29

July 11

Imagine having to get your water from a community well. Then it breaks. Now you have to walk hours to the next one or use the filthy swamp water. No biggie? Quick fix? Try 7 years. That's how long this sucker has been broken. Today we joined with the community to help fix it.

The nerd in me was psyched to see how the wells work here.


Fred, is a UNICEF trained, Ugandan engineer. He is the only one in a 50 mile radius that can do this type of work. His wage is about $30 a day.


Best image of the day is those kids dancing in the CLEAN water coming from that well!


No doubt they were the happiest as it seems to be the little ones that get stuck with the water trek.



The rest of today was pretty amazing as well. We're staying at this ranch in the bush country that is also a hospitality school (African Hospitality Institute www.ahi-ug.org). Maggie runs it. She's training villagers to work in the hospitality industry so they can get good jobs and break the cycle of poverty. Maggie is a muzungu (white person/foreigner) that has a powerful story of her own. I'm speechless. No way I can recapture it here and now without devaluing it somehow. You'll have to meet her for yourself.

Birthday festivities included a candle in a small sweet banana and drafting a list of 29 reasons I'm excited to be alive. Here are a handful:



- today's well

- aidchild's beautiful faces

- community

- dreams

- maggie's story

- that which remains...

I also got a sweet African cooking lesson.


There's too much today to process much less communicate. So that's all for now. Time to climb under the mosquitto net.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry