With our powers combined - we are team Galileo School!

The local kids LOVE seeing their own pics.

Today we had 3 specific goals to accomplish. One goal was to take a picture of all the currently enrolled students and try to learn their family situation (parents, one parent, no parents, etc).  Another goal was to do some health/medical training for the parents.  And the last goal was to get interviews done with some of the key members of the school and community (like the Headmaster of the school). 

To accomplish our goals, we broke into teams.  Jaklin and I were in charge of photographing the 150+ children and trying to get their parental situation nailed down.  We ended up going class by class and taking each students photo.  We also had a translator helping us understand if the child had parents or not.  Sadly, quite a few had lost a parent or had no parents and were living with their relatives.  This area was pretty badly affected by the war.  In all, we ended up taking pictures for about 6 hours and got a picture of all 187 students.  Hopefully, this can help to set up a future sponsor program for the Galileo School one day.  These kids are going to need help with school uniforms, a school meal, and school fees.  Right now, most can barely afford the school fees.

Here's Katie checking and redressing a boys leg wound

Katie, who Jaklin has dubbed, “The Galileo School Medical Director” did a spectacular job seeing villagers.  Our small team could only bring a limited supply of medicine (mostly pain killers, wound care stuff, and malaria test/treatment kits).  But Katie was able to help many a villager through either treatment or training.  Most importantly, she was able to sit down with the “school nurse” and give her more education on how to administer the supplies we had brought with us.  She even got to treat the land owner that had donated the land for the Galileo School to be built on (he has leprosy btw – Leprosy!!! But she was able to redress his leg wound – he’s barely able to walk)

Above is a short clip that shows the old school and the new school.

Georgianna and Anne were able to get some great video and interview footage in the village.  Some of these stories are so amazing and unreal (the Headmaster for example had his wife murdered by the LRA and was held captive for 2 weeks - he was able to escape before they killed him). And this is just one of many similar stories in this area.  Anne will be putting all the footage together and hopefully we’ll be able to share that with you guys this summer.  

Side note, all the kids are still wearing their bracelets and ran up to us asking to sing the banana song again J