Building- Day Three

First up, a shout-out from David, who is missing his family. He says, “Hi Cheryl and girls, miss you all dearly and love you all. I’m doing well, haven’t been real sick, though my sinus is playing up because of the smog. To my brother Richard, I know I should have brought the whole bottle. Love you all, God Bless.”

Julie also says, “Hi to all the family. Love you, miss you, and God Bless you all. Love mum.”

On the way to the building site today, we were caught in a massive traffic jam. Understandable, considering the lack of attention paid to the road rules. For ages we sat about, even tried getting in a different lane of traffic to avoid it. But in the end we had to chuck a U-ey through a service station and take the long way round! While we were sitting in traffic though, we saw a huge yellow truck labeled “Yellow Pages” which is a courier service over here. Bonny also explained all the painted building we see on the streets. If it’s a business property, he said they were most likely being paid to have their building painted in the form of an advertisement. But he said a lot of homes get painted too, to cover up the walls, and they aren’t paid for it. It’s certainly an effective form of advertising. I could tell you half the phone companies, paint companies and cooking oil companies here in Uganda.

For our morning prayer circle today, we sang a different song. It was a welcome song from PNG that I taught the group last night, with actions as well. We did it a few times, getting faster and faster until we all just couldn’t keep up. It was very well received. We were also treated once again to Rose’s beautiful singing.

Today’s building went really well, for the most part. We only have about one and a half walls left to do, which hopefully won’t take us long. Not helped of course by me and my “fantastic” building skills. Ken pointed out that there was a tiny hole in a section of the wall that I’d done and you could see right through it! I think I’ll stick to teaching inside classrooms, not building them!

After they finished school, Rose brought her children to the site today. Dennis who is 7 and Chiffon who is 5. Because of my great building skills, I was given the new job of child minding. We had a great time with a bunch of balloons. They kept popping on the prickly plants though. I also taught them how to squeeze the air out so that it makes that really annoying noise! Something for which Rose may not be entirely grateful!

We knocked off after lunchtime and prepared to do the food drops to the homes between Suubi 1 and Suubi 2. The first stop along the way was Jjaja’s house. A very emotional reunion took place between the two Jjajas as we handed him his, specially prepared, food parcel. From there, we stopped at a lot of homes, where there were mothers and children. The kids formed a band behind the bus and followed us along. They loved to have their photographs taken, something which our paparazzi team was more than happy to accommodate! It’s hard to describe the feeling in words, what each person received from the experience.

We’ll be off for more gelatis after I finish this post. Hopefully not as large as Ken and Pete forced me to have yesterday

Oh and mum, yesterday I said the word bambi- it means please. So “Mezenue bambi” means “mortar please” and when you recieve the mezenue, the response is weebale (way-b-ley) meaning thank-you.
This morning, we greeted Bonny with “wasuzue otyano” meaning, good morning! Moses spent most of the trip laughing at our pronunciation!

–
Zoe MacLean and Tony Long (I got my proof-reader back!!)

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