Day 15 - Hope

Today was really the beginning of the essence of why we are here. We got up early in the morning, I showered quickly because that’s what I do, had a bite to eat, and then hopped in the van with Alocious and headed up to Hope Children’s Home.

Our plans for the day were to build an Adobe or Lorena Stove for the home and to begin the construction of a pig pen. I was involved with the pig pen at first but didn’t do much in the long run. I did however dedicate my time to the adobe stove that we made for Christine. She told us to knock down the old one to make room for the new larger one. I was surprised she wanted to do this, but happy that she had the confidence in us to make a newer better one! The process was slow but sure. We began by making frames out of some planks that the worker guys rounded up for us. They weren’t perfect, but they worked. We nailed them together and had our layout ready. This was our very first time with the stoves so we were sort of doing things only by what we had been taught or thought would be best for the design. It was pretty intricate as far as finding material to form the vents and the holes in the top. We ended up using banana truck to form the vents as well as the upper/smaller vents of the stove. We put grass in the middle to help support the weight of the adobe from crushing in.

We used about 3-4 loads of clay that was gathered somewhere down the hillside. It was pretty good clay, except for the last load which was pretty clumpy and hard to work with, we made it work with. We used 6 parts clay, 3 parts sand, 1 part water (instead of 3 parts because the clay was so moist), and 1 part cellulose. It actually turned out to be quite good stuff, it should dry very strong. I had been pushing to put a cement surface on top to have a nice finish. I went down to those working on the chicken coop and saw that they had an entire wheel barrow FULL of unused cement!! I was extactic! I asked them if we could use it, they concurred. I told Jeff and Dan and we brought it up and laid it down. I went to get a trowel and when I got back, Jeff reached out as if to take it. I gladly but unhappily gave it to him, I was eager to do the finish work myself. I figured I wouldn’t make a seen and that I just be OK with it, and I was. They did a great job, I’m sure it will look amazing.

We were there ALL day. We had lunch with the kids and workers. We had posho (a maize flour/water mixture), beans, rice, cabbage, and pepsi to drink. It wasn’t half bad. I won’t lie, I was a little nervous about the whole thing before hand, but when I was there and observing it all, I was so happy to be there and the food was quite good. Some kids stacked there bowls higher than mine to which I was surprised, but then realized that what we were eating was a treat for them, as they don’t normally get cabbage and rice to go along with the usual posho and beans.

The day came to a close and we were all so beat. To make it worse, we decided to go to African Paradise and dance our little brains out. It only cost 1000 USH to get in, which is the equivalent of 60 cents. When we got in there, there weren’t to many people but we began to dance anyway. About 30 minutes passed and we had been dancing hard, but it wasn’t until this time that more people began to file in and dance. We ended up dancing with the Ugandans and it was great. People were drinking so they were out of it, but it was still way fun. We would take little breaks here and there and sit around a table. I had 2 Pepsi’s, they were unbelievably good... mmmm. We stayed for about 2 hours before we finally took off and went home. We were tired out of our minds. We had worked up at Hope for around 7-8 hours and then danced for another 2. I know I’m going to be hurting tomorrow, I can already feel the pain creeping in.

The kids at Hope are amazing. They are happy, full of love, have a will to live, and I love them so much. They are so disciplined and helpful its amazing. I took many pictures of the kids, they turned out very well, I’m excited to get them posted. The lives of these kids are so simple that even rolling a tube down a hill gets them happy and excited. Well, I’m excited to see how the stove works out, we’ll go back Monday and check it out as well as finish the chicken coop and start the pig pen. Until tomorrow.