Trouble and Joy...

Sunday 21^st August:  oh dear… the morning after the night before… not a hangover but some of the party who had been to the wedding including Ian experienced hyper-peristalsis!  If you have heard the term “the runs” this was the Ussain Bolt version!  Thankfully now subsiding…

On a brighter note, we had an unexpected visit from our “daughter” Joy who had lived with us all those years ago.  She originally came to us from a village background to help as a house-girl.  This arrangement is part of life here where there are very limited cooking facilities and no washing machines or supermarkets, so the normal household chores take a long time to complete.  The choice is therefore either to work part-time or to employ someone like Joy to help.  We were both working flat out in our hospital jobs so it was ideal to have support from Joy who learnt rapidly how to cope with new experiences like taps for water, door handles, electricity and light switches etc.

When Mark arrived she often looked after him and still has a soft spot for him after all these years.

Later when Ruth came along, we had a second girl, Peace, to help.  Peace has actually been helping us this trip though will now be moving to help a new couple, Kate and Ian who have just arrived.

So we always had joy and peace in our household!

Joy came with her children complete with their school reports to show us their progress.  Hanna realised Joy was having problems reading and went and found her spare pair of reading glasses – suddenly there were whoops of joy as for the first time for ages Joy could again read. 

She is from a very poor background and is faithfully supporting her mother who is quite old and has reduced mobility.  Joy is also caring for her children and has a key role in her local church.  She grows potatoes, millet and sorghum on the small piece of land around their home but hasn’t any other real source of income.  So she had no easy way of getting her eyes tested and paying for glasses.  Little do Tescos realise how much joy a pair of their simple reading glasses can bring!

Knock on the door and two new medical students arrived, bringing 2 models of pelvis / birth canal for the School of Nursing that Hanna had organised for them to bring.

Later another visitor appeared, Ziony, bringing two lovely bags she had made for Ruth and Beth.  She has developed a number of crafts to earn her income and set aside some starting capital for further business ventures.

Now we are planning the week ahead as Ruth and Beth will fly back to UK on Thursday night from Entebbe via Amsterdam so we’ll be travelling up to Kampala this week.