Here are some updates about our activities this week:
- Fran bought a bunch of eggs and gave them to the aunties, so they’ve been cooking us eggs for lunch along with homemade French fries and fresh vegetables… it’s been a nice break from rice & beans everyday.
- Me, Evan, Fran, Denise (our new German housemate), Anna and Kato went out to an Italian restaurant for dinner. The owner is the one who taught one of our girls, Jacinta, how to make mozzarella. The food was good and the restaurant itself was really cool.
- There are many young Germans who teach at a nearby school and come to the house frequently to do a variety of things, so on Wednesday they came and we all walked with the kids to a local playground. This is going to be a weekly Wednesday event once school starts.
- Evan and I have spent a lot of time in the last few days working on the Malayaka House “cooperative of businesses.” As I mentioned in an earlier post, there are a few businesses in the works including jewelry, mozzarella cheese, and a bi-weekly pizza night. We are doing our first pizza night on Tuesday so, in order to properly prepare, Evan and I did some research and learned the basics about making a proper business plan. Yesterday we met with Namatov, Naiga, Jacinta, and Kato and created a draft of their business plan and set goals for where we want to be one month from now and three months from now.
- Today, as a follow up to yesterday’s meeting, Namatov took us to the market where we bought nice plates, glasses, serving plates, and a pitcher for water. We’re going to set up a nice outdoor dining table with candles and the older girls who are serving the food will be dressing up. For the first pizza night (and maybe the first 3 or 4) it will only be me, Evan, Fran, Denise, Anna, and Kato eating. We’re hoping that in 2 weeks the girls will have a good system down and we can invite other friends of the Malayaka House to come in for dinner.
- Yesterday Fran took us to visit another orphanage run by a Ugandan woman named Remy. She started taking children in around the same time that Robert stopped, and all of her 20 children are under the age of 5. She’s been having success with adoption though, so hopefully that continues. We took two of our children with us, Didas (age 7) and Jimmy (age 6), and the boda boda driver let them each have a turn sitting in front of him on the bike (one on the way there and one on the way home). Remy’s place was incredible and her aunties are just as fabulous as ours. Their house is spotless, probably because most of the children are too young to make it dirty. They have a small playground, swingset, and a trampoline, so our children love visiting their friends there. It was nice to see another orphanage home, especially one run by a Ugandan.
- Yesterday Denise went into Kampala, the capital and closest city, with some of the other Germans. They came home with a very tiny, and absolutely filthy, puppy. They found him on the street lying next to his dead brother and decided to save him. Luckily they at least took him to the animal care place in Entebbe and got some shampoo that kills fleas and ticks. The pup is adorable and looks like it’s mostly German shepherd. They named it the German word for flower, but we’ve been calling it Kovy (after a NJ Devils player) and the kids are catching on to our name. Fran is a dog lover, but he’s annoyed that the Germans brought it here to begin with because there’s enough going on with 36 children, 5 dogs, 8 cats, and tons of farm animals. He had the task of training the house’s youngest dog, Lola, last year when he was here and it looks like he’ll be doing it again with this new one.
I hope all is well at home, and please feel free to email me!
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