More from June...

Every Child Ministries had a short term team come to drill wells for remote parts of the village near Tegot Atoo, where I tutored in 2009. I got to go along, before their arrival to help scout out the locations for the wells and send back photos, and then also after they arrived to see the work they were doing. The first time I went with ECM staff to photograph the potential locations, they asked around the village to see which men would be willing to help out and have a part in digging the wells for their communities. Many of their families had to walk for hours just to get water, and often still from a dirty source like this creek:

It was fun to see the excitement on the men's faces and listen to them express their happiness over getting a clean source of water. Here they are committing to work with ECM in the drilling, and checking out the future well site:

Men from the community contributing labor for their new well:

884 million people in the world don't have access to a safe water source, but ECM has reduced that by two villages. :) A small step but a very important one for several families in Northern Uganda. It is an honor for me to still be involved with ECM on a part time basis and to see the work they are doing for this community. You can check out their website at www.ecmafrica.org.

If I had blogged in June...

...I would have blogged about taking the girls to Gulu Recreation Center. It's about 20 minutes out of town by boda or taxi. It's still under construction, as it has been for about 10 years, but parts of it are finished and super fun - like the playground, the fake safari (ceramic animals placed a few meters apart in the bush), and the rowboat on the small man-made pond! All of this for about a dollar per adult and 50 cents per kid.

The girls were toward the end of their holiday so they were pretty bored and needed some excitement. :) I got to their house in the morning... all they knew was that they were getting "a surprise". They all dressed in their nicest clothes and we piled into the taxi (16 girls, 2 house moms & their babies, myself, and the taxi driver - just 22 people). Too bad I didn't get a picture of that. All the way along the bumpy road, the girls kept guessing where we were going. When we left town they became really confused. We turned off the main road and followed a smaller dirt path through the bush until we came to the recreation center. The boat was the big attraction at first...but the staff told us we had to wait until they had blown up enough life-jackets, so we moved on to the playground.

After that, the manager gave us a tour of the fake safari. The girls could hardly stand still long enough for him to tell them about each animal before running ahead to find the next one.

When we got back from the bush, the lifejackets were ready and it was finally time to go for a boat ride! It was the first time in a boat for most of them. They loved it!

After that they ran and played, and spent some more time on the playground. We ate chicken and chips, drank soda, and rested in the shade...then it was time to head home. It was a quiet but happy ride back to the house. ;)