So, we've finally arrived in AFRICA!! We flew into Entebbe, Uganda - for all of you history buffs, yes, THAT Entebbe. But it was all good! We had to wait awhile to get our visas before going through to get our luggage from the baggage claim - and we had A LOT to claim! The bright side is that through all of our flight changes, leaving bags at the airports, etc...is that the airlines made sure that over 25 big bags made it to Uganda. The down side is that ONE bag was missing - and it was poor Sarah's clothes! So a claim had to be made and that took time! Here is what I packed for just 14 days! Between the 3 big bags, carry on, and my back pack, I had over 200 pounds of STUFF.
Our taxi was very quiet as we all were looking out the windows and taking in all of the sights, sounds, and smells of Africa! It is quite different from the mountainous regions of Colorado and the small towns of Kansas! In Africa, they drive on the left side of the road and what we in the US would consider a 2-lane road (one lane of traffic in each direction), they consider a 6-lane road (3 lanes in each direction!)...here is a picture of the 14 passenger taxis and a few boda bodas (motorcycle taxis). As you can see, the bodas aren't even on the paved road here. They weave in and out of traffic at will and just take the quickest route possible to get where they are going!
We made it to the guest house and were there long enough to drop all of our stuff into their conference room, change into work clothes and go to the bathroom...and take a picture of Michael's monkey with David!
Then it was back in the taxi for another ride - this time about 45 minutes outside of town to the land of the new A Perfect Injustice boys home! We met the other 11 members of our team that had arrived 2 days prior and had been working at the house all morning! It was a bit awkward to try to meet and remember the names of people you've never met and then try to start working together. This is what the house looked like when we arrived. Yes, that is all brick and mortar (aka cement!)...and scaffolding made of sticks! I'll do a separate blog post next week about brick making and construction in Africa...quite a bit different than how we do things in the US!
Our job as a team was to transport the loads of bricks that had been left on the outside edges of the work site and get them into the building for interior walls or along the outside edges of the building for the exterior walls. These bricks were approximately 8 inches long, 3 to 4 inches wide, and weighed about 8-10 pounds a piece. At the time we would have said that the bricks weighed between 15-20 pounds, but I'm all about keeping it real! There's no telling how many bricks we threw this first day...especially since 1/2 of us showed up and only worked about 4 hours! We did take a lunch break and had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The peanut butter there was quite tasty!
In order to move the bricks, members of our team created 2 lines facing one another in a zigzag pattern. Someone would throw a brick to you and you had to immediately turn around and throw it to the next person and try to keep up in a rhythm so that your body didn't get too exhausted with starting and stopping! But, a whole bunch of mzungus (white people) from the US that don't make their livings doing manual labor had to take water breaks, bruise breaks (time to compare bruises from times when bricks didn't get caught with hands, but with shins, ankles, chests, etc), and dust in our eyes breaks. It took some time to get used to it! :) Toward the end of the day, the contractors (natives in charge!) allowed us each to lay one brick on the wall. So we could say we had something to do with the actual building of the house!
We finished working by about 4 pm and then headed back to the guest house to "clean up" (such a relative term) and take a 5 minute walk down the hill to Sanyu Babies Home - an orphange of 48 children aged 3 weeks to 3 years old - to help with feeding and bath time. Wow, what an experience. No amount of babysitting or teaching can prepare a person for that many kids! The mommas that work there (5 - 6 at a time) have it down to an art, but in my opinion, even with the additional hands of 22 people it was still chaotic! It was fun to be able to feed the little ones their bottles and to attempt to find appropriately sized clothes for all of the kids..kind of like a moving puzzle!
Dinner most nights was the buffet at the guest house around 7:30 pm. Most nights there was rice and beans (or bean gravy), a vegetable (slaw or green beans/carrots), chips (french fries!), meat (goat, most often), and then fruits. This is our first night's meal - the rice and beans were yummy! At this point, I thought I could live off of rice and beans!
We had a team meeting and debriefed about our day - it was a short meeting because most of us were just wiped out! By now I think I have everyone's names down which is good! We were assigned our rooms and roommates for the 2 weeks. Praise the Lord that I got put in a room with 2 other ladies, April and Courtney...and our room had 5 beds! So we had room to breathe (which is good considering Courtney's luggage EXPLODED and she took up 3 beds for awhile!) and didn't have to be in each other's way. Due to malaria carrying mosquitoes, we were able to sleep like princesses under mosquito nets! The one electrical outlet that we had in our room housed the small fan that kept us "cool" throughout the night...or at least kept the air moving!
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