Safari and Salt (4/24-4/26)

So, I am in Africa and I think it is pretty stereotypical to assume that people go on a safari and they are pretty great to go on, once. I went on one in 2009, at least I think that is the year. I sometimes forget which trip was which. It was with Ross and Rachel when they were both here. At the time it was super exciting and we got to see most of the animals up close and personal thanks to a guide/driver who really liked to bend the rules. (At the time we didn't know that the rules are that you can't go off the road to get closer to the animals) We also saw my favorite animal, the Giraffe because they are only in two of the national parks and we chose to go to Murchison Falls which had plenty of them roaming around. There is something about these very tall, and gracefully awkward creatures. The only animal that I didn't see that time was a zebra but I didn't really feel a strong need to go and see them. Since we planned on going on a safari, however, we chose the other parks, Queen Elizabeth, and Lake Mburu which were likely to have zebras and elephants, but no giraffe. 

Don't get me wrong, safari's are great, but they can be relatively expensive compared to the amount of money I have gotten used to spending daily here. When I was at the hospital I spent 2,500 on transportation to and from Mulago, 2,000 for breakfast, 4,000 for lunch, and usually just cooked from home. That translates to around $4 per day. Going on safari made me feel like more of a tourist. Maybe that's why I didn't love it as much as the first time. I like just living here and being a part of everything rather than feeling like I am here to sight see. Anyways, here are a few of the highlights from the trip!

Boat ride in Kazinga channel. Lots of hippo, water buffalo, and so many beautiful birds.

The top of a small hill in lake Mburu. The best part of the safari was the day we got to walk around the park to appreciate both the scenery and any animals that let us get close.

These three little warthogs didn't get scared off when I started talking to them, but apparently they are usually really jumpy and run away. Maybe they thought I had something useful to share?

My favorite bird of the trip. These little guys sing pretty songs and they are almost patriotic with the yellow, black, and small amount of red they are showing off in their feathers.

Some water buffalo make me sad. When the males get old and they lose a fight to stay in the herd, they are kicked out and have to live alone for the rest of their lives. Don't feel too sorry for them, though. They are the most aggressive of the water buffalo so be sure to stay far away and don't disturb them when there are only 2-3 gathered in one place.

Elephants possibly the second best animal we saw. There were dozens of them traveling together at a time and they were often very near the roads so we could get a really good look. 

Water bucks = pretty big deer?

Zebra! If you look at them too long, they just don't seem real, especially when there are groups of them moving around. They are just very oddly painted horses with a mohawk of a mane.

My favorite hippo picture! these two were going at it for quite a while. I think they were just play-fighting,  but I wouldn't want to get in the middle. Just in case you weren't aware, hippos kill the most people out of any animal in Africa (or so I have been told)

Safari wouldn't be complete without seeing long horned cattle and a boda boda in the park

Sunrise over Kazinga channel

View from the walking safari. Those foothills in the background are part of the Rwenzori mountains. I was sad when I found out that the Rwenzori water that I always choose out of the many brands of bottled water is not actually water from the mountains, but just named after the mountains. False advertising!

I think one of my favorite parts of the trip had nothing to do with animals. We were taken to one of the crater lakes, Lake Katwe, to see how salt is traditionally mined from the lakes. I always love learning about the jobs that people really do in this country. This is the main source of income, in addition to fishing, in this particular location. In this part of the west, many people are own a section of the lake where they mine out Sodium Chloride after each rainy season when the water evaporates within their plot. Each plot can sell for around 5 million shillings ($20,000)  if the owner choses to sell. The salt is good for eating but is not iodized. We were told that even without iodizing the salt, people that use mainly the local salt have rarely had problems with goiter (which basically is a problem with the thyroid gland in your neck that can cause a really big mass). 

There are also people that mine the sodium bicarbonate directly from the main portions of the lake. They walk around and break up the bottom of the lake and pull out big chunks of a salt that is not edible for humans, but animals often use as a salt lick. They can gather enough salt in a day to pay up to 200,000 shillings (about $80) per day. The biggest concern is that the saltiness of the water can be caustic. Women that go in the water without a protective covering have suffered damage to their fallopian tubes and urinary tract. Most women, therefore, don't do mining except in the plots for salt a couple of times per year. The men are known to have some external damage and it is expensive to buy water overalls so they are known to wear a condom instead for protection against the salt damage. When they leave the water you can see the whitish dust covering their whole body from walking around in the water all day.

Forgive me if any of these facts are incorrect. I am not fully up to speed on all of my types of sodium. Between that and sometimes having a hard time understanding the words that the guide were saying, I might have mixed some things up. Basically, salt mining is the livelihood of many people in the area and it seems to be really hard work to make a living. Also, there are lots of hippos that live in the water around the village and at night time, they are walking around and if you disturb them, you might get attacked. Not exactly a safe place to live and work, right?

Salt remnants from one of the salting plots - similar to what is actually found when harvesting at the end of the rainy season (we are just in the middle of it now)

Stacks of salt licks gathered from the main lake

Timber rafts that are used by the men to walk around and collect the salt licks during the day. The lake used to be about ankle deep with water but over time, the mining has caused the water to be at least 2-3 feet deep in most places

Beautiful view of the lake. The partitioned areas in the foreground are all privately owned plots. The line in the middle is where a pipeline used to carry water to a factory that produced iodized salt in the 1960's. When the pipes corroded, nobody ever replaced them so there is a big empty factory building in the middle of the small village area.

I also just needed a place to share this picture on a billboard I saw when we stopped to take a photo at the equator. I was just glad that somebody is educating people about corruption in government. Trying to fix it is a huge task, but I think the public is realizing that things need to change. I really like the man with the bulging belly and buttons that are about to pop off….

So Long, Farewell

Goodbyes have never been a good thing for me. I have a hard time moving on from the things that I love. Maybe that is why I always enjoy coming back to the same places where I feel I have connections with people rather than continuing to travel to new locations. I don't really think there is anything wrong with always going someplace new, but for me, I feel like the impact is greater and a little more deep when you can keep going back and learning a little more about people every time. For example, when I went on my first real missions trip to Chicago, I ended up continuing to go back every year for the next five years, even after I graduated from university. Every year I got to reconnect with people and get updates on how they were doing over the past year and conversations always got deeper the longer we knew people.

Since coming to Uganda, I have a select core of friends that I have met which started with my brother's first trip in 2007 and my first trip in 2008 when I was introduced to one of my best friends who unfortunately lives all the way over on this side of the world. Pretty unfortunate that we had a really strong connection from the time we met, but pretty amazing that we were able to keep in touch regularly over so many years. Over time, the circle has expanded so that I have met people's parents, siblings, and other members of their extended families. It really does feel a lot like home and I think there will always be a tug of wanted to be in two different places because my heart feels it has a home in both. 

Although I am sad about being away from the friends I have made, it's never so bad because we have technology to help us, such as Facebook, Whatsapp, and Skype. It's pretty easy to stay connected at least a little bit. The saddest part for me is leaving the orphanages, especially the ones where we know the kids very well because you never know what will happen the next time you are back. Over the past week, we have tried to make house calls to the orphanages that we were involved with through our previous project with Medicine for Sick Children. Unfortunately, the doors were closed on this chapter, literally. JaJa's orphanage and Nantale's orphanage were places that seemed to have things together and there were outside sponsors helping. However, when we showed up at their gates, we found locks on the outside of the door. From far away, I know it is a bad sign to drive up and see the lock. It means that nobody is inside because the lock would prevent them from getting out. We have some contact numbers but mostly they don't work and the neighbors only know when they left, but none of the other details. We are going to continue to search until we find out at least a few of the details. For now we have to be content knowing that when we were here in the past, it was our time to offer help and now we are moving on to different things instead.

Closed doors are always a bad sign

Today was really a horrible day, even though it was actually pretty fun. It was the last day with the Wooly kids at Watoto. It was a usual visit day full of coloring books, volleyball in the yard without a net, braiding (or knotting) my hair, and finishing with delicious local food. At the end of the day, the kids piled in the car so there wasn't even enough room for us. I got to walk back with Arthur, the boy that I sponsor, instead of riding in the car. It was so nice to have a quiet time to talk to him without all the commotion. I realized how much I love this 11 year old and the whole group of kids. We know them so well. Every year we visit them a minimum of 3 times, and have at least one full day outing to some fun place in Kampala. I know all of their personalities really well and I feel like I am really "Auntie Margaret", just like they call me now. Even the most stubborn girl, Ruth, who used to always call me Mzungu, and never speak in English has now been calling me by my name and coming around to talk to me. I still wonder if she is just looking for sweeties, but I am considering it a win. 

My face about sums up how I feel. The picture looks about how much they were pulling. 

At the very end of the walk, Arthur asked when he would see me again. I had to tell him I honestly don't know. With starting residency and moving along with training, I don't have a clear plan of what my purpose will be both in Minnesota and in Uganda. I have no idea if or when I will be back. In my heart, I feel like I will always be back, but I just can't be completely sure and that makes me more sad. I wish I could say I will see them next year but I might not. I have to trust that if it is meant to be, I will see them again, and it hopefully won't be too long from now. I am convincing myself that I am just saying "so long for now" rather than "goodbye forever". I need to trust that whatever God's plan is for the kids, it will be for the best, but I really hope that I am a part of the plan some time. For now, when I get home I will still be able to pray for them, I can write to them, and even call occasionally every few months. I hope they know how much we love them and want the best for them, even though we are from such different places in the world. I left with an extremely heavy heart today and cried for a good portion of the way home, but I think it is good to feel close to them and be sad to be separated from them. I think it is a sign that there is a strong connection and the relationships we have with them are important and meaningful. 

Kenneth and Irene. I don't know where he got that shirt, but I was instantly a fan of his support for the Muppets!

Arthur and me. We made sure to have an individual picture every visit this year!

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

Better or Worse or the Same When I Do This?

If you grew up in Eveleth, MN you probably went to the same optometrist that most of us did. In fact, I still go to see him even though I haven't officially lived in Eveleth for over a decade. During every appointment as he checks different lenses, he always repeats, "is it better or worse or the same when I do this? How about this?" As I was trying to sum up how I feel about yesterday, I find myself asking if things are better, worse, or just the same as we visited the former house mother and most of the children that used to stay at Little Angels since the time we started getting involved.

I actually started writing 3 or 4 times yesterday and found myself too frustrated to even finish anything so I decided to sleep, run, and think about my feelings before I put them in writing. I often find myself saying that I shouldn't have even asked questions about what really goes on at orphanages because the more questions you ask, the more you reveal things that aren't going well. We went through a similar experience with Need for All in 2007-2010. It was really rough with lots of tears and shouting but now, as you can see, the Woolies are at Watoto and are thriving. It might be different than where they started but they are in the best place possible, so I need to remember that there is a hope for things to be better, but I have a hard having faith that it will happen sometimes.

Judith, one of the boys, and Judith's son outside of her restaurant. Because the other kids stay in large children's homes, we weren't really allowed to take pictures when we visited.

So, there are lots of posts, especially towards the end of my last trip here in 2012 talking about Little Angels and the man who was in charge. I will refer to him as "M" for now but I am sure I have used his real name in previous posts. We started out just providing medicine kits for the orphanage and minimally being involved but when my mom visited the first time we realized that they needed a lot of things. Since we weren't allowed to talk with the house mother, Judith, because "M" doesn't like donors to hear any truth about what really goes on, we didn't realize how bad things actually were. After a couple of years we realized that things never looked better at the house itself and the kids never had the things they needed. When "M" showed up at the gate to meet us, he always had a brand new very expensive car, very nice clothes, and last year we met his extremely well dressed children. He claims that he treats the orphanage kids just the same as his own, but when you put them side by side, you can see his children with brand new clothes and shoes, with healthy body fat and clean teeth while the Little Angel kids had holes in their clothes, no shoes, and lots with rotting teeth.

Because there is so much to say and there is probably reference to it in previous posts, I will just list a few things we found out about last year during our visit:

• "M" locks all the food in a closet and measures out exactly enough for an individual meal. Sometimes he doesn't come back and the kids only got a meal per day or sometimes less
• He hasn't paid the landlord in 2 years, therefore, she refused to fix anything that went wrong including broken glass, locks that don't work, the outside wall completely falling in, and the latrine falling in
• When the latrine finally fell in and wasn't fixed, the solution was to tell the children to go outside and dig holes so they could go to the bathroom in the yard. Nothing like camping-style toilets in the middle of the city, right?
• Judith hadn't been paid in over 1 year
• One of the older girls ran away and locked herself in a sponsors room who later found a letter she had written to "M" asking why he was abusing her - the nature of the letter assumed it was sexual abuse, but the details are still a little unclear
• When donors tried to pay school fees directly to the schools, "M" went to the school and told them nobody was allowed to give them money and he needed to be paid cash directly, so then then kids just didn't get any school fees paid and were often chased away from the schools

The front of the house. It keeps looking more and more run down, but inside is actually better than you would expect. In fact, Judith said on the inside it is a really nice house.

Garbage pit in the foreground and way in the back you can see a little dirt mound that used to be the latrine. It wasn't much to start out with and now is nothing.

The fallen fence. It used to be a brick wall, but has been this way for at least 3 years. We almost fixed it two years ago, but then realized it was supposed to be the landlady's job - and led us to discover that "M" hadn't paid the rent in months at that time.

Okay, I think I could at least double the length of the list, but it will just get to be monotonous after a while. We visited Judith, who explained more of what was going on now and took us to visit some of the children. "M" called the police to take Judith away from the home but she explained that she hadn't been paid in year and he was ordered to give her the money in a lump sum, which he did. She used the money to pay for a small space that she now has made a restaurant but also sleeps in a space behind. The walls around her bed surround it so that the only way to enter is by stepping on the bed. All of her clothes and belonging are hanging on hooks and a shelf above it. The outdoor kitchen is actually pretty spacious and she cooks amazing food! (Although it's always way too much to eat, but I try to eat everything on my plate to not be rude - and then I feel sick the rest of the day!)

Very good Ugandan food

So when I try to sum up all of the information that was given to me yesterday (this was after over 5 hours of discussions with Judith and the people that take care of the kids at their current homes) I can summarize most of what I have learned into three categories.

Better:

• Judith has her own business and she is able to make an income for the work she does. (each plate of food is about 3,000 shillings = $1.20)
• The kids don't stay far from Judith and they can come and visit her fairly often
• 5 of the girls stay with a monastery school and they have a real school and they don't have to worry about school fees
• 3 boys stay at the sister home of the monastery and school fees are paid
• 1 girl stays with a female sponsor by herself and does not have to be around "M" to take his abuse
• The nuns and workers at the sisters' home know about "M" and have been working to protect the children from him. He is not supposed to have contact with any of the children by police order
• 2 older boys stay in Rubaga and understand the "M" was using them for money so they refuse to see him and are being taken care of very well at the home they stay at.
• The police have opened a case against "M" with some evidence being gathered and he seems to stay away from some of the kids (more on that later)

Worse:

• 1 of the boys is staying at "M"'s house. He has told Judith that he has to work and do chores all day. If he doesn't, they sometimes don't give him food. "M" is collecting school fees for this boy, but he has not been able to go to school because the fees have not been paid. In my head, this little guy has a modern Cinderella story going on.
• 3 of the older children are staying in "M"'s home village far away from the other kids
• The children miss being in a home together. Although the house wasn't much to look at (and has gotten worse), it was still the place they called home
• "M" took everything that we had given last time and everything the kids had before and either sold or kept them for himself. This included selling the beds for scrap metal, selling the mattress, bedsheets and brand new blankets are nowhere to be found, the kids didn't have any clothes, all their backpacks are gone, and none of them have shoes. He claimed he would bring the things the day after her dropped some of the children at one of the homes and then he never followed through. He even tried to take apart cupboards and shelves that were owned by the landlady and sell them himself.

The Same:

• "M" has been collecting money from sponsors. Some of the younger boys still consider him Uncle "M" and he will drive up in his car on the way home from school and pick them up. He takes their pictures and then distributes them to collect money to support them - which they never see.
• The lawyers and police officers have supposedly been given money by "M". The assumption is he uses at least some of the money he was collecting from sponsors to pay them.
• The young kids still like "M" and call him Uncle or Daddy, which makes me a little sick when I think about the possibility of what he might have been doing to one of the girls
• "M" is still considered a fairly prominent business man and is "a very cunning man", according to Judith, so he gets away with a lot. The only thing that give me a little peace is knowing that he is going to have to answer some day to God about what he has done. I am pretty sure we are called to help the widows and orphans and not to abuse and take advantage of them, but maybe he read that part of the Bible incorrectly?

Fron

Okay, so that's my story for the day as far as I am able to tell. In my head I am still summarizing everything I heard and every time I think about "M", I find myself clenching my teeth and start seeing a lot of red. If I am talking about him I eventually bring myself to shouting at any poor soul that is within earshot, whether it is my mom, friends, or our cab driver, Joseph. I need to know that I can only do what I am able and that I should have faith that God is slowly working and intervening in the situation. The Sister that I talked to yesterday told me that she sometimes sees "M" at Catholic Mass and she has a hard time not confronting him. She also told me she heard one of the boys praying one morning and he said "God, please help the people who are using orphans to get money to know that what they are doing is wrong and make them stop. People just like Uncle "M"" 

As I was walking through the house and remember all the times we had parties are were hanging out with the kids singing songs and laughing, I saw one painting that stood out. I don't know if I have the capacity to do what it says, but I think I will try to forgive "M", but I am pretty sure I won't be able to forget everything that he has done.

Just another big kid

I love the Wooly Kids! After knowing them since 2007, I feel like I have watched them grow up before my eyes and become vibrant young men and women who have such strong personalities. It's so much fun to spend time with them now that they are a little older and we can talk with them and tell stories. Kenneth, Trevor, Arthur, Kirabu, Martin, and John are now all ages 11 and up and they have started to take on bigger responsibilities at home. Arthur helps a lot with cooking. Kirabu has been helping with the media at church services. Martin is in senior high school and wants to be an engineer. I almost always lose sight of Kenneth and Trevor when we visit Watoto and usually find out that they were going to help with hauling food from trucks or cleaning the house. It's always really fun to see the older boys watching out for the younger kids, too. They make sure that all the little ones aren't left behind and they gently correct them when they are fighting or not following the rules. It's been very rare that I have seen them bullying the younger kids but occasionally I see them snatch a toy or a piece of candy from the little ones either to tease them or just plain be mean. I don't think it's much more than what Ross probably did to me as a kid and I would never say that he was a bully to his little sister.

Every year since the second year we were here, we have managed to take the kids to a fun place outside of the village. We have gone to the zoo, to the mall to eat chicken, and even to a big kids event at the rugby field. This year we went to a new kids park at a mall called Freedom City. When Joseph dropped us off and said there is a nice pool, I had a hard time envisioning where a pool would be in a mall. It turns out the entire top floor is a kids area complete with 3 pools, carnival style rides, trampolines, swings, and a big outdoor concert stage. Since Easter Monday was a holiday and Tuesday was not, the place had been packed full the previous day, but today was deserted, especially in the morning on Tuesday. We got the whole place basically to ourselves for the first couple of hours which meant we had the freedom to run around and not worry about losing any of them.

To make it a short post, I am just putting some of the pictures we posted to capture the day. The kids just make me happy and some of these totally capture their personality. We are off on a 3 day safari until Saturday! I'm hoping for not too much rain and safe driving all the way to Queen Elizabeth!

Trevor jumping on one of the seven trampolines

This and the next are my two favorites. Kenneth had just climbed all the way to the top and you can't see it, but one of the other boys is trying to pull him down.

Joy - she's mischievous and full of energy and will do whatever she wants if you don't watch her carefully. This face is pretty much how I can sum her up.

Irene - I picture her as the most calm of the kids. She is always even tempered and has a smile that lights up the room

Hanging out with Arthur, my sponsored kid. I looked at old photos of him from the first time I met him and he is SO grown up!

Their favorite past-time - eating chicken and chips. 

I think my mom was in her glory, getting to have Irene sit on her lap the whole mtatu ride home. There were 2 moms, 3 other adults, the driver, and 16 kids crammed into one.

The whole crew waiting to go inside. It is not easy to get them to stand still when they know we are about to start an adventurous day!

Arthur, Trevor, and Joshua - three of the boys with the biggest smiles

Swimming - Patricia was on tour with the choir and we met her in Canada. She had recognized us from visiting Bbira in the past and we were able to find her when we visited last week.

The beginning of boat races - I think these boats are pretty sweet, but much harder to crank those wheels than you would expect.

Sheer determination - this look was on his face the whole time he was paddling.

Pamela and I were tired so sleeping on the trampoline seemed like a good idea. Arthur, Kenneth and Patricia just wanted to join us.

Awesome little wading pool. Warning - if you try to stand with 16 kids in the pool, you will not stay dry, splashing is a favorite pastime.

I was ecstatic that they let me on the big slide. It is much harder to climb than I expected but so worth it!

Swings

The lady watching the trampolines insisted I take a turn.

Making some bracelets while we waited for chicken.

Peter made sure he had it in his favorite color!