Maybe you can "polish a turd"?

I am not sure if I have ever shared the phrase, "you can't polish a turd" before. (Sorry if anybody finds a reference to poop offensive, but it's a pretty descriptive way to think about life.) It always pops into my head when I think about trying to "fix" anything, whether it is cleaning up a mess, organizing a stack of documents, or something as big as helping out with projects like some of the ones here. When you start with a foundation that is broken, you can do things to make it look different on the outside but underneath it will still be a messed up foundation. No matter how hard you try, poop is going to be poop and you have to do something about getting rid of the crap in order to really make a change.

(This post is describing what we did on Monday of this week, 4/28/14, so a couple of days have already passed)

Part of what we have been doing in Kayunga at the House of Peace is to fix up the house so that the kids can hopefully come back. We have visited quite often since my mom arrived and have also been meeting with Pastor K in town when we have to exchange money. It would be so nice if we could just transfer money in bank accounts or that there could be a credit system to make payments easier. Since that is not a possibility, Pastor has to travel by Mtatu for over two hours one way every time that we need to meet. The money is always difficult to keep track of because the amounts are so large. Instead of dealing with maybe a couple of hundred dollars, we end up using millions as our numbers and all the zeros get a little stressful to keep track of after a while. Maybe I need to work on my math skills? It makes me happy that our system of money is a little simpler. At the same time, I think I will miss feeling like I have a lot of money when I pay 100,000 shillings at the supermarket (the equivalent of $40)

The kids gathered outside of the House of Peace Home in 2012

I had been worried about this project from the start. Not because I don't think it is a good idea. In fact, it is a great thing to work on fixing this house so the children can come back to live together. After the past month or so, I am confident we are doing the right thing. I guess it is a little different than what I had to say about Little Angel and sometimes it is better to be apart. In this case, Pastor K is great and the kids are getting treated equally and they are all taking care of each other. It feels right that they should be going back to their home. Even tonight I was reminded of the fact as my mom and I watched the Muppet Movie (yes, I still watch it to cheer me up) and Kermit decided that they needed to save Muppet studio because it is their home. It matters when kids can be together as a family and I think it has been very difficult for them to be apart and fairly far from the village. Pastor K started working with the children after he had been away from the village for many years but felt that he was being called back to help his village, even though it held a lot of sad memories for him and he could have stayed away for the rest of his life if he wanted to.

The kids outside of the school in Jinja, about an hour drive from where they used to live

On Monday, we came back to see how the progress was coming on the projects we had been paying for as well as putting our own skills (which are really not that many) to use in painting the house. It was amazing how much progress has been made in about a week and a half. The garbage pit and dish drying rack were completely done. The walls have been mostly all fixed, the floor is completely refinished, and they are re-using some parts of the floor to fill in the outside porch. Almost all of the broken windows had been replaced and should be done by now.

Plate Stand for Drying dishes next to the outdoor kitchen

Garbage pit

The latrine pit is coming slowly but surely. It really is the most impressive part to me. We were told it would be 60 feet and that a man would dig it by hand. Paul and I both had a hard time believing it and were sure that it would cave in. I am happy to report that we are totally wrong and the man has dug over 29 feet so far. He climbed down into this grave-sized hole in the ground in the morning and only comes out for lunch. He digs with his pick, shovel and a trowel of some sort. His friends at the top lower a jerry-can on a rope and he fills it up with dirt. The process of raising and lowering continues all day as he keeps going lower. When you look down in the hole, you can only see the top of his head because he is wearing a white hat. He is almost completely lost in the dart pit. I just keep praying that the walls will hold as he finishes the job!

The digger is somewhere down there. You can't see him unless he is moving around, but you could always hear him singing

Imagine emptying that pit one jerry-can at a time

During the day, we got to paint. The rollers were normal paint rollers like home, but the paint starts out as a thick paste and is mixed with water in the same buckets we can use for washing clothes until it is a fairly thick coat. First we put an undercoat paint that reminded me of Elmers glue consistency on the walls and then went around with yellow paint. I have to say that after completing two hallways, the meeting room, main entrance, and 3 bedrooms, things are starting to look a whole lot better. It is amazing how a little paint can really brighten things up!

Mixing paint

I thought they were ruining the paint by adding water, but apparently that is how things are done in Uganda and it worked well

My favorite part about painting was that the poles we put the rollers on were made of tree branches because they were available for free. They are probably 4 times heavier than the light metal or plastic ones we are used to so my arms were definitely tired after all that rolling. Also, my ability to stay clean and keep paint off the floor was severely decreased without proper paint tins and really runny paint, but it all seems to work out and it was looking really nice by the time we left.

My trusty tool for the day

During the day it was also really great to see the response of the village to what was going on at the home. It is not often that there are large construction projects going on and lots of people working on one place. Everyone in the village knew Pastor K and the kids and that they were closed down because of the disrepair of the house. While we worked, groups of kids kept gathering in the yard to watch. There were groups of women walking by that kept stopping to see what was going on. They only well near many of the homes in the village is at House of Peace so there is a constant line of jerry-cans to be filled and people coming around to see the progress.

The inside window after being patched with filler

Overall, I think this 'turd' is being polished quite nicely, as it started out as a home that was in "total illness" as reported by the government offices. Maybe it never was a 'turd' to begin with but by the time were were seeing it, it was having too many problems. This process of restoring the home seems to also be restoring life and excitement to the children and men that live there and also to the village where it is located. Now we just need to pray that the work we have done will make it possible for the home to re-open.

Fresh paint fixed it nicely - the wall behind is still needing some help

I guess I should remind anyone that reads this that although I feel like what my mom, Paul, Medicine for Sick Children, and everyone else is doing is really good work, we aren't looking to take credit for being anything special. We have the money that we do for the project because of really generous friends, family, and even strangers who have graciously shared out of the goodness of their hearts. Above all, I do believe that God had a plan for this place and this trip. Usually we don't have anywhere close to this amount of money to work with and somehow people offered without a lot of asking. I am very thankful and will continue to be humbled by the generous hearts giving around me. Strangely enough, the budget and what we have to offer is looking like the amounts will be within less than $100 of each other which I think is a sign that the money was meant to be used here. We never said the exact amount we were going to pay to Pastor K, but it just happened to work out. As I sat down with all of those crazy extra zeros, I feel like it should be a guarantee that mistakes have been made. Then I think back and realize how we never told anybody the amount we had to share and find it to be more than just coincidence that the amount was almost exactly what was needed.


Sunday will be our last full day here and we are planning for Pastor K's church to meet in Kayunga instead of Jinga and we will have a big lunch with food that they normally do not get to eat. I am excited to see how things look by Sunday and I think that it will be very fitting to have the service and the children there to pray for the future of their home.

Clearly some of us are more excited than others to be working