Pader Project Trip

Hello everyone! I’m back and rested up from a wonderful project trip, full of adventures, learning experiences, and wonderful blessings!

The Starting Line-up:

Project Leader: Janet Strike
Electrical Engineer and Volunteer: Jim and Mary Ann Cathey
Civil Engineer and Volunteer: Joe and Lindsey Knochel:
Architect: Curt Berg III
Mechanical Engineer: Luan Fellman
Interns: Nick Whitney (a fellow K-Stater), Ryan Williams, Allie Hiddinga (my roommate) and me!

For those of you who don’t know, a typical EMI project trip involves a team of staff and interns from a field office and volunteers from the States who embark on a 1-2 week journey with the client to the project site. Our team worked with the Ugandan American Partnership Organization, a ministry planning to build a community center to help transition the people (mainly the Ucholi tribe) from Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps back to their original homes and villages.

Uganda has been a fairly stable country lately, especially in comparison to other African countries, but it has seen its fair share of corruption, warfare, and civil unrest. A group called the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has been terrorizing Northern Uganda since the late 1980’s. Consequently, people have been forced to live in IDP camps for protection. (Some of you may have seen the documentary “Invisible Children”, which illustrates how this group of rebels kidnap young children and force them to become soldiers.)The UAPO project site is located near these camps in hopes to reach these desperate and hurting people.

After a full day of transit, we arrived at our guest house in a town called Pajule. That night and the next day were full of meetings: sharing testimonies of our Christian faith and how we came to EMI, understanding the vision of UAPO, and figuring out the amount of work that needed to get done over the week!

The North is becoming more and more stable, so villages have started to resettle. As this happens, the UAPO hopes to help in providing jobs for the community, especially for the women, who are often left as the soul providers for their children. Men’s and Women’s Vocational Centers will give the skills, tools, and training needed so the people can start to provide for themselves, and eventually rebuild the economy of the area.

The UAPO also wants to provide a small medical clinic for the area, because the nearest hospital is over 14km away. They found out that if only 5 basic medicines were provided, most of the medical needs in the area could be solved, including malaria. In addition to the vocational centers and clinic, there will also be an Educational Center, Meeting Hall/Church, and Staff House for UAPO permanent staff and visiting short term mission teams.

Sunday, we attended Pastor Anthony’s church. The praise and worship session was an unforgettable experience! Joe had a chance to lead a few songs on his guitar, and everything else was done a capella in beautiful harmonies, accompanied with whistling, shouting, clapping, and beating benches for percussion. It always amazes me that two completely different cultures, thousands of miles apart, can still come together under the commonality of their faith and worship the same God together.

Marianne, Lindsey, and Allie led the Sunday school, using the classic felt puppets to tell the story of Moses. They made beaded bracelets to tell the story of Salvation and handed them out to the children. I remember making the same bracelets in AWANA when I was younger!

After church we stayed and played with the kids- I chased them around the church. On our way back to the guest house, we had a parade of singing children following us, and I had at least three children holding on each hand.

Monday was a good work day. The self-proclaimed “A-Team” (Curt, Nick, and I) had a day of Auto CAD, revisions, and rendering. Tuesday I took a break from work and joined ‘the medical team’ that was out in the camps. In middle school I remember thinking about becoming a nurse so I could go and help people in the third world, but very quickly dismissed the idea due to my fear of needles and ridiculously weak stomach. I decided God made me who I am, so I must not be meant to do that kind of work. Still, I found myself cleaning the most awful-looking wounds and scrapes on children’s legs and arms, and kept at it for about two hours straight. I couldn’t believe I got through it- God really does give us strength when we need it!

Someone had donated $200 dollars to buy about 200 pairs of shoes, and many of the volunteers had brought clothing from the states, so Wednesday we went back to the IDP camps in the afternoon for a clothing distribution. We went to one of the three camps, and started to hand out shoes. We had a pretty ordered assembly line, the people walking up and finding what size of shoe they needed, moving to the bus window where we distributed through, and then they would get a mark on their hand to prevent anyone from getting double. The order lasted quite a while longer than I expected, but eventually we were getting low on shoes. The people could tell, tension was building, and we didn’t want to wait around any longer for chaos to break out, so we all piled onto the bus and left.

We still had the clothes, and we all were a bit discouraged to see the reaction of the last camp (though it’s completely understandable), so we decided to try again at a smaller camp. This time, we parked the bus down the road, and had about 6 children come through at a time. Everything went great, we gave away all of the clothes, as well as the rest of the shoes, and most if not all of the children got something. It was a great blessing after the last camp, we felt like we had done something to help the situation and really felt appreciated.

Thursday we left Pajule and headed to Murchison Falls National Park to go on safari for our closing activity. I had been last year with my family, but it was still a great experience. The first day we took a boat ride up river to see the falls, and saw hippos, elephants, cape buffalo, a variety of birds, ‘lion food’, and my favorite, Nile crocodiles! We also saw a lot of baboons, and while we were waiting for the boat, one actually jumped into our bus and stole two bananas we had been saving for a snack! We also saw one take a cracker right out of a lady’s hand, and one that stole a whole box of cookies out of someone’s bag. They mean it when they say ‘don’t feed the wild animals, they’ll learn you have food’.

The next day we went on a game drive, which I went on, but I couldn’t enjoy as much because I was feeling sick. I actually slept most of the time, and woke up to look when I heard everyone ooing and awing over something. We saw lots of elephant and giraffe that day, but sadly no lions this time!

We headed home after lunch on Friday, stopping at the top of Murchison Falls for a quick look., Our team arrived back in Kampala (or ‘Dirty K’, as Curt nicknamed it), late Friday night, we got stuck in traffic, and then our bus overheated just as we came into town. We stayed at the UAPO guesthouse that night, and the next morning, we gave a presentation to the ministry, basically summing up the week of design.

Overall, I really enjoyed the trip; I had fun, got along great with all the team members I worked with, and, as always, loved seeing the people of Uganda. However, now that I’m back, I feel like I didn’t truly grasp the reality of the situation. I just enjoyed being around these people and I enjoyed designing, I didn’t really think about what they have gone through-I think I didn’t want to.

It’s absolutely horrifying when you process what happened here in the North. The fear, the pain, and the brutality of the LRA- it is so overwhelming and the situation is seemingly hopeless. And what can anyone do to stop it? As westerners, we are pretty far removed from it, and we feel so helpless when we hear about this pain. I believe this new community center is a good start for the Ugandan people to get back on their feet, back to a normal life, but it would be absolutely meaningless if it wasn’t for God. There can be no healing, no hope for the future without Him; He is the ultimate source of comfort. If this seems depressing, please know I am just trying to emphasize how important the Lord is to our lives. How desperate we are for Him and how helpless we are without Him.


Just a few verses that came to mind:

II Corinthians 1:3-5

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction…For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.


Ps 30:11-12

You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosened my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!

Romans 8:38-39

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, not height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.