Northern Uganda (Part 3)

By far one of my favorite days in the north was they day we went to the future site of the Home of Hope. The Home of Hope will be a youth center, vocational training facility, and overall support center to help youth to resist, survive, and overcome HIV/AIDS. As I've talked about in previous posts the north of Uganda is particularly hard hit by HIV/AIDS in large part due to the armed conflict that waged there for many years. We were on site to supervise the fencing and make sure that the land was marked correctly. But within a 10 minutes of being there some local children came along to see what was going on. They were pretty curious about the Muzungo (This word means white person. I don't take offense because I am really pale and pretty much no one here has ever heard of First Nations people). It all started with these little boys. They are the grandchildren of the next door neighbour of the soon to be Home of Hope.

I snapped a few photos of them and showed them on my camera. They loved this and loved the video feature even more.

Soon there were a ton of curious childeren. I started to talk to them and exchange some words in Heiltsuk and Acholi. It stared with hello, good bye, thank you. Then we moved on to body parts. We sang head and shoulders in English, Heiltuks and Acholi. I sang for them in my language and they sang for me.

Eventually we relocated under the mango tree. We ended up playing some games. I tried to teach them duck, duck, goose. We played an altered version of it. They then showed me some of their dancing games. Which were very cool. I have to say it was nice to be around children again. At home I work as the Child & Youth Program Coordinator for the Health Center, and I had been missing that playful spirit of being around a group of kids

Some how the afternoon ended up turning into a sort of impromtu proformance. It all started with Naomi explaining who we were, what we were there to do and about the Home of Hope. She asked them what they would like from such a center. They responded that they wanted a place they could come together to do drama, sing, play, and just be together and love one another. Seem that the Home of Hope will be very well used by the local children and youth. Here are some pictures of them singing and dancing.

This day was by far one of my favorites so far. I really enjoyed getting to know these young ones and I'm grateful that I had the time to spend with them. Here are some pictures of the site of the Home of Hope and the fencing, which was the official reason for our visit.