A Day in The Life

I’m sat on our veranda looking out over Lake Victoria. About 30 meters to my left is an eagle perched on our goal posts its 2 friends are soaring around the eucalyptus trees which act as a wind break from the occasional storm that comes in off the lake. This morning though is peaceful and beautiful, it is 8.30am and the mist over the lake is lifting from the night’s rain and the temperature is about 22⁰c. The air is filled with the singing of birds, there must be at least 20 different species out there but I’ve given up counting and just enjoy them as they glide between our mango, papaya and avocado trees, smaller birds are darting in and out of the long elephant grass just below our veranda which we use to feed the cows on the farm. From behind me I can hear the boys practicing their African drumming as they wait for the teacher to call them to class, the drumming pauses as in the distance there is the gentle engine noise from the Mission Aviation Fellowship small propeller plane as it takes off from the run way just across the swamp as it flies over head and boys watch with excitement as it flies by, most of the boys dream of being a pilot one day, as it disappears the drums continue.

In this amazing moment of awe and wonder of God’s amazing creation I am interrupted by several knocks on the door. First by one of our boys, Kawesa, who has been sent by Jen to get some more paper. Jen is teaching catch up education for those boys who need an extra boost; she is doing phonics so I know that soon I’ll hear the sound of “mmmmmm” or “t-t-t-t-t-t” coming from the classroom. I give the paper to Kawesa who is about 10 years old and give him an encouraging smile, he is had a rough ride recently. He was desperate to go home to his family who we had managed to trace but on returning home he discovered his family had become deeply involved with witchcraft and they wanted to put him through an ‘initiation ceremony’ not surprisingly this scared him so he ran away. Thankfully this time he knew that RETRAK would help him so he came back to us rather than going straight to the streets. The social workers attempted to trace other family members for him to live with, Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents but it has not been possible so he is now back at Tudabujja with us preparing to be placed into a new foster family. After two years I can still only imagine what he is feeling inside, I will never know. That makes me incredibly grateful for the life and childhood I had but also makes me sad that a 10 year old has to go through what he has had too.

As I return back to my laptop another plane takes off and I notice the fishermen are coming in off the lake in their dugout canoes with the mornings catch. Just as I settle there is another knock at the door, it is the pastor of the local church where most of the boys like to go on Sundays. This time he is here to see my mum, she has been here for the last two weeks and is flying home tomorrow so he has come to say goodbye and pray for her as she travels. As he is not here to see me this time, I greet him with the usual greetings and excuse myself and get back to ‘work’ as they chat inside but there is the third knock at the door! It’s Nsimbi who is the gateman and helps on the farm, he has given me some of the farm workers mobile phones for charging. We often have a collection of phones that need charging from the workers or local neighbours. Nsimbi also wanted some money so he could buy some soap to clean out the pigs feeding basins.

While I’m already up I wander over to one of the cottages who have been having some trouble with their solar electricity. I put a new fuse in this morning and needed to check that the batteries were charging properly now there had been a few hours of sunlight otherwise they would have another night in darkness. On the way over I greet some of the locals who have come onto the compound to use our bore hole to collect water.

Some how the time is now 10.30am and I’ve only managed to write a couple of paragraphs, typically a 20 min task will probably take a whole morning but I’ve done a few smaller jobs in between which are a bit too dull to go into details. It is now far too warm to be sitting on the veranda and working so I prepare to move inside but I spot my favourite bird that I’ve not seen for some weeks. It is a brilliant blue kingfisher who I have named Mr Bojangles, to be honest I have no idea why I gave him that name but his presence makes me bear with the heat and stay outside. He often comes and sits on the railings around our veranda, he even flew inside our house once.

In the afternoon we are going to do some games with the boys so I have to tear myself away and prepare for them, then we are going to visit one of the boys who was here and now is in a vocational training school learning metal work skills. Before I do that and while Jen is teaching I might just go a sneak some chocolate, we’ve got a bit of a supply at the moment as we have had a few visitors from the UK so she’ll never know!