New volunteers just survived our first week in Lugazi! 8 of us arrived last Sunday and were put right to work. Hooray second wave! First wave volunteers have done a marvelous job of getting projects up and running. There are so many projects that we are working on!
I've been helping a lot with the disability choir choir that we're starting up. Its a choir for kids with disabilities or those who have parents with disabilities. While they are practicing for the choir, the adults will be meeting in the next room as a support group with various lessons and classes. Our goal is to help the children develop their talents and feel like they are part of a group. We also want to educate the parents on how to take care of them so they aren't neglected. I'll be in charge of coming up with hygiene, sanitation, health, business, and various other classes for each week. Our first meeting is tomorrow afternoon and we can't wait to see how everything goes!
Last week I also had the opportunity to help with the mushroom house project. We will be building the first one next week. There are seven villages that will have one and they each help each other build them. Once they are all built they are required to give 10% of their profit to Buikwe Village Care which is a group that also helps with self sustaining projects. We met with the village council and the people are so excited to start training and building!
I am now in charge of heading up our business training project. We hold weekly classes for those with local businesses and those who sell in the market to help them be more organized and potentially increase their profit. Hopefully we can continue having more people come to the trainings by word of mouth that way we can help as many business owners as possible! This project will make a huge difference in many lives.
Last week the team was able to finish two of the adobe stoves that they had been working on. We're trying to leave them with lots and lots of training so that they can maintain these stoves and build new ones when needed.
Peter from the HELP board of directors has been staying with us the past few days. He has so much helpful advice and insight its been great to spend time with him as a group and one on one.
I can't wait to continue working on these projects over the next few months! I'm grateful for the group of volunteers that are here and for all of their hard work and dedication to this opportunity that we have to help others.
Welaba!!

Chelsea

Hello, all you readers! Welcome again to this blog. This is Molly this week, happy to greet you and prepared to share our greatness.

The Lugazi team is rocking it this summer! I just love us. Everywhere we turn there’s a new success to marvel at: teacher trainings, elderly groups, business trainings, HIV/AIDS lessons, adobe stoves, mushroom houses, gardens… we are on Fire with a capital F.

One of our greatest successes thus far, in my biased opinion, is the triumph we’ve had with our Eye Camp. We started out feeling rather limited about the whole affair; limited funds, limited resources, limited patience… but we’ve had some recent good fortune which we are shamelessly taking credit for! First and foremost on the list of happy Eye Camp moments: we’ve got enough funding for a freaking stellar camp! Our friends at Sightsavers International came through for us at the last minute and hooked us up with some monetary goodness! They have helped us with so much and made things possible that we never imagined we could do. I won’t go into details about the moments after the first Sightsavers meeting, but suffice it to say that there was some jumping and squealing involved. Masculine squealing. Anyway, our camp is going to be magnificent! We’re planning surgeries and screenings at three separate hospitals throughout the area—all with barely-pronounceable names, so I won’t even type them out. They’re spread far enough that we’ll be able to help a broad variety of people from all over this region of Uganda! YAY! So with the greatly appreciated assistance of Deseret Int. Foundation, Sightsaver Int’l and local partners like The Youth Outreach Mission and Buikwe Village Care, we’re orchestrating the best Eye Camp we can manage. I can’t wait to start seeing people see!

Along with our brilliance at projects, there are always the unique Africa-related tales we’ve accumulated throughout these eight long weeks on the other side of the world. We’ve got some crazy-cool safari stories, we’ve got splendid tales of tropical island adventures, we’ve got epic sagas involving bungee jumping (Guess who is one of the two who went? That’s right, yours truly! BAM!) and whitewater rafting… our escapades amaze me. Not to mention the hysterical day-to-day situations we find ourselves in. Every day is such an adventure! Boda-boda rides, rainstorms that feel like they’re drowning you, parasites, giant spiders, people calling us heavy and telling us we have sideburns… it’s like Jumanji. Only better. What’s better than a Robin Williams jungle movie from the mid-nineties? OUR LIVES!

I think I’m out of time. I hope this is a sufficiently informative blog post, O Reader, though it is short. I apologize for the lack of photos. I am technologically inept; I take all blame for the dullness of today’s post.  Keep your eyes out for more from us!

“So, from all of us [in Lugazi] to all of you out there, wherever you are: remember- the light at the end of the tunnel may be you. Goodnight!!”
~Aerosmith

LOVE, MOLLY!

4 weeks in Lugazi!

     It is hard to believe that we have now been in Lugazi for 4 weeks! Our team has really pulled together to begin recognizing needs and creating projects to begin to fulfill them.  We have been so grateful to the many Ugandan partners for their kindness and the help they have given.  They have invited us onto many of their projects as well as aided us in ours.
     Last week, we were invited by chairman Livingston to go on an outreach into some rural villages and help in HIV/AIDS screening and lessons, filling perscriptions, agriculture, as well as many other things.  We had it divided into two days so half our team went on Tuesday and the other half on Wednesday. Although it was a bumpy ride to get there, it was an incredible experience and the scenery was absolutely beautiful.  It was different than being in Lugazi because most of the people from the villages did not speak English.  But between our beginning Lugandan phrases and the help of a translator, it was a sucess.

     One thing we have began to realize since we have been here is that there are many people already here in Uganda that are doing so much to help their community and it has been a pleasure so far to work with them.  From the outreach, we were able to gain a greater knowledge of HIV/AIDS awareness as well a better understanding of its' impact here in Uganda. 

       Another area of work that volunteers here have been invollved with is teacher training. So far it has been a great success. The first session was on classroom management and the different student learning styles. The teachers were so interested in how they could make their lessons more interesting and creative. We went around the room and talked about our own personal learning styles and also discussed how to make a geography lesson that includes the seven different styles. I am so impressed with the educators here. They have so little resources to teach yet they are so positive and do so much good. The students here are extremely well behaved and are very intelligent. It's been a pleasure to work with the administrators and teachers.

      Thanks for all the support back home! This is Ashley and Katelynn signing off. Welaba!