Gulu

Tuesday morning we packed up and bounced (literally) up to Gulu. Gulu was about an "hour" away (Uganda Time), so it took us about 2 hours to get there from Chobe Lodge. We visited the Gulu Watoto Children Village briefly, but got the feeling that this is another very special place. Watoto is taking care of 168 children so far in this village, but it is growing quickly. This is where Watoto plans to have most of its growth in the years to come.

The Northern Uganda area (including Gulu) is recovering from years of war lead by the rebel outfit the Lord's Resistance Army. This rebel group is run by Joseph Kony, who is a self-declared prophet. For years the LRA attacked villages, killing, raping, and abducting children to be soldiers in their group. Many many unspeakable things have happened in the Region. Uganda was finally able to kick the LRA out of Uganda in 2005, however Joseph Kony still continues to wreak havoc on innocent civilians in the Congo and Central Africa Republic. This is a situation that needs lot of prayer, since it mostly goes unreported because of the lack of communications in this remote area.

Seeing how Watoto is helping this area to heal and rebuild is nothing short of inspiring and life changing. After visiting the village, we stopped at the local Watoto church. This church is growing rapid with over 1,000 attending each weekend. Then our group broke up and some visited Living Hope in Gulu. Living Hope is a program that Watoto started in 2008 and it focuses on working with women who have AIDS or are in need of help. This program takes them in and teaches them skills and trades so they can go out in the world and make a living. I went with the group that visited the brand new Babies Home in Gulu. What a sight this was! This new amazing facility is home to 20 babies currently. Watoto is also trying to purchase a large compound that has buildings that could be dorms and a school. Their plan is to make this into a Rehabilitation Facility for the children soldiers that are rescued from the LRA or that come out of the bush on their own. Please pray that they can purchase this much needed facility.

As we drove through Gulu we could see the IDP Camps (Internally Displaced Person). These are the camps that people flee to during the war when the LRA would attack their villages. The country has been trying to get the people living the the IDP camps to move back to their home villages for 2 years now. Some have gone home, but others are still too afraid to go back to their villages. The camps are made up of small mud huts with grass roofs.

Our short visit to Gulu ended with lunch at the Watoto Guesthouse. This is where teams stay when they are building in Gulu. This is a beautiful place, and I know I will be returning since I now have the opportunity to sponsor a 10 year old boy named Richard who lives in Gulu.

Brynn

Safari!

At 4am Sunday morning, we groggily dragged ourselves out of bed, ate breakfast and loaded on to the bus for a 7 hour ride. We left a dark, drizzly Kampala behind and headed north to Murchison Falls National Park. After several hours we turned off the paved roads and things got super bumpy, although all of the baboons and warthogs running around outside were a great distraction.

Two and a half bouncy hours later we pulled up to the entrance of the park where Joseph and Gilbert hopped out to get more info on the hike we supposed to take to the top of Murchison Falls. Unfortunately, the rain falling during our entire drive had created a mud mess of the roads. Gilbert gave us a choice – wait 3 hours for the roads to dry and then attempt the hike or continue on to the hotel and hang out there. We decided to forgo the hike and continued on with Joseph safely driving us up slick clay hills and through large water-filled potholes. During which he earned a well deserved round of applause for managing to control the bus as it was fishtailing in the clay. That guy is an amazing driver.

Hours passed and we reached the banks of the Nile River where we got out to stretch our legs, take pictures and wait for the ferry. After a short ride we were across the river and at the door of the Paraa Safari Lodge. After unloading luggage in our rooms, we stepped out the back door and found ourselves face to face with a group of elephants who were calmly eating a leafy lunch. What an amazing sight!

We grabbed our own lunch at the hotel’s buffet – a delicious spread created just for tourists (yay!)then headed back the river for a boat ride up the Nile. From the very beginning our ride was full of animal sightings. Pods of hippos, crocodiles, cranes, eagles, water bucks, warthogs and jumping Nile perch entertained us as we made our way up river towards Murchison Falls. As we drew closer to the falls, foam began to fill the water and finally we could see the falls thundering through a 20ft section of rock. Another incredible part of God’s creation.

Post boat ride, we enjoyed a dip in the swimming pool (which hippos and elephants are known to frequent at night) then made our way to dinner with bats swooping and diving about our heads – yes, there was some screaming and running involved. After another great meal and a game or two of pool, it was off to bed in anticipation of our 6:30am safari.

6:30 came quickly but we eagerly piled into the bus, picked up our guide( and his AK-47), then headed out with high hopes. Beginning with an incredible sunrise things only got better. Two lions, brothers, were relaxing right off the road, then elephants snacking on trees, kob, hartebeest, and oribis continuously leaping out of the way as our bus passed , herds of giraffe eating bushes together, monkeys sitting on branches, and cape buffalo lying in the mud. As one amazing sight after another passed, I simply took in God’s ability to wow me with his creativity and beauty. What an incredible opportunity.

After lunch and a couple of hours at the pool we said goodbye to Paraa and drove to the Chobe Lodge, our destination for the second night on safari. With portions still under construction, the lodge was not yet opened to the public and we had the entire gorgeous place to ourselves. We instantly took advantage of the waterslide and swimming pools, convincing Joseph, Gilbert, and Brian (our Watoto hosts) to swim as well. However, I think the most exciting part was getting to shower with water pressure. Dinner was delicious and the evening was spent relaxing, spotting hippos on the lawn, playing games, and checking out the channels on the flat screen TV. Breakfast the next morning brought talk of rock hard beds and excitement for what was next to come – Gulu.

-Noelle Alvis

Monday, August 1

We woke up again to a very quiet Guesthouse this Monday morning with the rest of the team on safari. Once we stepped out on the veranda things livened up considerably thanks to the concert of the many colorful birds here greeting the spectacular equatorial sunrise. After breakfast our host, the indefatible Rogers, showed up and whisked us away through traffic jams and over potholes to Watoto Church Central. We waited as always in the reception area as Rogers rousted the necessary people to meet with, Watoto's IT lead Suzi and one of their lead technicians named Herbert. We agreed on the plan to pick up the remaining 20 PCs from our supplier InterConnection and then head out to the Watoto Bbira villiage.

As usual in Uganda, even routine tasks seem to take longer than expected so by lunchtime we had finally signed off and loaded the machines. To hold us over on the ride out to Bbira, Rogers scored us some "Obama Chapatis", the ubiquitous Ugandan fried pancakes, in this case from a street vendor named after our very popular president :-S.

Once in Bbira we were greeted with a somewhat different situation than what we had in Suubi village. The primary school computer lab was in a much smaller room and had several more working machines plus some brand new lookng HP towers with flat screens. The biggest initial challenge was clearing away all the non-functioning hardware and finding room for our refurbished Windows 7 machines.

While the Watoto folks worked on that, Petra, Rogers and I decided to visit the home we built with our pevious team in 2007 (see blog: http://watototeam.blogspot.com). Bbira village has been been developed quite a bit over the last 3 years and we wandered past several rows of new teacher apartments and groups of children's homes before reaching house 11-1. We were very pleased to meet the House Mother Margaret and a few of the elementary schoolers who live there. It was great to see how the home is being used to bless 8 children and a very nice lady, who turns out to be the previous house mother of our sponsor child Ben, when he used to live in Bbira as we later found out.

Back at the primary school lab we ended up installing 7 of our "newer" machines and left Micheal there to work on configurations while Herbert and I went over to the recently completed high school to scope out the lab situation. Situated along what used to be forest and pasture along the road into Bbira are 3 big new classroom buildings for the older children. In the last building we found the yet unused computer classroom including a secure teacher office in the back with a few older machines. We quickly assessed that they were not ready to set up the remaining 17 PCs so we decided to store them in the office until Herbert and team could make it back with the necessary network infrastructure.

From there we took some very picturesque backroads over to Suubi where we hoped to meet Ben for one last time (Petra was very relieved to finally make this leg of the trip as the computer work went longer than expected). We ran into Jane Ringel's sponsor son Douglas up at the adminstration building and agreed to head down to Ben's house number 56

together. Sensing that we must finally be close Ben met us along the way. We enjoyed another joyful reunion with our very special sponsor son and his House Mother Sarah. When Rogers sauntered in the back door of the house looking reluctant to interrupt we knew that our time with Ben was finally up - for this visit. We parted with many hugs, Ugandan handshakes and a few tears knowing that we were all so blessed to share this special time together.

Back at the guesthouse we enjoyed a very tasty homebaked lasagna, did some packing and retired early as the bright day faded into a deep purple twilight over Kampala. So sad that we have to part on the morrow, but so glad to be near seeing our 3 dear boys again!

-Brett

Saturday started with a leisurely breakfast at 8am. Neither of our hosts showed up to pick us up- at first. Joseph our driver from East Uganda brought us to Watoto Church where we picked up Roger who then accompanied us to the Watoto Baby house, the Bulrushes. It is a beautiful facility, surrounded by gardens, with a bright courtyard and rooms all around that couryard where many bunk cribs are lined up. There were many high chairs and saucers and jumping seats lined up, toys, medical supplies, bottles- it was quiet the sight.
The Bulrushes houses all Watoto babies that are medically at risk, the premies, sick kids that might need immediate medical attention. (The hospital is right around the corner.) When babies become more stable, they are transfered to the baby house in Suubi village. The ratio of caretaker to baby is 1:4 and the nannies follow their babies until they leave the house, so the babies can bond with one person until they are transfered. All the babies are on a strict feeding and napping schedule. One volunteer from New Zealand mentioned that the nannies stick to that schedule no matter what. There were a couple white girls volunteering at the house when we visited. They are there for different intervals from 4 weeks to several months.
Our team helped the nannies feed bottles to the babies, held them, played with them in the garden, fed the one year olds hard boiled egges and fresh fruit/vegetable juice. I helped the nanny put all the one year olds on potties after their snack. They just started to potty train them a week ago and some of them really did do their thing :). Immediately after putting a new diaper on them we led them to the sink where these little guys all washed their hands.
Watoto gets babies through different channels. Sometimes the police drops them off after finding abandoned babies on garbage piles, others are refered through social services. One of the premies we met was an abortion surviver. The mom tried to abort him at 6 months but he survived. Another baby that is being taken care of right now has a syndrom where his tongue and chin and ear are deformed. His name is Benjamine and he is being fed through his nose by a feeding tube. He had the most incredible eyes. It is heartbraking to see theser little ones struggeling to live but praise God for Watoto and their willingness to give these children a chance at life.
Many of the one year olds that I was helping with actually have family members that come by to visit them. There were twin girls whose mom died in childbirth and whose dad cannot take care of them. He comes to visit them often. There are babies whose moms after giving birth have a mental break down (sounded like post partum depression to me) and where put into a mental hospital to recover. The Watoto nannies take those babies to the hospital once a week so the moms can see them and hopefully after they recover take their child back and take care of it.
There was one toddler whose mom (now 17 year old) was actually working as a nanny at Watoto and taking care of her own and the other babies. She and her baby were referred to Watoto because the mom didn't know how to take care of her baby so she is being trained to be a good mom and works there now to support herself and her cute little girl. Quiet a few of the babies have HIV/Aids or were sick with fevers and colds.

After this rather emotional visit we went to have ice cream at the outskirt of the mall. The store was really more a bakery than an icecream shop and they had lemon and a little bit of pistaccio icecream. The lemon icecream wasn't bad, the pistaccio icecream was very green, had peanut pieces in it and didn't taste like anything in particular. Baskin Robins had real potential here :).
We then got back on the bus and proceeded to go to Suubi Village for our traditional lunch with the kids. We got split up into groups of four and all were hosted by houses in cluster 7. The houses in Suubi are arranged in circles, 70-79 is cluster 7. The house Brett, Brynn, Sherry and I were hosted at was led by house mom Mary. She is taking care of 8 boys age 8-13. The house moms have a kitchen that is approximately 6 x 6 feet. There is no fridge and they cook over a little over one foot high cast iron stove that is lined with clay (to hold the heat) which they fire up with charcoal. I don't know how they did it, but we had five or six different kind of warm dishes, rice, matoke (the staple food of starchy, green bananas that we see sold everywhere, steamed), a beef dish with a lot of bones, green beans cut into tiny pieces in a yummy sauce, plantanes, yams (here they are purple and very starchy as well), a great ground nut sauce that was also purple and served over the rice, in short a feast. Our sponsor child Ben ate with us and told us that on Sundays they'll have that kind of feast in the houses, but during the week the dinners are more simple.
The houses in Watoto get their fresh food delivered once a week (Mondays) and the charcoal (2 large bags) once a month. I don't think they have hot running water in the houses as I didn't see any hot water tanks. It was great to interact with the kids at the houses and chat with the house moms. The team had brought each house mom a cute shoulder bag that Avery had made filled with goodies for the kids.
After about 2.5 hours at the houses we had run out of time to spend more time at the Suubi baby house. We just went into the baby house to change into our church clothes and went back to down town Kampala to attend the Saturday evening service at Watoto church. It was a great, lively service, lots of great worship songs, most of which we knew as well and a great dance performance during offering. We then proceeded to very nice Chinese Restaurant around the corner from church and the Watoto Children's Pastor Dora and her husband hosted us there.
After returning home the team got ready to leave for their safari at 5 am.

Petra Johnson

Today (Friday), was another great day for us in Uganda! Breakfast at 7:00 and on the road by 7:55am. Our 1 1/2 hour trip to Suubi Village was filled with amazing sights, as we drove down very narrow, bumpy dirt roads. We are truly amazed at the hundreds of "Boda-Bodas" (motorcycle taxi's) that weave in and out of traffic, loaded with 1 to 5 passengers, and carrying everything from tires, bags of coal, bunches of bannanas and yes, even wooden bed frames! The market place is mind boggeling, with people selling live chickens, fruits/vegetables, shoes, clothing, furniture, coal, and even caskets on the side of the road. Ugandans are truly one of the hardest working people I've ever encountered.
We arrived on our work site at about 9:30 and began the last day of our building project. We completed building the inside walls of the teachers house at about 12:00 pm and then dedicated and prayed over the building. We worked with a crew of about 10 Ugandan men and woman who were amazing! Before we left to dedicate the newly installed computers in the computer lab, some of the mission team walked down a dirt road to give some clothing and candy to some very poor families. The almost toothless grandpa of one of the families, couldn't say thank you enough, or give enough hugs. What a blessing it was to us to be able to bless those without!
Once up in the computer lab, we prayed over and dedicated the new computers, and met with a class of students who were using them for the 1st time, (a dream come true for Brett Johnson, who had the vision for updated computers for t Watoto when he visited a couple of years ago).
We left Suubi Village and headed into downtown Kampala, for a late lunch at Silver City Spur Steak Ranches. (a real treat after a couple of days of PBJ's!!!!!) After a nice lunch, we returned to our guesthouse, for some down time. Some of us slept, some played cards and others took a walk. We had another great dinner, prepared by the guesthouse staff of 4 ladies and spent the rest of the evening relaxing and preparing for tomorrow, where we will get to visit the babies at Bullrushes Baby Home in downtown Kampala (a former palace of Idi Amin) and have lunch with some Watoto families in Suubi Village.

-Jane Ringel

The "other" Project

It has been a challenging yet inspirational few days on the computer lab part of this trip. The good news: we have (about) 20 "newly refurbished" PCs upgraded to Windows 7 and on site at Watoto's Suubi village! The bad news: it turns out the other 20 machines have been stuck in customs because of an abrupt new Ugandan trade policy to not import ANY more used computers, refrigerators and other items. The good news to follow the bad, is we got 20 FASTER machines via another supplier and will be able to at least start the lab upgrade for Bbira village. We have had to do the upgrade & install for Suubi “the old fashioned way” – one machine at a time with a lot of troubleshooting and training.

That was the challenging part. The inspirational part is that despite all this and we have had a terrific time with the technical people from Watoto and our supplier. They have worked overtime with us to overcome many small and some big obstacles in the process. The best part is that Watoto is learning first hand how to set up a lab with the newest software technologies. Lord willing, we won't be leaving behind a black box that they can't repeat themselves. After this they should be able to work with local suppliers and their own technical team to upgrade and maintain their other computer labs - and finally get a best in class computer science program started.

On another note, I would like to thank the team for a wonderful surprise tonight after dinner – a big homeade chocolate cake commorating Petra’s & my 15th Wedding Anniversary! I can’t think of a better way to celebrate it here in Uganda with such great people J.
-Brett

Tues , July 27th

We had a great day today. We left our guest house at 7:05am and headed to the Suubi Village. The traffic getting there was nothing short of wild and crazy, between the boda boda's zippin in and out of the vehicles and the pedistians being very close along the road. It's a miracle we haven't seen any accidents. After about 90 min we arrived at our destination and we were all ready to begin our builidng. Our team was given a demonstration by the local forman on how to lay brick and mortar and we made some incredible progress. We worked alongside the locals and it was some darn hard work. I'm ready to pass out even as I'm writing. The local team seems very young, you really don't see a generation of older skilled folks. They were all very gracious. At the end of our first day we moved an entire truckload of brick by hand and completed 7 layers of the first floor.

Everyone without exception is just wiped out. I'm happy to say we had a much easier drive home. Made it in an hour. We all got back and took numbers to see who would get the dribble shower and in what order. Just finished dinner and now we are all about ready to pass out., Can hardly wait for tomorrow. Terri