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).