Katale: Monday August 2

August 2

Today was our last day at the school. We didn’t spend a whole lot of time there. Wilson had a job to do this morning and our team needed to finish up some work that we were doing for the school. It worked out best for us to be picked up late. I was so happy! I had a lazy morning. AH…. It is amazing how a little more sleep than normal changes how I feel about leaving Uganda. We were not picked up today until 1:15pm. We went to the school for a celebration lunch. Grace, Wilson’s wife, made an huge lunch for us. My favorite was there too…chapati. It was really good to share a meal with the teachers and to give each other words of thanks and encouragement. Our team went to each class and told the students goodbye. Carrie and I were tearing up when we walked into the oldest class. One of the girls we especially connected with had tears in her eyes. She is the one who really took to using my camera. I really do not like goodbyes. However, it was such a good thing for us and for the students. It was nice to be able to tell the kids how much fun we had with them and how impressed we are with how they are studying. Saying goodbye definitely put a hope in my heart for a return trip. It was a really great thing to spend a whole week with the kids. They had enough time with us to act like the were comfortable with us.

After we left the church Pastor Wilson took us to another village. It is a village near a very large tea planatation. I thought that we had seen poverty in Katale. However, as we walked in the village on our way to visit the church that Wilson has planted we saw a new degree of struggle. The water source was pretty rugged... Here we saw kids who are clearly malnourished. For the most part we’ve seen kids who had clothes and have had shoes. However, in this village there were kids without clothes or without “proper” clothing. Wilson explained that in this village the people are expericening struggle to even grow their own food. There seems to be something wrong with the soil. We wondered if the tea plantation is using chemicals that are running into the surrounding lands. It wouldn’t be a huge surprise. Trevor commented that this probably happens all over Africa. Yet here we were seeing the potential scenario in front of our eyes. The tea plantation pays people seventy cents a day to pick tea leaves. Can you imagine working in the hot sun all day to earn seventy cents? And then you can not even grow your own food? It was good to learn about another area that Pastor Wilson is ministering in. As we drove away from the church we kept on passing people Wilson knows. He is so well connected in his community.

Before Wilson returned us to the guesthouse we visited a guesthouse that is closer to his village. Like the Namirembe Guesthouse we’ve been staying at in Kampala this guesthouse is also run by the Church of England. However, this one is so much cheaper. If we have another team come back to work with Wilson we’ll have the team stay there. It would be a great space for students!

It has been a good day…. Tomorrow is our last and in the evening we plan to fly out. AH…it is time, it is time.