Thursday, September 18, 2014

Happy Anniversary Les and Jean!  Happy Graduation Bethany!

Toni, Ginny, Karen, Diane and Sue were treated to a wonderful visit at Lovinah’s house today.  Lovinah is our quality manager for MEP.  After about a ten-minute drive from the Empowerment Center high into the mountains we arrived at the top of a trail that was about a 10 minute steep downhill walking trail to Lovinah’s house.  We were met with singing and hugs.  Then we were led into her home where we were served the local drink, obushara, along with water and soda.  We then took a tour of the kitchen, which is a separate building where dinner is cooked in pots over an open fire on the ground.  We met several family members and neighbors, and were then treated to a wonderful meal of curried rice, cooked cabbage, boiled Irish potatoes, chips and chicken.  During the meal we talked a lot and they tried to help us learn their language.  There were about 12 people welcoming us and only one or two spoke any English.  Diane got her baby-fix holding four month old Joshua.  There were many hugs and smiles between everyone present.  At the end of the meal everyone, including us, introduced ourselves to the gathered group.  When it was time to leave, they sang us a farewell song as they followed us back up the hill to our waiting van.  Our visit lasted four hours!

While the women (except for Michelle L) were being treated to the wonderful visit, the other five team members were extremely busy back at the Center.  Almost all of the painting is done with just three walls left to finish tomorrow.  Go team!

The HANDS team met with 21 women who have an informal mushroom growing co-op.  These women live over a four kilometer area, but get together because they share a drying house.  They grow oyster mushrooms, but have to purchase the spores through the Mushroom Training and Research Center (MTRC).  There is a large demand and low supply of mushrooms in Uganda, so the women are interested in working with ACT to increase their knowledge through training.  To increase their profits, the women are especially interested in learning how to harvest and prepare spores so there is no need to purchase them from MTRC.  ACT’s HANDS team is going to work with the women to see if a program can be developed that will be beneficial to all.

Ginny spent more time sorting and taking inventory of the MEP women’s baskets.  It’s a very important, but time-consuming job.  We are so thankful that Ginny likes detail work!

Pathways is our new program for the children in ACT’s Muko HOPE program. The goal for this program is to provide what is essentially a “school” counselor for helping educate the kids for adult life and choice of vocation. We plan to offer life skills, spiritual support, understanding about situations like domestic violence and abuse, health education, and so on. We want to help these children learn to make the best choices and not be taken advantage of throughout their life.

ACT is currently experiencing our first young people to complete Senior High School and move on to other programs. One is enrolled in Kabale University and two in vocational programs. Our hope is to begin another program that would offer scholarships to exceptional students whether orphans or just destitute. We are just beginning to set this up and have more work to do. Part of our work is to best understand the existing school system and family dynamics. This takes lots of fruitful dialogue time with Josiah and Generous.

On a general note, we saw some beautiful crested cranes today, Uganda’s National Bird.  We were lucky enough to get fairly close to some because our wonderful driver, Christopher, keeps his eyes out for them and pulls over so we can take photos.

Speaking of Christopher, we are fortunate to have two very kind and capable drivers.  Christopher has been a driver for just about every ACT team that has come to Uganda and Aine (I-NAY) is new to ACT.  Aine is actually from the area where the Empowerment Center is located, so he is seeing some old friends.  In addition to being great drivers, they are also capable mechanics – thank goodness!

We bought hamburger buns last night and the Jopfan, our hotel, has graciously agreed to make us hamburgers and fries tonight using the buns we provided – otherwise they would be served on bread slices.  We order our dinner in the morning so the hotel can be sure they have the needed ingredients.  Past teams have found dinner can be delayed quite a bit if it’s ordered when we return at night.  And lately we haven’t been getting back to the hotel until 7:30 or 8:00 p.m.

Tonight’s score of accomplishments, as compared to our agenda and totally arbitrary scoring according to Dave, was 120% … good, but not as good as yesterday.