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"THE PEARL OF AFRICA"

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     Dear Family, Friends, and interested readers of our humanitarian work,

We are finally home from our Ugandan Adventure, which wasscheduled as 3 months but became 8 months under the lockdown.

Starting in March- no schools; no public transportation; no private vehicles allowed without special presidential permits; only groceries, pharmacies, and banks were allowed open; curfew from 7pm to 6am; no exercise was allowed outdoors and all gyms were of course closed along with all other businesses; all construction or essential workers had to be totally quarantined at the site and provided food and a place to sleep. They were not allowed to leave and this was enforced by the federal and local law enforcement.

Let me say that there were some very low moments but we would like to share the high moments of the projects with you and celebrate this last season.

To save you time I will use a bullet format.

·   We built and fully equipped a dining hall (“Tanja designed” tables and Benches) including  hand washing areas for 400 children

·   We built and fully equipped “Tanja designed kitchen” serving 400 children. This contains 4 “state-of- the- African- art”, wood burning , lava rock heating stoves that eliminate smoke and heat and use 70 % less fire wood.

·   We furnished a complete water filtration system for these 400 children.

During our construction process, we discovered some major problems and replaced our contractor. We were asked by Rome to investigate the other Church construction projects underway by this same bad contractor.

We replaced the Contractor on all Church Projects and we became the implementing partner on 4 projects and an additional financial donor in 3 of these projects:

·   A hygiene block and laundry for the boys of Don Bosco School and dormitories(the girls already had a new nice one)

·   A hygiene block for the children of Don Bosco as well as the surrounding neighborhoods to use during and after sports events

·   A  large nursery school for 100 children and 30 daycare children

·   A two story dormitory and hygiene block for an additional 400 children complete with 200 bunk beds. This project is located in Bombo, which is located one hour away from our other projects in the area called Namugongo for those of you who have Google map.

·   We also discovered a Black Jewish Orthodox community that has existed since the early 1900s. This Community built a school for their children and the entire non-Jewish community living in this very impoverished area. We constructed and donated 51 bunk beds; we refurbished two classrooms and constructed a third class room; we created and equipped a first aid clinic in some free space and gave all projects a fresh coat of paint inside and out.

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I ask for your understanding for me, the computer idiot.I have tried my best to give you captions with these photos as well as send some of our favorites that are missing. I failed.

A few aids

·   The police car was our transportation during the lockdown which continues today. It had no shock absorbers , which is called an “African Massage”.

·   The photo of me and the mop is when Tanja demanded that I attend to my chores

·   The one with Tanja and a group of men outside of the dining hall is a typical day when she explained what she had done and what she was planning to do.

·   The one with  my arms raised to the sky was day one and I was asking the heavens what made me decide that I needed an African experience.

·   The balance is a mixture of the different projects. I am sure that you are all extremely intelligent and will have no problem identifying each and every project.

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Good Luck!

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