Monday 20th October

The compere/comedian at the show last night had told a joke about different parts of the body competing to be the best, and how when we all the parts together the body works. He took this on to say that each of has different gifts and when we work together we can accomplish many things, little did we know how important this would be today.

An early breakfast call followed by a 2hr drive through the Kampala traffic (its like nothing any of us had ever seen!!) took us to Lubbe Farm.

Watoto has been in existence for many years now with their churches, villages and baby homes. As they got bigger they realised there was a need to sustain the project through tough times and so they set about making this happen! Lubbe Farm is a 207 acre farm that is owned by Watoto where they employ local farmers to produce various crops for them. Including Pineapple, Maize, Beans, Potato and Paw Paw. These crops are used to feed those in Watoto’s care as well as to sell when there is a surplus and to make in to chicken feed for the farm we will visit on Friday.

We were working with the construction team who have been there for about 2 years building various structures needed for the farm, but today we were working on a new office/accommodation block. The first job was securing the metal columns in place around which concrete will be poured to form the structure of the block. These columns were about 4m high and the group worked in 2 teams to have all of them up by lunchtime, securing them in place with metal wires.

Over lunch our driver, Godfrey, revealed his musical passion and played us one of the songs he had written. It was a song including his testimony of healing through Jesus as well as that of other people he has met.

After lunch we set about moving all the bricks that had been made to the building site so that over the next couple of days we can start to lay the first few courses of bricks. The team worked superbly together, at first passing the bricks along the line to Joe who was stacking them at the end and then, later in the afternoon, using wheelbarrows to transport larger quantities. It was hot and thirsty work and several team members ended up having water ‘put’ on their heads!!

A 2hr 30mins journey back ensued before we found our way back to the guest house for showers and dinner, however when we returned we found the power had been disrupted, not an uncommon occurrence in Uganda.

There was a brief moment when we thought the power had come back as next door had their lights on but we were told that they have solar power and store the electricity for just such a time as this. The evening was spent doing group feedback and playing various card games by torch light.