Recap - Day 9 - Ssenge Village - Building, Rain, and VBS!

Ah, Saturday - how I love you so!  I only get to spend one Saturday in Africa.  One stinkin' Saturday so I'm planning to live it up!  We headed back to Ssenge village to work on the school's kitchen and have another session of VBS for the village kids.  Today was the only day that we had our full team with us in Ssenge because the pastors conference was over.  As you can see in this photo, the walls are coming along quite nicely as are the piles of bricks!  You can tell the difference in the piles of bricks stacked by Ugandans and the piles made by mzungus...we understand the importance of neatly stacked and organized, they don't much care!

Because Moreen (have I mentioned that she's the best cook ever?!?) had gotten in trouble for fixing us breakfast for the past 2 days (our 11 am snack) she brought food down to the school for us instead of us coming to her!  One of our options was bread with peanut butter and honey.  Someone in the advertising business is extremely clever!  The brand of this food is "Not tonight honey"...I mean, come on, that's funny!  But the honey really is pretty tasty too!

In the photo below, you can see where the bricks change direction (width wise to length wise) is the foundation switching to the walls.  At this point, the walls are just as tall as the foundation, but not for long!  In the middle of the photo, you can see a worker increasing the height of the corner for the walls.

And then the storm clouds began rolling in...

You can tell the difference in the sky transforming.  The building in the foreground to the right in this photo is the current kitchen at the school.  It is made up of building scaps and has only 2 'rooms'.  It is a 3-sided structure with little room for food storage and no place to put clean bowls and cups for the kids.  The new building is almost 3-4 times the size and will have space for storage.

The view as we left for lunch.  At this point, I possibly made a smart-mouth comment about the fact that it probably wouldn't even rain because we'd been passed over by rain several times in the past week.

As we got to the boys home for lunch, it began to 'sprinkle' heavily...after a few moments of everyone taking off their shoes and getting inside, it began to RAIN...and not just a nice, gentle, spring rain...RAIN coming out of the sky in all different directions and the wind was doing its best to wreak its own havoc!  Sitting in a brick and concrete house with a corrugated metal roof that has sporadic leaks is a bit different than being in my home in the basement during storms!  There were times when the rain hit the roof and it was difficult for us to even talk to each other because it was so loud!  During the storm, Kasim (the 5 year old from a previous post), went to the other room every couple of minutes to check on his "little" 3 year old brother, John, even when John was sleeping.  So precious!

Here is Derrick (with quite the personality, obviously!) using someone's camera to entertain himself and some brothers while we all waited out the storm.

After lunch and when the storm had let up (not stopped, but let up!), we headed back to the school to begin VBS.  We were unsure as to how many kids would show up due to the rain, but kids were there waiting on us when we arrived!  Because of the rain and MUD, the plan was to keep all the kids INDOORS and not out in the courtyard where we were at the day before.  So, we got more desks from other classrooms and filled up one of the big classes with over 250 kids.  It was a tight fit!  But there was not as much space to move around so some of the mzungus went back to work on the building, others sorted supplies, and a few even painted the classroom doors.  Here is April with our friend, Junior. He lost both of his parents to HIV/AIDS as well as his older and younger siblings. He is a true 'orphan', yet he has so much chosen family!  He is in school now to be an accountant and wants to make a difference in the lives of orphans and street boys.  What a legacy he will leave!

Oh, and Junior was always educating us in the English language.  It was FUNNY to hear how others see English  - yes, it's a confusing language, but to hear them explain things was definitely eye opening!

This picture was taken during the rain - it was much more gentle at this time!  As you can see, there are now window openings and a doorway!  The progress was coming along very quickly and they were doing such amazingly good work!

This is what VBS looked like from the outside in...it's a little crowded!  The girls led some singing of "This Little Light of Mine", "Hallelu, hallelu, hallelujah - Praise Ye the Lord" complete with standing and sitting, "Father Abraham" and a few others.  So fun to watch them be excited!  They did crafts, had a story, and got a snack too.  They didn't care that it was raining!

As each of the kids left for the day, they were each given a beanie baby and another prize.  I really wanted to give Michael the monkey beanie baby that I had been carrying around with me for the past week so I pulled him out of line and talked to him.  I told him how much I loved him, and that I was sad that I was leaving, but that I wanted to leave him a present.  He doesn't looked too thrilled in this picture though!  (But I look tan and that matters a WHOLE lot...but I'm guessing it's just red, Ugandan dirt!)

Here is Michael and his monkey beanie baby!  Poor quality of photo, but you can see a little bit of his smile!

Here is one of the precious girls going back home in the rain - trying to stay as dry as possible.

Here is little Kasim - all dressed up in his jeans and sweatshirt to ward off the little chill in the air.  I think this is the only time he wasn't being held by someone all day!

Earlier in the day, one of our taxis had gotten stuck in the mud of the dirt road by the school.  We had to help push the taxi out of the mud which was difficult compounded by the fact that all of the tires here are used and have NO traction on them!  Fishtailing was a mild way to describe how that taxi looked trying to make it up the hill!  Needless to say, after another 2 hours of rain, the taxis weren't coming down to pick us up!  So we walked back up the slippery slope to the village.

This is one of my favorite picutres from my trip.  This is George (on the right) holding Kasim.  George has such a love for all of the boys that have seen some sort of hardship in life.  He will be a wonderful father to his own kids one day, but he is already a wonderful father to so many.  He is changing lives in Uganda.