After the incredibly long plane trip (4 hours to chicago, 6.5 hours to london, 14 hour layover, 8 hours to uganda) today was finally the first day we got out there to see first hand what we were dealing with.Today we had the opportunity to spend some time building a new home for a blind woman named Cece. Her story is tragic in every way. Her husband came home and killed her mother [his mother-in-law] and beat her to the point of losing her eyesight. The husband was killed from mob retaliation within their village, mob justice as they call it and apparently its pretty common. She found out later that her husband infected her with HIV after cheating on her and she is left blind, widowed with four kids.
Her whole home that she shares with her four kids is about the size of my room. It was just saddening tearing down her place and just seeing all the things that she had. And honestly it seems like stuff you would find in a trash dump in the states.
As sad as it was the kids were just awesome. they were all hanging out and playing with us all day. A few of them were singing that one song... something like "nobodoy want to see us together but it don't matter noo (cuz i got you)" i don't know the name of the song but i recognize it from the radio. It was really sweet. They just loved hanging out with us and playing with us. I'm really not the oooh-look-at-the-cute-baby type of guy but they were pretty cute and they came up to play with me even if i didn't come up to them. One of the boys even held my hand as we were walking.... it was unexpectedly nice :)After a long day of destruction, construction, half-mile water treks carrying 2 4 gallon jugs, visiting families, and playing with kiddos. We spent some time debriefing tonite and we talked about some of the stuff we saw today and how it compares to what we're gonna see in the next week or so, and from what I gather this is only still no where near what we'll see in the more remote villages of Uganda. Its gonna be crazy.
I wish I could write more, about today or even the emotions that I felt but its hard to put into words currently. Too many interruptions, slow internet connection, and the enormity of it all. So I'll just let some of the pictures below give you a glimpse of what we experienced.
These were all taken from today.
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some of the bricks used for the new house.
water run.
some local kids.
This is Lee with some kids, hes got an amazing story.
a school
cutie.
cutie #2.
a room that typical impoverished ugandans sleep in.
done!
The pictures, the story... I'm pretty much speechless.
We're praying for you guys.
All those faces, so beautiful!
Tears come to my eyes while looking at the pictures of those precious little ones. Hug them a lot for me!