Day One
Our team (Tim Rosenberg, Dwight Hobbs, and Joanna June) arrived at Entebbe late Wednesday evening, and stayed the night in Entebbe since it’s too dangerous to drive at night. I picked them up Thursday morning and we spent the three-hour drive catching up. Tin and Dwight are veterans, having been to Uganda twice before to support us as a family and HFC as an organization. Joanna was here for the first time, so it was fun introducing her to Uganda on the way to Jinja.
Thursday was a day of rest and unpacking. The team was generous enough to bring over lots of equipment for us, from tech stuff for the hackerspace and CTC to Amazon gift card purchases for the family. Here’s a small sample:
REAL Kool Aid! Super cool. That’s Declan’s ;-)
Sugar free syrup? Wow! That’s MINE.
We ate lunch at the Keep, and headed back to the house while the team unwound. We had a great time just hanging out and got some rest for the following day.
Friday was so busy, but it was great. As much as I would have loved to hit the “pause” button while they were here, I couldn’t. By 8:00am I was already dealing with issues from guard schedules to staff concerns, but by 9:00am we were ready to start the day. We went to the Keep for breakfast and met with Zack Matere and Bonface, who we brought down from Kenya.
Those of you that don’t know Zack’s story, see Zack’s original Google-produced video here and for the updates, see my Derby talk here.
Our time with Zack and Bonface was thrilling for me, because we’re now seeing real progress. As you know, we’ve been able to help these guys get closer to their passions. Zack is working with farmers and the community with the Village / Shamba Chromebook solutions and Bonface has been installing Rachel in schools all over Kenya. They both share a passion for helping others through technology, a passion we share. But this time, the guys have taken huge leaps beyond just doing their own thing. Bonface is working directly with WorldPossible (the RACHEL team). This is HUGE! Bonface is getting paid to do what he loves! Zack donated one of our chrome books to create a resource center in a village where local farmers come for assistance and advice. This is huge news for us, and I’ll detail all this in a later post. Our four hours with the guys was too short in my opinion.
We headed back to the house around 3:00pm. Tim and Dwight “sat down” in the sunroom and fell asleep, Jo “put her feet up” (napped) and Jen and I ran out to run a few more errands. I don’t envy their jet lag.
I was able to get a 10,000Va stabilizer for the hacker space from a local missionary yard sale at a good price (around $300) and if I play my cards right, it could provide power protection for the entire hackerspace. I’ll share news about that in another post.
10,000VA of POWER!
The afternoon was pretty interesting. I unpacked our new robotics training kits (“Meet Edison”) and sat with Declan to figure it out. The team wanted some footage of the bats, so we went out back to scare them out of the trees and Declan and I made homemade sling “shot” out of anthill dirt, a trick we learned from the bat hunter in Mbale. Yes, Declan and I played in the mud. I couldn’t have been happier. The team went on an exploratory walk down to Lake Victoria. We had a great dinner, played a round of Quirkle, and reeked out quite a bit. All told it was a solid twelve-hour day (well fifteen if you count the time I spent geeking out with Declan after everyone went to bed) but it was fulfilling and fun. I slept like a rock.
I can’t wait to see what today brings!
