Onto Uganda

As you may know, we are staying almost right on the border of Kenya and Uganda, so for the weekend we are going to stay at the mouth of the Nile river! It is only about a three hour drive. Today is Sara’s last day here, and then we will drop her off at the airport before returning to Wema for a few more precious days,

 The kids  themselves do all of the building, so we spent over two hours carrying bricks today and stacking them, in hopes that soon, with help from donations, they will be able to build real dormitories for the orphans, so they will have a home, and won’t have to live in the school.

 I have spent a lot of time the last few days taking pictures of all the children and then sitting for hours with Teresa and some of the teachers, making sure we get all the names correct. However, finally I have a database of beautiful pictures of 106 children. It feels like we are really making progress.

 Sara and Esther have been working all week on skits on HIV/AIDS and drug abuse with the 8^th grade, and today we filmed the final skits and had a competition. Organizing them all was very hard, because all the other classes wanted to watch too. They crowded around the windows and tried to sneak in the doors for the thrilling occasion. However, finally we got everyone organized, and the children were amazing actors! There were crying mothers and cross-dressing, and everyone had a blast.

 And the biggest news of all… We were teaching a class when suddenly, the electricity came back on! We are all very excited! We have been charging everything we can for our weekend journey. Not having electricity has made us appreciate so many little things like showers and clean water. We are so happy!

 For the touching moment of the day, Alex’s sister let him bring her old Mac laptop on the trip, and she was so kind in allowing us to leave it here at the school. Today, Alex told the directors, and it was a beautiful moment. We told them we had a surprise, and when they found out they smiled and laughed and clapped, and we celebrated together. They were so excited. I can’t tell you how much the orphanage will get out of this computer. Access to the Internet is access to the whole world, and from the look on their faces, it sure felt like we had given them the whole world.