London

March 26, 2007 - Monday

london I've been in London for about a month, and my fan suggested that I write a blog to prove I am here and have not simply run off again with the Swede again... thanks Mum... I arrived at about 7pm one night and went to find a place to satisfy my tatsebuds which had been a little bored for the last few months. I found myself drawn to the golden arches and a burger from heaven, it was a moment. I met up with Andre an Irish guy who was kind enough to put me up for a week or so on a 5 star couch until I could find some accommodation of my own. The Irish guys who lived there were all Lawyers and therefore a whole heap of fun, we played spin the litigation... Kidding... it was great to be able to have a place to go and people to show me how London works. I went to Andre's Church in the city, I was amazed to realise that this was by far the oldest building I had ever been in. The church was called St Helens and was many 100's of years old and full of just as old dead people's coffin/grave/crypt things. The people there are great and I have been hanging out with a few of them which has been a good lot of fun. After staying there for a week and a bit I found a cheapish place nearby to stay for a month or two. The price is £65 a week which sounds alright except if you translate that in to Aussie dollars. Its about $150 a week and only for a small room with a slightly broken bed, unfortunately that is about the best you can do on a budget. Speaking of cash, for comparative purposes a bigMac meal is £4 which equals $10au compared to the normal price of $6 back home... but all in all London is an amazing town, seeing the history of the country that founded Australia is quite cool. There are a million things to do and alot of great people to meet. I've been to a couple of bands playing in the local pubs and it feels alot like home. Finding a quick job came to be slightly harder than I anticipated, I then got introduced to the wonderful world of medical trials. For 2 weeks "work" I am getting paid £1400 or $3300 for basically doing nothing except for taking a asthma medicine once a day, giving a bit of blood and a heart test thing. So instead of working twice as long for half the money I have the most part of the day free and girls in nurses outfits keep telling me to take my shirt off. Overall I'm happy this came up, I was a little worried about dying on the street due to lack of funds. It seems God is still looking after me which is always a good thing. Once the payment comes in for this i plan to be doing a bit of tourist like activities around parts of Europe, the air fares here are ridiculous. I can fly to many European airports for 1penny and £20-£30 tax. I am looking to visit a friend in France right on the German border, I am looking forward to that. Thats that for the moment... James

Tororo

February 16, 2007 - Friday

Tororo I'm leaving Uganda on Wednesday, the three months have gone by neither quick nor slow but just about the right speed. In this last week we traveled to Tororo which is somewhere in Uganda, the East I believe. I really need to get my hands on a map of Uganda so I can find out where I am. Tororo is the area in which OCA started; Anthony the director was born in the district in a small village. We visited his old home which is looked after by his younger brother and other relatives. Since we were visitors the family slaughtered a couple of chickens and potatoes for us to munch on. There were only 4 of us but they decided that white people can eat their own body weight plus another chicken. Tororo rock… The main purpose for the trip was to check out a few other orphanages, by a few I mean many. In Tororo there are not really any NGO's operating and some white people visiting is a big thing. I was quite embarrassed by the attention we got, I was expecting to come and have a look at the daily running of the places but instead it seemed not. In short we rushed around 7 or so orphanages with a total of maybe 4000-5000 kids, most orphaned by Aids and many infected themselves. It would take to long to talk about each one, but one I would like to point out had 1500 children 350 who are HIV positive. There is no funding from NGO's in this area and it goes without saying that there is none from the Government. Because of this there is no treatment for the sick children, the pastor in charge of this orphanage said to me 'we care for them as we can until we bury them'. They buried a child in the few days before we came… This is not fair, the situation makes me angry and there is little I can do. One of the Orphanages… We also met a grandmother of about 70 who looks after 35 kids on her own. Some are her grandchildren and others are simply children who turned up, she gave us a billion lemons. What OCA is looking to do is set up a new center in the village which Anthony came from. In his village there are 150 children without parents; setting up a small orphanage is the plan. It should be getting started sometime this year as long as the funding comes in. Scouting the area and needs was the main focus for this trip but I think I saw a lot more than I expected. Did I say my last bus ride was hell? The trip home from Tororo made me wish I was dead or at home in bed. We were in a small bus that had two speeds one being not moving and the other billion miles an hour. The road are worse than you can imagine, the money for roads gets 'lost' in the government and the roads that do get built are poor quality and fall apart after a year or two and a bit of rain. In short the constant bumps finally made bits of the engine fall out and we ended up pushing the bus across the Nile River and then waited for a replacement bus to come and get us. Stuff to do has been a little lacking so we volunteered at a local school for disadvantaged kids, this has involved teaching the teachers how to cut out letters from cardboard and learning the names of the children who I'm sure are meant to be in class. This has been fun and a great help to the school. So apparently I live in a place called Wyndam and the council wants to give some money to OCA. This is great news, I'm really not sure how that all came about but thanks to Dad for getting that worked out. Also thanks to a couple in Melbourne for donating an amount of money, this came in at perfect timing and will be a great blessing. The computer project is still going slow, the process of grant application is a long one, but the outlook is good and I believe the funds are soon to come. I'm glad that my part of the project in bringing the computers is over; I still am amazed how God made that project work. This trip has been an eye opener, some parts still feel like I've seen a TV special on some random African country having difficulty existing. There is so much that needs to happen here, a large part of it is to be put on the Ugandans themselves but there needs to be people willing to donate time and money to help them help themselves. No matter the skills you have, if it be building, teaching, nursing, changing nappies, training people or even no specific skills like me, you are needed here. Think about coming for a week to a few months, I have enough contacts here that I could show you exactly where you would be needed most. Also if you would like to donate money there is always a need that it will go right to, in a land where a bottle of Coke costs 20 cents your money goes along way. I'll be in the UK this time next week enjoying all the McDonalds I have missed over the few months. I'm staying in a friend of a sister's friend's house until I can get my replacement credit card. I look forward to getting my mind back in order and trying to work out what I think about the whole trip. Thank you all for your prayers and support over the last few months, I could have probable got a little home sick if I hadn't been receiving emails from people. I doubt I will blog any more since by all accounts the UK has little on Australia (I must say I have become much more patriotic since coming here, we have a great country). Please email me when ever you feel the need, I will blog anything that is related to OCA and Uganda etc… God Bless, James Favorite photo…

Gulu

January 28, 2007 - Sunday Gulu The first bad thing happened to me on Saturday, I was getting off the bus from Gulu and there was a large group of people at the doorway which everyone had to squeeze through. Stupid me was guarding my backpack and forgot my wallet was still in my pocket, and that got nicked with about 60,000shil ($40). I don't mind so much about the money but since I was on my way to an internet café and ATM to withdraw cash I had therefore had put my Credit/debit card in there as well. So that has thrown some plans out, I needed it for booking stuff in the UK etc... My bank can't send a replacement to Uganda because they won't send a card to a PO Box which is the only postal service here. I was my fault; I should have been more alert… We went up to Gulu this week where there are 1.4 million people in 53 IDP camps… We visited just one of these camps with 7000 'huts' which could mean a father a mother and 1-12 children. We did not see many of the adults and even most of the teens, they had already gone to work the farm areas or with brick making. The kids on a whole were generally happy it seemed even through the situation was appalling. Many of the children had obvious wounds of some sort but have no way of getting treatment. I met an old man whose hands had been cut off by the rebels and was told that if we saw many of the adult there would be similar scars of the war. We went there for a few reasons one being simply to see it and also to get information on the best way to go about things if OCA decides to set up a center in Gulu. There is much that could be discussed about the state of affairs in Northern Uganda but if you are interested do some looking around on the internet. I didn't get as many photos as I thought, I wish I had taken more so you could see the different parts of the camp and the life the people live there. I've put in a small video from my camera, sorry about the quality. The bus ride home from Gulu was a shocker, the driver would take dirt roads at 100k and we're talking a full sized coach, there were a few life before the eyes moments. One funny thing was at every stop there was a herd of people trying to sell things to us passengers, quite good service really. I was a little suspicious of the 'meat' sticks since I could get no more info other than that it was 'meat'. Doing a bit of the touristy thing we went to the source of the Nile and just down river to where they start the white water rafting. It was a very amazing place, the water thunders along at incredible speed all year round. This time of year it is a bit slower than it can be. There were guys there who would jump in the river with a plastic bottle and ride the rapids for 5000 or $2. They were doing this in category 5 rapids, which are apparently the second highest degree of danger. A few days ago I heard a sudden roar come from outside, stepping out to hear more clearly, it sounded like an entire city was cheering. I couldn't work out what was happening until Anthony simply said it was the entire city was cheering. I asked what for and found out that Arsenal had just scored a goal in the premier league, so just imagine the MCG at full capacity times 50 and that's what this entire city sounded like. We have visited quite a number of orphanages in the Kampala area; this is again mainly to get more information on ways that OCA can improve and also to enable the girls to get details for grant writing and also to see how things are run. During this I have seen many cool things there has been traditional dancing and singing there has been some amazing display of traditional drumming and also the story of some of the children are heartbreaking but then to see how the Orphanages have changed their lives is great. As a whole things are going well and it is continuing to be very busy, thanks for your continued prayers and support. James

New Peoples

January 16, 2007 - Tuesday

New Peoples Hi Y'all, I have two new Americans friends from LA and so I guess I should practice my American vernacular. Lauren and Kelli arrived on Friday at about 9pm Uganda time. We thought that they may want to rest on Saturday after the long trip bout we got a call early the next morning with them saying take us with you to the kids… please… They are both ready and excited to be here and working with kids and got right into it on the first day with Lauren getting 17 different hairstyles done by the young girls and Kelli teaching Volleyball to the older ones. This was good seeing it gave me the opportunity to play soccer with the boys longer that day. This is Lauren getting hair styling number 3… This is Dennis, he's my new favorite, and he doesn't stop smiling at anytime… He was found abandoned on the Pastors doorstep a few years ago. Some good stuff has happened recently, on being me randomly meeting a Canadian who has been here for 6 years and basically 'Networks'. He meets people who are doing charity stuff in Uganda and then gives them contacts that can help in their certain area. So in a day or two Anthony and I have got contacts for computer people, other orphanages in the same situations and many other helpful people. This has been a big blessing from God because we were in need of someone like this to find these contacts that we were already looking for… so good… In the next 3 weeks we will be touring around the countryside. I am looking forward to this since we have not had the opportunity to get out of the city area yet. The first place we are going is Jinja in the east, which is the source of the Nile. The next place is Gulu in the north, which is the main area that has been affected by the Lord's Resistance Army (A rebel group that have killed, raped and kidnapped 10's of thousands of Men, Women and Children over a 25 year period, in case you didn't know of them). We are then off to Torroro in the west which is Anthony's home village area. We are mainly focusing on seeing how other orphanages are run and if this will be beneficial to our programs. This is mainly the girl's area, they are experienced in writing proposals and organizing things and other paperery stuff… yay… it's not for me… In Gulu we will be visiting the refuge camps in which there is a huge population of kids with nothing and no one. Anthony has plans to set up a center there as well. I have only about a month to go here before the call of the UK and the prospect of eating cheese calls me away. I still have a lot to do here and it will not get finished while I'm here so please continue to pray for Anthony and the orphans that are here. Lake Victoria is amazing; it basically seems like an ocean. The other side cannot be seen by along way. An odd fact is that the majority of Ugandans fear water and no one can swim even though they have this immense lake in the backyard… maybe it's the Croc factor… Here's a few fishermen… yes I know you can see the other side it's only a little 'bay' area… There is a whole heap of other stuff that is bloggable but if you want to know anything at all just email me. James

New Year

January 5, 2007 - Friday New Year So how was everyone's news year's eve? We went into the city to see the New Year in; there is always a fireworks display over one of the big hotels. Beforehand me and Anthony went to the KPC or Kampala Pentecostal Church for a worship service, this is how it went... We arrived at about 7:30 and took some seats near the back of the first tier (it's in a giant old theatre). Since it was basically full we assumed that it would be starting shortly, so 2 hours later and with a total of about 10,000 people inside and outside the building the singing started. There were about 10-15 songs to begin with and then there was a break, silly me assumed that that was it and now for the message, but no, that was simply the first worship team of four teams... 2 and a bit hours of standing and singing on a warn night surrounded by lots of people is quite a challenge. My legs were telling me to sit down but since no one else was I couldn't really... I was temped to give myself a Toronto blessing as an excuse to sit down... So we left about 20 to midnight to go see the fireworks and found out at the same time that they were planning to be singing until morning... Crazy stuff, it was quite good still. The 100 strong choir was very impressive and I had a crush on one of the lead girls because of her voice, it was unbelievable... As I mentioned previously, the computer set-up is at a halt because of the funding problem so we aren't doing to much with that at the moment. So things are a bit quite around here sometimes. We also have a building program happening shortly which we are in the process of organising. I am looking forward to that. I will be working with guy who will be getting paid about $2 for a days work to build. I will have to keep an eye on them because the standard of work is not high when unsupervised... The work Anthony is doing here is so good; he is focusing on an holistic approach with these kids, looking after their mental, physical and spiritual welfare. A lot of the similar organisations are not doing all three for whatever reason and that can cause problems when the child is ready to leave the orphanage. After the Christmas party we had a about 70 more children just from that little area that have come to our attention that need help. It shows the massive need that Uganda has for aid in the area of Orphans. Although I have well placed skepticism that money donated to the Government will not make it to where it is needed. Corruption is absolutely destroying Africa... I could go on forever about the corruption, but the best example is the $70 million donated by World Fund to be given to NGO's in Uganda. Most of the government people in charge of distributing the money got their family members to set up NGO's and then gave the money to them. Only a few million got to the thousands of NGO's that really need every cent they can get. Anyway... I wish guys would stop holding my hand... it's a cultural thing to be sure but that doesn't make me any more comfortable... I thought I would try and get similarly cultural with a pretty girl I met but apparently I have a bit to learn... Please pray for Orphans for Christ in every area you can think of... James

Christmas

December 29, 2006 - Friday

Christmas I hope you all had a great Christmas... I really did miss the whole Australian Christmas style, but that's alright it was only for one year... The main difference I've seen here is that the poorer communities don't as much on the present giving side of things, due to the fact of lack of dispoable income, rather it is focus on family time. It is great to see that in the Christian community the fact that Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ seems to be the focus completely. I had a great time even though I was at home, the Christmas party for the kids went well. More people turned up than expected, but luckly $200 goes along way here and it still covered food for over 200 people and some presents for the Orphans. I've said before how hard it is to get a photo with the kids smiling; it seems that it is a culture thing here. Every time anyone (Old and Young) gets in front of a camera its defiantly no smiling... interesting... Luckily I have caught a few kids in the act... Thanks for all you prayers and messages over Christmas, Happy new year, James

Turkey

December 21, 2006 - Thursday

Turkey I have decided that the Ugandan word for concrete must be foam, I have been sleeping on a 'foam' mattress these last few weeks and it seems that I still haven't made an impression. It is interesting to wake up to think you've fallen out of bed onto the floor. The weather here is great, I was expecting it to be much hotter, but it seems that the temp stays around 25-30c… I was asking how hot it gets in the warmest part of the year and found that last year they had a record temp of about 36c… so heat is not going to be a problem here… I hate computers again; we've spent the last week installing the new operating systems on them. It's really not fun, but we do buy a ridiculous amount of coke to fill in the time so it sort of evens out. We got the coke on special order from a small store near the house; normally you can't take the bottle away from where you buy it but we promised to bring them back. Bottles of coke cost about 30c but take away (cans) are about 70c… A big thing has come up that I would like prayer for; originally I was under the impression that they were building a new building to house the computers at the children's center. In actually fact the new buildings the director (Anthony) was talking about were built for the children as extra dorms. The plan with the computers was to rent a place near by and set them all up there. The problem that now is in front of us is that the person from the US who was going to supply the funds to rent and set up computer place has sort of fallen through on that gift. This of course leaves us with a problem on the computer training side of things a $10,000 problem. Please pray that God will provide the funds shortly as we are only a week or two away from being ready to set up… I miss cheese, there is no cheese here… By the way if anyone wants to buy an Orphans for Christ in Africa tee-shirt or mug or stuff to support the center click HERE… There are two girls from America coming over in mid January to help in the Kanjjasi center. It'll be good; I am finding that I am missing people my age just to 'hang' out with, so I'm looking forward to that ;) I've been playing a bit of soccer recently with the boys here, they are very good. Not only are they good with ball skills but they are totally switched on when it comes to positioning. It's quite funny to be told by a 7 year old that I should be running up the right side of the field not the left… the insolence… he was thrown… The kids have trouble pronouncing my name which is fair enough when I have no chance with most of theirs. My name seems to come out as Jam-sea. Ten points if you can work out what song the kids are singing here… Speaking of music, if I hear a Hillsong song once more I'm am going to the hills… it seems that secular music is a no-no in the Christian community here so instead it seems to be Hillsong scattered with a sprinkling of solo male Christian artists… I can't really handle worship music played non-stop as background sound… I have a secret iPod… :) Was asked to give the Kids the Christmas story last Saturday to which I said 'no, go read it yourself'… then decided to do it anyway… I found a cockroach in my bed… :) I have noticed that there are a lot of Indians living around here; I tried talking to them with the only Indian words I knew. There seems to be no response to 'teepee' or 'Geronimo', I think they were just being rude. We killed a giant turkey yesterday, interesting experience and a bit messier than I would have liked but I did learn quickly that it is better to have a sharp knife. Here is the turkey a few hours before lunch, We Barbequed it and I ate its livers… I'm finding that people are basically the same the world over, there are good people, bad people, nice people, angry people, happy people, sad people and people that smell… once you get used to the barrier of the cultural differences you can get to know what personalities people have, I was missing that in the first weeks here. Starting to miss having my friends and family around, its easier to be totally comfortable around people you know rather than being the center of attention 24/7 and meeting 100 new people every day… its good but it sometimes gets a bit much. Thanks guys, James P.S. here is almost the funniest thing I have ever seen… maybe… (thanks Jules)