Roads, Roads, and Roads

I mentioned in a post I made after we drove up to Gulu how amazed I was at all the work being done on the road from Kampala to Gulu. After spending several days in Gulu, I was even more amazed at the work being done. All the major roads and many of the less important roads had been graded in Gulu. The main road from Gulu to Juba in South Sudan is now paved except for the center of Gulu where they are working full speed ahead. I was told by one of the drivers that the entire road will be paved by December and I have no doubt that this will happen based on what I observed. I even found that the smaller roads we take to visit one of Beth's and my sponsored children who lives way out in the bush had been graded and they were working on culverts.

Dora, one of my friends who is a former WVU staff person at the Children of War Center, said that the other reason so much work is being done is that the President of Uganda is running again next year and so he has the full court press on completing these road projects so he can use them as reasons that people should re-elect him.

On the ride down to Entebbe every once in a while I noticed these coiled pink tubes lying on the side of the road. I did see them on the way up to Gulu, but assumed they would be used for water or gas or something else. I couldn't believe it when my driver said those tubes are for the fiber-optic cables that will be running the length of the highway from Kampala to Gulu. Wow! I am astonished by the changes I have seen over the seven years that I have  been coming to Uganda!

A Big Surprise

One of the biggest surprises that I had at the St. Thomas Moore School was seeing Robert Ogwete for the first time in about four years. I met Robert on my first visit to the school in 2008. He was an orphan who was dirt poor but hungry to attend school and learn. Alex, the headmaster, was actually helping him pay for his tuition. Many of us on that trip collected money to pay for the remainder of his tuition for that year. In 2009, the first Vision Trip our church took, we collected enough money to pay for his tuition for that year as well.

Robert graduated from St. Thomas Moore and then attended a teacher's college. He had wanted to attend a four year university but wasn't able to find the funds to pay for it. But he has graduated from the teacher's college and is now teaching at another school in the Gulu district. It was such a joy to see him!

St. Thomas Moore

Now that I have returned from Uganda, I want to blog several more times about the trip. As I said in my previous post, the visit to St. Thomas Moore was amazing. All my trips there have been great, but for some reason this surpassed them. As I was reflecting on why this was the case, I came to the conclusion that the Program Manager of the Gulu Cluster, Harriet, was a major reason for it. I thought I had a picture of her by herself, but I didn't take one so this picture will have to do. She translated for me when I spoke with the students.

Harriet is warm, inviting and full of joy. Not only did she make us feel welcome, she made the students and the teachers at St. Thomas Moore feel welcome. There was something in the way that she interacted with all of us that made for such a memorable visit, I think.

I kept remembering the first two visits and the contrast of what I was experiencing on this visit. It was so different. I could not have imagined the degree of change that our partnership had produced back in 2008 and 2009.

The Director of Education for northern Uganda, Catherine, attended the first part of the day. I was impressed with her demeanor and with the message that she shared with the students. After the ground breaking ceremony was completed, she gracefully departed for another function. Below is her picture.

According to Alex, St. Thomas Moore is ranked number 11 in the northern district. 

Overwhelmed

I don't even know where to begin. This was the best day that I have spent in Uganda since I first traveled here in 2008. We spent 7 hours at St. Thomas Moore that defies words. It's late and I am still trying to process what happened so I will share just briefly and post blogs about our experience when I return. Let me summarize what we received from the school: one chicken, one goat, one large container of honey in the honeycomb, two poems, a beautiful picture by the art instructor, and had one song dedicated to us. There was a lot of singing, dancing, speech-making, and laughing. I even played some volleyball and didn't do too badly for an old guy. We had a ground-breaking ceremony for the new library. I also was given a Ugandan name by Harriet, the project manager of the Koro-Bobi ADP. My Ugandan name is Omara, which means "He loves." I will post a few pictures to give you a little taste of what we experienced. Joan and Michelle feel as overwhelmed as I do. We are going to have time to process it on our trip to Entebbe tomorrow.

Below is a picture of Todo Alex and his wife, Joy. This was the first time that I met her. I think it was Alex and Joy who gave us the goat. They intended for us to eat it for breakfast. I asked Harriet, the Program Manager for Koro-Bobi, to give the goat to a needy family. They are going to give it to one of Beth's and my sponsored children, Brenda.

The picture below is the sign we unveiled at the ground breaking for the library.

As you can see, Joan handles a mean pick. I was afraid that Michelle was going to hit someone in the head with hers!

Two of our gifts...

Tomorrow I don't think I will be able to blog, so there may be a 2 day gap before I can blog again about our visit to St. Thomas Moore.

Vision Fund

Today we focused on the Vision Fund, the entity that World Vision has created for microfinance. After devotions we received a briefing on how the Vision Fund works by some of the Vision Fund staff. It has been operative in Gulu for about 4 years and they are having a lot of success with it. The one criteria that differentiates them from other microfinance organizations is that the person seeking the loan must have children. Since WV focuses its work on children and their well-being, they want to insure that the loan will in some way benefit children. As I have read elsewhere, women are better at repaying loans than men, and the repayment rate is extremely high.

After the briefing, we drove for 1 1/2 hours or so to the Candangmone community which received microfinance loans. The president, Santos, spoke about the community and how the Vision Fund helped them. Below are a couple of pictures from the day. Santos is standing and Flavia is translating in the first picture and the second is of some of the Vision Trip Team,

After the briefing we headed back to Gulu and partway back stopped to meet Peter, a man who had received a microfinance loan. He was quite impressive. He spoke in English which surprised me, and he had received his first loan to help him in his farming. He is growing sweet potatoes to sell to farmers who will be planting them when the rainy season starts in the next several weeks. The neighbors were references for him to get the loan because of his investment in the community, trying to teach others about farming. His success will affect the well-being of those in his community. We took a field trip to see some of his fields planted with sweet potatoes. Below is a picture of one of them.

Tomorrow we spend the day at St. Thomas Moore School and Joan, Michelle, and I  are really excited about spending the day there.

Sharing in the Life of Children

The Gulu Cluster has moved to the former Children of War Center. (COWC) I feel very connected to that place so I am actually happy that it has moved. Because they were renting the former office and WVU owns the COWC and it was no longer functioning in that capacity, they decided to move last year.

Harriet is the Cluster manager and she lead a very lively devotions. During one of the songs we formed a conga line singing a praise song in Luo. After singing I gave the message with a translator, and this was followed by introductions of the Gulu Cluster staff and those of us on the Vision Trip.

When devotions ended, we all headed to the open market to purchase some food stuffs for each of the families of our sponsored children. This included 3 litres of cooking oil, 10 kilos of corn flour, 1 kilo of sugar, 2 kilos of salt, 2 kilos of rice, two long bars of laundry washing soap, a big package of biscuits (cookies) and 2 kilos of onions. We needed to buy for a total of 18 sponsored children between the two churches. We came back to the hotel, divided everything up, placed them in large bags that we had also purchased. Because of the large number of sponsored children, it was not possible to visit all of the them at their homes. So most of the children came to our hotel with one or both parents and were there from approximately 10:30 am to 3:00 pm. I headed out around 10:30 am with several of the WVU staff to visit Beth's and my sponsored children. At the end of the day, everyone had a moving time with our sponsored children.

On my way to visit one of my children, we passed by a pond that was filled with people hunting Mudfish. Mudfish dig down into the mud, and apparently they go deeply. This pond was filled with people hunting for them. Many had spears whose head was a 1 to 2 feet long thin cylinder with a point. Some people were trying to dig for them with their hands. I didn't actually see anyone in the process of catching one but the second picture shows a man who is holding up his recently caught mudfish.

Two of my favorite sponsored children are Stephen and Ronald. They are best friends, their families are very close, and they are really cute. Stephen is affectionate and Ronald is shier, but I always visit them together with one boy sitting on my right and the other on the left. It turns out that the clothes that Miriam helped me buy in Entebbe for the children fit amazingly well. She did a great job. Below is a picture of the boys in the shirts I bought them. Stephen is on the left and Ronald on the right.

Oh, did I mention that today was the hottest day that I have experienced in Uganda? It hit 106 degrees. The humidity is low so it felt more like Phoenix than Miami. It was a great day.

On the Road

We met for breakfast at 7:00 am and headed for the WVU National Headquarters around 7:45. We attended devotions with the WVU staff and after the presentation we introduced ourselves to those staff who were there. I always look forward to devotions because my friend Vincent who is in charge of spiritual development for all of WVU leads them and I get to see him if for even a brief time. Below is a picture of Vincent.

After listening to several presentations on the work of WVU, we headed up to Gulu around 11:30 am. We were in a convoy of four vehicles. Joan, Michelle, and I were in a vehicle together and the other church split up between the other three vehicles. We were fully loaded with all of the luggage that we brought, a lot of it was for the children. The trip normally takes from four to five hours. We made good time on the first half of the journey and stopped at a nice rest stop to stretch our legs and get something to drink. It wasn't too long after that we started running into road reconstruction. The amount of roadwork that I saw amazed me.

For a number of years the government has been working to rebuild the road to Gulu. Each time I return they have made progress. I never saw much actual work being done, and I might see one modern road construction vehicle like a grader in the work area. Today, however was totally different. Not only did I observe the "usual" work" but from a little over halfway to Gulu, road construction was actually occuring or had been done but not completed all the way to Gulu. It dawned on me after I saw an Asian looking man supervising at one place, that this is the result of the billions of dollars that the Chinese government has been pouring into Subsaharan Africa. I was astonished that the road work has gone all the way to Gulu. When I was here at the end of July, virtually none of this occured--it has all happened in nine months!

In addition to the road work slowing us down, the lead vehicle had a flat tire. The spare tire was too soft to use, so one of the drivers of another vehicle drove it to a gas station not to far up the road to fill it with air. That episode took about 40 minutes. Below are a few pictures of it.

We finally rolled into the Bomah Hotel around 7:30 pm. We were glad to be in Gulu and hungry for dinner. 

Tomorrow we will share devotions at the Gulu Cluster and then visit with our sponsored children, something we are all looking forward to.