Thankful to be back at Uganda Lodge with the children and familiar faces, we slept surprisingly well. After last night’s Bible study, Claire showed us the week’s planning of daily activities: A rota for porridge serving at 6:30 for the boarders, then a range of activities for the mornings and afternoons including building tables, making charts for the classrooms, digging the toilet foundations, painting and helping in classrooms.
Today the boarders didn’t have porridge, so we had organized to go to local Ugandan families and help prepare lunch. We went in groups of 3 or 4 to a family, along with one translator, to help prepare typical Ugandan dishes and then eat with them. Charlie, Madeleine and Giles went with Jacquelin (the mother) and her son James who is in P2 at the school (P = primary, going from 1-7). They rent their house on the outskirts of Ntungamo. Their house doubles as a shop where they sell essentials to make a living. They cooked “matoke” (a type of banana) which they peeled and cooked in banana leaves, atop a clay pot filled with charcoal in a corrugated iron box. They also made rice with bean sauce, cooked for 7 hours before-hand.
Meanwhile, Jack, Claire and Josh went to the house of Rose. Her husband only comes home on weekends, and works odd jobs. Her mother died when her brother Ambrose was 2 months old, so she looks after him: he is 12, along with her 4 children: Brian (7), Brave (4), Breia (12), and another girl in secondary school who wasn’t there. The whole experience was truly amazing: from the chopping down of a matoke tree to harvest the bananas, to trying raw sugar cane for the first time. It was all very memorable. “Young Denis” (19), our translator, is related to “Big Denis” (main man) and hasn’t seen his real parents in 7 years so Big, Young Denis’ uncle, looks after him. It turns out that our group actually played football against Young Denis’ team last week, and he even scored against us. Rose was also recently hired by our lodge to help clean and had helped us the previous day with our washing before we even knew we would eat there. She had even laughed at my (Josh’s) amazing washing skills, consisting of plunging the item in cold water with half a bottle of Mr Propre, then letting it soak for a solid 30 seconds before gently swooshing the water round and rinsing it thoroughly in dirty water.
We peeled “matoke”, which is incredibly sticky, saw their large plot of land going down a very steep hill, on which they grow jackfruit, passion fruit, mangos, G-nuts, avocados, tobacco, matoke, beans, sweet potato, coffee, yams and sugar cane. They also have rabbits, goats, hens, and a pet pooch. The lunch itself was delicious (rice, fried spaghetti, onion and cabbage professionally chopped by Josh, potatoes, pineapple, beans, expertly-wrapped matoke and mango juice to wash it all down.
Don’t worry about the sanitary conditions, we discretely slathered on some sanitation jelly cleaner whilst she wasn’t looking. We got back late in the afternoon and then left for choir practice where we taught them some hymns for tomorrow’s church service. We sung with lots of will and almost no skill, but we majestically clapped our hands on the 2 and 4 beat. After finishing practice, we started making some educational posters to put up in the classrooms of the younger classes, with simple pictograms of body parts, shapes, etc.
And that’s a wrap folks!
Tune in next time for the Sunday Special!
Jack, Charlie and Josh.
Love y’all, may the faith be with you.