kulika omwaka...

...ate nkwagaliza omwaka omurungi

(i congratulate you for finishing the previous year, and wish you a happy new year!)

hope you all have a good start into a good, healthy and successful year 2012! thanks for many mails...! and i hope some of you can party a bit for me, since i will not...its just after 9 pm, and i think i will go to bed soon. so it might be the first new year since...i do not know, so many years, where i sleep before 12...i cant believe it, but i think i am getting old!!!

i have some things to do tomorrow, since i need to leave uganda soon because my visa is expiring...and i have to see where i can go. nairobi, the capital of kenia, would be an easy bus ride from here, and some people recommended it. but also i heard from a number of people that it is a really dangerous place...so maybe too dangerous. actually i wanted to travel to south sudan for the visa issue (also because of my bak. thesis), but the north of uganda, and especially south sudan is said to be extremely dangerous (at least for white people) as well...and kongo too might be not the safest... so probably i will go to ruanda! but when he wanted to go to ruanda my friend gunter was knocked down and robbed (it happened in kampala, uganda, though, so there is no influence of ruanda!). lets see, i will let you know...

all the best, take care sevi

frohe weihnachten

two years ago i celebrated in salzburg, austria, europe...last year in goa, india, asia...and this year in zigoti, uganda, africa! i wonder where i will be next year (guess it must be south america or australia?? or maybe antarctica?!). 
anyways i wish you a...

...enjoy your day - where ever you are (auch wenn man grad von einer langen reise heimgekommen is...viel glueck beim eingewoehnen roeth!...welcome to austria!!!)

malaria

today, sunday, a boy came up to the farm and asked me if I had time to come with him. He wanted to show me a house which he built some weeks ago. He has learned to be a builder (and was sponsored for this education by the org. I am working for). When we reached the house I realized that I know the woman living there! She was really happy to see me, and showed me the house. It has 3 small (really small) rooms…one for the boys, one for the girls and one for the woman. Then I asked her how many people are living there…she replied 14 – and I could not believe it. The children living there are all orphans (I guess mostly HIV orphans). Some of them I knew from `our` school.

So all children came to greet me, and one boy I know was sick. It turned out that he was very sick, and they asked me if he can go to hospital…or take medicine. The people knew that it was malaria, but there was no money for treatment. So I decided that we have to get medicine for him, I told him to wait and I would come back. Why ever the boy followed us, and quite soon after I reached the nurses place he arrived as well. I bought with my own money the medication. It was 8.500 uganda schillings, equal to just a little bit more then 2 euros. As we measured his temperature we found out it was almost 41 degrees. That indicated to the nurse that he was with the disease already for a long time – and she said that probably if the treatment would not have started today the boy would have died.

Its crazy, just a little over 2 euros…between live and death. Crazy, that at home there is hardly any value…here I go to the restaurant more than 2 times, or buy four beers, or buy some tablets that can safe live!

But its really a problem if I buy it yourself, because as I said this woman has 14 children…if they now always come to me when they are sick I cant handle it, and as well they would tell other people…and many, many people would approach me. So when I brought back the boy on the motorbike (he had not enough power to walk home again) I told his mother a different story how he got the medicine…and I hope they will not start to always approach me when there is need of something (just because I cant solve all the problems).

Millions of people die every year of malaria – which makes the anopheles mosquito the most dangerous animal in the world (forget about the shark). You get malaria from a mosquito bite, and the mosquito transports malaria if it has bitten an infected person before…so it’s a vicious circle (ein wort fuer dich mama!!!).

So this is what happened on my Sunday…and I wonder how it would have been if that boy did not come to show me the house he built some weeks ago…if isiah would still be in school in the following term…

And when speaking about the following term…I have a return ticket to Austria on the 7^th of February, but I will change it, and stay in uganda for some more months! Visitors are welcome here… but it will take more time until I am back!

Hope you are all doing well!! See you

…and a few pictures...really just a few because the internet is so weak!

field visit with one of our staff (right)

our knitting lady at work, with her daughter

in front of our carpentry, the tailors in front

these 2 boys still stay at school (have no family left). i showed them how to repair a bicycle

yesterday we removed the cage of the goats and started to put up a new one

playing `golf` at school

habibu, the builder, in front of the house (where i went today...see the story!)

 bye, good night

and some pictures...

nice...the powercut is over - belive it or not, after one whole week!!!

so now i am able to show you some more pictures...these are pictures from the last 2 weeks or so. so from many differrent `events`. i like them, and i hope you will like them as well. enjoy

view through the window of a school we visited. they all wanted to shake my hand when they saw me!

some of our pupils playing.

the 2 boys in the back of the picture, eric and royzee, were born in uganda, and then went with their family to kongo. there their parents got killed, and an aunt of them came to bring them back to uganda. but on the way this aunt left them alone...so they police found them when they were loitering in some village and brought them here. they are right now almost the only pupils that stay here, because holidays started, and all got the permission to go `home` for a months... to see at least some family members - but these 2 boys dont have anyone, so they stay.

bringing beans from the farm

and storing the beans

on our farm we grow many vegetables - also beans. when they were harvested we brought them down to the school. they had to dry in the sunshine, but when it was raining (which happened by this time every day) we had to bring them inside...as you can see in the 2nd picture!

some children in zigoti

dodging a mess

the 2 children of our tailor lady

looking funny

some of our staff

streets in kampala

cups at a school where `a chance forchildren` provides porridge for the children

and the children of the cups

thats a normal road...and if it is raining you really have a problem!

schoolkids...happy to see the muzungu (white person)

the same

please note, these are 2 different class rooms

police...cars made to destroy houses and people. these cars are used when people start do demonstrate

`some` files in the hospital

we had our speechday in the school, a day where the parents come to school and the children sing songs, play theatre and so on.

children preparing for the speechday

in our school compuond

might this be his future job?!

our brass band played an important role on this day

me and lian...the baby that had already 3 times malaria since i am here (just more than 2 months)

everybody getting prepeared...

...almost everybody...

...one last round marching in the school compound

annd then we went on the road, to our village zigoti

with the chairman walking in the first row

abck at school, with parents and caretakers

after all the official things a football match took place. teachers against secondary students. everybody looked quite the same, besides the number seven of the teachers...!

what a team...with a legionnaire!

in this house i lived the first 1,5 months

a few days after our speechday there was a speechday in bongole, a school `a chance for children` built - and is running. its deep in the village. we went there with the brass band, and so it became a big day for the students!

its deep in the village

you see how many students are following!

find the mistake in this picture!!!

the guest of honor, chairperson LOC5 in the red dress, at a school we are just bulding. school will start in feb.

last week was the last week of school...the children have now a 2 month holiday. to celebrate this day we went to our farm (where i live) and slaughtered a pig. it was a huge pig...really huge. and it struggeled to survive - but failed. so all children went up, and we prepeared the pig...and eate a lot! some pictures from this event

cooking

barbiri, suzan and sarah

isiah and abe having a barbecue

...

children eating i front of the house where i live

children of ataff members ate as well there

talking with yudiah

in front of my house - the left room is mine

with joan...behind is a watertank. we safe rain water, for cooking, washing, bathing, drinkine (boiled). its much better water than at the waterhole

teopista with lian, isaac

some children at a different school

people in the audiance

saying a few words...with our chairman as translator

giving the graduates some certificates

...an official duty! if you are whiet and you arrive there you are automatically something like the guest of honor!

some street kids on the way back

as i said we have holidays now...and most children could afford to get a bus home. not so patric. he erpaired his bike and went on a long, long journey

patric on the move...have a safe trip dude!

some few (very few, less than 10) children stayed. yesterday i repaired with them a small bike. and so royzee is now learning to ride a bicycle!! right now i bought some more materials to fix more bikes...i will do it when i came home...so more children can learn!

go royzee...go

2 kids of workers

as they go i have to go as well...!! bye and take care people!!!