Aunty Ieke and aunty Hannah, that is who we are at the Wakisa project. Friday we gave our first lesson to girls. We offered aunty Grace some help during her English class. She said: ‘that’s great, teach my girls something! A song? Yes that’s good! Teach them a song. Just keep them busy’. She left for the market to return after 2 hours… And so it happened that we already gave our first lesson on the second day. That was challenging! But the girls did not seem to mind and listened very well. They really respect the aunties. We taught the girls a song, ‘He has got the whole world in His hands’. It is so nice to see how much they love singing and dancing! It is such a great part of their culture. During this class we also found that the English level of the girls varies a lot. That’s why we hope to have translation whenever possible during our coming classes.

Our first weekend in Uganda and we directly took a trip to Jinja with our (German) colleague and her (Ugandan) friends. Jinja is the second largest city of Uganda, however what is more important is that it holds the source of the Nile! We enjoyed a nice swim and a stunning sunset! (don’t forget to take a look at our pictures). It was lovely to go out of the city and see the forest, the longest river in the world and to learn more about Uganda and its people. We went to a local restaurant and ordered ‘any food + beans’. The other option was ‘any food + g/nuts’. Any food consists of porcho, banana porcho, sweet potato and some greens, and other foods when they have other. G/nuts is like some peanut sauce with beef in it, and it’s purple.

There are four little babies at our project. Two of them are one week old and 2 of them only 2 days, and they are soooo pretty! Today we went to the hospital with 6 of the girls to make echo’s, to find out ‘how old the pregnancy is’ or to have a check in a later stage. This is a free service for the Wakisa girls offered by a private clinic close to the Wakisa house. It was very special to see the babies moving, see their heartbeats and see the happy, impressed and peaceful look on the face of the mothers. Three of them are having a babyboy and one is having a babygirl. The other two will find out at a later stage. It was very impressive to see the hospital. It took hours before it was our turn, however we returned just at lunchtime, which was a surprise for the others, who thought that we would return at the end of the day.

We are still learning a lot these days by just watching what’s going on. We found out that we as aunties are higher in the hierarchy than the girls, but definitely lower than some of the aunties. This we are not used to at all. We are trying to develop a plan to teach the girls something, which they can apply after they leave Wakisa. For example, tomorrow we will start with hygiene in combination with the preparation & storage of food. There is a fund that enables some of the girls to go to school again, that inspires them to dream about a good future.

There is much more to tell, but there is far more to explore, so now we leave you with some nice pictures and our blessings for you in another part of this beautiful world. Enjoy your days, we are very thankful for you guys!