Peoria Christian School Shoe Project

We want to say a big "Thank you!" to Peoria Christian School for putting shoes on the feet of many Ugandan school children. PCS held a loose change drive in January to collet money for this project. We are so thankful for the PCS teachers, administration, students, and families who participated. PCS has partnered with us on a project for the past several years and has really blessed the community of Bundibugyo.

Uganda has universal primary education for children from Primary 1 - Primary 7 (roughly equivalent 1st through 7th grade in America). Government schools are tuition free and as a result are very overcrowded. Many classrooms have 100 - 150 students with only 1 teacher. Although there is no tuition, students are required to have certain items in order to attend school. These include things like notebooks, pens, a uniform, and shoes. Children in the government schools are often from the poorest families, many of whom struggle to provide school supplies. We find kids are missing school for a lack of simple things like notebooks and pens. We decided to use the funds from PCS to purchase school shoes because they are one of the more expensive items on the list (around $7) and often prevent children from attending.

Step one in organizing this shoe giveaway was finding the right type of shoes in the market. School shoes have to be all black in color. They can be tennis shoes or dress shoes, but should not be flip flops. Eli is surveying the market to find the shoes we need.

Eli and Hailey holding a typical shoe for a boy and a girl.

The challenge was that we had enough money for 156 pairs of shoes, but Nyahuka market does not have that many school shoes available! After choosing the style we liked, we sent a shoe seller from the market to Kampala (an 8 hour drive) to fill our order. We requested three sizes (small, medium, and large) so that we would have a good selection for P1 - P7 students. She spent two days in Kampala buying the shoes and two days getting them polished. Almost all of the school shoes here are used and sent from developed countries when people no longer want them. They come in all types of colors. The final step in the process before they are ready to be used for school is having them coated with black shoe polish.

After the polishing in Kampala, the shoes then arrived to Nyahuka on a matatu (taxi van) in two huge sacks. Unfortunately, none of the shoes were matched! Hailey and Eli helped Stephanie sort through 312 shoes to locate all the matches.

It was a big job but they had success at last!

We partnered with two government schools near our home in Nyahuka, Bundibugyo district. Bundikahungu Primary School is pictured below with the Rwenzori Mountains in the background. We know teachers at both schools from our local church. They helped us to identify the children who were most in need. Many of them are orphans or come from very poor families who struggle to provide for their needs.

There was a lot of excitement when we pulled up for distribution!

We started with a time of prayer and worship and a Bible lesson. Vincent (on the right) is a teacher at the school and often leads praise and worship at our church.

The children lined up according to their class. Here are some P1 students getting ready to receive shoes. Notice their barefeet!

Stephanie (with Julia on her back) helped to organize and distribute in a classroom. We had another teammate join us too which was a big help! 

Happy students after receiving their new shoes!

Peoria Christian School students also colored tags for each pair of shoes. The tags got lost in the mail and we were not sure if we would be able to find them. The tracking number said the tags arrived in Uganda on February 10th, but after 10 weeks they had still not reached our post office in Bundibugyo. We began doing some searching, but after a week of intense looking the post office could not find the box. They finally told us it was lost and we would be unlikely to see it. We were very sad that the tags would not reach the students. Then, at the end of Marc's message at the chapel service, we received a phone call saying that the package had been found! We quickly sent a teacher on a 40 minute round-trip motorcycle ride to the post office to pick up the package. The students were very excited to receive their hand colored pictures from America!

Our second shoe distribution was for Bundimulinga Primary School. This distribution was held at our local church.

Eli and Hailey were a big help as students tried on shoes for just the right fit.

At each shoe drive Marc shared a Bible message with the children. He used R.C. Sproul's book, "The Priest with Dirty Clothes", to share the story from Zechariah 3:1-5. The focus of the story is on how our sin prevents us from standing before a holy God, but then Jesus comes to the rescue to remove our sin and to clothe us in his righteousness. The children loved the pictures and were very engaged in the story. At the end, they all said they wanted to wear the clothes of righteousness that Jesus provides. You can check out the book HERE at this Amazon link. It's a good one!

Thank you so much to Peoria Christian School for providing school shoes and an encouraging card for over 150 students in Uganda. The children were very blessed to receive this gift!

House Building Part 4: Construction

A few more snapshots of the construction process...

View from the front yard before building began.

Digging for the foundation.

Large stones were placed in the trenches and held together with concrete.

The ground was pressed down with these hand compacters shown above.

More stones for the foundation.

All of the rebar was twisted by hand.

Plastic sheets were placed over the stones to prevent moisture from coming up in the foundation.

Concrete foundation being laid.

After almost 2 months of foundation work, it was really exciting to see the cornerstone being laid.

Once brick laying began, the house really started to take shape.

Katelyn checking things out.

Hailey in the front yard while the roof is going up.

Isaac enjoying the front porch.

The roof is covered with iron sheets.

The house as it looks now with fresh plaster on the walls. We are waiting for electrical wiring, plumbing, painting, and finishing work on the inside. We should be moving in about 4-6 weeks. Thank you to everyone who had a hand in this project! We have a guest bedroom waiting for you if you would like to come for a visit!

We have a remaining financial need so that we can purchase solar equipment to have a back-up power supply. Grid electricity is very unreliable and we need to have a way to keep food cold. We also hope to fence in the back yard to allow our family to have a little private space to spend quality time. If you would be willing to help with these financial needs, please click HERE.

House Building Part 3: Brick Making

Our home is being built with compressed earth bricks, all of which were made on site from the dirt in our yard. It was really interesting to watch how these bricks were made and to see something that came right from our yard being used to construct our home. The first step in the process was to dig large holes in the ground to locate soil with the right composition for bricks. As we dug deeper and deeper, we eventually got to a reddish layer of dirt (marrum) that is ideal for brick making.

Marrum

After locating the right type of dirt, it was passed through a sifter to break down the large chunks into fine particles.

Freshly sifted marrum

The marrum was then mixed with a small amount of concrete to add strength to the bricks.

The mixture of marrum and concrete was fed into a compressor to make the finished product. It was really impressive to watch these guys hand press all of the bricks that were needed for our home - about 8,000 in total!

Freshly made bricks were sun dried for several days and then stored underneath a building to protect them from rain.

Hand made bricks from our backyard. Pretty cool!

House Building Part 2: Water Access

It is easy to take for granted having reliable water access in America. Not so in Uganda! One of the big obstacles we faced in building our home was getting water to the construction site. World Harvest Mission first brought running water to Nyahuka 20 years ago. Our team's water engineer oversaw a project that channeled water from a local waterfall to large storage tanks on the mission property. The water was then distributed to public water taps that were built in many locations in the community, providing the first clean water access for Nyahuka. Prior to this, drinking water came exclusively from the Nyahuka River, which is also used for bathing and washing.

Nyahuka falls, which brings water to our community via the Nyahuka river

Our initial plan was to bring water to the construction site by connecting to underground pipes from our neighbor's yard. 

We dug a trench about 50 meters to connect to existing pipes.

We bought two 1000L water tanks to store the water for brick making and concrete work. Here our local plumber is building temporary stands for the water tanks.

We hit a snag when we discovered that the water pressure was not high enough to fill our tanks. This was partly due to construction beginning in the dry season when there was not much rainfall. The other factor was that our water system is now 20 years old and is overly stretched by the current population.

With no water at the construction site when our building team was working on the foundation, we were forced to carry water uphill from the river in the valley behind our home for several days. One morning I was up at 6am carrying water in the dark up the hill from the river. After just a few trips, I was exhausted. I gained a deep respect for the women and children that I see carrying water on their backs everyday to take home for cooking and washing. When the construction team told us they would need 2000L of water per day for several weeks to pour a concrete foundation, we quickly realized that carrying water in jerry cans was not going to work as a long term solution.

After consulting with our missionary team's water engineers, we decided to buy a generator pump that would allow us to pump water directly from the river into our water tanks. We had to find the shortest distance from the river to our construction site and then negotiate with the local land owners to get permission to place a pump and pipes on their land.

After measuring the distance from the river to our water tanks, we bought 300 meters of plastic pipe in Fort Portal (2 hours away) and then bought a water pump in Kampala (8 hours away).

We were thankful to have a large roof rack on our car so we could transport the hose pipe.

When the water pump finally arrived we carried it down to the river to see if it would work. It was pure joy when we turned the pump on and filled our 2000L tanks in about 5 mins! It had previously taken all day (literally!) to carry this much water by hand....