Today, after celebrating Josh’s birthday, we had a “late” start (we were woken up just before 9am) to another bread and egg breakfast. Apart from Giles, Josh and John who had headed down to serve the 6:30 am porridge. We then headed out to different classes to spend time with the Primary children. Emilie and Gabriela, went to the Medical Center to help make envelopes for the medicine and tend to a few patients to provide some moral support. We spent most of the morning in these places until around lunch-time when we decided, that after eating, we would divide ourselves into 2 groups to do some different activities.
At around 2 o’clock one group (Claire, Giles, Jack, Charlie, Benjamin, Josh and John) went to the neighboring mountain to set up the final few “TipTaps” and all successfully completed them. They even made a Mark 3 of the Tip Tap with a double pull system which tilted the jerry can more so more water came out, however this strained the string more and it broke within 3 uses. Meanwhile, Giles showed off his Swiss army knife to curious Ugandans, very interested by the magnifying glass and attempted to make a fire with it. Meanwhile, Mark, Maddie, Emilie, Jordan and Gabriela went off, with the Doctor and a few assistants, half way up a different mountain to visit a severely handicapped young man named Philip. This young man is 19 years old and suffers from both cerebral palsy and Spina bifida. Due to these diseases, he has the physical resemblance of an 8 year old and the mental age of a 3 year old. We were very moved by this visit and seeing the difficulty of this young man and his family’s life and just imagining their situation and all the things they have had to deal with during the last 19 years has been extremely overwhelming for many of us. Despite his poor health conditions, he was so incredibly smiley and loved the interaction we had with him. Rosen, one of the midwives at the Medical Center, told us that when they found him, he was in a really bad state and could barely even stretch out his hand, but now he is now able to do so. There are apparently plans to put him in a care home in Kampala that specializes in taking care of people with severe disabilities. We headed back down the hill very humbled by this experience and with much more appreciation for our own families and health.
Upon arrival back to the lodge, after some tea, some of the school children came up to sing goodbye to us. It was a very emotional experience and Maddie cried most of the way through it, as did most of the school children and some of them tried to hide some crying behind their singing. After dinner, we went across to the school to help with some of the prep work and homework. Although we intended to stay for the full hour, after about 30 minutes, there was a regional power cut and all the electricity and lights went off in both the Lodge and the School. So in a sort of Conga line manner, we slowly made our way back to the lightless lodge. We saw that an originally controlled fire up on the mountain that was lit by a farmer in order to burn his field to make ploughing and planting much easier for the upcoming harvest season, had spread over the majority of two of the mountains facing the lodge. (We found out through some of the locals that none of those mountains had any residents on them or any animals, so no one was harmed as it was only land for crops etc).
That’s it for today’s edition! See you all soon.
Lots of love, Maddie.