The Interns are Here!

Last Wednesday, the new set of interns finally arrived! Kyle, David, Jaclyn, Travis, and Peter will be in the office here in Kampala, and Danny, TJ, Jack, and Jang Won will be in Jinja. The night before they came I was so worried that I would oversleep (it’s a bit of a trend) and miss picking them up from the airport, my anxiety woke me up every hour. I did get up on time, and I could empathize, on a small scale, with their jet-lag!

On the way back from the airport, we stopped at an eMi project site, Music for Life. Steve Hoyt, the construction manager and eMi staff, led us on a tour through the site. The project is a primary school for the African Children’s Choir. (I think they sang at Kearney E-Free, small world!)

The rest of the week was orientation: cultural discussion, touring town, getting familiar with the Kansanga neighborhood, and office orientation. We also had a ‘service day’ when we dropped off the Jinja guys. We helped Phil Greene, who just came on staff with eMi this summer, and is working as the construction manager for a project called Mto Moyoni, a retreat and counseling center. We dug foundation trenches, and bent rebar and stirrups for concrete columns (doing both without machines). It was a lot of work, and I was sore for quite a few days after, but I really enjoyed doing it.

This week Jaclyn, Brad, and I have been preparing for the upcoming trip, the boys surveyed a site for a small in-house project, and Janet, the Bergs, and Travis, went to Kapchorwa, following up on a water project done by eMi in February 2008. Paul will be working on this for his 10 month stay.

A few volunteers are flying into Uganda today, and we will meet a few others in Kenya. We leave tomorrow early, 4 AM, and will go by bus to Nakuru, which will take about 10 hours. We will be designing an orphanage, for a ministry called Miracle House, which currently has two day schools in Kenya. They have 55 children attending the schools, but all of them are living in slums. The ministry wants to move the children to full time care at the new center in Nakuru. Pray for safety, community, and understanding between our team and the ministry. It is going to be a great trip!