For the moment . . .

It's rather quiet here on site for the moment. Today is our semi-annual maize harvest. Our enterprise farm grows a good portion of the maize used for the posho flour to feed us here at New Hope Uganda. As a community we consume 1 ton of maize flour a week!!! (apologies to those of you whom I told 2 tons as I was having a memory black hole!!) After the harvest, our maize mill will turn it into the flour we need to feed our kids and staff.

So, today all other work stops and we as a community--primary school kids and teachers, secondary school kids and teachers, vocational school students and staff, missionary kids and teachers (parents :), administration and any visitors head off to the enterprise farm to harvest acres and acres of maize. It is a fun and relationship building time. Toby, Acacia and Kevin were so excited this morning that they jumped out of bed when reminded of the events of today. They left the house at 7:40 and the primary school kids just journeyed by our house on the way over to the farm.
We won't have any pictures to show you as I just saw the camera sitting here in the living room after everyone had already left. SO -- I'll share some photos of recent days.

Geoff had a jigger in one of his toes. It was the first time I tried to dig one out as you have to be so careful to get it all and not break the egg sac. YUCK! It's a dust flea/mite type bug that burrows under your skin and lays eggs. Is that not one of the most disgusting things ever???!! Anyway, I tried to "doctor" Geoff, but he insisted that I was "Killing" him so we stopped. The next night Uncle Mulu (our David Family father) came over to finish the job. He said, by the way, that I had done a good job and that now we had another "jigger doctor" in the house!

I think the kids got turned onto the idea of soaking their feet after the whole jigger episode that they decided it was a good way to end the day. So, they all grabbed a bucket and a good book and set in for a soak.

Here they are doing before breakfast reading in their pj.s.

This is a typical scene in our yard. Tons of kids playing--here they are having "horse races" and bicycle tire contests. The other game they love to play is a hide and seek type game that is NOISY!!!!! It's great to have a yard filled with kids! Notice in the back left is Hasan being wheeled around by Dodovico, one of our David Family boys. Hasan seems to be responding to the interaction he gets with the David Family and our kids since he's moved into HIS house on the David Family compound.

And finally, the plan is to move into the new house this Saturday. There should be no reason to hinder us that we can see for the moment . . .