Day 3 - Into the Villages

12/6/11

Day 3 – Into the Villages

Yesterday, I got to worship with the Water Missions team, before their weekly meeting. It was awesome to stand with believers in the faith and sing I surrender all and Amazing Grace. The team of people working here are awesome. There’s four Mzungus and 14 Ugandans! After lunch, we traveled into some villages along Lake Victoria. If you’ve never looked at the size of the lake, you’d be surprised how big it is. There are hundreds of villages around the lake. We only had to drive about 30 or 40 minutes out of Jinja, to get to Ntinkalu. It baffles my mind how close these villages are to civilization. We drove most of the trip on a dirt road through sugar cane fields. Along the way, we saw women picking up leftover stocks of sugar cane in the fields that have already been harvested. They carry their harvest on top of their heads, while walking the dirt road back to their village.

The dirt roads are easily washed away by rainwater, leaving huge ruts and massive holes in the road. So, we must travel slowly to avoid the meteor size holes that undoubtedly would swallow my VW bug alive! No matter how far out you drive, you will always find boda-boda’s taking people to their desired destination. I haven’t ridden on a boda-boda yet, but I plan on doing it before we leave!

As we drove into the first village, we watched as little children screamed “MZUNGU, MZUNGU!” as if they were announcing it for the rest of the village children. By the time we would park and open our doors, children surrounded our van with excitement. The first thing I tried to do was give them high fives. They just held their hand up back, as if I was a native American greeting them with a “How”. So, I would just high five them, saying “HIGH FIVE”, as I did it. They would in turn yell “HI FI” and giggle and want another one.

It was so humbling to know that they were excited to see me, a Mzungu, who had never been there before. I was the highlight of their day and all I did was show up. With us, we brought balloons and soccer balls to pass out. As I would blow up a balloon, they would giggle and scream “BALOO”. At first, I thought they were calling me Baloo, from jungle book, but I then realized they knew what the balloon was. These are no ordinary balloons, though. They were the large latex balloons, the size of beach balls. I threw the first on in the air, and immediately, they started to hit it up in the air, and all 20 kids were overwhelmed with joy. We repeated this a few times, and every time, one of the kids would just grab the balloon and take off! The rest would follow the balloon.

We got to see how far Lake Victoria was from the villages. Although they were along the lake, they were still a few miles away. Some parts of the villages had a water pump, while the rest of them were required to walk to the lake for their daily water needs. It was a good feeling to know that Water Missions had technicians working all day, piping water from the water source, all the way to the furthest village. Ntinkalu is just a week or two away from having safe water for everyone.

There is so much more that’s happening here, than you would think. It’s so encouraging to see what’s happening first hand. I hope that I, in some way, am giving you a taste of what it’s like here!

Grace and Peace,

Kyle