Adventures in Uganda!

Village Woman in Mbale wearing a traditional gomeza(sp?) with her son and her goat.

Through eMi, I was able to go to Uganda for three whole weeks! Now that I am sufficiently recovered from jetlag and a cold, I would like to share some small bit of my experience. I was on a team of 9 people, 3 eMi staff: Scott Powell (POW), our team leader, Laura Powell, his wife and eMi's HR department, and Steve Hoyt, an architect and staff based in Uganda; 3 interns: myself, Mike Ng, construction manager from Cal Poly SLO, and Lennell Perry, architect from Oklahoma State(interning in Uganda the whole semester); 3 volunteers: Scott Bradshaw (BAM), civil engineer from Montana, Danny Sze, architect from London (originally Hong Kong), and Clifton Stark, surveyor from Little Rock Arkansas.

Our team with Anne, her son Matthew, Esther, and Barbara.

Our project was to design a Master Plan for the Bushikori Christian Centre (BCC) in Mbale, Uganda. BCC was founded in 1981 by Pastor Sam Wandendeya after he miraculously survived a death camp during Idi Amin's Reign of Terror. Pastor Wandendeya knew that God saved him for a purpose. Now BCC sponsors 400 children, providing school fees, clothing, and other necessities, they run the Joshua Primary School that serves lunch to the children everyday, and they run a community clinic with subsidized drugs so that the local people can afford it. They do all this on a small piece of land that is only 4 acres! Also they want to do more, they want to add two more classrooms to the school so that it can go up to P7, they want to expand and improve the clinic up to Health Centre 4 ratings and 40 beds, they want to add a community library and a boarding school and a house for a clinical officer.

The kids enjoying some camera time.

Sadly, Pastor Sam passed away a few years ago and now the director of the ministry is his wife, Anne. Anne served us so much while we were there. She moved out of her home and into the garage so that we could have the house to work and stay in. She made sure we had wonderful meals everyday and was always there to answer any questions. While we were there, her brother-in-law died and even in her grief and in planning the funeral she did nothing but give of herself to ensure our comfort. Hearing of the trials she has gone through and seeing her immense faith was so inspiring to me and leads me to praise Jesus for the work that He has done and is doing in my dear sister.

Beth(volunteer at BCC), Laura, Anne, and yours truly.

Somehow, our team managed to fit in most of what BCC wanted into the site.. it is pretty tight, but hopefully the consistency of the design will open up the space, and of course the kids still have a half-football (that's soccer) field to play on.

The Master Plan.

The last week in Uganda, I spent in Kampala at the eMi office there. Most of the time, Mike and I hung out with Lennell who was able to lead us around pretty well. Let me just say public transport in Kampala is pretty crazy. Lennell also had many episodes of "The Office" on his computer so I watched a bunch of those too... we really didn't have much to do. The last few days we got to go on a safari at Murchison Falls with more of the interns in Uganda. It was really fun to stand up in the van and scan the horizon for any animals... we saw a bunch of giraffes and antelope and a few elephants, but unfortunately no lions or leopards. We also went on a boat ride to the falls where there were many hippos, water buffalo, and crocodiles.

Big Croc Daddy.

Well, I must be off... but there shall be more tales from Uganda and Colorado to come.