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