Graduation

It’s been a busy few weeks since our return to Kasese on 15^th October.  It was wonderful to have my Dad with us for the first fortnight, and he made himself very useful helping us fix various things around the house and building a tree-house for Sam in our garden.  Thankfully our initial tummy-bugs cleared after the first week or so, and we were able to return to our normal pace.  On his last day in Kasese Dad accompanied me to Kahokya Baptist Church, which we had first visited shortly before we left Uganda.

Getting to Kahokya is quite an adventure, as you drive down towards the equator and then turn and climb up the beautiful road which heads towards the DR Congo.  Long before the border however, we turned off the tarmac road and drove 16km on dirt tracks of ever deteriorating quality and increasing steepness through farms and villages, until we finally reached Kahokya in the foothills of the Rwenzori mountains.  The vision for Kahokya is to install a 65W solar system which will provide the church with light for the evenings, and the capacity to charge multiple mobile-phones during the day, and so earn an income (more details to follow).  During this visit we had good discussions with the Pastor and made all the measurements of the church required to make a detailed wiring plan.  The Pastor then took us back to his home to meet some of his ten children and many grandchildren.  As we left, Dad was presented with a chicken – a great honour for any visitor here!

Uganda is a wonderful place to visit and very hospitable to outsiders.  We’ve had some recent reminders, however, of just how tough life is for so many Ugandans. One of the toddlers who comes to Daycare was badly burned by a cooking fire whilst at home and died after a few days in hospital.  One of the reasons for establishing the daycare was to reduce the prevalence of such tragedies, but of course we only operate during the working week.  The following weekend Daycare was broken into and money stolen from the cashbox, probably as a consequence of Alpha School’s nightguard having recently been killed in town, therefore leaving the school and project site much more vulnerable, until a replacement could be found.

With these sad things in mind, we were particularly keen for our first Graduation of 15 trainees from the tailoring and carpentry courses to be a success on Friday.  Under Bethan’s patient instruction, the women’s co-operative from Central Baptist Church spent two afternoons making and icing a massive graduation cake, while the rest of the committee were busy inviting local leaders, making certificates, buying refreshments and decorating Alpha’s School Hall with beautiful bougainvillea branches (from our garden wall) and “local streamers” (ie rolls of toilet paper!).  Typically, the 2pm ceremony started at gone 3pm and the local politician and his entourage, who was our guest of honour, didn’t turn up until 5.15pm.  However, an extra-long sermon from our Chairman Rev Sitarico, and a couple more songs from Alpha School’s choir padded out this waiting time, and no-one seemed to mind.  Sam mostly entertained himself pushing around some bottle-cap wheels on the end of a long reed-pole, in true African style, and Jonah was passed around for cuddles from almost every woman there, so we were proud and relieved that our two small boys didn’t disrupt the lengthy proceedings.  There were many speeches and presentations in different languages, of varying lengths, but it was pleasing to hear local leaders referring to the skills training project as part of a “new Acholi Quarter”, turning its back on its reputation as a hotbed of crime and despair.  That said, its status as amongst the highest in the country for rates of HIV infection, shows that there is still much to be done here.  One surprising, but very touching event was that the co-operative formed by our first class of tailors and carpenters presented Bethan and I with a matching African dress and shirt that they had made.  We were touched that they wanted to do this for us, and seriously impressed that they fitted us so well without any measurements being taken!  The quality of this shirt and dress are testimony to the skill of our tailoring teacher Zhile Kighoma, and to the hard work of his students.  It was dark by the time the ceremony was complete and the delicious cake had been eaten, but it was a wonderful day, and it was great that Bethan’s Birthday should fall on such a positive occasion!  (We deferred celebrating her Birthday properly until the weekend!).

Prayer-Requests:

·         Give thanks that we recovered from our initial illnesses and for my Dad’s successful and safe visit.

·         Give thanks for all the funding, hard-work, skills and prayers which have sustained the Skills-training and Daycare projects through their first year, despite all the challenges in Acholi Quarter.

·         Pray for the trainees who have graduated, for their successful future employment/own businesses, and that the investment that has been made in them will bear fruit for their families and the community as a whole.

·         Pray for the current batch of trainees, and for our staff, that they will be inspired to do even better on this course, and build on the progress already made.

·         Pray for the family of the child from daycare who died from burns, and for all the other families who suffer too often from needless and preventable deaths.