Home of Hope - Joseph and goodbyes

Wasswa

I had a lovely time at Home of Hope this morning.

I spent some time with a baby called Joseph. He has Cerebral Palsy and was just abandoned at the home one night, leaving them no choice but to take him in (of course they wouldn't say no)
He is such a lovely little boy, always smiling and I just sat holding him for quite a while.

Junior

The girls from YWAM (Another organisation down the road) who have been travelling there with me on Tuesdays - they go nearly every day -are going home this week, after being here for months - before Christmas even. So it was very emotional for them to say goodbye to all the kids they have been seeing so often and getting so attached to. It is scary because in a few months I will be in the same position and it's not nice!
Jennas' Mum in Canada and her womens' group had all knitted some toys for the kids at Home of Hope, and sent them over (air mail, took a MONTH to arrive). It was adorable seeing all the little teddies they had packed in, each with a little draw string bag.
I offered to take photos while the girls gave out the toys and it was lovely to watch.
We also took a photo of the whole team of staff and all the kids which was really nice.

Home of Hope group photo!

Arsenal fans, Bombs, Gunshots and Free Cake

I went into town today, did a bit of exploring and shopping etc. I feel very safe there, the people are really welcoming (or call out mzungu, but I guess they don't see calling "white person" across a street as anything but normal) and even more so when I wore my Arsenal navy polo shirt.

Men here literally just pick a team and decide they are a die hard fan. It's not like they can base it on where abouts in the UK they are from, or which team were playing at their first ever football match. It's nice though because they treat you like family if you support the same team.
Over thousands of miles away from home and I still get "yes goonerette" in the street, people pointing to my badge then theirs and grinning, and even someone grabbing my hand, shaking it, congratulating me on being an Arsenal fan, and then pointing to his house behind the shop and saying I should stay there some time... Smile, wave and back away politely.
Apart from that weird incident, it almost feels like I have mates in town as everyone greets me haha.

So today, I ended up in a westernised cafe/restaurant/food place called The Keep where I sometimes go for wifi, a drink or some nice English type food such as steak sandwich, fish fingers, spag bol etc. BUT the best part of going there is the banana milkshake. It's beautiful. Made of icecream and real bananas mm.

Recently I've been enjoying the sun (maybe too much, my shoulders are peeling from one day being out at midday with no cream on) and the lack of rain (obviously because I live in Manchester), so hearing Ugandans constantly voicing their hopes for it to rain soon made me want to send them over to Stockport for a week in "summer" and show them how unexciting rain is. However, I've now had it explained to me that it is unusual to have such little rain during this time of year and that rain here is very different. Mostly short periods of (warm) rain but extremely heavy, and some exciting storms, which then suddenly blow over and it goes back to being ridiculously sunny again. Doesn't sound anything like the grey rain I'm used to.
Also, as some of my pictures show, all roads, paths and any ground that isn't grass, is an orangey-reddy-browny coloured dust. Because of the lack of rain the dryness causes the dust to just be everywhere. And when a bike or car drives past you, a huge cloud of dust fills the area for a short time (in which people run as far from the road as possible up the banks or into peoples gardens until it calms)
So that's why people wanted it to rain.
Having still not experienced this yet, it was a shock for it to happen when I was on my own, 5 miles from home.

It started with me hearing bombs and gun shots, assuming war had begun in Jinja and I was going to die, I looked around the sky for planes and flying bomb type objects.
Then I realised it was thunder.

It was like torrential rain and I wondered if I would ever find transport home, and if not how wrinkled I'd be from being soaked with only a tshirt on. After my dramatic thought process of how tragic my day was going to turn out, the rain stopped.
I walked out of the cafe and everything was how it was half an hour ago (just a little damper)

I met up with Ivan and Edward (Ugandan men who run and oversee the Village of Hope) who were driving the minibus, picking up some shopping and food for the village for the week. We visited one of the house mamas who was in hospital (nothing like a UK hospital at all plus pretty expensive to stay per night) and then went to the a bakery to pick up enough rolls for about 70 kids to eat one every morning.

While the bread rolls were being sorted and put in bags of 8, Edward, Ivan and I stood talking. That is until one of the men from the bakery hauls out a chair and insists I sit on it. Grinning, I sat down and thanked him. That was not the end of the special treatment, (I felt bad really) a few minutes later another man comes out of the kitchen of the bakery with a cake for me.

It was still warm. Of course I shared it with the others. It's crazy the way they treat white people here in comparison to the Ugandans. So different to in the UK where everyone has to be treated equally.

It was a nice cake

Bubbles

Friday night was one of my favourite nights here. I went to the village before the kids got back from school and sat with some of the mamas while they cooked. They were shocked that i enjoyed sitting in the sun as they always sit in the shade.

I explained to them that we don't have a sun in England.

I also brought with me some bubbles and the kids who don;t got to school yet were all very excited. I got some adorable photos of them playing with the bubbles, it was a lovely time.

Jackson - ONE OF MY FAVOURITE EVER PHOTOS 

Teaching young & old

I spend Thursday at Jinja Christian primary school and it was great. It's nice now that I've got to know the kids at the village because a large amount of each class is children from there. I helped in P1 and P1 (I think it's equivalent to Reception and Year 1 in UK)

Once they had been set work by the teacher and written in their books, they would all crown round my chair and ask for me to mark it for them, it was so cute. They have "chapel" where they sing and learnt what The Lords Prayer meant.

I LOVE it when the kids sing, its so energetic and fun:

At one point, teacher that was explaining said this "so we know that Mzungus' have everything *points at me* *140 pairs of eyes turn to look at me*...but really, God has everything" 

English lesson with Josh, Jane and Fiona

Being here, I've realised that people really do think we have EVERYTHING, and that we are all rich and are able to do anything we want because we are trained to do everything (e.g. be trained as a proper teacher just because I can speak English). However in some ways they are right. To them, the fact that we have food whenever we want it, the same with water, houses stronger and bigger than most here, and free education is everything they know that is needed.We know we don't have everything because we have seen all the things out there that we don't have. We also live in a culture where we may earn more money but everything is also a lot more expensive. E.g. we may earn multiple times the average wage here, but prices here are so so so much less. I found out the other day that someone paid to have their nails done, and it cost 5,000 shillings - just over £1. In England this can be between £10 and £20...

So I can understand why kids shout at me from the side of the road "Mzungu give me sweetie!"

Josh filling in an answer

In the afternoon I took 3 students from Year 6 out of class who needed extra help with English. We went through their test and I helped them see their errors. Then I just created an English lesson with them as I went along, picking up on their weaknesses and helping develop skills in those areas. I was scared I wouldn't know what to do but it went really well and they began to understand tenses, plurals and verbs really well (probably good experience for doing my English degree next year too in some way)

Womens' English class

Friday was teaching the 18-23 year olds English again. I was surprised at their improvement since last Friday! Some of them were struggling to read a sentence last week and now were much more confident and their reading flowed a lot better. 

I recapped the things we did last week with some questions and activities and they could do most of it perfectly, very impressed! 

test...

I had put together some exercises involving spelling, understanding meanings of words by working out opposites, and more work on tenses and verbs.

Apart from one of their babies violently choking half way through, the lesson went really smoothly, and they loved passing heir books down for me to mark and put smiley faces for them haha.

marking answers

Upon finishing the lesson I was holding one of the babies for quite a while. He then decided to wee on me which was lovely. Thinking "oh well it's happened now" I continued to hold him after wiping my leggings with a cloth. 

He then wee'd on me again.

I gave him back to his parents.

How could I be angry at him though, he's THE CUTEST baby:

Before the wee

Shine

So for the past two weeks I've been teaching the kids at the village a song that we sing with the kids at WEC summer camp in the UK - "Shine"

Night time rehearsal / mini party

They absolutely love singing so it got them very excited, especially when I showed them it had actions. I spent a lot of my evenings with houses 7 and 8 just chilling out and chatting and playing music from my little Bluetooth speaker (one of the best things I ever bought). Once they knew it (and were walking around the village all the time humming or singing it non stop) we spent some evenings going over to the other houses to teach them too.

By mid week, wherever I walked I could hear kids singing "Shine..." it was everywhere... They asked me if they could perform it to the church on Sunday so I spoke tot he pastor and he said ok.

Last night after we made bracelets, I went to the big hall and started playing the song. They all flooded in to come and practice for the morning.
They sang it over and over, I made them do it without my help, without the music, and then made them get in positions and pretend they were in church. Then I just carried on playing music and they were all running around and dancing it was great haha.

So this morning I arrived early at the church. A few adults spoke to me and said

"so which kids are you taking up to perform" or
"are you taking a small group up? there's a lot of them!"

But I just said no and that I would be taking all of the kids to the front. They were all so excited and I wasn't prepared to pick and choose some and not others. So practically the whole village came up to the front and sang it brilliantly, very proud of them!



http://youtu.be/kHYMFGl1--Q

Yesterday I decided I was invincible and didn't wear sun cream, spending most of the day outdoors.
Yes, I am burnt and suffering now :''''''''( lesson learnt

Village of Hope

There's been some confusion over what the "village" I talk about is.
When I say I've spent the evening in the village I don't mean a typical village, it is a project run by the Australian charity HopeBuilders - the Village of Hope.

It began in 2009, where a plot of 4 acres of land was bought. There's an admin building with some rooms used as offices tor the running of the village, There's a small farm at the bottom with chickens, cows etc. Then 8 homes (so far, 14 will be the total) have been built over time by teams of volunteers to house 8 orphans and a house mother - in most cases this is a widow. From what I gather the children are brought from slums each time a new home has been built.

Paired houses: dinner time 7&8

The homes provide an opportunity for the kids to grow up in as close to a family type environment as possible - I think it's brilliant, everyone acts like brothers and sisters and they are all so happy and grateful for the new life they have been given.

Most of the children go to the nearby primary school Jinja Christian primary school (which I help teach at on Thursdays, so it's nice to see so many of them in the classes too) some go to Hope Community High School and so are very good at English and all subjects work them very hard.

If kids at home think school is a bore they need to try school here. It starts and finishes earlier and later than UK school!

A few of the younger children go to pre school and then the very young ones stay with the mamas in the village (like Jackson and John - in lots of recent photos)

The houses are in pairs and face inwards so the mamas are paired up and take turns cooking. The kids work hard after school too, hand washing their clothes, doing homework, helping with cooking, using an axe to chop wood for cooking etc.

So when I say I've spent the afternoon/evening in the village, its in this compound. I love how in such a small space of time I've got to know them so well, its a lovely feeling walking through the gate and them all saying hi.

I love how friendly and loving they are, always cuddling or wanting to hold hands or be carried. SO yeah, I just wanted to clear the confusion, I'm not just popping into the local village. It's not written on my little timetable but this place is the main reason I came and I spent most of my free time here. The kids have got all sorts of backgrounds, some unimaginable stuff, but to see the change and transformation of their lives now they are here and how happy they are is amazing,

Bracelet making (and other recent photos)

When I lead at WEC summer camp last year, one of my 11 year old campers called Tunu taught me how to make friendship bracelet type things, and I've made a few since then.
Before I came, I thought it would be a good idea to buy some thread to take with me to teach the kids how to make them too.

I'm so glad I did, they loved it. I got about six of the older girls around a table to make them, and by the end we had about 25 kids round the table all making them.

It was surprisingly hard to teach them though, it's not too hard but they were so keen to get started they didn't focus on my teaching of the method and just started as soon as they could.

This resulted in a constant hum of "Rachael" "Rachael can you come" "Rachael is this right?" (no) "Rachael can you please help me" in which I would circulate the table checking everyone's bracelets which looked nothing like the demo (it was their first time) and nodding in approval telling them it was great, or repeatedly showing them the right way to do it (all whilst Jackson is clinging onto my back) but they all enjoyed it, sang along to their favourite songs ("Waka waka" "shine" "Might to Save") and made some kind of bracelet, pattern or not, and that's the main thing :-)

Demo photo of bracelet (modelled by Will Dent)

Jackson xxx

 

Africans are fascinated by white people hair! The kids just love stroking and playng and plaiting my hair, sometimes there's 5 of them around me plaiting different parts haha.

Breakfast with Jeff and Blessing

Happy

I'm trying not to spend TOO much time on the internet while I'm here even though the wifi is constantly there for me, however = I've had a great day and there are sooooo many good photos from today and probably tomorrow that I want to post so I may just have to do a few more posts over the weekend.. sorry I am doing other useful things with my time here than just uploading photos... promise.

Energy Youth

Missing everyone at youth group lots! Leading at Energy this year has been so good and the weekend away before I came was a great send off. It was lovely spending a whole weekend all together playing and chatting and singing - and the last meeting was amazing, I hope you will remember it for a long time!

Thanks for all your messages and comments guys I'm glad you're keeping up with me!


I hope the ones doing the Genetik showcase are practicing hard, I cant wait to see the video of your performances! Good luck x
And also hope the next Encounter night goes well, sad to be missing it!


Stay in contact and have a good week, miss you all lots, especially when I hear "Rather Be" xxx :-)

http://youtu.be/cL_pt7Tl4Ew

Sleepover with a mouse

So on the third day of being here I spotted a mouse in the kitchen on the cooker. It ran off and nothing came of it.

Since then, every night I shine a torch under my bed to check for mice (pathetic I know)

Juliet put the kids to bed one night and left a 10,000 shilling note on the
worktop. In the morning it had been half eaten...
In English money this is about £2.50 but to her it's worth quite a lot (can be a day's wage for some people)
The mouse was not seen then either. I hoped the dogs might have killed it.

This morning I was putting something on a shelf in my room when something moved in the corner of my eye.

I shone a torch under my bed and then under the shelf, my eyes meeting those of a mouse...

Realising I'd spent the night sharing my room with a mouse (bearing in mind I've never seen one before AND at home a small spider is enough to disturb my night's rest), I am surprised at how calm I was, slowly walking out of my room and calling Sam to remove it. As he shoved a stick under the shelf, the mouse legged it across the room at me, realised the door was shut and swiveled back to hide under the bed.

He then managed to kill it (after I'd made him wait for me to perform a photoshoot with the frightened mouse posing for me on the skirting board under the bed) and life reverted back to normality.

I'm in Africa I think I need to man up.

I'm back

I stayed in bed all day, very ill on Saturday with a bad stomach - must have eaten something funny.

I have been eating quite a lot of different foods that I am not used to. The culture here is so different to England, people love to offer to make you food. When I go down to the village sometimes the mother from each house will say "Ah Rachael you eat with us today" and ask me to sit with the kids from that house round their big table and eat with them. I am not the greatest fan of a lot of the local food but I've been doing my best to eat most of it!
However Juliet cooks for me at the house where I stay so I usually have to say no to the mothers. However sometimes they just turn up stood in front of me holding a plate piled high with rice and beans or potato and posho - "Posho is one of or THE most popular Ugandan food which is made from ground white corn flour mixed with boiling water until it becomes solid." It's very filling but tastes of... not really anything. The women in my English session said it was their favourite food. Coming from England with such a luxurious and broad menu of food, posho is definitely one of the last foods I would choose as my favourite but that's just me being spoilt...
... and when they stand there with the plate heaped with food for me, and I have just had a large bowl of cabbage and sauce and rice at home less than twenty minutes ago, the dilemma is: do I eat another large meal and end up exploding, or do I reject the offer of this meal and greatly offend the lady. On the occasions where I have saved my stomach and said no to the food, the Mothers have not let me forget that I rejected their meal and made me promise to eat with them soon. I now already owe about 8 different Mothers an evening where I shall eat their food...

Anyway thanks for the prayers and messages, I am now fully better and luckily it was on my day off that I wasn't well, so I didn't have to let any of the people I visit on weekdays down.

First ever prophecy...

Sunday was great, I wish I could film the whole service to show you all, it's so lively.

I went to see Pastor George in the afternoon to see his new baby.

On Wednesday evening, I was at the village with the kids, and Pastor George was sat with the kids from houses 5 and 6 doing some bible study. After they had sang and we ate, (Yes, I decided that I would be polite and accept the meal they gave me, despite the fact that I'd eaten already. It was also the first time I've had to eat using my hands and not a knife and fork.) I asked Pastor George about how his wife was and when they were expecting the baby.

"Ahh we are expecting it this month sometime"

to which I replied

"ooooh very nice, any time then! Could be today.."

Anyway he left at about 9pm and the day after, I was informed that the baby had been born that night!

Edward and Ivan (the men who oversee the village) found this very funny and we decided that I had prophesied the birth of the baby haha.

So visiting the baby was lovely, she's a little girl:

Mary

I spent the rest of the afternoon at the village. They boys watched some videos I took when I went to watch Arsenal at the Emirates and they loved it, watched it on repeat. I'd bought the kids "Jungle Book" on DVD and in the evening they all sat in the big hall thing and the film was projected onto a sheet.

Happy Valentines Day

So today is valentines day. I want to thank Sarah Hine for being so thoughtful and sending me to Uganda with a present I was not allowed to open until the 14th February... Thank you xxxxxxxxxx

 

Miss you xxx

Photo Updates from this week

Put Jeff in a dress hahah	boys	pretty
Love night times	Home of Hope disabled home on Tuesday	Food market
Wairaka	Evenings at the village of hope	:)

Finally got a photo of a Marabou Stork as promised. They are like rats you just see them picking at rubbish in the street but it's weird because they are the size of humans haha.