Twawebwa Mukama

Sunday evening and then…. Monday building day!
At dinnertime on Sunday evening, Linda (du Buisson) felt something in her hair and pulled out a wasp. And what do wasps do when you grab them? Exactly: sting. “ A wasp just stung me! A wasp just stung me!” she shouted. Grace got the stinger out, but the damage was already done. We got her thumb soaking in hot water with bicarbonate of soda and after a few hours the worst of the pain had happily gone away. In the evening we were treated to a performance by the secondary school children: fantastic, there was a lot of dancing and especially the traditional dancing was super. Such a wonderful feeling for rhythm, it was a great show. Tomorrow it will be our turn with our film about how we live in the Netherlands. Monday building day! It’s one of the reasons we’re here. So today we’re going to make a start on the foundations for the vocational school. Kaleb, the construction engineer, was already at the building site with some workers, busy setting out lines where the trench will be dug for the foundation beams. It took a while to establish squared-up guidelines for the building’s footprint, which will be at least 30 by 9.4 metres, but by using the good old 3,4,5 rule we eventually rigged up various strings. Uncle Ben in the digger and everybody else finishing off the trench. By the end of the day we had already dug 160 metres of trench, including the interior walls. The trench was almost two metres deep at one end and 60cm wide all around. That came to more than 100 cubic metres of shifted earth. Our presentation in the evening was apparently a success, although it’s always difficult to assess the audience’s response, so we’re hoping to hear what they thought of it in the coming days. Pastor Israel is hoping that it will motivate the students to make something of their lives. He said that the film, combined with our help on the project shows that as well as enjoying luxuries we in the Netherlands are also used to working hard.

Tuesday
We partly continued work on the building site and partly entertained the children with stuff that we’d brought with us, like balloons and paper for folding.
Somehow we managed to bring our Dutch weather with us: yesterday a big rainstorm, and the rest of the time the sun has been shy. It’s actually not too bad for digging: we sweat anyway because it’s nonetheless certainly not cold. bijkomen!