June 14th, 2011

June 14, 2011



Most of today was a day of some good ol’ fashioned labor at Musana. We started the day off slow but soon got into smashing rocks with sledge hammers. There is this road in front of the kids dorms that had a bunch of of large rocks just piled up. Our goal was to smash these rocks so that they become smaller and evened out the road better. The hammers that we had weren’t really workin out. They were small and had tiny wooden handles that ended up leavin their mark on our hands. Bryan and I decided to head to town to see if we could purchase a better and larger hammer.

Here in Iganga there isn’t a Walmart where you can go and find everything you need. A good sledge hammer wasn’t easy to find at first. There were a few little shops that had the heads but of course the price on a 10 lb head was outrageous. When the shop owners see two white people trying to buy something they automatically hike the price up because they assume we have a ton of money, which is true compared to most living here, but like everyone else we didn’t want to pay 70,000 shillings for just the hammer head. That’s more than in America so we had a little problem to solve.

Luckily we ran into a shop that had wooden handles that we could of used for the hammer. The owner was a unique individual though. He was Ugandan but when we explained to him what we wanted he ended up helping us out instead of hiking his prices up, which is rare. He told us we should be able to purchase a hammer’s head for around 25 to 30 K and would be able to weld a handle onto it which would make it much stronger. He ended up having his assistant find us a 10 lb head for 45, which was no 25 but better than any white kids could do. Then his assistant went over and got a handle which could be welded to it. We were grateful for this guy helping us out so at the end of it all we had a pretty legit hammer and kicked him an extra 5 K for all the trouble and work him and his assistant went through for us.

We were able to crush up a bunch of rocks by the end of the day, but we still have some to go. Figured we would let our hands rest the next day and get all the numbers painted on the new jerseys for the futbol team. The evening brought much needed rest but as all the volunteers sat in the living room we got to talking about some pretty interesting things. You could say we all know a little bit more about each other, in an odd sort of way. I really like the group we have had while I have been here. I am sure I will get to know everyone quite well. Living with them while in Africa certainly lets you talk about this experience with people that are seeing and going through the same thing. It makes all of this that much better of an experience, despite the rough moments.