Bunabuyoka... THE pearl of Africa

So... i finally got to skype my mom today and one of the first things she informed me of is how bad i am at updating my blog. So i am going to try and recap all of the incredible things that have happened to me in the last few days. so... here it goes.

last week we met with an organization called Christian Faith in Action. They are a non profit organization that works with people in really small villages. Help worked with them last year in a village called Bunabuyoka. We had decided to work with them again. They are in need of a Health Clinic and a roof on the school that they built. The village sounded so great and the people sounded incredible. but i don't think i was prepared for just how amazing they are!

We had met with CFA and decided to go to the village on monday to talk with the village leaders so that we were all on the same page about what we can do and what we expect the village to do. 

So on monday we woke up at 6:30 AM and got in taxi that would take us an hour out of Mbale to another district ( county) called Manafa. In the taxi which could be renamed a Volkswagen bus with 22 people all scrammed inside. 

Then there was a hike that was suppose to last 30 minutes, but that was only the case if you grew up in the jungles of Africa and were use to running in the hills every day! so it took us an hour and a half. It was very treacherous, it was almost straight up hill the whole time. so by the time we got the top i was EXHAUSTED!!!!! and we still had another 20 minutes hike, which thankfully was a stroll to the place where the school was and where our meeting was set to happen. 

When we first got to the top of the hill there was a group of men that had drums and they were going to accompany us to the part of the village we needed to go to. Which was fun. it was like a welcoming committee. Children from all over the place came running to the path to see what all the commotion was about and i think they were even more astonished to find a huge group of Muzungu's walking in their village. They were so cute. A lot of the village had never seen a white person before and if they had it was from last years Help team so it was still very new to them. They were either excited and wanted to come hold our hands. Or they were curiously terrified. 

As we got closer to the school we started to hear children's voices singing. It was the cutest, most sweet voices i had ever heard. They were welcoming us to their village. It was a very special experience. They sang for about 15 minutes and i honestly don't think i could describe to you the happiness and light that i felt at that moment. The spirit was so strong! just listen to their voices! 

My heart melted at this point and I felt like  I had come home. It was interesting. Everyone in the village kept saying that they wanted us to feel at home and I already did! Once we got into the building the kids put on a little more of a performance for us...

Then the meeting began and we talked about all of the different things that we wanted to do, and every time we said something everyone would clap. Didn't really know how to respond to that. So we negotiated for about 2 hours to figure out the logistics of getting the school finished, which needed a roof and floor. Also how to construct the Health clinic. We concluded that they would build the walls and then we would provide the roof and the floor for the clinic as well.... we are also going to be helping them to build the health clinic so i will be knowing how to brick lay. Im excited about that. we spent the entire day there and i loved every minute of it! i cant wait to go back, we will be going there on sunday night and staying there until tuesday!!!

This is a picture of a sweet girl that couldn't stop dancing even when she was sitting on the bench. SO CUTE!

Another project that we are doing, which i am actually a team lead for is putting in place and training the Namatala community Water filters. I am really excited about this project! They actually had a blog post from the Organization that donated the filters for us last year and what they actually did was copy and paste the email that i sent them asking for more filters and put a few of the pictures that i sent them with it. Its a great cause. Im really excited about it! The village is also great in maintaining it and managing the water filters which i think is the best part of it! i was so terrified that i was going to come to Africa and do one of those feel good projects that when i leave have no impact on the village or leave the people worse than they were before, but the projects that we are working with is working with the communities in making sure that they are sustained and continue to be effective when we leave ( which at this point i don't want to ever leave....) 

 This is the link to the blog.... RainCathcer provides clean water filters to Namatala slums in Uganda | RainCatcher
www.raincatcher.org

So that is a brief snap shot of what i will be working on this summer, i promise to be better at posting and being more detailed. I love every minute of what i am doing and have really started to feel like i have found where i belong!!!!!