33. Uganda 4

Wednesday 4^th June. This morning we headed out to Suubi Two, a village further down the hill from Suubi 1 village we told you about yesterday and over an hours drive from the guesthouse. We were shown our task for today which was to help build house 34 and the Kindergarten room which were only about 25 metres apart. We arrived on site at about 8.30 am. The foundation pad for both the house and kindergarten had been poured and the corner blocks had already been laid. We were to lay up to 7 courses of blocks to form the exterior and partition walls of the house and kindergarten room.

Fortunately their was a good building team from Watoto to mix the mortar, set up the string lines and generally keep us ‘on the vertical and with straight walls’. We started at 9.00 am and at 3.00 pm when we knocked off for the day had completed our assignment for the day. Not bad for a bunch of oldies lifting 6 kg mud bricks and laying mortar. The Watoto staff did the finishing work such as pointing and putting the steel door frames in place. By 3.00 pm. we were all a bit worn out but satisfied with the days work. It was a fun day with a fair bit of banter between the team and the Watoto workers.

Over lunch which was had in a temporary shelter we heard more of the work of KPC. Each of the 1,400 cell groups adopts a person with HIV/aids and provides medical care, food and any other help they can give. There is a new project north of Kampala to grow crops for the village food and also to sell to help with the village costs. They are looking at establishing their own hospital as many Ugandan’s in need cannot get free medical help. This sounds like it is going to be a huge project which will have a major effect on Ugandan health in the future. There are also plans to install solar power to provide the lights for the homes and other initiatives to help Watoto become self-sustaining in time. For now though they need volunteers and finance from overseas.

All the people we met from KPC are strong ‘born again’ believers and they teach kingdom values. They do not smoke or drink and teach abstinence as the Christian way. At the cell groups on Wednesday they discuss the sermon from the previous Sunday and even though there are 5 different centres where they meet each Sunday they all have a teaching on the same theme. The attitude of these people, their genuine love and caring just shone through in so many ways. It is definitely become their way of life and not an ‘add on’ as it is so often in the western countries.

The bricks for the houses were made on site with a hand machine. A mix of cement, sand and mud was put into a manual press and two men would swing a metal arm over to compact it. It was then left in the sun to dry for about a week. We have some photos and a video.

We arrived back at the guesthouse to a welcome shower and a good meal and most people were away to bed early.