We're Here!

We’re Here! We arrived in Uganda very early in the morning on Wednesday (just after midnight). We met our driver Jamil who took us to the Lake Victoria Guest House. We just barely fit all of our luggage in the van (15 checked bags + all our carry on bags) and then we also squeezed in. We received a very warm welcome from the Ugandans. We were very exhausted from a couple of days of travelling but very happy and excited to be here. Internet access has been very difficult (non-existent). Paul and I have worked very hard at trying to get internet up and running.

On Wednesday, we spent part of the day in Kampala. We exchanged our money and felt very rich with the wad of money we were given. I have never held 700,000 worth of bills in my hand (they are shillings, and only about 300 dollars in Canadian). Kampala is a very interesting city of about 2 million people, and only 3 to 4 stoplights (so you can guess what traffic is like). Thank goodness Jamil is an awesome driver!

We arrived at Buikwe Guest House around 4 in the afternoon. Justus and Sarah were here to greet us very warmly. All of our luggage was waiting for us filling up the entire living room area. We unpacked and sorted most of our supplies for the next two weeks. We all collapsed in our beds, but it was an interesting sleep with a local club playing music until 2 in the morning. Then the roaster started in crow around 4 am. School begins at 7:30 am and you could hear the excited chatter of children, a very welcoming sound. It was great to see all the children heading to school.

Today, we had the opportunity to go into both the elementary school and secondary school here at Buikwe. The children are very excited to see us and are constantly wanting their picture taken or to just touch our arms. We have been mobbed several times and feel kind of like celebrities. We have got used to hearing “Musungas” which means white people. It was great to sit in on several lessons and see how they do things here. We are in awe at how many students are on a class (there were 44 students in the grade 2 class today).

Tomorrow we start our workshops, and everyone is hard at work preparing for it.

As I am typing this message, there is a cow at the window of our guest house mooing. We hope everyone at home is well and we will keep battling the internet in an attempt to keep this blog updated!

Glenna