Kimmenyede

March 6: We woke in the Gorilla Guest House in Entebbe. I slept so soundly. It felt good to stretch out after being on those planes for what felt like forever. The airport had us scrubbing our hands and  filling out forms about corona virus. 

I love the songs of the African birds. It feels like Uganda is welcoming me back. I sat in the open-air breakfast porch writing my “morning pages” and watching a huge lazy snail crawl up and down the garden wall. It was already over seventy and the day had hardly started. Helen joined me after a while and drew my attention to the birds as they flew past or landed in the flowers. Helen is an avid birder and watches the sky a lot. She brought her Eastern Uganda birds guide and is beginning to name the feathered beauties around us.

My breakfast companion

Father Francis picked us up in a big van that could easily carry the almost 300 pounds of freight that we brought with us. Unfortunately, you can’t buy rip stop nylon or Tyvek in Uganda so we fill fifty pound bags with the stuff and carry it over for our tailors. We brought a sewing machine and lots of calendars too.

We are grateful for Fr. Francis and his big vehicle!

I loved catching up with Father Francis. He runs a vocational school fairly close to Entebbe that trains students to become welders, chefs, tailors, electricians, plumbers, hair stylists, etc. Almost all the students are able to find jobs right out of school. We talked about the importance of job training and the idea that perhaps focusing so much on higher education and not skills isn’t always the best plan for everyone. We’ll go see his school later next week.

We met Phoebe at a gas station where we exchanged cars and parted. We went to our hotel to drop our bags and Fr. Francis went off to do God’s work.

We met up with three of the people that Phoebe had trained to teach the MoonCatcher curriculum. Andrew-Paul, Dominic and Desire spent the rest of the day with us. We went to Kimmenyede, where we have a sewing cooperative, to see Alice and visit two secondary schools. I watched the boys curriculum being taught while Helen went to the girls class. We switched places at the next school. This was my first time being with the boys. It was wonderful watching them go from blushing faces and hidden heads to asking questions and coming up with ideas about how to help the girls. We laughed and got serious too. In the end a show of hands told us that a promise had been made to stop teasing and shaming and to be helpful in whatever way was needed. It was pretty powerful.

Our friend Alice who coordinates our work in Kimmenyede.

Teaching the new boys’ curriculum.

Next stop was the Nakifuma Muslim High School near Kimmenyede.

Teaching the girls curriculum at Nakifuma HS.

We drove back over bumpy, rutted, back, dirt roads. Helen said she felt like a rag doll as she got thrown around the van. What a perfect description.  I marvel at how Phoebe can manage those roads. She’s my hero.