We're Here!

We arrived in Uganda yesterday (Wednesday) morning!! All of the kids did amazingly well on the trip, and even managed to sleep quite a bit on the last leg....mom was a different story, but thankfully I went to bed early that night and caught up a bit.

We arrived to a warm greeting by "Auntie Rox" and a driver to bring us to Kampala where we were greeted with a beautiful and tasty snack of fresh pineapple, homemade bread and hummus and freshly squeezed passion fruit juice. Fresh flowers adorned the table and our bedroom, and the kids are sharing a great safari room with Roxanne's son, Wasswa. As I type this I realize we were so tired we probably didn't adequately show our appreciation - we must remember to do that first thing tomorrow.

Yesterday was pretty much a fog, but we did experience our first power outage, with power not returning until about 7:30 tonight (Thursday). In case you are wondering why I keep putting the day, we are 7 hours ahead of EST.

Today we joined Roxanne for an interview of 3 women who might possibly enter Tukutana's trade school and learn to sew. The women arrived with their babies saddled to their backs and the 5 shelves that they each carried on their heads all day in hopes of selling. One of them had an equivalent of a 2nd grade education and the other two 1st grade. They all were made to leave school to start working to help provide food for their families. They each stated their biggest challenge was not being able to properly provide food for their children. It blew us away to learn that they buy each shelf for 4,000 Ugandan shillings and sell them for between 4,000 and 5,000 and on a good day can sell 2-3.  To put that into dollar terms, that's making about 50 cents per shelf, or $1.50 per day at best.  When they left, they all told our beautiful interpreter and current Tukutana member, Medina, that they hoped they were the one chosen to join the program - they were so eager to learn a trade that could enable them to better provide for their families.

We also learned each sewing machine (they are all the old fashioned kind since electricity is in such short supply) costs less than $100 in US currency. It breaks my heart that for $100 and some training, these women and their children could lead entirely different lives.

So, I was supposed to make this a short post and will let one of the boys give the details tomorrow, but the kids got to make bags of goodies (cards from American children, soap, toothbrushes/toothpaste, stickers from Trader Joes - complements of Lila saving all of hers for months, and granola bars) and deliver them with Rob and Auntie Rox to children in the cancer ward at one of the local hospitals today. They will hopefully get many more opportunities for this in the weeks to come.

Alrighty - gotta sign off and get some sleep in case the kids are up again tonight.