finished our house!

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Hello! Just another quick update from kampala…we’ve had a very busy and tiring rest of the week. Each day we were up at 6 to get to the site on time, and much to our excitement and satisfaction ended up finishing our house at 4.30pm yesterday! Well, not quite, but as much as they get the teams to do. In the next few weeks the builders will finish the roof and other bits n pieces that need to be done. It was so great to work with the African team of builders, they were all just so nice. We would start the day by praying with the builders, and they insisted on having one Mzungu (white person) and one african in a circle, which was really cool. We learned some Ugandan words, namely muchanga (cement), bambi (please) and werribe (thankyou). They probably won’t get us that far in life, but still, it was nice to be able to interact a bit in their language. building was hard work, we've been heaps tired and going to bed really early. the sun was really draining but most afternoons it rained for some relief.
Last night we had a traditional African meal of sweet potato, boiled banana (which I’ve forgotten the name for), a bean and peanut dish, and rice with a beef dish. It was really nice! Sarah is one of the lovely ladies who works here at the guesthouse; she had gotten up at 4.30am that morning to begin preparing our dinner. Just shows how much the staff here are willing to go out of their way for us. George insisted on washing our shoes each night when we got home from building. They were always disgustingly dirty and caked with mud, but he really wanted to serve us by cleaning our shoes. Such a sweetie. It is definitely a relief to be out of muddy clothes now. I ended up dressing like an Eskimo to build, despite the 30+ degree heat, cos I was getting so burned. The last 3 days I wore gumboots, ¾ pants that came up to my gumboots, a long sleeve top, a hat and a tshirt tucked into my hat to cover my neck and shoulders! Haha, not a very fashionable look but at least it stopped me from getting fried more. The aloe vera gel I brought has been really nice!
The drive back from the site last night was so much fun, someone brought a car kit for their ipod, so we hooked it up in the bus and had a huge singalong through the streets of kampala. Our favourite was ‘we are australian’- we had it up full blast, with the bus windows open, singing: we are one; but we are many; and from all the lands on earth we come; we share a dream and sing with one voice; I am, you are, we are Australian. Actually it was more rowdy screaming than singing, we were having the best time! Even bonny, who is a self-professed Australian living in Uganda (despite never having been out of Uganda) was singing along and dancing in the bus 😊 good times!
Today we were supposed to get a sleep in, but decided to join in with the clean up kampala day that the church we are involved with was organising. So we rocked up there at 8 and were given some flimsy plastic gloves which we were rather grateful for. I was actually feeling pretty scared about cleaning up, due to the possibility of being cut and getting infected with something. I avoided picking up broken glass and stuff so all was ok. We were cleaning up in slum areas and saw some pretty gross things like a dead dog. People here just dump rubbish everywhere, and seem to especially favour places that have a sign up saying ‘no dumping’. So we spent the morning picking up rubbish and having people call out mzungu to us and staring, as they obviously don’t see that many white faces where we were. We felt perfectly safe all the time though, being with a huge group of Ugandans who were looking out for us.
After that we spent a few hours at a craft market cos sandy had had to go to the airport to pick up the boxes of stuff we’d brought for the kids. Due to endless red tape and corruption this exercise took them 7 hours! In the meantime we’d bought a few souvenirs and taken an interesting taxi ride to get lunch. The taxi was a minibus meant to hold a maximum of 14 ppl, while we squished in 18 so we could all be on there. It’s so different to Australia, oh&s is non-existent here! I kinda like it in a way cos I think half our oh&s rules are totally stupid and overdone, but I guess this is a little too much in the other direction. Like there was a car accident here the week before we arrived, where 75 ppl died. I guess it was a few taxis crashing. We saw a taxi yesterday which was kinda like a ute with a cage, and ppl just piled in til they couldn’t move - must’ve been about 30 ppl on there…crazy!
This afternoon we went to visit one of the other watoto villages called suubi, which means hope. We saw the house that the last team from ebc built, and met the principal of the school and his wife who live there, who are also aussies. Had tea with them then got a bit of a tour and talked with some of the kids. The traffic was so bad that it took about 2 hours to get home instead of 45 mins!
Tomorrow we visit another one of the kpc churches and then will have a traditional African meal with a family in a watoto village. In the afternoon I think we are visiting another babies home. Tuesday, wed, and thurs we are going on safari! Hurrah! I can’t wait! So you prob won’t hear from me til late next week. Hope you are all well! Clauds if I don’t get to write before, hope you have a wonderful birthday, I’ll be thinking of you!
See ya!

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Comments

[Amie]

Sweet:)
Sounds like you're gratefully working your tails off! That's beautiful:) Keep it up and stay away from those lion prides!

[nathan strempel]

Sounds awesome tam. i love the singing of we are Australian! Say gday to the rest of the team from me. spewin I cant be there to be a personal physio for you all! Nate