Ivan

Investing in the kids around here is pretty rewarding. This is Ivan:

From Ivan

Ivy

I probably spent 45 minutes with him the other day just messing around with the webcam so he could see himself. (Funny thing, you would have thought I could get a decent picture in that time, but I didn't...) I've been rewarded for that by his presence at my desk every day just to hang out. Ivan's only in P1 so his English is just starting to come along, but every day he'll slip in the door and give me a 'good morning', then give me a hug and start to communicate through hand signals. We've had enthralling conversations, such as "My name is Ivan" and "the drums are loud."

Anyway, I'm enjoying it and thought I'd post up. Otherwise things are good, though a bit slow. Jamie and I have had a great time over the past few weeks taking our office staff out for dinner at a local restaurant called Hajjat's. The restaurant has somehow perfected this fried beef thing. I couldn't even begin to describe it, but it's amazing. Amazing enough to balance out the fish-head soup.

Oh yeah! The Farm Borehole is finished.

From Ivan

Water all up in my farm

Remember that post? Things weren't going smoothly. Drilling company went, broke their rig, welded it and broke it again, finished, came back to install the pipes and all that came out was sludge. So they redrilled, installed, and dropped the pipes. Keep in mind - this borehole is 100 metres! Came back to get the pipes back out, and had to put so many other pipes back in to retrieve them that 15 of our builders couldn't lift them out - too heavy. Used a truck to lift them, broke the truck. Came back one final time with a huge crane and, after briefly breaking the crane, managed to lift them out and finish the install. End result is there is water on the Farm.

And not a moment too soon. Dry season continues, and though we've had a spattering there are just no words to describe the dust.

Cheers from Kibaale.

Pump *clap* my water

Lame title. I know.

Dry season has been upon us for awhile. Today we were fortunate to have 20 minutes of drizzle and some chilly weather. It was a nice break from the hot heat and dry dryness of dry season.

We're choking on dust most days. It hasn't rained in eight weeks, other than a tiny speckle here and there. The grass looks burned in some places, the cows wander through our yards at night searching for greens, and our tanks are running dry. All is not lost though (depending on how you look at it) - we're all pumping water now.

From Pahmp you ahhhp

Shortly before this was taken, I say "There's a 50% chance my hand is going to look bent and femmy when you take that." This is the school's borehole. The big metal box on front is an iron removal plant to get rid of the iron in the water.

From Pahmp you ahhhp

Our jerry can.

From Pahmp you ahhhp

... in the shade.

Woops

It's been a bit long....

Could I say "nothing to report" and get away with it without telling a lie? Well, no. It's obviously been pretty busy so all that either of us can do is say, "woops, sorry" for the lack of updates. Let's try and run things down:

Family Team - 27 people
We bought a new truck
Fish Farm Install Crew - 2 people
Hired a Full-Time guy for SODIS
Mpigi Team - 17 people (ish)
Fixed 4 boreholes
Jeff's Cousins and a PA Student - 3 people

Now, I'd lie (again) if I said I had any remote semblance of responsibility with any of the visitors (I did get to have fun buying the truck at least), so I'm not going to try and look like a hero for organising those throngs of people. A huge thanks to everyone else but me for getting everything organised and ready for all of these people, namely the Dycks for Kibaale, Brent, Cheryl, Morgan and Anna for Mpigi, our big boss Jon Imbeau for the fish farm crew (and everything else he does), and Jeff's Aunt and Uncle for the cousins (haha). Thanks to Cassie for making her way over here from PA to visit us again. We're blessed to be visited.

So, despite a lack of preparing for arrival (speaking for myself, Sean, only), we did get the full benefit of having these visitors around. It has been just awesome talking with people from back home and seeing what my skin could possibly look like without dirt caked and embedded all the way into the subcutaneous layer. Honestly though it has been so good seeing people pumped up about Africa and making sacrifices to come over here and help out however they can. And they sure did - someone has a new house built, lots of sponsored kids got to meet their sponsors in person (think about that... how cool is that?!?), needy people in the community have some gifts and were able to receive prayer and love from others who genuinely cared enough to fly over and show it. Lots more too - all very very cool. All the teams did great work and were a pleasure to have. I hope if you guys are reading this you were able to take away some life changing experiences! Uganda can do that :)

In other news, it is now very lonely here. Everyone has left. Rachel has left to Kampala to give Paul and Megan, our new coworkers working with the Timothy Centre in Masaka about an hour away, a tour of the big city and helping them pick up some groceries and stuff like that... the first time in Kampala is pretty overwhelming. Picture real life Frogger combined with Carmageddon, throw in some AK47's with your pizza, and the ability to buy children's life preservers from Habib on the street while waiting for Licky Calmichael to pick his motorcycle up off the pavement and that's Kampala. Jeff & Shannon are dropping and picking people from the airport. I spent the latter half of the day sweeping puke from the sidewalk due to sick children. Jamie and I reorganized the house saturday leading me to endlessly quote Will Ferrel from Old School in my head and secretly smack myself when Jamie wasn't looking (actually, it wasn't that bad - the place looks better now, and I probably led the charge on the project). We haven't had rain in ages and are out of water, pumping it from the borehole to flush toilets, wash dishes, and sweep puke from the sidewalk. Yeah, so, another weekend in Ug actually.

I hope that we can do a bit more posting than we have been. And hopefully we haven't lost everyone who used to read. We're still here!

PS - Oh yeah. I broke out my tooth. Minor detail.

Some pics of the babble above for all you cliff-noters:

From Woops

The Family Team givin'er at church

From Woops

KCC's new truck, "the dominant ruler"

From Woops

Tim and Geraldine from H20 4 All with Elkanah, our farm manager, hooking up tanks for the new fish farm, and experimenting with the human hamster wheel

From Woops

Yobu, our SODIS dude

From Woops

Some of the Mpigi team, and Jamie's cute head

From Woops

Confused Chameleons!

From Woops

My "toof" as it looks while at church

From Woops

Jamie, and a kid after sugar-cane

From Woops

Really?

Drilling update

So the drilling hasn't gone very smoothly so far. At all. In fact, it has been a bit frustrating, but I'm still thankful I get to be a part of it. It's definitely a unique job when I realize that the majority of the work I end up doing in such a large project such as this is sitting in the shade of a tree and praying all day long.

So, here's some issues. Join us.

Water quality - it's not very good yet. This is a potential problem with all new water sources, but not very common. We've had to delay the second half of the installation (installing the handpump) so they can treat the water and fix the turbidity issues. I remember the turbidity warnings we'd get back in BC. Suffice to say, that was nothing:

From Drilling Update

Stupididity

Stupid turbidity.

Also, water quantity - surveys are only so accurate. This one said there would be lots of water, but so far not so much. There's more than enough for any human to be able to pump out, but we were hoping for more. Then again, it's the dry season, so hopefully things get better when the rains come again. In two months.

From Drilling Update

Drilling complete, now doing some pump testing to see how much water is down there

From Drilling Update

Ugh

Drilling!

We're drilling again. I'm taking a quick break from the action for lunch. Probably about 40 metres down so far, so pray for water if you see this before we finish! Stay tuned (next update will probably be tuesday)

From Drop Box

Yummy Matooke

So we definitely eat our fair share of Ugandan food – whether it be for staff lunch, at people’s homes or eating out at the local restaurant. If it has been a while since we sank our teeth into it - we actually crave it. Here are some photos of Matooke – one of the staple foods. Matooke is a plant that looks much like a banana, but has an extremely hard interior that requires it to be boiled for a long time before being edible. It’s served in banana leaves and is it ever filling!
-Jamie

From Matooke

Matooke being peeled. It's very sappy so you have to oil up with Mukwano (translated - "friendship") cooking oil first

From Matooke

Mmmmmmmatooke

From Matooke

And this is peeled matooke

Luganda Language Lesson
Ok, since we've thrown a few Luganda words in our posts recently, here's a very quick language lesson.
a = "ah"
e = "ay" ... or "eh" I guess
i = "ee"
o = "oh"
u = "oo!"

And just to keep you on the right track with the language - Luganda, the main local language where we are, has a funny little rule that will (ok, it might not) blow your mind. Double vowels = stress that syllable. So, where you might be tempted to call it "Ma-too-kee" like it would be pronounced in ye olde english, it's "Mah-TOH-kay." Now you too can get by in Uganda about as proficiently as I can!

Webale kasiima (thanks for appreciating),
-Sean

Sipi Falls (Time Away – not as grand as Niagara Falls but it was Ugandan grand)

My mom told me that we only have 104 weekends and to make the most of it. So, with this in mind, we try to see as much of Uganda as we can. In May we made quite the drive to see the eastern part of the country – 8 hours of driving! We went with Rachel and Cheryl (Cheryl was visiting Kibaale for a week) and it was so much fun! We hiked to three different waterfalls, went swimming in a swim hole (maybe this is why Sean is sick), slept two nights in a cool hut and ate some great food! Next adventure is South Western Uganda for Sean’s Birthday!
-Jamie

From Sipi Falls

Pay as you go... they accept blood and sweat

From Sipi Falls

The hut we all slept in. Like a Ugandan yurt, except not at all

From Sipi Falls

The beginning of our "half hour" (actually 3 hour) hike

From Sipi Falls

Kids looking on from the top of a cliff

From Sipi Falls

One of three sets of water falls. These are just over 97 meters high

From Sipi Falls

Real men hike in polyester sweaters!

From Sipi Falls

Jamie on the edge of a cliff. There is a guy abseiling from the top of the waterfall in this photo which you can't see