Sorry for the Silence

Isn't it odd. Knowing that I would not be able to work for a while as I recuperated from my knee operation I had visions of all the thousands of things I would have time to do from home. Just shows how little I knew about the "getting better" process. Very little energy and no real ability to sit and concentrate on anything for long. And this blog got a bit neglected!

I will be much more understanding if the future!

Our volunteer Rebecca has posted loads of pictures of her12 months in Uganda on her picture site and it you want to take a look it is at http://rebeccanixon.traveljournal.net/gallery/

The serious drought and massive inflation in Uganda has been a major challenge to all our schools and we have delayed some building work in order to make sure that the children and staff have food and water. We have already had two substantial water catchment projects at St Zoes but now we have pretty certain knowledge of underground water on land we now own we may have reason the start a new project to drill down and find ways of pumping it to the school.

The Lira Babies home has been visited by some wealthy and generous Americans who are keen to fund an extension of this wonderful orphanage. Sarah Woodward, niece of Trustee Chris Bishop has also raised a lot of money in New Zealand for the same cause and HUGS is helping with the money transfers.

The builder of our secondary and vocational blocks at St Zoes has proved to be really dreadful and although he has been paid a lot of money he disappeared from the site in April and has not been seen since. This is quite a setback but over time I believe we can recover and refinance the completion of the work by other means.

Things like this remind me how lucky we are!