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Published: October 20th 2007
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Watching....
...a few of Josephine's grandkids, and their neighbors, playing around at the 'site' I spoke too soon when I said we have fortunately not been without water and electricity at the same time. If the past week is anything to go by, we are going to be very lucky to have water or electricity at all. If water comes on we all head for the showers immediately, and if the electricity comes on we all charge our batteries and head down to the internet place (which I just did)."Twagala kukuzimbira nyuma" is Lugandan for "We want to build you a house". On Wednesday, our volunteer coordinator Suna wrote this down for me and told me to read it to Josephine. Thanks to everyone who has donated money, I have received over 1000 pounds, which is enough to build a 'world vision' style house. I hope that everyone is happy with the decision to spend the funds in this way. Remaining money will be used to provide short term assistance (food, blankets etc.) to many other families in the area. RACT has over 50 'vulnerable' families in their books so far.Even though Josephine was sick the day fellow volunteer Naomi and I broke the news, she still raised her hands up and down, praising the
Day 1
Thursday October 18th lord. She did this many times. We have seen her every day since, and every morning she comes and shakes our hands, raises her hands in the air and, now that she is feeling better, dances round and round! She is unbelievably happy. The older grandchildren, who understand what is going on, are equally happy. Compared to the amount of time it takes for most things to be done around here, the house is going up incredible fast. Apparently it may be completed within 2 weeks. I am pretty sure this couldn't be done without mine and Naomi's superb construction skills (?!). Along with many of the neighborhood kids, we have so far been digging up the ground, passing bricks and shovelling and carrying cement. I am sure we bring more cement home with us (all over ourselves) than we actually manage to move to the guys doing the brick-laying. The building in general seems to be causing quite a spectacle. There are always a lot of people stopping by to watch, and everyone does their little bit.We did ask Josephine junior (12) why she was not at school. She told us that she had not been able to pay
Day 2
Friday October 19th for porridge this term so she wasn't allowed to go. Suna informed us that Josephine needs to pay 1500 Ugandan shillings (about one dollar) every three months. The school will not let her go if she doesn't pay this fee as they don't want her to be at school without food. We gave her the money. As always, she got down on her knees, bowed her head and shook out hands. She then showed us her lesson books from last term. They made interesting reading. The last science lesson that she attended was all about Cholera - what it is and how to prevent it. Yesterday, Josephine was at school but one of her older brothers was not. Suna questioned why and he said he didn't have money either. Suna got very annoyed, told us this wasn't true, and told the boy, and grandmother Josephine, that the building would stop immediately if he saw the boy at the site again. This is an example of one of the problems out here. It's hard to trust people. Even the ones you are trying to help. It makes sense why they would try their luck though, consideration their situations. As Suna said, the boy may just be lazy, his grandmother may well not care whether or not he goes to school, and/or they may both just be looking for another 1500 shillings.Anyway, school attendance problems aside, I am really happy with the way things are going with the house. All of the grandchildren will have equal rights to it. We talked to the village chairperson to check which area of land we should build on. Of course, there is no paperwork whatsoever to record this. This often seems to be the case out here. Everything seems to be done by word of mouth and hand shakes.However, I was upset by other news that we had this week. Marie Teresa died. She was the grandmother of Oliver, Aivani & Davis. She was in her 80s and had a broken leg. Some previous volunteers had offered to pay her medical fees but she refused as she didn't want to leave the kids and go to hospital (even though she couldn't do anything for them in her condition anyway). Instead she wanted traditional medicine, which included massage. She ended up dying due to infection in her leg. Yesterday we went to their house and were told that the kids had been separated and taken to different friends' houses. We found out that they were not brothers and sisters but cousins (several sets of parents had died). We were also shown Marie Teresa's grave, which was right next to their house along with about 4 other large ones and the same number of small ones. Right now I am not sure what is going to happen to the kids. The RACT coordinators are going to try and find them over the weekend, and see if anything can be done.There are such huge problems out here though because there are so many families like this. There are so many situations where really old grandparents are taking care of large numbers of children because all of the middle generation has died. I think I said before that this region is where the first case of AIDs was diagnosed, and it has been hit particularly hard by it. One thing I have observed though, is that all around the villages there are signs to show that work has and is continuing to be done by many different charities. ICR (icrcharity.com) and World Vision inparticular, seem to have done a lot. At least we are helping too. The house is going to provide decent shelter for Josephine and her 6 grandkids (we are wondering if we might find that several other families move in with her also). Josephine's family is ok for food aswell as they have quite a few crops (cassava, beans etc). The maize seeds at the school are germinating, and we have been transferring tomatoes this week also. Early next year there will be new food supplies for the school and some families.I have to go for now. Sorry there are only a few photos this time. The connection is slower than ever.Hope everyone is well and thanks again (so much) for your donations. I hope I can post more pictures so you can watch
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Katherine
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You rock little sis :)