Link to pictures

Picasa web photos

Help us help them!

We are back, but our work has not ended. We want to help Chris achieve his goal of having every child sponsored by the end of this summer.
These children, and their future, are so worth it!

Visit www.newhopeafricanchildren.org if you want to sponsor a child for $33 a month.

Children using laptop for the first time ever








All the "Brooker" volunteers on opening day











Scott and the kids at New Hope










Never enough arms to hug each child

Our 3rd day in London

Scott is home. He got there safely, but wasn't feeling very well for the last two days. We're praying its not malaria. He text me last night and said he's feeling much better.
Maggie and I are in London. We leave tomorrow morning early. We were able to visit the British museum yesterday and see the Elgin Marbles - the controversial relief and sculptures from the Parthenon in Greece. We're off to see Big Ben and Buckingham Palace today.
Thanks to Eileen we have an amazing hotel in London! We will happily spend the afternoon and evening there before we leave at 530 am tomorrow.

I'm unable to upload pictures while I'm here in London. The internet in the hotel is $ 10 an hour with no card reader. And there is no internet cafe in sight. I miss technology!!!!

I will upload lots of things when I'm settled at home.
Love to you all!!!

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Our last day

Our last day in Busia was very busy. We got up early to make sure everything was packed since we were leaving right after the opening ceremony of the computer school. All the children had the morning off from school just for the occasion and they were very excited. I will write a whole blog and upload pictures hopefully tomorrow from our hotel in London. This hotel at Heathrow charges $10 for a half hour of internet!!
After the ceremony, it took us much longer to leave since Ken's car had a leak in the gas line. Once that was fixed, we were on our way with 8 hot lunches packed by the hotel. Entebbe airport is 4 to 5 hours from Busia because you have to drive through the capital city of Kampala to get to the airport. There are no bypass roads! When we hit Kampala at rush hour, Chris decided we should shop for the computer things we still needed for the school and visit an Italian restaurant until the traffic died down. It can take up to 2 hours to sit in traffic in that city and since they all use diesel and have no emmission controls or air conditioning, it gets pretty gross just sitting in the car. When we finally found the restaurant, none of us could believe it (except Chris who had been there before). There was actually a toilet, air conditioning, warm water and amazing food. There were 8 of us on the trip because Peter and Ken drove the 3 of us, Chris and Hannah came along, and one other volunteer named Malory was taking the same flight home with us. We treated Ken and Peter to an amazing meal including chocolate mousse and cappucino for dessert - something they have never had before. Since Chris promised me that we would be at the hotel before midnight, we left the restaurant and headed to Entebbe. We made it there around 1145, and we all checked in for $30 a night per room. Us Americans were desperately hoping for a fan, a shower with hot water, and a place clean enough that we didn't have to worry about flea bites (annoying but not painful). The place fulfilled all our wildest dreams. We got up at 6 and managed to have a quick breakfast (included in the price of the room) and get on the free shuttle to the airport.
I will continue to blog for several days, because I need to process and remember everthing I can about Busia. The people there are precious and we miss them so much (including the muzungus!)!!! If you are in Busia, please email me and let me know how everyone is! Martha.Pavao@stonybrookschool.org. Hope Sipi Falls was amazing!
Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

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We're off!

Thursday was so busy with the official opening of the computer school and 6 hour ride to the airport that we had no time to blog! We have great pictures and videos of the opening and are looking forwarding to posting that ASAP. We're now in the airport in Uganda waiting to take off to London. Scott will be on his way to JFK the next morning. Maggie and I will stay in London for a few days before we head back to USA. We're all healthy and happy to be out of malaria danger. God is good. We left everyone in Busia well and healthy too. I will blog again from London. Thank you for all your prayers!

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Our daily routine

We are awoken each morning by the Muslim call to prayer around 5:45 am. If we manage to sleep through this, the hotel rooster behind is sure to catch our attention around 6:30 am. I stay in bed until around 7:30 when I get up and pray that there is actually water in the tank for the sink, shower and toilet. If there is water, I turn on the water heater switch on the wall.

Some good news today!

Everyone is healthy. Hannah is almost 100 percent and we all went out for a big American meal tonight. There is a local Ugandan who makes food we're used to. We all had spaghetti with meat sauce! But the best news is that they actually doubled our internet speed today. We're at a blazing 128k! (Please note the irony.). But we're happy to be able to more than we could before. And...... "Uncle" Chris (as they call him) didn't have to take anymore volunteers to the clinic for malaria! They had a special prayer meeting last night at the orphanage to pray against any more sickness among us. What an awesome community this is! I will post more pictures tomorrow. Only 2 days left here! : (
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For Eileen and you all

A "shout out" to Eileen Higgins and her amazing children! Here is Sarah (on the left) with the child that the Higgins family is sponsoring. His name is Ashiraf. Adorable! If you would like to learn more about him, check out his sponsor page on www.newhopeafricanchildren.org. Chris is also doing well.
Here is Megan and Aida (on the right)- the cutest thing you've ever seen. Aida is 2 and lives at New Hope with her brother and sister. We are often trying to hold either Aida or another tiny one - Muzafalu - also 2 years old.

A Busia Home Companion

Before we left for Africa, I read an article online that described Busia, Uganda as a "dusty border town". That seems about right. It seems the town sprung up as the Trans-African highway crossed over from Busia, Kenya into Uganda. Its a bit ramshackle, but the people are quite friendly and the children are enthralled with munzungos (white people). Its a sprawling town that uses bicycle taxis (boda-boda) to get around. The left photo is Maggie riding a boda-boda from our hotel to the internet cafe. Its a 25 minute walk or a 8 minute bike ride which runs 300 shillings (about 15 cents).

We're to have the grand opening of the internet cafe on Thursday. The mayor of Busia has agreed to be a guest of honor as we unleash 128K of the interweb on Busia (slight hunor there, I know). The computer school will be one of only a few of its kind in eastern Uganda, so people have expressed delight over its opening. The first weel we were here, New Hope Orphange underwent the final fieldwork on their audit and even their auditor said how happy he was about the school. The computer center is divided by a partion into 5 computers for a school seperated by a wooden partion from the other six computers that form the cafe. Its also possible to use four of the school's computers as part of the cafe, but we may be streching the limits of 128K. We have an all-in-one printer/scanner/fax that will provide additional services to patrons.

The right photo is Martha talking to Megan outside the clinic where Hanna was staying. Yes, that's a drum full of burning trash in the alleyway. It exploded shortly after we took the photo (minor explosion). There's lots of small fires as people burn trash. They don't generate too much trash, so there's surprisingly little for the town, but the smell was one thing you got used to (its not a bad smell, but its is unusual).

Saturday Morning

Hannah is improving, but having a hard time keeping the medicine down. Megan stayed in the clinic all night with her, and Jajja (the grandmother who takes great care of us here) is bringing her all her meals. Please continue to pray for improvement and a rapid recovery.

We came to the computer school early today to get a jump on the various tasks to complete. All the computers need to be connected through the cafe software so that people can buy minutes and the manager's computer will keep track of the money and time used. But we arrived to find that the internet router wasn't working, and that took 3 hours to fix, and the printer server needs to be changed from one computer to the next. It's always something!

I spent 3 1/2 hours training the two women managers - Eve and Fatima. We covered everything I knew about the computer room, from universal power surge protectors, to the ins and outs of the cafe software. The ladies are very nice, and hopefully will be able to manage the computers once everything is up and running. Hours and Hours!!

Here is a picture of us at dinner last night. We thought we were ordering hamburgers, but that's not what we got! Maggie is having a great time with the children!

Uganda Telecom

We've been dealing with Uganda Telecom for a few days now. They're not much better than dealing with Verizon in the US. ts nice to know that wherever one goes in the world, the local Telephone company will be unresponsive.

In short, we bought a 128K ISDN line from them. I was surprised to see ISDN as its pretty much disappeared in the US, supplanted by DSL, cable, or fiber-to-the-home. I had to redo the entire setup with the router - ISDN requires a computer be connected to the phone jack rather than a router. So now the router sits behind the gateway computer. Getting the gateway computer to share via the router was difficult. Luckily WindowsXP does have a decent network wizard and we got it running. But its slow. We haven't gotten the full128K yet, just one 64K channel. Downloading anything is a long, tedious process.

We had a big electrical storm a 5 days ago and some parts of Busia are still without power. Our hotel is hit or miss with water (mostly miss). They offer to give us a jerry can of water and a basin to wash with, but its not the same as a shower. I really miss a hot shower!

Two more days until we open the internet cafe. We're training the manager today.

Thanks so much for all the emails & blog posts. Its awesome to know we have many people praying for this endeavor.

-Scott

We have Internet!

Well, we moved the computers in today. A few days late but we are up and running.....barely. If you can remember dialup internet, then you may have some idea of what we're dealing with. Our speed is at 64K and at home we continuously enjoy 15000K. So Scott is doing everything he can to patch a system together. It was a long day there. He is going in early tomorrow to get a jump on it. Maggie was a big help setting up every computer with its lock and power cords. She even helped me train some of the older boys today from 5 to 7. They run home from school to learn computers every day. They are having a blast. We're having to remember to teach the basics like what does the word "desktop" mean. We had to chase them out at 730 to go eat dinner. There are about 8 of them from the age of 16 to 20. We're teaching them first and then they'll train the younger children. I'll write again tomorrow.
Blessings!
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Things I've seen on the back of a bike

1. People - its how everyone gets around here. Only costs 15 cents to go across town
2. A stack of firewood taller than the driver
3. 4 cases of water.
4. 2 baby goats in a basket.
5. 15 plastic chairs.
6. 10 lumber boards 8 feet long
7. Man with a baby
8. 2 giant bunches of bananas. 1 on either side.
9. A bushel bag as tall as the driver. Filled with clippings, flour or anthing else.
10. A wheelbarrow!
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See what the Lord is doing!

I will post again later today, but if you are anxious to see pictures of what New Hope is like, please visit Chris' site at www.newhopeafricanchildren.org . It is the site Maggie is working on updating. I'm in an office next door to the computer school still waiting for them to hook up the internet for us!

This is a picture I stole from Chris' facebook, but it is the main street of the town where the computer school is and where I'm waiting.

In case you don't know, the Chris I keep referring to is Chris Higgins - an alum of The Stony Brook School and I taught him for 5 years there.

A Public Holiday

Since it was a public holiday, we spent the day at the orphanage playing with the kids. We brought 3 laptops there on battery power and they were thrilled to learn the mouse and keyboard with the games that Scott has on the computers for them. They had an absolute blast. I spoke to Regan and Elijah for over an hour about the internet. They had never heard of Google, wikipedia, or what was possible on the internet. They are both juniors in high school. I'm especially happy for Elijah since he had to change schools last year and his new school doesn't teach biology- his favorite subject- and he doesn't have a book. I told him about what was possible for him to study with Google and he was so incredibly thankful. It was a great day! When we had to leave because the batteries were dead and it was getting dark, it was difficult to leave! We can't wait to do more tomorrow.
Please pray that they get the internet installed tomorrow and that the tables are finished. The carpenter got malaria and tried to get a replacement for us today but it didn't work out. The red tape for the internet installation is huge as well. I will consider it a miracle if it is installed tomorrow! Ken is doing everything he can but we are definitely not in the US. There are lots of jokes about "Africa time ". : ).
Scott is on the mend but please continue to pray for everyone's health. Some of the girls have colds but are holding up well.
What Chris has done here is remarkable. Everyone adores him - childen and adults alike. They call him Uncle Chris! The donations he has raised have completely changed what Ken has been able to do for the children. The older boys talk about it everyday. Chris' goal is to get every child sponsored by the end of the summer. 70 of the 88 children have bios on his site with their picture, but there are now 88 children. Maggie is working on interviewing each new child with a translator and entering all of this into the computer. She will begin photographing them tomorrow. Hopefully, Chris can have them all added by the end of June. God is good!

Jeremiah 29:11. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, a plan to prosper you and not to harm you.

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Muzungu

Well, we're definitely a novelty here! There are 40,000 Ugandans in Busia town and 8 muzungu - their word for white person. Everywhere we go little kids yell "how are you? I'm fine". Its the only English they know! And we hear everyone say "muzungu" as we pass. We've only seen two other Americans since we got here.

There was a mix up at the last minute so we were unable to get the internet up and running today. A bit disappointing because tomorrow is a public holiday so we have to wait until Wednesday. Scott got a slight rash today so we visited the clinic to have in checked out. The doctor took us right away and with two types of medicines dispensed and only $10 for everything! Probably related to his mattress so we moved rooms in the hotel and now we have a hot water shower! Turns out they were holding out on us for the new rooms! But we're settled again and all is well. Please pray that Scott continues to heal quickly.

We're all having fun learning some of the Ugandan language and how to ride a boda boda - a bicycle taxi we can ride wherever we need to go. But you have to balance on a tiny seat on the back and girls sit side-saddle! A good deal for only 9 cents one way. And Megan is getting really good at being sure they don't overcharge us! I will upload pictures when we can.

Praise God for all He is doing in our lives!

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Sunday

What a day! Our hotel is very pleasant and we were able to walk to Ken's house from there this morning for the first time. The weather has been simply beautiful. We joined the children at new hope for church at 10. We sang and danced and sang some more. Since Ken is the director of the orphanage and the pastor of the place I offered to preach today so he wouldn't have to. I told the story of how the Lord arranged for us to come here.

Afterwards we watched all the children open the suitcases with all of the donated clothing. They were so happy and so patient! We were able to go to town for the first time today. We had some cold soda and some chocolate! They moved the tables into the computer room today so we're getting ready to set up computers tomorrow. Maggie spent 3 hours at the orphanage making bracelets and braiding hair. The children are so awesome and so much fun. We're at Ken's now waiting for dinner. There is an amazing grandmother at Ken's house that makes us all our meals. Everyone is really tired, but its been a good day! Blessings! Martha

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Our 1st day in Busia!

"This is a great day at New Hope, we're so glad you're here!" - song the students sang for us on our first day.
We arrived in Busia last night around midnight and had dinner at Ken's house and the went to our hotel. We have two rooms with no salamanders or frogs, but two beds, mosquito netting towels electricity and only cold water! We had a great breakfast at the hotel of eggs toast and bananas and instant coffee. We went to the orphanage after that and the children welcomed us with lots of hugs and songs and dances. The children are such a blessing! All 88 of them! We saw the room today where the internet cafe will be and it is in an excellent location. The tables that Ken had built will be ready on Monday and we will move the computers in then. We can't upload any pictures until then. More coming soon! I'm trying to make these posts from my blackberry!
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We're here!

We have arrived safely at Entebbe - the airport in Uganda and all our luggage is here too!  Both flights were excellent, and Terminal 5 at Heathrow was all we were hoping for (you were right Kevin!)  Entebbe has sim cards for our cell phones, food, clean bathrooms and lots of very friendly Ugandans.  It is such an amazing place.  We are waiting for Chris and Sarah Higgins to arrive in  a few minutes and we will all join Ken in a van (hopefully large!) for all of us to head off to Busia, which is a 5 hour drive from Entebbe.  Everyone is healthy, a bit tired, but doing well.  Happy Birthday Grammy!  Congratulations to my niece - Dylan - graduating from high school!  We love you all! - Martha

Heathrow - done!

The flight from JFK to Heathrow went fine. Actually a nice meal on the plane. Not much in the way of sleep, but we all gotat least some. The Heathrow ground crew broke the ramp to the plane and we had to wait over an hour for someone to come look at it. No one did, so they moved us to another gate & we eventually got out.

After locating the Yotel, Megan & Hanna split for the sights of London for 4 hours. Martha, Maggie & Scott slept/showered/ate in the Yotel. Different strokes...

Thanks for praying!

What an incredible prayer time we had on Friday! Thank you to all of you who were there at the Chapel. It was truly amazing to see almost 100 people get out of their pews to lay hands on us. Scott, Maggie and I feel totally "covered" and are feeling peaceful and energized. We are so blessed to live in this SBS community where we can bring our concerns before the Lord and know that He is right by our side.
Ephesians 3:20-21 - Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Trip Itinerary

Some people have asked, so this is the details of the journey there & back (times are local and then eastern time zone time):

June 03 - leave JFK 11:30pm
June 04 - arrive London's Heathrow 11:25am (6:25am EDT)
June 04 - depart Heathrow 9:15pm (4:15pm EDT)
June 05 - arrive Entebbe, Uganda 7:45am (12:45 am EDT)
June 06 - depart Entebbe arrive in Busia, sometime mid-afternoon
June 18 - depart Busia for Entebbe airport
June 19 - depart Entebbe 9:05am (2:05am EDT)
June 19 - arrive Heathrow 4:00pm (11:am EDT)

Scott
June 20 - depart Heathrow 8:30am (4:30am EDT)
June 20 - arrive JFK 11:00am

Martha & Maggie
June 23 - depart Heathrow 8:30am (4:30am EDT)
June 23 - arrive JFK 11:00am

Less than two weeks

It's hard to believe that among all the papers to grade, the events and duties to attend, we are finding the time to make sure we are ready for our trip. Scott is busy preparing each laptop, fitting them into their pelican cases for travel, seeing if the printer will fit in some piece of luggage, and making sure we have every cord and piece of equipment. I'm calling the credit card companies, buying new luggage and asking everyone I know to pray for us. Busia, Uganda is the kind of place we have never experienced before. We are trying to prepare for every part of the trip, not knowing anything about what we will actually face. Scott has found some great websites that give us an idea about Heathrow and our 10 hour layover in Terminal 5, Entebbe (the Ugandan airport) and its lack of ATM machines, and what to pack from other Busia visitors who bothered to post things on the internet. Chris is doing everything he can to prepare us, and we are trying to be laid back, and trusting the Lord. We are especially excited about going with our precious daughter, Maggie. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths" (Proverbs 3:5,6) Thank you, Lord, for all your direction so far. We bless Your Name.

Just in case

With a dry run on the laptops in their transport cases, we found that the ThinkPad T42s won't properly fit in the Pelican 1620 case we borrowed. The case is set for smaller laptops and the ThinkPads nearly touch the top. Not good when both American & British baggage handlers will be giving both cases a what-for.

We've backed up and bought a Pelican 0340 case that should safely enconse five laptops to get the to Buisa safely. We stil need to test out the packing of the printer & other accessories (compucage sydpers, Asus router, USB drives).

I think we're blowing past the 50 pound limit per bag.

30 Days out

Martha & I bought a Canon MP480 at Wal-Mart this past weekend. It should serve the computer school / internet cafe well. Its about as small as I can get, yet still has what we need to make it worthwhile: prints, scans, & copies with an integrated LCD screen so it can operate independently from a computer. It has an auto-switching power supply (thankfully) so we can use it in Uganda by switching out the US C7 lead to one of the UK plugs we bought.

I also decided to load Internet Explorer 8 on all the laptops. I like it better than IE7 (and waaaay better than IE6) and I think it'll give better service to the school. But now i have to go back to the lappies that were ready to roll and install IE8. March of progress, I guess.

As we sit just over a month from departure, we're close to having everything needed. The security locks were ordered today. I'm going to try to get some gate locks from Home Depot that we can use to secure the laptops to the table (the Compucgae locks have a cable that needs to be secured to something - I'm hoping to screw or bolt the hasps to the table and run the cable through it).

We're trying to decide on a printer. i think we've narrowed it down to a Canon MP480 or MP240. Both are reasonably cheap, small enough to transport, and should work well in the computer lab.