Yes, it was not so much of a glorious adventure, but a lot of hard work with some definite excitement at the same time. It took a staff of about 30 a full week to pack everything and truck it an hour down the road out of the city and to unpack it. Even two months later we still have boxes as we await the completion of storage areas.The official start of the school year began with our new school also as a construction site with many doors and windows, missing and plasterless walls. My temporary office was a classroom that also included the library, staff room, and work desks for the deputy headmaster and house manager, dirt floor rough brick walls and empty window frames barred over with wood.
After a week in my new home three other rooms were occupancy ready as the concrete screening for the floors had set and we moved into our new permanent office home. Luckily for me a snake had not heard the moving date and came early for a visit one morning. I was not in, but he was spotted through the painless window and quickly disposed of. (99.9% of snakes in Uganda are considered poisonous). That’s what we get for moving to the country! No more city pressure. Just snakes! There have been countless temporary allocations for the library, classrooms, staff room, and school supplies as the construction continues. Yes, we have had an adventure, but thankfully the students are very excited to be in their new home as there is a lot of space to run around. About six snakes have been killed but God has protected everyone and provided much needed energy for the staff who have worked extremely hard.As we move forward into more of a daily routine we are still working on finishing the first phase of the building project. Classrooms are still having doors and windows added along with plaster and flooring. Sidewalks and plaster on the outside of some buildings are also being worked on. The plan was to have things completed before we moved in but that did not end up happening. Currently we continue to trust God to provide for the completion of the school.
Our faith based organization has seen donations decline since the ‘credit crunch’ which has affected their general budgets and caused cutbacks at the school. But through all of that, God has been good and we have been able to meet our operating targets (though we feel stretched to the max) and provide an excellent education for the children. However, I continue to feel a hunger to have the school completed which means simple things like plastering, paint, landscaping and important things like fencing and an access road developed. Yes, on some rainy days you would not be leaving our property without four wheel drive.On a different note I continue to see how good Canada is the longer we are in Uganda… During the Olympics I was dying to see some of the action and especially the men’s hockey. In fact the night of the big game against the US, a Canadian friend and I spent until 2 in the morning trying to find the game televised somewhere. After searching everywhere we found nothing and went to bed not too happy. Yes, I will admit that some of you would laugh at a few of the places we poked our heads into just to see if they were airing it on their big screen (most pubs here are dedicated almost solely to soccer matches. And they are generally, should I say, ‘rustic’). But we wanted so badly to see that game and just as importantly to stand in a far away land and sing so proudly OH CANADA! It turns out we won and I sang OH CANADA several times the next day on the way to work in the car where no one could hear me or even see the odd tear coming down my red and white cheeks. Yes, Canada has a lot of work to do, but from the glasses I am looking through there are not a lot of countries better.
Well, I should sign off, but we would love to hear from you and all the best in 2010 from the Williams Four in Uganda
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