First visit to Buikwe

Well - what a day! We headed to Buikwe with Justus from International Needs to see the schools that Eltham College (where I'm Chaplain) has worked with for a number of years. It's about a 90 minutes drive from where we're staying. The last 10k is on rough, murram road and, about 3k into it, the auto gearbox on the car stopped changing out of gear one! So we did the last 7k as high as I could reasonably let the revs go...doing about 12mph! 

Anyway, we then arrived and deposited the car with a local mechanic before looking around the schools. Though we'd heard lots and seen photos, the experience of meeting over 2000 children whose only meals of the day are often their school bowl of porridge and rice and beans was pretty full-on. I don't feel I've digested the experience enough to do any kind of justice to it yet...so bear with us a bit. We had a lengthy chat about what we could best do to be useful while we're here and they've asked if I'll do some chaplaincy work with all three schools (Buikwe Primary and Secondary and Kiyindi Primary) over the next three months. In blueprint form, it will mean going over for a couple of days per week (staying the night) and leading assemblies, meeting students, teaching some RE and leading some small groups. I suggested teaching some Spanish as well but they weren't too interested in that! 

If you're a person who prays, perhaps pray for the family dynamic as we do this. The kids (as in...our kids) found the experience quite intense. At one point, Theo tried to join a game of football and was quickly overwhelmed by children crowding round him, pointing and pulling his hair. My feeling is that they just need to get through the novelty stage...but that may be easier said that done! It would be wonderful if, as a family, we can together learn from a culture that is currently much less materially driven than our own, but I think that can only happen if our kids can interact with the students here. 

Anyway, a friendly local mechanic turned up with our car, told us gleefully that it had just needed more tape on a wire, and off we went using all 4 gears on our 1997 A45DL autobox Hiace!