Let me first respond  to the number one question I was asked by my friends when I got back from Uganda a few weeks ago. (Aug 18) What was it like to return to Uganda after being home in Canada for three months? That is a loaded question. The answer totally depends on if the person asking has 5 minutes or 5 hours to talk. So… I’m taking this forum to go a little more in depth on what we encountered. For those of you who don’t have time to read this, my short answer is - it was fine. For those of you who want to know more, it wasn't fine.....let us begin…

 

Many of you know that we rented a little apartment that is “closer to the action”. Well, it is right in the heart of where we are working and amongst those who we now call friends and those we would like to help. Back in April as we were leaving Uganda to come home, we just threw our stuff in the door of the apartment and slapped a padlock on it  as our time was limited to make it a home. Unknown to us, the reddish-orange clay that makes up most of Uganda (and managed to stain our families feet orange over the 9 months that we lived there), is also apparently airborne. These incredibly invasive floating particles carried along by the gentle breezes of Uganda infiltrated the smallest of cracks and heavily dusted our apartment. The result was a thick orange blanket of dirt on ABSOLUTELY everything: cutlery, light bulbs, furniture, toilet seat, absolutely everything. You know that episode of Mr. Bean when he paints his room with a can of white paint and a stick of TNT? Like that, but  0range. Now our Canadian friends are probably thinking that this sounds like a job for a swiffer (an amazing cleaning broom like duster), but you see, we were in Uganda and the nearest Walmart that sells the swiffer is probably the one closest to the Toronto airport where we just came from. Five hours of backbreaking cleaning later, we could finally see the floor especially when the kitchen sink faucet blew off the wall, flooding our apartment from the contents of the 1000 litre  water tank gravity feeding our abode from the roof above.  But other than that I guess it was fine. 

 

Our car that was parked for three months in the apartment compound looked more like a science experiment than anything else. Apparently, the driver’s side window leaks when the car is parked downhill  (and it was)  and this allowed water to penetrate into the Nissan  cabin causing perfect greenhouse conditions for a botanical garden of mold and other vegetation to grow along the dash and all over the steering wheel. You can imagine that the stench was pungent and it saturated the entire car for the whole 2 weeks.  I will say, the steering wheel with its chia pet   like growth, did provide a very comfortable grip throughout the week.  (If you don't know what a chia pet is just google it.)  

 

We basically found the school in the same conditions; a little unkept, a little dirty but for the most part, just fine. As you will read in Karen’s story, we were very busy getting dental stuff done. Our dentist friend Kai brought his wife Jenny and their two teens Wesley and Caeden to Uganda this August to help us with a variety of needs and projects and we are so thankful that they came along with our son Matt, as we couldn’t have accomplished nearly as much without them.

 

Matt, Wesley and Caeden masterfully created an amazing mural in our library that the HIPPO school kids will be freaking out about for years. They also worked hands on with all our classes to paint and decorate their classroom dividers that we had built to eliminate visual distractions between classes. Much of their time was spent hanging out with the students playing volleyball and soccer which I know was extremely meaningful to our students. It also kept all of the students busy and their minds off of their turn that was coming up in the "dental lounge chair". 

Jenny spearheaded one of our major projects on this trip which was sizing, buying and fitting 90 pairs of shoes for those kids who most greatly needed them. This time last year we bought 54 pairs, so almost all the kids have been able to get new shoes thanks to friends of HIPPO. This time, we have to thank Jordan from Brisbane, Australia and Heather from Brampton, Canada for providing the funds to purchase the 90 pairs of shoes. One of our kids actually had his big toes sticking through the toes of his shoes. About an inch through! Just the big toes.....right through! To be honest, this was both comical and sad. We found a great shoe market with high end barely used sport runners and indoor soccer shoes.   The joy some of the boys had when we gave them a pair of Nike 90s (ask a soccer mom) was really cool. This was a very stressful job dealing with sizing issues from second hand shoes from all over the world.  Shoe sizes are definitely not even close to being standard.

 

Jenny, Caeden, Wes and Matt did so many more things, I’m afraid I might leave some out but I’ll try: they taught the kids to brush their teeth, played with them, spend loads of time with and bought clothes for a nearly deaf child in our neighbourhood, filled and sewed beanbags to play with, re-organized our library book system, helped fit shoes, helped with the retaining walls, organized thousands of photocopies for term 3, helped Karen organized payroll, veggie, charcoal and sweater payments, visited the house being built, loaded 50 kg sacks of food and other supplies into the storage room, passed out prizes, peanuts and juice boxes, played skipping and other games with the kids, helped to pack up and unpack our trunk countless times, bonded with our dogs and absolutely bonded with the kids. They were awesome!!

 

We beautified the school a bit by adding a few retaining walls to give better structure to our designated play areas.  We planted 10 palm trees in an attempt to teach our kids about caring and respecting their school and to add some green into their dirt and concrete surroundings (that chia pet steering wheel really got me thinking). We also had to replenish and store all of our food and school supplies such as posho, beans, sugar, salt, rice, oil, pit latrine cleaner, toilet paper, exercise books, pens, pencils etc. etc. to tide the school over during term 3 until our return in November. It was really great to see Sarah and the store that she started with our micro loan project fully stocked and doing well. We were also able to start three new micro loans bringing our total active micro loans to 13. Our guard puppies were healthy and happy and all in all we were pleased with the state of the school. 

 

Were there problems and conflicts to resolve? Of course. Jesus never said helping the poor would be easy. I only know he said “just do it”.