By: Charles L.
February 2016 – Trip Journal, Part Two
Day 5
Today we are meeting with a government figure about the nutritional program we are developing. He agrees to try to schedule a meeting with the Prime Minister, and other government officials. As soon as he can coordinate with everybody, he will call me. This may mean that I leave on a day’s notice to go to Kampala, but it would be worth the inconvenience.
We leave for Southern Uganda by 2:00pm and arrive at 5:30pm. The construction of “Block A” of the secondary school and the dormitory for the primary school is going very well. We still have some work to do to improve the quality of construction- like having a chipped piece of tile and just filling in with grout instead of replacing the tile, painting on the windows when aiming to paint around the windows, etc. The good news is, the laborers we hired are more than willing to learn! Bishop could not stop taking pictures and his friend was just amazed.
I talk to the two construction contractors about what I want the next building to look like and they inform me that they have already started some planning for it. The building looks great but there’s not enough brick showing for the finished product; all the brick is covered up with plaster.
After saying hello to everybody it is after dark when we get to the hotel to rest for the evening.
Day 6
We start the day with a breakfast meeting with William, Bishop, and a young couple that we are counseling in their marriage. We make it to the school in time for a morning meeting with William, Anthony, and Aaron about what meetings we needed to schedule and who is to attend those meetings. Yes, it’s a meeting about meetings. We currently have 16 meetings set up and that does not even include the budget meetings. Fortunately, budget meetings are requiring less time with each visit – progress!
We have 270 children in school today, 12 of them are boarders. There are kids everywhere, what an awesome sight! We are multiplying faster than our building space is growing, but Paul, our administrator, does an incredible job of creating learning spaces for students that I never would’ve dreamed of! And – he does all of this without a single word of complaining. Praise the Lord!
We have a short meeting with the headmaster and the administrator and the two contractors about the location of the next building. We need four new classrooms just to take care of the students we currently have- that’s not including space for future (expected) growth. The upper primary (elementary) classes are small in number but the tutoring (kindergarten) and the P1 (1st grade) classes are – as Trump would say – “HUUUUUGGGEE.”
Nevertheless – what an incredible problem to have?
the master cares 