We found a house, signed the contract, and hired two solid guards to provide security for our compound. The next step was to move into our new home.
Moving was quite the process. We moved 25 bunk beds, 30 mattresses, and a ton of other items. We didn't know when we rented our house that we were just down the street from where all of our things were stored, about a thirty second drive. Huge blessing! This saved us a lot of time while moving. Elder Halladay and Elder Mukustwana saved us! They devoted a few hours to help us move; they also provided the moving truck.
Laundry
Since all of our things had been in storage for almost a year, we did a lot of laundry. I don't know how many mosquito nets we washed, but it ended up being two buckets full. We also washed a tote full of mattress covers. We used our friend Saleh's washing machine and dryer, but with the power going on an off, laundry took a "good minute" as Jess would say. Finally at about midnight, we finished the laundry and hopped on boda boda's to head home. Baker, one of our great friends, decided he wanted to be in the picture. Love that guy.
Jess and I worked together to get the house in order before our volunteers arrived. Jess organized and cleaned, I moved and fixed things, and in some cases broke things! After a lot of work, we got everything ready for the crew.
UNHCR
Jess and I left for Kampala early Wednesday morning, 5/14/14. I had an interview with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee's (UNHCR) office at 2:00PM.
One of my greatest passions is serving the refugee population. These wonderful people were forced to leave their countries of origin due to no fault of their own. Several people from Sudan, Congo, Somalia, and other countries have crossed the border into Uganda to seek asylum. I've worked with refugees for over three years in the United States in two different refugee resettlement organizations, but I've never had the chance to be involved in the resettlement process overseas. With a lot of help from my friends in the refugee community, I was able to arrange an interview with Heidi Boehner, Senior Resettlement Officer in Kampala for UNHCR.
I had a great meeting with Heidi. She was very kind, and is going to try to find an extension office where I could work one day per week conducting interviews with asylees that are seeking refugee status. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, I would love to help UNHCR while I'm here in Uganda!
The Crew
After I finished my interview, we took boda boda's from UNHCR to the taxi "stage" as they call it, then we took a taxi to the taxi park in Kampala. I've never seen so many taxis in my life! People everywhere, taxi's everywhere, and we had no idea where we were going.
A random guy, without us even asking, told us to follow him and he'd lead us to where we needed to go. He walked with us for 15 minutes until we safely got on the right taxi to head toward Entebbe where we'd pick up our volunteers from the airport.
Someone tried to pickpocket Jess. One of her zippers on her backpack was opened, and the lining inside her pocket was pulled out. Luckily, she was smart and didn't put anything in her outer pocked. I've considered putting a poisonous snake or spider in the outer pocket of my back pack, so if a thief tries to pick my pocket he'll have a surprise awaiting!
We arrived to Entebbe late Wednesday evening. Our first volunteer arrived at 3:00AM Thursday morning, another came at 9:30AM, and three more came around 2:00PM Thursday afternoon. Jess took this group and they started the five hour trip back to Mbale.
I waited behind. We had one more volunteer come in at 10:30PM Thursday night, and the last volunteer came at 3:00PM Friday afternoon. We started on our way to Mbale, and made it safely home around 10:30PM Friday evening.
Our volunteers are amazing. Each of them has dedicated at least the next five weeks of their lives to serving the people in Uganda. They have several different interest, and they are very talented.
We have a smaller group of volunteers this first wave, just seven people. Our next group will have over 20, but it's good to have a smaller group to start. We gave them some time to sleep, to get unpacked and to settle in, then we hit the road.
Today, we took them to the Community Child Development Orphanage. The founder, Dan Wagidoso, started the orphanage a few years back. He used to travel deep into the villages in his area to search for banana fibers. He used the fibers to do his artwork. He graduated from college with a fine arts degree and he's a very talented artist. As he was traveling through the villages, he became aware of several orphan children. Many of these children had lost their parents to HIV, and they were alone. He started taking them in, because he felt that it was his "ministry". He's since adopted 100 orphans and he provides them with food, shelter, healthcare, and even education.
There is a waiting list of 200 kids in the community that need to get into the orphanage. Right now, Dan does not have the time or the money to expand his orphanage to serve those kids. He's asked our help to raise more income for the orphanage. He's also asked for our help to teach the kids English, computer skills, and a many other things. Before we left the orphanage, we snapped a pic with Dan and some of the kids that live in the orphanage.
Oh ya, one of my favorite moments of the week. We were on the bus going from Mbale to Kampala, and suddenly the bus stopped. Everyone started piling off the bus. We didn't know what was going on, so we stayed on the bus to watch what everyone was doing. We soon realized that the bus driver had pulled over so that everyone could relieve themselves on the side of the road. Men, women, and children walked off the bus, into some short grass, and started taking care of business. Gotta love it!
