Day 4

Saturday 27^th June 2015

It was another early start today awaking at 6.55am, to enable us to leave our house of residents at 8am as we travelled to Maya, whereby we would be able to enter the world of John’s ideas. There were so many attention-grabbing factors such as a man taking advantage of a free ride as he clung on to the back of an over packed bus driving down a busy road, the occasions in which the driver would stop to gather more passengers the man would leap off the bus taking a couple steps in the opposite direction in the hope the driver would not spot him. On the occasion we saw the driver did not notice as there were many cars traveling in both directions often two travelling side by side a single lane road, which was frightening at times but nevertheless our trustee driver Moses is very capable with dealing with such conditions as he has been a driver for many years, a couple of those years driving for CRED Foundation. 

Arriving @ Maya approx. 9:05 where we were lucky enough to receive some history into John’s project as well as a very interesting tour of the dental clinic, followed by some information as to how the village get their water, electricity (which involves cows manure) and solar power as well as all the other amazing work in which John and his team are creating and enabling opportunities for jobs for others within the community.  There was also a building being made which is hoped to become a maternity wing or a school, which will hopefully train the children and adults of the village to become nurses, doctors or some practitioner of importance. As well as the building being made there were two families who were fortunate to be relocated to the village, they were given new homes, jobs, security and most importantly stability as over the last few days we have heard of families being forcefully moved out of their homes and not being given an alternative. The families had children which came out to play with the team during our tour, we were next shown the idea john has to make ‘Tube homes’ which he got from south America, Mexico it involves placing together two wide tubes which in then made into a three story home which would fit a family of 3-4. This blew many of the team members minds as it was hard to come to terms with living within a tube but for many within Uganda that would be a dream as so many are left without. Our tour continued with a demonstration showing a method John has developed to make bricks.  We were all very keen to have a try before lunch after a short interval for lunch we all had enough energy to continue with our brick making experience due to the size of our team we deiced to divide into two groups, those who wished to play with the Maya children and those who wished to continue making bricks, it turned out the team were pretty good, making a total of FITHTY TWO bricks, even though John and his team make a minimum of 400 a day but nonetheless for first timers we did surprising well, especially our very own SUPERWOMEN KAYLIANN who was able to operate one side of the instrument which involved compressing the brick, which at times took 4 people to handle with the most stubborn of bricks haha.   

The last stop of our tour was to see the very big green banana tree, which John had asked if we were able to cut down to bring back to his home for our dinner. Kayliann was first to offer her assistance, which involved a machete, a very smug looking Kayliann and a very sorry looking, tree branch! On our way home form Maya we were able to stop by the school in which we will be teaching in on Monday, this was nice as we were able to get an idea of the space in which we will have to work with, shortly after returning to John’s home the rest of the team got very hungry awaiting dinner and decided to pop to the local supermarket to stock up on snacks, which leaves me (Nicole) here writing this blog.

Ps those Bananas Kayliann chopped down smell wonderful on the fire being cooked for dinner!!!

Ps Kayliann appears to be taking this ‘King and Queen’ game too far as she only refers to Michael as ‘Peasant’ poor Michael hahaha .

This is Kayliann writing this with the help of Shannon and Mitchell. We have recently got back from the supermarket. At the supermarket we looked around the shops and brought a few snacks to last for the rest of the week (with our midnight feasts and card games.) Shannon and Kayliann found a Victoria Secrets shop which was unfortunately closed (sorry mums :p.) We arrived home to find that our prayers had been answered as we walked into the lounge with the delicious smell of chicken and rice (yum yum.) We are currently writing this on the balcony and we will soon be getting settled into the evening.

We (Kayliann, Mitchell and Shannon) miss our family dearly. We will be with you very soon. We love you loads and cannot wait to get back to see you xoxoxo.