Summer Vacation of a Different Kind

Can you be an orphan and have a mother? Can you plant an oil palm and harvest coconuts?
Our trip to a place that couldn't be more different from our homeland began on June 13th and ended on June 28th. We arrived in Kampala on Friday and stayed in the capital until Sunday. On the Sabbath, we were able to take part in a singing-filled church service.
We were a group of 23 people who flew to Uganda as the WAVE Team (a project of the Austrian Women's Ministries Department) to visit an Adventist primary school with a boarding school on the island of Buvuma and to live and work there for a week.
Our main concern was the construction of a water pipe so that the girls no longer have to walk miles to fetch water for everyone. But other activities were also planned.
After an adventurous journey in a minibus (designed for 25 people, but of course, there was room for at least 30 people with their luggage), we arrived in Bukula on Sunday and were immediately surrounded by lots of children, some of whom even knelt in front of us, which was frightening enough for us. But when I later saw an adult woman kneeling in front of a seated man to talk to him, I had to ask the local pastor's wife what that was all about. The answer was simple: it is a sign of respect and nothing out of the ordinary.
After a small welcoming ceremony, we went to the place where people had been drilling for water since the early hours of the morning, and as if on cue, the water did bubble out of the borehole a short time after we arrived. Nothing stood in the way of building the water pipe and tank, and everything was completed by the time we left.
During a tour of the boarding school rooms, we discovered a girl who had severe stomach pains. After a brief examination, our medical team diagnosed this as a severe gastritis and initiated appropriate treatment. This meant that work could begin in the infirmary before it was officially declared open, and it was not declared finished until late on Friday afternoon, even though the maladies were not likely to end.
From Monday to Friday, the three-person team that had prepared a Vacation Bible Craft School for the children was also busy. Every day, 50 to 100 children came to hear stories from the Bible, to do crafts and have fun.
In the meantime, the school desks were renewed by the nimble hands of a gifted craftsman and with the help of many children. The beds were also repainted and all the rooms in the school and boarding school were repainted.
In the evangelistic team, we tried to bring biblical truths closer to people using modern stories. The series began on Wednesday evening and continued until Saturday morning, reaching its climax in the afternoon with a baptism.
While our highly valued catering team took care of our physical needs and also cooked for the approximately 150 children, our management team tried to get an overview of the school's financial situation. This was not so easy, because the number of students could vary greatly depending on your point of view. It was not immediately clear who had not received a salary for how long, because there were also several "variables". And several other misunderstandings were not easy to explain.
This brings us back to the questions at the beginning. They can be answered with a clear "yes" because someone has to look after a child, so this woman is introduced as a mother even though the child no longer has one, and if a language like "Luganda" only has one term for various palm trees, in English you can refer to them as oil palm or coconut palm. This means that what we often understand as being "wrong" can turn out to be a simple language problem.
This school needs our support and we need this school to carry out God's work of love, but we also need to find a common language about how we can best do this because it should be done with a big heart and a lot of understanding for the benefit of all.
At the end of our trip together, we went on a little safari through a national park where we let the typical images from Africa, from God's beautiful nature, penetrate our hearts.
We can be thankful to God that, despite some health problems on site, everyone finally landed back in Vienna healthy and happy.
According to a report by Brigitte Bach, Schlossgemeinde, Vienna, Austria
More photos in the image file.