34. Uganda 5

Wednesday 5^th June. An early morning alarm and we were once again having breakfast at 6.30 am, in preparation for a 7.00 a.m. departure in the bus. We were nearly 10 minutes late in leaving, much to Paul’s dismay, as a few minutes late on the road meant delays in the morning rush hour. He was right, and our progress through the city was slow.

We arrived at House 34 and again commenced the day with prayer before forming a chain and passing bricks to positions outside the building ready for laying. Our task today was to lay 8 courses of bricks on all walls up to the top of the windows. These windows (5) are pre-made steel frames with bars and shutters and are very heavy. The day was cool and threatening rain. The supervisor said the ground became very muddy when wet and we would have to stop if the rains came. However, the threatened rains stayed away and the temperature remained cool for most of the day. This made it pleasant to work and inspired us to all to continue the progress of the previous day. We completed all the exterior walls, much of the interior partitions and even helped clean up.

Sister Veronica mastered the pointing of the blocks and spent the day on this task. She said she had not had so much fun for a long time. The rest of us took turns at laying blocks, supplying blocks to the building platforms or tidying up the plaster between the blocks.

We were late leaving the site and arrived home at 5.30 pm. The management of the guest house had arranged some unexpected entertainment for the evening. Everyone had a quick shower, dinner and then went outside to watch ’The Chosen Generation’. (1 Peter 2 : 9)

This was a group of approximately 20 children aged from 6 to 12. They sang, played instruments and performed traditional dances. What fun. After their performance we all intermingled with the team. Some of the group were shown how to do the dances and the teacher along with a couple of girls and boys on African drums gave a skilful performance. We all finished up, holding hands in a circle, singing the worship song ‘Emmanuel‘, lead by a 10 year old girl from the group. It was very moving.

We were told the children in this group were all orphans and were being looked after by ‘Mother Robina’, as she was called. She is the owner of 6 Adonai guest houses and was using the profit from these to support the children’s ministry. The guest houses are used mainly by teams coming to Watoto to build or volunteer and we were staying at guest house One.

Mother Robina is a member of the Makerere Full Gospel Church but has started a Childrens’ church, attended by a few hundred children, plus she runs a school. The school has many refugee children from the Sudan, Rwanda and other countries as well as local children and has been running for about 10 years. We are hoping to visit on Monday so will write more then.

Just a couple of months ago she started a home for a number of orphan children, many who have experienced terrible atrocities. For example, one child had watched his mother have her throat slit in front of him and they all have similar stories. She currently has 35 orphan children in her care and out of these the team of 20 or so came to dance and sing and play for us. This performance was the first they had given in public after spending two months in preparation so it was a real thrill and privilege for all of us.

We were truly blessed today, achieving so much in the building construction and then with the performance of the children. We are going to try and change our tickets to give ourselves an extra couple of days here as we would like to visit the school and Chris still wants to visit Ndejje Hill, where she taught at the Lady Irene teacher training college for a year in 1997/8 as a V.S.O.