Day Six and Seven

Day Six:

We left the house today at 6am to travel to Fort Portal. The bus ride was 4 hours. Once we got there we went to a GFR sponsored high school, Tooro High School. We were enthusiastically greeted by dozens of students. The principal of the school gave our group a tour of his school. We were able to look into the girls' dormitory. The high school girls all live at the school so they would not be attacked or abducted from their homes. After the tour, we had lunch and watched the student choir perform for us. Then the students performed a play which I didn't completely understand because it was in Luganda. The students then performed some traditional dance for us. One boy, who had a instrument made of bells strapped to his legs, pulled me up to join in on the dancing. I'm sure us mzungus looked ridiculous, but it was a lot of fun. Once we left the school we went to visit a few sponsored families in the area. We then went to check into the guest house we were staying at for the night. Then we headed to the soccer field. We had a GFR versus Tooro High School football game. It was quite an eventful day. We were all pretty tired after that so we had dinner at the guest house, had a group meeting, and went to bed. We had to be up to leave the house at 6am the next morning.



























Day Seven:

After a night in the honeymoon sweet with my team member, Jackie, we all woke up and met for breakfast. Soon we were on the bus headed for Kamwenge. It was another long bus ride, taking about 2 hours. It was an amazing ride though because we drove right through the jungle. We actually saw wild baboons and gave them bananas from our car. Very exciting! After driving so far into the bush, we finally arrived at Kamwenge. We met up with a local organizations called Parents' Concern, which works with getting orphans into school. The group took us to visit an extremely poor widow and her family. We were able to witness true poverty. The woman had lost her husband in February to malaria and is taking care of three grandchildren. The worse part is that she now has malaria and no access to treatment. This family desperately needs to be sponsored by GFR. This particular experience was very eye opening for me. It forced me to face actual reality when we saw her husband's grave site. Without medication and proper care, this woman will die. What would happen to those three beautiful children? It's truly heartbreaking.
After this traumatic experience, we were able to visit another family. This family is currently sponsored by GFR. One of our group members, Kaitlin, and her family sponsor this family. It was amazing to see these two groups of people meet face to face. I'm sure it was an overwhelming experience for her but amazing at the same time. The whole community was present to welcome us and thank GFR for their support.
We soon had to leave Kamwenge and start the 8 hour bus ride back to Kampala. Upon our return, we had no electricity in our house. We had to eat dinner and have our group meeting in the dark. We were so thankful when the power (and internet) came back on a few hours later. What a tiring day!