit is particularly good, she shakes her head and tells me I’m “killing it”! I love Deborah! Not just because she makes you feel good about yourself, but because she is funny, gentle, smart and just a pleasure to be around. She is golden.

So there’s two more Jenga people – I’m not sure if I will get around to everyone and there’s definitely those I know better than others, but I will work my way through and see how far I get! Thanks again for reading and I hope that wherever you are reading this from, things are well for you. My next entry will be when I’m living with locals, so I should have some colourful stories for you all! Until then,

Lou :)  

              

Can I have another piece of chocolate cake?

Hello my faithful followers and welcome to another episode of six months in Uganda!

Food storage training in Namabasa went really well - we had just over 20 people there on each of the three days of training, and the remaining two days of training have been booked in. The participants learnt a lot and we had a good laugh along the way. Moses headed up the faciliating, along with two people he used to work with at Action Aid. Here is Moses doing his thing:

The first two days was setting a foundation of understanding group dynamics, hard work, leadership, management etc and the third day had a more specific focus on running a storehouse - how bags should be stacked on pallets, how to keep records of what stock goes in and out, how to ensure the cleanliness of the store and so forth. The training took place in the storehouse itself, with pallets stacked to one end of the room. At the end of the third training day, we presented them each with one of the training manuals that I had created, which they were very excited about! Here's the group posing for a Kodak moment:

 

In other weekly news, the female volunteers had the pleasure of having dinner at the home of Deborah, one of our lovely Jenga staff members. She cooked us up a feast (as Ugandans always do!) of potatoes, chicken, beef, rice, cabbage and chappati. Oh and fresh pineapple for dessert. The power went out part way through the evening, but we continued on by lamp light and had a very enjoyable all-female evening!

On Saturday night, I had Sam, his wife Debbie and their son Caleb over for dinner at my house. I made lasagne served with bread and salad. After dinner, I set the projector up and we watched The Lion King, which they had never seen before! Caleb was mesmerised. Tiff made a yummy cake with coconut on top and we served it with custard during the film. Mmmm. 

Yesterday it was Grace N's 29th birthday, so I took the day off in lieu of Saturday's training, and headed over to her house for lunch with a chocolate cake and presents in hand (she had taken the week off on annual leave). I'm getting quite good at balancing on a motorbike while holding a Tupperware cake container! I had made the mistake of having a huge breakfast of American pancakes at Manna's house a couple of hours beforehand, and was then forced to consume a rather large (even for my generous portion size standards) meal of rice, potatoes, beef and cabbage. Oh and chocolate cake. I was sooooooo full, I felt sick! I left around 3pm and went to Mount Elgon hotel for a swim to try and burn off some of the many calories I had just consumed! 

On Friday we have a team of 12 young people from Zoe's church in the UK arriving in Mbale and they will be running a youth conference next Monday and Tuesday for young Christian leaders in Mbale. Luckily I still count as a 'youth' in Uganda, because you're officially considered a young person if you're not married! I may just be forever young ;)

George is doing well and has now become an outside dog  - we couldn't really handle his whining in the morning and he was also taking up the 'bedroom' of poor Phoebe (our cat). So now he plays with the big dogs. Most of the time they're nice to him! We are going to give him away to a school that our American friend Nat works out. They have another puppy there called Kathy who they took in recently, so there will soon be Kathy and George. Perfect!

My wonderful family back home have been busy raising funds for some projects here, and I was very happy to tell Michael, one of our staff members today that we have funding for football (soccer) boots for the street kids who have, to date, been playing barefoot! Michael looks after the youth/sports side of things and he was very excited when I told him the good news! My parents have also donated generously to the hospital here and part of their money will also be going to a Christian school in Musoto who can't afford to give the students lunch - which is usually the only meal they will eat in a day. The school is waiting for the next harvest for more food, so in the mean time, the donated funds will tie them over. A big thank you to my brother in law, Chris, and my mum and dad for helping out!

At the moment I am busy trying to arrange all the things I want to do before I leave Mbale in a few short weeks. I know time will fly by and I won't be able to squeeze all the visits and dinners in to the final few days, so I'm trying to get on top of it now! Come August 1st, I will be moving out of my current house and boarding with some locals! I am planning to stay for about a week and a half with Leah in Muluku, a weekend with Rose in Namatala, and about a week and a half with Sam & Debbie in Namabasa. They are quite different areas and different living arrangements, but I'm looking forward to sampling a taste of Ugandan life for the 'average' Mbale-dweller. 

I know I still have to do some intro's to more Jenga staff, but I'm starting to get a headache from staring at this computer, so I will do it next time! Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more updates in the near future...

Lou :)     

Curious George

Hello again! So, time for another update. I promised I would introduce the Jenga staff to you, which I will begin to do in just a moment. Firstly though, I will give you some general news updates:

Grant has now left and another volunteer, Rozzy, has arrived. She's from Birmingham and we like to make fun of her accent! She's very outgoing and lovely and was here with Jenga for about 5 months last year. Tiff has also returned from the UK with an improved (although not completely better) arm, and doesn't have to return home for check-ups until December. So now we're back to having 4 people in the house! Almost seems crowded now after having so much space to the two of us for a while. Our doggie family has also increased in recent times. I went for a morning walk last week and noticed a small animal waddling along up ahead. When I reached it, I found it was a very small and very cute puppy! I stopped to pat it and noticed it was wet and filthy and it started wimpering. I knew I couldn't just leave him there to fend for himself at such a young age, so after a couple of phone calls, I carried him back home with me and put him in a "temporary" home in our garage. Rozzy decided to start calling him George, so it's kinda stuck now. Curious George. He was crawling with fleas and who knows what else, so we shampooed him several times and he seems to be okay now. We're still not 100% if we will keep him long term, but for the time being he is ours to nuture! This is him:

 
The past week or so, I have been compiling material to make a cohesive training manual for the Food Storage project. This covers everything from work ethics to business practices to correct handling and storing of grains to leadership and management. It will be used for all the storehouses (oh which there are currently two, with plans well under way for two more) but will be tested out this Thursday in Namabasa. I think there will be around 20 people there, including those who will oversee and manage the day to day running of the Namabasa storehouse once it's in operation. This is what the store looks like:

The training will need to be done over about 5 days, so this Thursday will be day #1 and the rest will follow at some point. Everything is quite ad hoc in Uganda, but it somehow works! (most of the time).  There is a chance a couple of us may travel to visit some other storehouses in the area sometime before I leave. There is a big industrial one in Jinja, as well as a partly-functional Jenga storehouse in Amuria, which is about 3 hours from Mbale if I remember correctly. It would be cool to get out and see some projects after so much time sitting at a computer in the office!  I'm looking forward to the training session on Thursday, even though I will be more of an observer than a participant. 

I now have less than 6 weeks left in Mbale and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I'm starting to feel like there's so much more I could have done here and I've only just started getting to know people here and feeling at home. I have now booked a flight from Mombasa to Nairobi, so I am heading to Mombasa by bus around Aug 23rd, then flying back to catch my next flight early the next morning to Madrid. I will be visiting my friend Adele in Mombasa, who is currently working for the Red Cross there on a one year AusAid-funded placement. I met Adele when I volunteered at the detention centre in Darwin and it turned out she lived just around the corner from where I was then living in Hawthorn East. Small world. It will be great to see her again and visit a new part of the African continent!

Okay, so now let me introduce some of our amazing Jenga staff members! This lovely lady here is Grace Namulinda (I think that's how you spell it anyway!). 

She is the mother of three children - Joshua, Pretty & Gracious - and lives with her husband in Namatala. I went to her church on Sunday morning and she invited me to her place for lunch afterwards (as Africans always do!). I had presumed that Grace lived in a decent house, as many of our staff do, because she always dressed nicely and looked neat and is well-spoken etc. When I arrived at her house, I was quite surprised to find that it was actually just a room. And not a big room either. It was much like my friend Natasha's place in Namakwekwe - a single room divided by a curtain, with a sleeping area on one side, and a sitting/eating area on the other. This room had electricity, but it also had 5 people living in it, not just one! I chatted to Grace for a good couple of hours about her life, her upbringing, her dreams etc etc. Her children are gorgeous and have manners that would put most Western kids to shame. It was quite a hot day, so I asked Grace if I could buy her and her kids a 'soda' each, so we walked around the corner and bought some cold bottles from the local store. They were SO thankful - you would have thought I had just given them each a hundred dollars, not a 800 shillings (22 cents) bottle of soft drink. Grace has a beautiful voice and is looking into recording a couple of her songs onto CD at a local studio. Both her parents have passed away and she dropped out of high school in S3 (around year 9 or 10 back home) when she had her first child at 17. She has been working with Jenga in the women's department for just over a year now and says it has made a huge difference in her life. She has a big heart, a big smile and has been a big blessing to me during my time in Mbale so far. She calls me 'Louigee' and I call her 'Gracie'. I am actually older than her by a few months!

The next person I'll shine my spotlight on is Sam. I honestly can't speak highly enough of this man.

Sam was the first person I met in Uganda, as he is nearly always the person they send to pick up newbies from the airport. And with good reason! Sam is one of the most friendly, inclusive, encouraging, faithful, generous & humourous people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. The drive from Entebbe to Mbale is not a short one, but Sam and I didn't run out of things to talk about the entire day. He also helped me shop for bits and pieces I needed when I arrived without my bag! He is married to Debbie and they have one son (pictured), Caleb. He doesn't say boo when I'm around and it's VERY hard to get a smile out of him! My mission is to win him over before I leave! Until recently, Sam was pastoring a church and working for Jenga part-time, but felt like God was telling him to step down from his role at church...without giving him any direction on what to do once he stepped down! Sam has amazing faith though, and I think would do just about anything God told him to do - no matter how crazy or confusing. Sam and his family live in Namabasa, and Sam will be part of the management team for the Jenga storehouse there. He has been to the UK before, so he knows a fair bit about mzungu's and other countries and cultures. He is a very insightful man. I asked Sam a couple of weeks ago to help out with driving a lady who couldn't walk to the hospital for her check up and of course he said yes. I passed along 2000 shillings for him, to put towards fuel or just for him to keep as a thank you for helping out and do you know what he did with it? He gave it to the woman he was helping. That's just Sam for you - always giving away the little he has and helping out wherever he can. He has really challenged me on the real meaning of generosity.  


I won't introduce everyone to you in this post cause it will take too long, but I will do my best to gather up info about the other legends I work with here in Mbale. These people truly are inspirational and constantly put me to shame with their faith, generosity, love and hospitality - in a good way!


Thanks for reading and I will endeavour to update this a little more frequently in my last few weeks in Mbale! Cheers,


Lou :)