New Pal

This is my new friend Tier (pronounced: "tea-A").  She's fabulous, one of the mothers here asked whose family I belonged in and she said "ours!" and gave me a big hug.

Alumni Success

As I was visiting some schools in the community I had the chance to see some of the girls that were at the Centre last time I was here.  They had no idea I was back so when they saw me they dropped their things and ran to me in surprise.  One girl, Beatrice, took me to the market where she has started a small business with the knowledge and startup money that she got from the Centre.  She has also started at the tailoring school in her village.  In the morning she sells small fish and these pastry like things called mandazzi and then in the afternoon she goes to the school.  In the small market we ran into about 6 girls who had been in the Centre at various times in the past.

This is Beatrice at her stand in the market place.

This is the reason that the Centre exists, these girls used to sit at home or dig in fields for very little money but they are now beginning to be entrepreneurs.  Their lifeless eyes are gone and they are now happy and proud of what they've become.

These are all the Centre alumni that we found in the market.

This guy is living right outside my house.

Reality

I had one of those moments today when you realize that you're alive.  Like when you're looking in the mirror and suddenly realize that you are there, brings you back to reality.  Today was one of those days.

I was kicking around a soccer ball with some of the girls from the Centre when I realized where I was.  Here I am in Northern Uganda kicking around a soccer ball with a woman who is HIV+, another who spent 11 years living in abduction and another who is a child mother/rape victim.

A little later I wandered into the kitchen and started talking to the one of the girls, Colline, who was cooking.  She asked me to take a picture of her.  I said I would.  She then slightly lifted up her skirt to show me the back of her thigh where she was hit by part of a bomb while she was abducted.  She's basically missing all of the back of her thigh to the bone.  What she wanted was for me to take a picture of it so that she could see what it looks like from behind.  I only had my video camera so I filmed a couple seconds of it and showed it to her.

She just watched and turned back to cooking.  She then asked to see it again.  She said that this was the first time that she's actually seen it and put her hand on her head and asked if that really was her leg.  I asked her what she thought about it and she said that she didn't have anything to say yet.


Reality.
.

As requested, here is a picture of some of the dead white ants that were in my house last weekend!

I need to update this more

It has been a while since I've written something of substance.  I realized that I haven't talked at all about the new group of girls that is here at the Centre.  Last Monday we went out to a couple of the villages and picked up the girls for the program.  We have 25 women and 33 of their children, all under the age of 7.  It has become much more lively around the compound since they arrived.

All of the girls are considered child mothers and were either formerly abducted victims of LRA rebels, or are victims of gender based violence at home or orphans themselves.  Almost none have husbands who are still alive or haven't left them and a majority of the children are from rapes.

They are adjusting well to life at the Centre, it's great to see them from the first day when they are silent, won't look you in the eye and barely even talk to their children to just a week later when they are singing and dancing with each other (and begging me to join) and playing with their kids.  Simply giving them a small break from their home life brings so much relief to them.

Their classes started this week - literacy, English, agriculture, basic tailoring, cooking and business studies.  And the kids began their nursery classes as well.

Over the next two months they'll be taking these classes and doing almost daily counseling with the hope that at the end they will be able to return home and be active members in their villages and continue an income generating activity such as small farming or owning goats or chickens.


The scholarship program that I'm working on is also going really well; tomorrow I'll be traveling to the villages to visit various vocational schools so that we will be prepared to enroll more girls next term. So pray for guidance in our selection process of both the girls who receive the scholarships and the schools that we select.


More to come.

Ant Update

Good news: I woke up to find that there were hundreds of white ant carcases (which I found out are a kind of termite) on the floor and not still flying.

Better news: My friend came over and as she cracked up about me being afraid of them, swept them all up for me.

Strange news: She took them to the girls here at the centre to pluck their wings and add to the thousands of white ants that they caught last night to prepare to eat.

Pictures to come, the power is out and my computer is running low on battery.  (I have a wireless modem so electricity doesn't affect the internet).

Peace