Our days begin with a breakfast of 2 pieces of white bread, a fried egg, and warm milk. Some days we stop by the internet cafe to update people back home. The first morning we ran errands around town to get our rice and beans for dinner and exchange money at the bank. The first afternoon we met our first program member, Jane. She runs a business selling drinks and juices, which is were we stocked up on water. We got a carbonated pineapple drink made by Schweppes that was awesome. Our big project the first day was to go and visit the land where the school will be built. The architect, Alex, came from Kampala and we headed out to the land. We picked which acre from the 3 for the school we wanted. To get a better idea of the size of the school rooms, we went to visit the secondary school here, which houses 600 students ages 12-18. That afternoon we went and visited with more program members and students who were out of school. One member cut down a jackfruit from her tree for us...they are huge!!
Day 2 we headed out to the land with machete's to start clearing it. It's amazing what you can do with a few people! It is so pretty out on the land and the breeze is usually cool. I ended up having to wear a hat and long sleeves because my sunscreen made me break out, but I was perfectly fine. We took a break to try local favorites, which included their white sweet potatoes (they taste just like ours) and a tortilla flatbread type thing that is common here. In the evening, we headed to 2 more program members houses and got updates on their kids. The kids they have taken in are part of our program and can be sponsored. One is a tailor that has fabric and makes clothes and the other has a farm and goes to the market to sell sweet bananas and jackfruit. We got to try fresh passion fruit and watched the sunset, which of course I loved!
Day 3 started out with going back out to the land. Some of the guys from the community came and cleared some more yesterday and it is starting to look amazing! Tonight we will finish visiting with program members. Tomorrow is church day and Sunday we will work with the program members in the morning and then the kids in the afternoon. On Sunday evening, we will head to Kampala so that we can catch the bus to Nairobi on Monday morning.
A few things about Uganda so far: 1 - it is pretty hilly and reminds me of my new home in Tennessee, except there are many fruit trees here. 2 - There is so much fresh fruit here and it is amazing to try it fresh off a tree from one of our program members! 3 - The stars are AMAZING! I literally thought a few were airplanes because they were twinkling so much. 4 - It has been really interesting to be living as a true minority in this village, as the 3 of us in our group are the only white people. Everyone has been welcoming and it has been a great experience so far!
Thanks for all the prayers for our team and our interactions with the program members and their kids!
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