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

Let the fun begin!

Today was a very fun and exciting day, we woke up to a breakfast of eggs, fruit and cold cereal prepared for us by our Ugandan "Aunties". Then we loaded up in the Watoto van and headed to the Watoto Central Church for an orientation of what Watoto was all about and the opportunities available to us such as sponsoring a child. Before we went to orientation we had an a chance to meet some of the Watoto choir kids and take pictures with them. Then after we had lunch we took a drive to the Bbira Village of Watoto to take a tour of it and to meet, hang out and take pictures with more kids. I think I probably speak for all of our team to say that it gives us great joy to see smiling kids excited to see and hang out with us.

The computer lab team also seemed to make headway, meeting with their various technical contacts and bringing back some of the lab machines to troubleshoot in the living room area.

Today was a great day!

-Ryan Miller

We're Off!

Dear Friends and Family of Eastridge,

After many months of prayer and preparation, we have finally come to this amazing moment: We are on our way to Africa!!! After almost leaving behind 2 of our team members (Watoto lesson number 1: Do not forget your yellow fever documentation! ), we safely and securely boarded the first leg of our journey. Now, we are all sitting in Amsterdam on our 3 hour lay-over after an incredibly smooth gazillion hour flight. Some of us have already enjoyed the "world's best" coffee (according to Brett and Brynn) and have done some window shopping and people watching. The weather here is very mild. We have also met some incredible medical missionaries (Dr. Liu, Dr. Daniel, and Nurse Judi) from Mercy Trips Healthcare Outreach in Odessa,TX who are on their way to Mbale, Uganda for a surgical medical mission. Our next posting will be when we arrive in Watoto after our next gazillion hour leg ie 3 movies, 2 snacks, 1 meal, and a little nap from now:0) -Sandy Wagner