House of Peace

Yesterday was another great day, despite the fact that I stress out about little things more than I should! I always have to remind myself that things will work out in the end, even if they aren't done the way I expected.


I started the day with a broken phone. After 5 years, I think my old Motorola flip phone decided to finally give out. Every time I turned it on, it wou

ld take about 5 seconds, or pushing any button to cause it to turn off. Although I still have the SIM card, all of the numbers that were saved to the phone are now gone. At least I wrote most of them down last year, so I didn't lose much! In order to save time, I walked up to the shopping center to find a new phone and print copies of our data intake sheets for the orphanages. The copy place was my favorite. It's a shop with a small counter, a wall full of paper and notebooks, and a really beat-up copy machine. You get copies for 100 shillings, which I think is around 4 cents - sweet! While waiting in line, another man behind me was asking for a copy. I didn't want to be nosy so I didn't look at his copies at first. Then the copy guy put them in front of me and I was intruiged. There was a black and white scanned picture that just looked like a fuzzy t.v. screen. In handwritten lettering it said "Warning: This man is a killer. If you see him contact..." I don't know what was more ridiculous - the fact that a man was searching for a serial killer with 5 copies of a sheet of paper, or that he expected people to identify it from the picture. When the man left, the copy guy started laughing and asked me if I could imagine his poster would be recognized. Even the copy guy knew it was crazy! I'm just hoping I don't run into the unrecognizable serial killer, but I'm pretty sure I won't!


As for my phone, I was able to find one for 70,000 shillings - about 28 dollars. I know, it pretty much broke the bank. I totally got downgraded to a NOKIA from around 1998. I am pretty sure I had a similar model in Jr. High. It even has the game Snake on it! Wow, totally lucked out. For an added bonus, there is a flashlight from the top. It actually came in handy tonight when we were leaving in the dark! Not bad for $28!


So onto our real work for the day. I ended up meeting Dennis and Isaac walking on the road by coincidence so we went to the ATM to get more money and buy some things at the store. I tried one ATM earlier that kept saying it wouldn't complete the transaction. 5 minutes after walking away, I realized it was because I was using my credit card - clearly not a checking account withdrawal! When I retried it with the corred card, I tried to take 720,000 - nearly $300 and it sounded and looked like it worked. The screen even said to take my money and receipt. My heart just about stopped when no money came, but the receipt did. With a look of panic I asked the guy next to me where the nearest bank was so I could report the incident. He calmly said that it didn't work for him either and pointed out on the receipt that my account was not charged. Clearly I need to read my receipt more carefully!!

When we got home, we needed to pack all of the medicine that we had purchased. It's amazing that you can fill a room with $600. Unfortunately, the prices have gone up quite a bit so we are spending more, but it is still much cheaper than bringing it from home. We were able to fill the medicine that we needed for the day, but we will have to get more of some items before the weekend. The only downside with the medicine here is the fact that most comes in glass bottles. I am always praying that they will survive the long bumpy trips to House of Peace and Mbende....or really any place we have to travel by car. Luckily, it has all survived the journey.


House of Peace is quite a trek. It takes a little over an hour to get to the main town by car if there is absolutely no jam, but because we were in traffic, it took nearly 2. Then, we had to take a bumpy, muddy, and puddle filled drive through the bush to get to the place. I am always amazed when we don't get stuck! An unfortunately Mtatu got stuck in the middle of nowhere because they ran out of gas. My guess is they would be there for a few hours at minimum. Pastor Kawooya is the man who started the orphanage and has plans to help develop the village. He would like a school or small clinic. He said that many women and infants die in childbirth because by the time they know they can't deliver at home, it is too late to make it to the nearest town. It would probably take a half hour if you had a good car, but most people would have to send somebody to walk and get a boda or car and then wait for the car to come and make it. Clearly not going to happen quickly, especially if it happens in the middle of the night.



The people at House of Peace are so appreciative! There are nearly 80 children cared for my adults and the older children. Last year, there was a sweet girl named Allen who was in nursing school. It would have been great for them to have a trained nurse living with them. Unfortunately, when I asked her about school she said that they were not able to pay her fees anymore so she no longer goes. It made me so sad. She was much less cheery and less interested in the medicine than she was last year, and I would probably be the same way if I were in her position. The likelihood of raising the funds for the older children to go to secondary school or university is not very high, but Pastor Kawooya works as hard as he can to raise the money. I know that there will be a way if it is meant to be.


Sometimes I feel that what we do is so insignificant. I mean, we saw JaJa's new house that some people who had met her decided to raise money to buy. It was amazing. Other people do work projects at Agape to make it a better place to live. However our focus is medicine. We don't have the thousands of dollars we would need to build a health center or provide expensive medicines, but we try to do what we can. It just feels like it isn't enough! It was very reassuring when Paster Kawooya spoke to the group and said how much our efforts have meant. He said they were blessed to know that we remembered them and decided to come back and visit them after one year. Even Isaac, who was very sick on the last trip came back and everybody remembered him! I guess I can never count out the effects that you can have simply by encouraging people and acknowledging that they are important. Maybe someday we can actually help them get a decent health center and do bigger things, but for now we will continue to invest a little money and as much time as we can with them!

Oh, yeah, we decided to do deworming on all of the kids. It's really not that expensive, but definitely needed. Apparently they have never been dewormed. The recommendation is once every three months. In the villages especially, kids eat food that has parasites so their stomachs end up full of worms. They just need to take a couple of pills to kill all the worms. It is a pretty easy way to help them out! Pastor Kawooya called it a "special Lord's supper". He mentioned that he cares for the soul and we are caring for their bodies. I think that both have to be cared for in order to have a healthy, happy person!