friday 7/20

Friday-
Today we got up with the intention of planning. The things on our agenda at the beginning of the day: survey the site at the widows house, and come up with plans for a new house for us to build, take some measurements at the younglife office to build them some shelves, and see and pray over the site for the new youth center, and eventually do some cleaning.

So we eat breakfast at eight and wait for Simon at nine. At around 9:30, Simon comes around, and wants to take us to the library, because we have some books to give. The library was pretty great- it was one room, with some shelves down the middle, and some couches in front of them, and a bank of probably about 6 computers (3 of which work). And they have internet now! Most days, anyway. One of the biggest problems is that electricity is hard to come by. They have 2 generators, but somehow that’s not a good solution (I am guessing it’s the price of gas, which is crazy expensive.) the town clerk, and another important man (I forget why) came out to greet us, and tell us the story of the library. What the library needs most is solar power.

After the library, a few of us stayed there to work on organizing the books, and the 4 people who are planning the widow’s house went to see the site (simon hired a car for them, because it’s a 45 minute walk), the people who are planning club for tomorrow night went back to the hotel to work on that, and those of us on the office team headed to the younglife office to get an idea of what they needed there.

I was on the office team. Right now they have all three back rooms filled with people living there (it looked like 6 or so), and we had the chance to sit and listen to pastor Michael, who lives there all the time, tell us about the needs. Shelves and office supplies is definitely a need, but there are so many others. They need chairs- they have no furniture, and borrowed several chairs yesterday for when we came around, the need basic cooking utensils and supplies, because they have one sauce pan, and very few things to eat with or to have tea with- and people are over all the time. They need books and games and balls and things to occupy the kids. Volleyball nets to have tournaments with. Younglife T shirts to give kids. Transportation. So much need.

We thanked them for sharing with us, and prayed for them, and headed back to the hotel to sort donations so we could start bringing them over, and to come up with a game plan. We felt the best way to do the shelves was to measure, then hire a local carpenter. In the book we’re reading, it talks about how many nationals appreciate the intent of the groups that come, but really the project could be better completed by locals who know how to work with what is available- and that we also spend money in their economy. Which is great.

We sent Steve and Matt to town to see what was available and get an idea of costs. Foster, Casey and I got bikes and rode back over to the younglife office. We walked into the middle of an impromptu singing and dancing contest- I impressed everyone with my mad dancing skills- and eventually saw where they wanted shelves and got to measure for them. Then we rode back for lunch.

After lunch, we sat around for a while chatting, and eventually got to planning a camp counselor training for tonight. We have some great younglife leaders on our team, and that coupled with the fact that I just taught camp counselor training the day before we left for Africa and made a ton of photocopies, we were set. We had a great time sharing camp stories and talking about the philosophy of camp. At the end of that, it was about 3, and we had plans to play with the kids after school, around 4 ish. I went up for a nap and slept until 5:45 or so, when Chrissy, my roomie, came and showered before dinner at 6, and got me up. When I came out to the field there were probably close to 150 kids of all ages engaged in all sorts of activity- usually with a Muzungu in the middle. 6 o’clock came and went, and we’re all used to Africa time enough that we paid it no mind- at about 6:45, when the Ugandan YL volunteers started showing up for training (at 7) we started asking around about what was going on. Africa, I have found, is not so demanding in the customer service arena. The staff here at the hotel do a great job, and really do want to provide for us well, but they don’t think to confirm dinner times (which when we checked with simon, he said that he told them 6:30, and we knew that he had told us 6.) or mention when dinner will actually be if it’s going to be late (and it’s always going to be late). While we were all chatting outside nicely, all of the sudden the winds picked up and we were in the middle of an amazing thunder storm. It was a novelty at first, but after not too long, it was just wet and windy, so we moved inside to the lobby and dining room. Now at this point there were at least 30 of us with the Ugandans there, and most of us were younglife leaders, so right away, there were a couple of songs led, and a game or two played to occupy the time. Around 8, simon had confirmed that the kitchen was not prepared to accommodate the extra 10-15 folks, and it was solidly dark anyway, so he was going to have the Ugandan volunteers go home, since it had stopped raining. Around 8:30 we had dinner, and it was nice. They do a very good job of feeding us here.