Day 3 in Uganda

Today started off early, 4am.
After breakfast, we packed up and left for Gulu around 9am. On our drive to Gulu we finally get to see some of the Africa that I envisioned. Dirt roads, towns that look like shacks with vendors lining the streets. The more rural areas have grass huts and children running in the long grass. I have never seen so many children! They are everywhere! Running, working and new babies strapped to their mother's backs.
About halfway through the trip, nature came calling. We stopped for a break and had our first experience with a "squat" toilet. That was interesting. We did however get to meet two lovely boys that lived in the house that I thing the toilet belonged to. It seemed that you could just knock on a door and use the facilities anywhere.
We finally make it to Gulu at 3:00pm. After countless speed bumps, and I mean bumps! These things were massive, not like our little ones in Canada, and they were mobile. Supposedly they would be there one day and gone the next. We checked into the Acholi Inn. We rested for about half an hour and then headed to Living Hope Gulu. This is a part of the Watoto church, a ministry that provides hope to woman living with HIV or AIDS. A woman by the name of Rosemary took us on a tour of the facilities. The ladies learn new skills just like the one in Kampala, that help them make a living. Once a month they are also given some basic supplies for cooking and some soap. There are rooms for meetings, a sewing room and a child care room. The lasdies have just left for the day, but you can feel the hope in this place.
Shannon and I decided to buy one of the dolls each from one of the ladies at Living Hope. They even had the baby strapped to their backs.
We then went to tour the Watoto Church Gulu. The facility is being rented until the new church will be finished next year. We were also told that Baby Bulrushes will be completed next June.
After all the tours we went back to the hotel and got ready for dinner at 7pm. We played a few games of Dutch-Blitz and then we got to meet Shirley, our connection to the medical team that requested the girls underwear for the ex-child soldiers. We finally had dinner by the pool at 8pm. Music was playing and the food was really good. A great way to end the evening :)

Day 2 in Uganda

Today's agenda is breakfast at 9:00am, Watoto orientation at 12:00, lunch and money exchange at Garden City mall and then a craft market.
The day started out early, 5:30am. The time difference has us all messed up. Shannon and I took the opportunity to sit out on the veranda after getting ready for the day. We waited for the other girls to join us and then has a delicious breakfast that the ladies at the guest house prepared for us. We eat our meal and all split up to do some last minute things before heading to the Watoto church for our orientation.
When we arrived at the church, Harry took us for a tour of the building. Its a large concrete building. The building used to be a military detention center. Watoto had approached the military to see if they could use the building when it was no longer used as a detention center and was denied. Two years later they approached them again and said that they would put a new coat of paint on the building so finally the military agreed to let Watoto use it. After the war ended and the government changed, the building was left empty. Watoto purchased the building and Watoto (then KPC) church was established. Each Sunday there are 4 services held at the church with approximately 1800 people attending each individual service.
Brenda welcomed us to our orientation and introduced us to Pastor Humphrey who told us all about what the Watoto church does in Uganda. It not only has the Watoto Childrens villages which gives homes to orphaned and abandoned children but it also has the Bulrushes baby home and Living hope, a ministry that helps woman who are living with HIV or AIDS. These programs teach the children and woman how to be self sustainable. Watoto's motto is "not to give a hand out but to give a hand up".
The church has such a community presence that the rate of HIV has decreased to 6.7% in Uganda. This is down from over 50% of the population being infected.
After Pastor Humphrey spoke to us Jean from sponsorship told us how the sponsorship program worked. Each child, house mother or woman from living hope that is sponsored has 8 different sponsors. To sponsor a child or house mother is $35/month and to sponsor a woman in the living hope program is $40/month. You can also sponsor the Bulrushes baby home as a whole.
We then met John, who is head of the building department for the villages. He explained the building process to us, rules and what to expect and showed us the site plans for Suubi 2, the village where we would be building house 65.
We finished up the orientation by watching a short documentary on Watoto. We then visited the ladies at living hope and saw the products that they make to sell. There were beautiful dolls, jewelery, table runners and place mats. We got to talk to some of the ladies and some volunteers from Australia that were there helping.
After finishing up the church we headed to Garden City mall for lunch. On route Harry warned us about the experience we would have at the food court. When arriving at the food court we got a table to hold all 8 of us. As we were about to sit a person from each vendor in the food court came at us with menus. Each menu is put in front of you and each vendor is putting his/her menu on top of the one already in front of you. If you are not quick they are each pointing out things to eat. This can be very overwhelming. A couple of the girls didn't even know what they had ordered until their dish was placed in front of them. This was quite an experience.
When we finished eating we went to the grocery store in the mall to get some snacks and change our money.
We left the mall and headed to a local craft market. There were so many beautiful pieces. Wood carvings made of ebony, painted soap stone bowls, hand painted stools, jewelry and much, much more. We only had an hour to shop so we had a quick look and by then it was time to head back to the guest house.
We had another wonderful dinner complete with fresh pineapple. I have never tasted pineapple so good!
We experienced our first power outage in the middle of a game of cards. It became an early night to bed.

Arriving in Uganda

Hello Everyone,

I apologize for the delay in updating the blog. While we were in Uganda we had limited time to use the internet and it seemed that every time I went to update this I would get kicked off after writing a long update. So, I chose to wait till we returned. Luckily I kept a detailed journal of the trip. I'll give you a day to day description in a little less detail.

August 17-19,2009
Shannon, Meghan, Teresa and I, along with 7 hockey bags full of supplies and underwear, all caught the 1:00pm ferry to Vancouver. We wanted to be sure that we had lots of time to make our 8:35pm flight, needless to say we had lots of time. We had an 9 hour flight to London where we had an 8 hour layover. We managed to find some chairs and sleep in them for a while, not the most exciting, but London is very expensive and we weren't willing to spend money there shopping. Our next flight was 8.5 hours to Entebbe Uganda. We arrived at 7:30 am on August 19th due to the time change. We were all very tired, but so happy to have finally arrived. We were greeted by Tanya (who had traveled a few days earlier to do some work), our Watoto host Harry and our driver Edgar. We waited for Teresa to come in as she was booked on a separate flight out of Heathrow. She came in at 9:30am.
So, we were off on our journey to our guest house. Along the way we see simple buildings, somewhat like how you would imagine buildings in the old west, however these were painted in bright pinks, yellows and oranges. Woman's clothing hung on racks outside the doorways. As we drive a long we see trucks filled with green bananas, these, I later found out are used for Matooke, Uganda's #1 staple food. As we carry we see roadside markets with a variety of fruit and other various goods. Stores with beautifully carved furniture and amazing metal doors line the roads as well. As we get closer to the guest house, now an hour from the airport, Teresa a doesn't feel so good. The roads have been very bumpy and the traffic very crazy. Lines, lights and stop signs are only suggestions here. This makes for erratic driving and when you are not used to it your stomach does funny things. After some air and a move to the front seat, Teresa feels better. We finally arrive at our guest house, Adonai #1. We were all overjoyed to see how beautiful this place was. It looked like a brick plantation house from the south. Large windows and verandas on the first and second floor, beautifully landscaped yard with a large brick fence and large metal gate to keep us safe. The inside was just as beautiful. Mohogany wood everywhere. A large common room, dining room, kitchen and a few guest rooms on the first level. On the second level were many more guest rooms. We were warmly greeted by the wonderful staff of Adonai with introductions and big hugs. After a long 2 days of traveling, this is just what we needed. We are all shown to our rooms(2 to a room), Shannon and I are assigned a room on the 2nd floor but soon discover that it does not have akey, so we are moved to the first floor and assigned "Alpha" room. We all rest for a few hours and shower (each room had it's own washroom)it feels so good to be clean. Dinner is at 6:00pm and so good! We finish dinner and then have a few games of cards before heading to bed. It was a wonderful start to our long awaited trip.

Long overdue update!

Hi Everyone,
Sorry that we have been out of touch for a while. The last couple of months have been very busy for all of us individually
A few things have happened in June, July and August that we should tell you about, so I will give you the rundown of it all.
So, we had our garage and bake sale at the end of June, this went pretty good. We started at 8:00am and finished at 2:00 as planned. Our sales were not tremendous, but every little bit helps. We carted off the leftover sale items to the Salvation Army and ate the last of the baked goods :)
In July we had a change in our team numbers. A few members had to withdraw from the trip due to various reasons but we know that their thoughts and prayers will be with us while in Uganda. On the up-side we did gain a last minute entry to our team, Teresa Gripping. She is a friend and co-worker of Shannon Sim, one of our existing team members. We are very excited to have her. Our team is a nice round number of 6.
Also in July, Tanya Witzke (our team leader) received a letter from a lady named Shirley that is working in Gulu, Northern Uganda, with the children that were once child soldiers and now are being rehabilitated. In this letter a heartfelt request for "new" girls undergarments for the young ladies came. Tanya sent a copy of this letter to all of us and it touched our hearts. In this letter Shirley had written " Can u imagine having one pair of underwear for more than a year? That is all they have… "
As a team we thought that maybe we could do something for these young girls, so Meghan Bellamy had suggested that we collect some underwear and ship them to Uganda or bring it with us. In turn I contacted Shirley Broback, creator of the Vancouver Island Baby Fair and asked if she may know of local businesses that would be willing to donate some undergarments for these girls. Little did I know, Shirley likes a challenge and posted on various websites including her own business website www.vancouverislandbabyfair.com our need for new girls underpants to take to these "ex-child soldier teen girls" in Uganda. A tremendous response came...Amy Bronee of C-Fax contacted her and wanted to help in some way and suggested an interview with me (she does a parenting show on C-Fax and I am a mom going to Uganda and leaving my family home) so, we did that the end of July. In the meantime because of Shirley's posts Underwear started pouring into Shirley's business UPS box. The interview also sparked the interest of many Victorians and the underpants kept coming. Shirley then contacted Hanes and they donated 200 pair and a company in Ontario called Nummies generously donated 200 pair. All in all, with these donations and the donations from individuals, groups and orginizations, the grand total collected on July 31st was 1464 pairs of ladies underwear! Amazing!!!! But that's not all...On August 10th A-Channel news did a story on this project and interviewed Shirley, Sarah (PR manager with Watoto) and myself. Without the help of Shirley Broback this would not have been possible. It was a pleasure to be able to work with her.
Hopefully all these undergarments will fill a need for a while and when we are in Uganda we may be able to find other ways to help these young girls with things that seem so simple to us but are so crucial to them.
Thank you to all who donated and supported this great cause.
Charlotte

Charity Garage and Bake Sale :)

The next fundraiser has come upon us! There will be a huge garage sale this Saturday June 06th, 2009 at 430 Peter's Street in Esquimalt (Work point Military housing). Starts at 8:30am and goes till 2:00pm. There are a ton of great items for sale, such as a tv, digital camera, numerous small appliances, picture frames, mirrors, children's toys, baby items and lots lots more! We will also be having a small bake sale and fresh coffee brewing. Come check it out!

Our first fundraiser is completed! The spaghetti dinner was a success.
Thanks to all of you who came out to support our group. We all really appreciate the time you took to have dinner with us and for your donations. We raised close to $700!
Thank you to all the volunteers who helped set up the venue, cooked and helped clean up. We could not have done it without you., especially you David :)
A special thanks to Thrifty Foods for donating a $100 gift card to help with the purchase of food for the dinner and to Cobbs Bread for the fabulous rolls that they donated.
More fundraisers are to come. We'll keep you posted.
Thanks for your support!

How to Donate

For more information on how you can support this team, please contact Tanya Witzke at tanyaw@watoto.ca
For financial contributions $10 and above, tax receipts will be sent out early next year.
Thanks for your support!