Sunday

               

We had a three-hour epic session of church, including The Hope Choir from the Village of Hope, singing to mark the 10-year anniversary of the Village. It is wonderful to witness the incredible passion of the Ugandan people when it comes to their religion. We then came back to Subbi house for lunch and a break.

After Lunch, we practised our team song that we’re presenting to the village children at our farewell.  We seem to be coming along nicely with it and are in harmony. As per usual, there were lots of laughs and banter amongst the team.

 At three o’clock we headed down to Youth Support Uganda (YSU) Centre on the banks of Lake Victoria to meet some of the local youths.

It seems to be a great meeting place for the local village kids and the children from the Village of Hope. There were games of Netball, down-ball and dancing. It is great to see that all the children participate and encourage each other in all the activities. A netball game was organised with mixed teams including some of the hope builder team members. It was great to see some of the guys (myself included) putting on the bibs and joining in on the game, even though we had no idea of the rules and plays. A great time was had by all, and one of the stand outs was young Ben scoring two great goals. The game ended in a tie – which was quite a relief to us mazoongoos, who generally get beaten in any of the sports that we play against the locals.

It was an afternoon of fun and was great to see well over thirty local and village children. At the end of the day, we headed back to Subbi House to another one of Juliettes amazing meals. Boy we’d be lost without her.        Dale

Saturday

Saturday

Starting off with a sleep in with nobody going up the mountain for a run, a true start to a cruisy Saturday - But, it didn’t last.

The Painting crew, being Dale, Glen, Jim, Meagan and Brooke struck disaster when they discovered a flaw in the roof space of the Uganda Youth Support [YSU] Building. Thankfully, the engineer of our crew, Anche Geuze assessed the building and is working on plans to come up with a solution.

Team members Albert, Ben, Pete and I [P. HULLS] headed to ‘The Village of Hope’ for a bible study being led by the leaders in the village. After a couple songs and wonderful testimonies, Sharron lead the study in Genesis 37 about ‘Joseph the Dreamer’.

Both teams headed back to ‘Subbi House’ for Juliettes fantastic salad rolls [seriously good] and fuelled up for the game of the century – the Mazoongoos [That’s white folks for everyone at home] V Ugandans. At some stage, the fittest and older member of our team, Jim returned from his daily hike up ‘olusozi rwenkiima’ [Monkey Mountain] – This guy doesn’t have rest days.

After a couple hours of chilling, we all headed down to ‘Jinja Christian School’ for the soccer match. Fortunately, we had a couple of locals on our side too – one being a member of a local soccer team. We also had Albie ‘the kiwi’ on our team – he was selected as a professional soccer player back in NZ, so we had a strong offence for our team.

The whistle sounded and the first 30-minute half of the game was on! The mazoongoos held up well providing a strong defence to the agile African players. However, the locals scored a goal late in the first half and the visitors were yet to score.

Two quick goals were scored by the locals early in the second half and things were looking grim for the visitors. Spirits were still high and same-same with talent. Many close goals were shot by offensive team members Albie, Glen, Ben, Dale, Julius - our local soccer professional and brilliant catches from the mazoongoo’s African goalie.

The mazoongoo’s were losing 0-4 until Julius scored a goal in the late second half. This triggered a typical Aussie response from two members of the team, Dale and Phil.  They lifted up their shirts, put them over their heads and ran around on the field howling. Some of the locals laughed, others wondered if they needed their heads examined. The final result was 1-4, the locals winning by a landslide. Both teams shook hands and went on their way back home.

Sodas were cracked open and soft tissue injuries were assessed and looked after by our talented physio’s Ben and Albie. Albie’s assessment of Anche’s injuries were She’ll live, that’s the main thing’.

After dinner, all team members slept soundly for a morning of singing at church in the morning.

Friday

Today was a rather full on day. In the morning some of us headed to the Home of Hope with some of the older kids from the Village of Hope. Others headed to Youth Support Uganda to do some painting work. For those of us who went to the Home of Hope, we took a lot of the disabled children for a walk on wheelchairs. It was a pleasant experience as I could see that the kids from the Village of Hope was eager to interact and show love to those at the Home of Hope. It was especially nice that a bunch of us learned the alphabet in sign-language from the deaf kids.

After coming back, we had lunch and prepared ourselves for the slum visit. For me personally, I didn’t know what to expect. I thought I had gotten used to the poverty in Jinja, and felt as though the slums would have little effect on me. I was proven wrong on so many levels. The conditions in the slums were overwhelmingly poor. We split into groups of 4 and visited some families to pray and give them some aid in food materials. That whole experience was very emotional and tough for me. To hear what these families were going through, and the conditions they were forced to be in, it was hard to control my emotions. It was painful to imagine the suffering these people had to endure to survive a day at a time. It was truly devastating, and it was very hard for me to maintain my smile to the swarm of children following us around.

Overall, today was a very emotionally draining day. I feel the experience I had today will live with me for a long time; and I hope it does. It will serve as a reminder that there are so many people who are in desperate need of our help and prayers. Today I saw true poverty.           Ben

Wednesday

Today we donned tools and walked or drove down to the YSU (Youth Support Uganda) building site down by the beautiful Lake Victoria. Speaking of beautiful the job we set about doing all day was not at all beautiful- it comprised of sandpapering the walls and ceilings of the house which was very challenging hard work but was all and all very rewarding to see the progress made and some paint start going on ceilings and windows. Apart from this other activities for the day included a nice lunch break with cool sodas enjoyed at midday, a meeting with the older kids at hope village about activities for the coming days and a soccer game against the local kids down the road and of course a daily morning run with the hope kids up Monkey Mountain. Early to  bed tonight after a big day! 

Oh and did anyone mention Albert won the spoons comp last night? J

Tuesday

The morning started with a well-earned sleep in followed by a long walk to lake Victoria. On the back we passed two men making mud bricks in front of their house which are traditionally used to build houses in Uganda. We had a small rest after the walk followed by a visit to the Village of Hope where we had a feast prepared by the mothers and older children of the village, this was a treat for them and us. After lunch we hit chaos…. Fitting 40 people into one small mini bus (x3) ... we took the whole village on an outing. Once we got organised, we ventured out to the newly built bridge over the famous Nile River. The kids loved seeing this bridge for the first time where we got to walk over it and enjoy some lovely ice cream. After all this some of us headed back to Suubi house for a rest and the others joined in with a local soccer game nearby. 

The night was taken up with multiple games of seriously twisted games of spoons. All in all the day was very lovely and seeing the constant joy on the kids faces brings such joy into our hearts.

Monday

Got up to a beautiful morning and had a scrumptious breakfast of Rolexs on the roof top again.

After cleaning up the dishes we had the maintenance crew head up to the Village to do some slashing with machetes and a general tidy up of the grounds.  The rest of us gathered up our craft supplies and headed up as well to set up for a morning of fun activities with the children.

All the children had a great time of going between the different activities.  We had Lego building, colouring in, bracelet making, makeup and nail polish and making craft turtle eggs. After the completion of the activities we had a fashion parade of all the children that had their makeup done.

They sure know how to rock the catwalk!!

To end the great morning, we had a singalong.  We sang Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree and  

The wheels on the bus. The kids then sang us some of their own songs. The children have such beautiful voices.

We then headed back to Suubi for a well-deserved break.

Late arvo we headed back up to the Village to spend some time celebrating the New Year in with the children with some music (very loud), glow sticks, sodas and biscuits.

To end the day off we went to All Friends for a late dinner, with lots of laughter, food, arm wrestling, more very loud music and finished off with some spectacular fireworks. (No OH&S here) 

Team 26

 Saturday

The official travel time was 34hr 47min from Croydon to Subbi House. Generally smooth flights and change overs – all our luggage arrived!!! Bus trip was a 5 hour experience with numerous traffic jams caused by accidents and break downs. But we arrived safe just all a little weary.

Sunday – We began the day with a delicious breakfast of omelette ro lexs, fruit and jam pancakes on the roof. A beautiful, sunny morning – very bright and very hot at an early hour of the day. Following this a short walk to church. Ugandan church services are very different from church services I remember in Australia – beginning with 45 minutes of non-stop singing and dancing. As new members we each introduced ourselves to the congregation – Dale impressing us all with a greeting spoken in the Lugandan language which was well received by everyone. A skit, a talk from a visiting Canadian and some praising and two and a half hours later the service finished. Followed by more singing and dancing outside as we met some of the children from the Village of Hope.

After lunch Glenn drove us in for a quick trip into Jinja to get money out of the bank and get a milkshake at The Keep.

Later in the day we were welcomed into the village by Ivan, Sam, Jacqui and Sharon – had a tour of the village, learnt a little about the place and then enjoyed meeting the children. More singing, playing Leggo, soccer and getting to know everyone. Beautiful, friendly and welcoming children who were so appreciative of our company. It was very hard to leave but in the knowledge that tomorrow we will be able to spend most of the day with the children. Can’t wait!!   Liz