Picture Update Time!

Welcome back my friend! So I'm going to mix it up this time and do a lot more pictures with some descriptions, rather than me rambling on and putting my mom and Grandma to sleep. I apologize because the formatting options of this Blog are super limited, so it looks like a 4th grader did it, but I'll try my best to make it look nice. But first, just a general update of life here in Gulu. It's been so awesome finally being healthy, especially after nearly a month of being some sort of sick. It's nice and humbling to know that even when I'm not able to work as much that things still get done! Everything work related is going well, construction is moving along quickly, I'm up to date on accounting stuff which is a breath of fresh air, we got some comfortable couches for our house that I'm currently sitting on while listening to ESPN radio of Game 7 of the Heat-Pacers (Go Beavs!), so overall, life is pretty great! Most of all, my dad is going to come visit in 5 days! I'm pretty stoked!  Well enough words, let's get going with some pictures. I think we'll start with some construction stuff!

The first building I'm going to do an update of is Hoke's main project, the primary school classroom. This first picture is the classroom (with some cool clouds) from about 2 weeks ago. Mostly finished, needing roofing, painting, plastering and some other small things, but pretty close to being done. It was a long fought battle to get the roofing material up to Gulu, but after finding an alternate material, different supplier, switching delivery methods and plenty of prayers, the roofing material came! We were pushing really hard to get it done by the time this group of visitors came to visit last Friday (5/31), so Hoke worked extremely hard making it happen. The materials came in the Saturday before the visitors came in, so we had less than a week to make it all happen. The Sunday after the roofing panels get there, Hoke, Emma and I go out to one of our worker's church that he started on the Sunday and had to pass by the school to get to the church (the rest of that story later). As we pass the school, we see that the roofing contractors are putting on the panels which gets us really excited. We get home after the church service and Hoke gets a call from the roofing contractor saying they've almost put all of the material on the roof and they need more nails! We deliver the rest of them, and by the end of the day the whole roof is on!! And they say Rome wasn't built in a day. This second picture is from May 27th, just two days after the roof was delivered. So yeah, all the hard work getting this building up and running paid off! That building was our primary focus, so having that all progress so quickly was really constructive for our morale.

 

  

 Next, the teacher houses. These have been done for a few weeks now, but they look awesome so I want to talk about them. Plus we're doing landscaping, which is kind of a big deal in Gulu. I don't have any crazy epic story about how we had a deadline for these and barely made it before the clock struck midnight, but they are pretty awesome and the teachers are moving in soon so it will be so great to see them being used and enjoyed! They're really nice buildings and it will be very helpful having more staff on campus all the time. We just planted grass around them tomorrow and are going to continue planing trees to make the area really nice for the teachers, plus it is near the entrance to the school so having that be one of the first thing people see when they come will be really nice. The group we had come in last week was an awesome crew from Texas who helped us out a ton for a couple days. They did a lot of beautification of the school including these fences and tons of other stuff around the campus.

Next on the list is the Administration Block. It's a close second for my favorite building on campus. The current staff are in a building about 1/3 the side of this one, sharing offices and not having enough space to work or have doors that close and lock. This is going to be an awesome upgrade. And selfishly, I'm excited to have some extra room when I go and work with our accountant. This building is unique because it has so many partitions in it whereas the classrooms just have one interior wall separating the two classrooms in one building. This first picture is where the building was at on May 11th, not a whole lot to look at. The second picture is from May 23rd and is a low-flying bird's eye view of the layout, and the third picture is taken of the doors and windows being put in. If we had gotten the doors and windows when they were supposed to be delivered, this thing would almost be done. Vincent, our leader for this crew, is legit. His English is probably the worst of all our leaders, but at the same time when we try to convey an idea, he really understands the plan and executes it extremely well. I don't know where we found this guy, but he is such a blessing! 

This next one is another of the two classrooms we're adding adjacent to the two existing classrooms. It's coming along really well and I got to help the crew with stacking the bricks the other day which was fun. The crew leader is a cool dude so it's fun hanging with him and chatting. He was teasing me about not being married and said that I could marry his sister. I was trying to be polite and say that I didn't have the money for the dowry (which is actually true, nine cows and gifts for all her relatives is not something I budgeted for coming over here), but then Godfrey said I didn't have to pay the dowry, and I wanted to be culturally sensitive, so ladies, it looks like I'm taken, sorry. And Mom, I'll introduce you to my new wife once I meet her!  Alright, where was I... Well yeah, here are two pictures.

 And finally, here's my favorite building, the guest house. Which is actually 3 buildings, but who is counting? Hopefully the workers, it's pretty essential that they know they are working on 3 separate structures. Overall, there will be 10 rooms with a legit common area in the middle with a kitchen, living room, open veranda and firepit. It's already my favorite spot on campus and so when it's actually done I think I'll be hanging there a bit when we don't have guests staying there. Right now the 1st wing of the house is shelled and now they're working on painting the inside, doing electrical and plumbing work and detail work like that. It's going to be super legit. I don't know why but I didn't take any pictures of the 1st wing yet, but the building in progress is the center common area. The first picture is the building shell almost complete, just need a little something to go over the top. And windows and doors... Ok, so maybe it's not almost complete. The second pic is from the other angle showing the interior partitions. I'm taking the picture from the open veranda and shooting into the living room, and then past that opening is the kitchen area along with some closet space and a bathroom.

So that's the majority of the construction pictures! Hope you enjoyed them. I'll do another update in a while so you can hopefully see the progress! 

Next up on the agenda is describing the aforementioned church service that Hoke, Emma and I were invited to. First of all, a little backstory. So one of our construction workers started a church as a 15 year old a while back when he was in an IDP (internally displaced person) camp, and now that the war is over he has continued with pastoring this church that is just a few minutes down the road from the school. Our VP gave him some money to help finish building a roof on his church building so once their community finished putting the roof on he invited us out there to be a guest at their service. There was another one of our workers who was at the church too so it was great seeing them outside of the worksite. Here is a picture of the hut. It isn't the best angle, but it's actually an oval shaped which is unique since most huts here are circular. It was a really nice church and well made and we later learned that our head forman helped them out which was great to hear too! On the way there we saw a camel. Like a legit camel just being walked by the road. I barely got my phone out in time to take this picture (I was riding on the back of the boda, don't worry mom), so sorry it's so blurry. 

So we get to the church after a rather pleasant sunday morning boda ride and arrive to only find kids. We all use our Acholi greetings, but you can only say hello to someone so many times before you run out of things to talk about. So Emma calls up the pastor/construction worker and he shows up a few minutes later, but he also doesn't speak english very well. His co-pastor does though, so he translates for us the whole day. They welcome us into the church, give us some seats to sit in, welcome us again, and then the service starts. Church in Uganda is slightly different than church back home. The morning is filled with singing, dancing, preaching, reading the bible, and then doing it all again. We read out of Psalm 1, and then they asked if anyone had anything they wanted to say about it. And pretty much all the men in the church did. I also stood up and spoke for a bit, directing it towards the kids because at least half the building was full of kids and babies. And as we all know, babies get hungry and need to be fed, and these women just make it happen in the middle of church, which was slightly distracting while I was giving my little talk. After I speak, then Hoke talks, except he does it much better than I did. He was a youth pastor back in Atlanta, so he had had a little more experience than I. Excuses, excuses, I know, but it was really awesome to see him in his element just killing it up there with this group of kids who couldn't even understand him, but within the first 30 seconds he had them all laughing, throwing their arms in the air and having a blast! So after all this wraps up, we're about 2.53 (always gotta use 3 sig figs) hours into the service and it feels like stuff is winding down. We had all preached, the sang, prayed, and the kids were getting anxious to go. All the kids leave the building, and we're expecting to do the same, because where I'm from, we need coffee to survive a 1.50 hour service. Well apparently we had just completed the sunday school portion of the service, and now it was time to start the adult service. It's pretty toasty in this building at this point and it's about 11:30 in the morning so it's not getting in colder out. Then the craziest thing happened and the building caught on fire!!! I snapped a picture below as this curtain went up in flames. The kids were rather calm through it all, and Hoke sprung up into action to put it out. Craziness! 

Alright, so I was just kidding. The building didn't catch on fire. But it really looks like it from this picture, doesn't it? So the service goes on another couple hours, and includes a program put together by the kids of songs they performed for us, along with sodas and cookies (a Ugandan hospitality tradition), and this group talking with/to us, expressing their thankfulness. During their prayer right before the service was done, (4.5 hours in) they thanked God that Hoke and I could come and be a part of their service, but then they went on to pray that Emma would become a believer. There is always a language barrier here, but all three of us were pretty sure we understood the same thing. As rude as it was, it made us chuckle a bit during the prayer. So as the service ends, we talk with James to try to clear the whole not-being-saved deal with Emma, and it turns out that James had asked her if she was a pastor, and when she said no it apparently means that she isn't a believer to them. Funny little miscommunication. It looks like their prayers were answered that day!

That next week on Tuesday through Thursday, Hoke and I both filled in as English teachers at a school that our friend directs, and another two of our friends work at. With a little bit of prep time, including some of their favorite songs to sing, Hoke and I were up there teaching/reviewing English! The students had just gotten back from a break and had forgotten a lot of the English they learned, so they called in the big guns to help review. In case you didn’t know, I was double majoring in education for half a term of college at which point I had almost signed up for two education classes, so yeah, you could call me an expert. I really did enjoy those few days, the kids were awesome, we had a lot of fun together, and made some good memories. One of my favorites was when we were reviewing different home/kitchen items. Quick preface, the letter “R” is a difficult sound for them, and it often makes its way in and out of words seamlessly. As we’re reviewing utensils, we get to the fork, and the “R” disappears out of this word, so it essentially sounds like twenty-something Primary 4 students yelling the F word at me. At this point, I resorted to the maturity level of the students I was teaching and started laughing. I compose myself after a few seconds, and try again. “Alright, let us emphasize the “R” sound, so say Fo-rrr-k” (I really, really exaggerated the R, but to no avail). They once again yell the F word at me, so I just flip them all off and walk out of the room. Or maybe I just moved on to the next letter. One of the two. Thursday afternoon came around and the goodbye was full of tears, but I sat the kids down and told them that big girls don’t cry. They didn’t understand that song reference. I then tried Cowgirls don’t cry, and that one was also lost in translation. They actually didn’t cry at all. These pictures was from right after my last class with them, and they all seem really happy so I was probably a crappy teacher and they were glad to see me go. At least my construction workers pretend to like me!

During this same week, I was rushing out to Restore and doing my other job in the afternoon. It was about an hour in the other direction from the school I was teaching at, so by the time I got there it was about 2 in the afternoon. I’d grab a quick lunch, then move on to all my construction and accounting duties, but more focused on construction because we were making a big push this week to beautify the campus for the group of visitors coming in. This included finishing some work on a few buildings, slashing (mowing) the campus, creating a border on roads, and other random tasks. It was a lot of motivating students, teachers, and other faculty to get everyone pitching in on it all, but through mostly the hard work of Jenna and Emma, we were able to get the place looking rather spiffy by that Friday. The visitors got in and helped us even more by planting a ton of trees we got in Kampala around the campus, helping it looks even better. A big goal of ours is making the campus feel less like a construction site and more like a school, and after this one week I’d say we made some good strides toward that goal. Saturday night after a long day of work, the group came back out to the school that night with 1,000 glow sticks and we had Restore’s first rave/dance party/bonfire/worship session.  The students taught the group some of their songs, and the group played some of their songs for the students, complete with lightning in the background and some light showers, bringing everyone under cover of the large assembly structure at the school. This picture doesn’t even come close to showing how awesome it was seeing all of those students with glow sticks sharing in this experience with this group from halfway across the world. 

Well, I’m sorta cheating because as I wrap up this post, there has been 2 weeks since that rave at the school, but the rest is going to have to make it into the next one. Even construction is in better spot than these pictures, but oh well. This one is way too long as it is, but hopefully the pictures make it more entertaining for you! But, here’s a sneak preview for next one: I went on a Safari with my dad and celebrated his birthday in Uganda! Pretty awesome stuff, get excited. Tell you friends. Go to the midnight premiere. See you there.