It's go time

Oh y'all, we got some stuff to do. Can I turn our guest bedroom into this kids room within the next 4 weeks?

I'm a little worried.

Home

We were gone 21 days and now we're home. We've had a couple of twists and turns on our way home - but that's what makes travel exciting.
Highlights include:
Strikes & protests in Athens.

We invented democracy! Hear us roar!

Flight delays in London - however, God provided us with a free pass to the AA Admiral's Club before we left the States.  He knew we were gunna need it.

AA Admiral's Club. Free food & showers!

I caught a bug. (I'm on meds & getting better every hour)

This is what google images gave me when I searched Africa, fever

We are home safe and sound and slowly re-acclimating to the "real world." The world with jobs, laundry, bills and responsibilities.
Thank you again for your prayers and support.  Nick and I are well aware that it takes a community to send people on a mission trip.  We couldn't have participated without the team of wonderful people that surround us.  It was an amazing journey and we feel honored to have been apart of it. Thank you for sending us. Thank you for investing in God's work in Uganda. Thank you for being in our lives.

It's good to be home.

Out of Africa...

We've left the continent of Africa and now it's time to debrief... in Greece.

Nick and I decided that while we were over in this neck of the woods we would take this opportunity to see other parts of the world. So while the rest of our team heads back to the states, we are visiting Greece. Just the 2 of us - 2nd honeymoon style.  (if honeymoons included cheap hostels, american airlines miles and clif bars for lunch)

Thank you for all of your continued prayers. We had a blessed and fruitful time in Uganda and can't wait to see what God is going to do through the Galileo School.  The stories of the children are overwhelming and there is much work to be done. We are so thankful for our time there and will take their stories home with us.

Anne, the filmaker, is quickly working to put together the short film on the Galileo school.  I'll put a link up as soon as we are able.

Stay tuned for Galileo school updates. I anticipate child sponsorship opportunities coming soon. 

Antio!

African Safari

We checked out of our hotel bright and early Monday morning and headed south for a little African R & R. Which means safari park!

On the 6 hour drive south, we stopped to visit the Village of Hope. They are a stellar nonprofit that is designed to help orphans in the area. They launched their program in 2008 and already have orphan housing on campus, a primary school, crops, solar energy, a water well and they are in the process of building a secondary school too. We toured their campus and learned about their operation & then hit the road again.  It was great to meet other people working in the same capacity. Jenelle & Mike, you're the best.

A few hours later we entered Murchison Falls national game park.  The park is so large that it took us four hours to drive in once we entered the park to reach our lodge. We didn't see another car the whole drive there. Upon pulling up to the lodge, we were greeted with fresh passion fruit juice and the staff carried our bags off to our rooms. We felt so fancy. 

We were able to spend two nights at the lodge with our team and got the chance to see some really amazing animals in the park.  It was a once in a lifetime experience to see all the majestic animals in their natural habitat. What a treat.

"Good bye, Bananas."

This was our last day in Bul Kur & at the Galileo School.  Being Sunday, we got to visit their local church...in a mud hut!

mud hut church

Singing on the fly!

They greeted us in the church with a choir performance. Nick and I got to host the children’s story time outside under a tree. We used the back of the van to hold up our feltboard. Translators were very animated and helped to convey the story to the children. Then Georgianna and I taught an impromptu song and made up the hand motions on the fly. Skillz!  The children picked up the tune and motions quickly and were able to perform the song for us perfectly.

After church the community leaders had prepared a special, traditional meal for us with posho, beans, chicken & Mirinda. All to be eaten with our hands. So fun.

yummo!

Pharm Tech Nick

After our meal we set up another day of medical clinic in the new school building. (Just a short walk from the mud hut church) This time we were a well oiled machine. Katie saw patients with wounds and malaria and I saw patients with other complaints.  Nick ran the pharmacy again and we were able to  see several adults and children.  I kept finding myself having the same conversation. Unfortunately, the lack of easily accessible clean water and food leads to myriad of health problems. Many, many distended bellies full of what I can only guess are intestinal worms, several skin infections, many discussions about stomach pains and gastrointestinal issues.  Many of theses  problems are solved with a round of antibiotics, but the people lived so far away from a doctor’s office and even if they went to the doctor, they could not pay for care or medicine. So the solution is to live with the pain and inconvenience and continue about your daily lives hoping you don’t get so ill that you die. That’s the reality for a large population of the world.

We wrapped as the sun was going down, and we gave lots of hugs and closing remarks. One sweet teacher said, “Remember to tell you friends that you built America in Bul Kur.” Everyone sends their greetings to our friends and family back in the states.  

Last photo of the team before we drove away.

As we drove away the children yelled, “Goodbye, bananas!” at me. I like that I've become known as a silly song that helped to bring smiles to kids who were afraid to smile. "Bananas" I shall be.

We drove back to the Acholi Inn and showered for dinner. I ate my standard fish and chapati with a cup of African tea.  The mosquitoes also joined us for dinner. They feasted on my legs.

Fried tilapia, chapati slices, and veggies. 

I dozed off to sleep around 1am listening the nightly thunder storm.  The power was out again in the hotel and there was no electricity to power the wall AC unit.  Luckily I’ve mastered sleeping with no covers with the help of a mosquito  net.  We've learned that AC wall units are merely for decoration.

All in all, it was a great day.

Where do you hurt?

swollen tummy

We woke up early Saturday morning and drove  the 2 hours from Apac  back to Gulu and checked back into the Acholi Inn. We made the executive decision to head back to Bul Kur (Galileo School) to spend some more time with the villagers.  After lunch we headed off to the Galileo school. We set up a simple medical clinic for the villagers of Bul Kur in the new school building. Katie worked her magic on wounds and malaria and I worked the front, assesment desk. Nick was in charge of the make shift pharmacy.  I met people who had cirrhosis of the liver, sickle cell anemia, typhoid, HIV,  and everyone had digestive problems from drinking bad water.  Unfortunately, when you live in a village with one under performing water pump, getting access to clean water 100% of the time is not an option.  I found myself repeating the same instructions to people throughout the day. "Make sure to only drink, cook and wash with clean, boiled water." However, every time I repeated these words, I knew it wasn't that simple. Their reality is to live with these parasites and diseases  hoping they don't get too ill. And when it's really bad, they hope they have enough money to get transportation to Gulu town and pay to see a doctor.

The most jarring thing I saw was a two week old baby. The 19 year old mother explained that the baby cried all the time and wouldn’t eat.  The school nurse instructed me to feel the baby’s stomach to see if it was hard or soft.  The mother unwrapped the sheet from the baby so I could check the baby’s stomach.  I leaned in to examine the baby and wowowowow. I immediately noticed blisters all over her little, naked body. She had blisters starting on her neck and into her armpits and all down her torso to her knees.  The blisters were so bad on her hips that she had yellow discharge oozing from that location. When I felt her little tummy it was rock hard.  After I finished examining the child, my translator rushed away from the desk to go wash his hands. He said we had to clean our hands immediately.  After returning to the desk and translating some more, we discovered that the young mother had not gone out to purchase anything for the baby because she had no money. She had used the only soap she had, caustic laundry soap, to wash the child, which resulted in the severe skin rash.  Also, the umbilical cord wasn’t properly cared for and the child got an infection in her little tummy.

Katie and the school nurse instructed the mother to take the child into town to visit the doctor so the baby could get the proper antibiotics and skin cream right away. 

 
It was a long and productive day and we were all happily exhausted by the end of it.  We weren't able to cure everyone, but hopefully our time there was of some small help. 

Adventure Missions

Yes kids, the lions did eat people.

Today was one of the most adventurous and wild days that we’ve had here in Uganda.  It started out simple enough with a short Sunday school lesson by Jaklin and me for the little kids at the nursery school – I’m sure Daniel and the Lion’s Den on felt board has never been so real.  We fielded many questions from 3 year olds about lions eating people. Katie went over hygiene with the kids and Scott and Georgianna did some field day activities. Then we had a late breakfast at Pastor Steven’s house (No adventure meats this morning, but we’ve dubbed Pastor Steven, T.O. because he looks like an out of shape Terrell Owens to me).  Then the adventures began.

Primary school kids were sitting CLOSE

Pastor Steven wanted “to take us to the local primary school and do some activities.”  That’s about as much detail as we were given as far as info about the school and what we were doing there.  We get to the Ibule Primary School and it consists of about 300 kids that all gather around us when we drive up.  Let me be clear. Gather all around us means get as close to us as possible.  The last “muzugu” (Caucasian) team they saw was in 2009 and I’m not sure if any aid team came out to this school before then.  The children were fascinated with us, and at times it felt very consuming. Every time we turned around they were closer to us and trying to sneak touches of our clothes, skin, etc. Needless to say, it was pretty overwhelming to try and lead our activities with only 5 of us but we broke them up into their respective classes and did similar lessons to what we did at the nursery school.  They actually had a short closing ceremony for us and thanked us for the teaching, visit, and encouragement.  They’re really just happy to know that people out there care.

Then, Pastor Steven told us we were going to drive by the government school in that area to see the layout, but something was lost in translation because before we knew it we were driving down a footpath into the bush. After a few minutes we were driving through a combination of corn fields and grass as tall as our van. That’s when the primary school children went “children of the corn” on us.  Full of excitement from our brief visit at the Ibule Primay School, many of them decided to run after the van when we were pulling away from the school.  It was adorable at first, but the large herd of children just kept following us.  Then they would try and jump on the back bumper of the van, hang onto the windshield wiper, and jump up and slap the window. It was bizarre. We continued to drive the minivan through the maze of grass and crops for several kilometers. The kids just kept running with us.  This scenario went on for about 30 minutes until we arrived at the next village.  We never made it to the government school. Other plans had been made.

Village of around 700 came out to see us.

A "line" formed quickly to see Katie.

It was apparent that the remote village (Ayera) was expecting us. After we arrived, the village elders called us into a hut and served us sodas and then the elders led us to a clearing in the bush where the ENTIRE village was waiting for us. They performed a few songs for us and asked us to speak.  We did our usual introductions and decided we could do a health clinic, since we had the medical supplies with us and this area is next to a swamp so malaria is a very bad problem here.  With Katie leading the charge, we did an impromptu malaria-focused medical clinic. This time it was mob style. I have a whole new understanding of mob mentality. As soon as we announced that we would be doing malaria testing, it seemed the majority of the village started running towards us to be the first person in line to be tested.  Mothers scooped up their children and fought for a position close to Katie. It became so out of hand that the community leaders had to intervene.  No one was beaten, but one of the leaders did wave around his large bamboo stick as he yelled over the villagers.  It was very hectic, loud and intense.  Katie was grace under fire and we were able to help her with charting and medication dispensing.  30% of those tested in the village were positive for malaria and we were able give them the medicine that will cure it.  Catching and treating malaria early is key. Many people here don’t catch it in time or they can’t afford the treatment and they die from the malaria.

By the time 5:30 rolled around, we had to wrap up the clinic. Unfortunately, we offended the village leaders because we had to leave before dark – but there was no way we would have been able to drive on the footpath in the dark.  They wanted us to stay, take tea, and eat dinner with them. But we graciously apologized and hit the road. A smaller herd of children followed our van again to the main road.  Overall, we learned a lot of lessons today.  Number one, you have to be flexible when doing missions in this continent.  Things get lost in translation and the culture is on a whole other set of rules (and clock) – you just have to roll with it (which our team has been great at doing).  Number two, setting up a clinic is an exercise in logistics and you should always have a plan before announcing free medical care to a village.  Number three, the villagers here desperately need better medical care. These folks are lucky if they get to see a doctor once every few years. Most can’t even afford the motorcycle taxi into the nearest town to even see a doctor (which is why we got mobbed – wouldn’t you fight your way to the front of a line to have your child see a nurse if they hadn’t had any formal medical care in 5 years?).  And lastly, the villages/tribes here are very formal.  Opening/closing ceremonies, afternoon teas, dinners, etc – these are all standard for “important” visitors and to refuse them is naturally offensive.  Whoops! But our team leaders knew that our team’s safety was the biggest priority so they made the right decision in leaving before dark.

Like I said, today was one of the most adventurous and wild days that we've had here in Uganda - it was totally awesome. Adventure Missions!