Day seven brought us to Nazaleeti, in the
Rakai district of Uganda. We were again
fortunate that heavy rainfall during the night cleared in time for our
distribution, however the roads were quite muddy with huge ruts for our bus
driver to navigate. The amount of rainfall over the past while had
resulted in high waters along the road to Rakai. As a matter of fact we were fortunate that
the road was now passable as two weeks earlier it was flooded and members of
our Inner Wheel partners were barely able to navigate the route to complete
their pre-distribution preparations.
When we reached the site (a primary government school and
Church), the children and bedkits were both inside due to the rain that was
just ending. We entered the Church where the children were
being sheltered and were overwhelmed by the loud echoing cheer of 500 waving
children excited to greet us. We were
equally excited to see them.
As the sky continued to clear we were able to move the
children and the bedkits outside and were able to complete our distribution in
the fresh air. We found an excellent spot for our set up with the hills
in the background. The many shades of green were stunning and
created a perfect backdrop for our pictures.
The children today had beautiful smiles and once again our
team worked together seamlessly along with the ladies of the Inner Wheel of
Kampala to complete the distribution successfully without a hitch.
It is always amazing at the end of a distribution to see the
families leaving in various ways with their bedkits. Today there were many walkers heading down
the hill to the road below. We know that many of them had quite a long
walk ahead of them.
After we left the distribution site we headed up the hill to
an amazing viewpoint where we could see Tanzania stretching below on the other
side.
Our bus made one more stop before leaving the district, at a burial
site for almost 2000 Rwandans who were part of the Rwanda
n genocide in 1994. Almost 2000 bodies had floated down the river
to Uganda where they were buried in these mass graves. Once a year the Rwandans make a pilgrimage to
visit this gravesite. The site is
maintained as a tribute to those buried there and is a joint venture between
Rwanda and Uganda. It was a sobering
experience to see this beautifully kept site.
It certainly was a very full day for the team.
Team Uganda 2013
