Update On Humanitarian Projects and Truck Wreck

ELDER BEAN OR MONKEY? YOU BE THE JUDGE.


BANANA CARRIERS


BOYS IN THE VILLAGE


PG-13 SOCCER GAME


Dear Family and Friends:

Just an update on what we are doing here in Uganda. The last few weeks have been very busy, but very rewarding. We drove out to a village to check on our pineapple project. This is the village where we promised a bunch of little boys that we would buy them a soccer ball. As we drove down a bumpy lane to the project manager’s house, the boys saw our truck and two came running out to meet us. They were about six or seven years old. They were stark naked, but they were so excited they didn’t seem aware of it. We handed them the soccer ball and they just went wild. They immediately started kicking it and running around our truck and then Ron joined in the game and pretty soon even their mother was out kicking the ball around. It was very funny to see these little naked African boys playing soccer. No one seemed to mind or notice. They were so excited and happy we couldn’t stop laughing.

The weather is very stormy. Almost every day it rains and sometimes it rains several times a day. These are very noisy storms. First it starts out with a very black sky, then a strong wind and then rain, hard like hail. The rain is accompanied by very loud claps of thunder and a lot of lightning. This of course does not help with the flooding problem up north. We are impatiently waiting for ten containers of clothing, food, blankets, hygiene kits and plastic sheeting that we have asked the Church to send for relief aid to the flood victims. Many thousands of people have been cut off from the rest of the country due to bridges and roads under water. The United Nations are dropping food into villages by helicopter and the UN is now asking for more food and donations from any and all organizations that can help because they are running low on provisions. We sent another E-mail today to SLC asking them to send the aid ASAP. The Department of Defense is flying it into Uganda at a cost of $140,000 for transportation. We are hoping to get help from the missionaries in unloading when it arrives. We would also like help in distributing, but will see what we can arrange when it arrives.

We had zone conference last Saturday at the Kololo branch, which is the district center of the Church here. It is very touching to see these young men and women line up outside the chapel and greet the mission president and his wife as they walk down the line and shake hands. We just stood back and watched. Thinking how proud the parents should be of all these fine young men and two sisters in white shirts and blouse standing in line to show their respect to the Mission president. About half of the full time missionaries are native Africans. They are from Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania, Congo, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zaire, and other African nations. All have different accents and speak different languages and some have had to learn English. Most of the white kids have African companions and in spite of the different cultures, it seems to work. This is a pretty hard mission and they walk many many miles every day and put up with a lot of hardships and challenges that are certainly here. As we arrived at the conference we were all greeted with a bottle of water and a small box of worm medicine, which contained six pills. We were instructed to take two tablets immediately and four tablets the next day. It was a humbling experience, but we were all in the same boat so we took them. We take a daily malaria pill, eat food that has been washed in bleach, dishes that have been washed in bleach and breathe in all kinds of dust and pollution daily, we wonder what it is doing to our stomachs and lungs. So far we have only had a head cold. The senior missionaries are so very important to a mission like this. The young missionaries get sick; sometimes hurt and from time to time discouraged or home sick and we are their parents, grandparents, friends, and counselors here

Our grandson, Ryan, has just recently received his mission call to McAllen, Texas. It is right on the border of Mexico. He will be in the MTC for two months learning Spanish. We are so proud of him He just recently went through the Seattle Temple for his endowments. His aunt Darcy and cousin Connor will be flying in from Wisconsin for his farewell talk. His Aunt Kami will be flying in from California and his mom and uncle Matt and Aunt Pam and five Latimer cousins will also be there. It is wonderful to have the whole family on his mom’s side there to support him. We wish we could also be there, but he will be in our thoughts and prayers.

We are busy with many projects. We are in the middle of our first water project, which is rehabilitating 15 deep bore holes and providing pit latrine slabs, sanitation training and some mosquito nets for the Impigi District. We have also submitted plans for our second water project in the Jinja area that is quite a bit larger, with 46 water sources being rehabilitated. The wheelchairs have been ordered and we are just waiting for custom clearance before shipping. Along with these major projects we have a piggery project, a malaria repellant candle project, and have recently visited six potential new projects in the Jinja district. One of the projects involves women being organized in seven very remote villages. They are asking for help with agriculture needs. One of the villages consisted of only mud huts with thatched roofs and we met with the women under a big tree and talked about their needs. As we were leaving this village, Ron got in the truck with a tight turn around and asked me to stand behind the truck and direct him out. I was distracted by a cute little baby and some of the other kids and he pulled forward and went into a deep pit. The truck was almost standing on its nose in the hole. This provided much merriment among the villagers. A bunch of the older boys and men had to help push him out. He is still blaming me for this mishap, but my job was to keep him from running over the children and I didn’t know he was going to go forward and fall in a hole. We both see the situation differently and blame the other one. At one of our new potential projects, after we had met with the board and were leaving, they gave us some wonderful local sugar cane, at least six avocadoes, the biggest jackfruit we have ever seen, and some huge paw paws (papaya). They were so generous and we shared this with the other couples.

We continue to monitor the rice, banana and pineapple projects. So you can see we are very busy. We are really enjoying the varied types of projects and the different locales of Uganda and the wonderful people that we are working with. We are really seeing what Africa is really like out in the villages and countryside. We love our branch and have grown to really appreciate the people here. They are still very new in the church and don’t always understand the procedures. I play the keyboard for the branch and teach Relief Society and give a piano lesson before church. Ron teaches the Gospel Doctrine class and provides much needed experience to the whole priesthood organization. We love our branch, the only problem is that most people are very very poor and think that all whites are rich, so we get asked to provide money and other things very often. Handling these situations is very uncomfortable for us. All in all we are enjoying the work. We are attaching some miscellaneous pictures.

We are looking forward to Kami and Brent’s visit here at Christmas and hope to take them to see many interesting sights and with us to visit some of our projects.
Love to all.

The Beans

Safari and Flooding

Dear Family and Friends:

It has been a very busy time for us in Uganda. We have been busy with water projects and sanitation needs in several of the Districts. These projects take a lot of time because the sites have to be visited and analyzed. We then have to approach the appropriate water district people to have permission to provide or fix any wells etc. in their area. This of course gets into the political arena, which has to be handled carefully. We then submit a request to the people in charge of water for the Church in Salt Lake and explain why this project should be approved and funds spent. We have to show how many people would benefit from clean water in the area, who owns the land, along with permission from the owners and the particular water district. If this project is approved then water contractors have to be contacted, people lined up to do the work, materials purchased and the last step is actually doing the work, which we then monitor along the way. There are a lot of steps. We were happy to have Salt Lake approve the first water project of fifteen boreholes and our second one of forty six will be submitted shortly. We have combined making pit latrine slabs for the villagers, training in water and hygiene sanitation measures, and as an inducement to come for the training we are bribing with some mosquito nets. We do have our work cut out for us in the clean water area. Along with water, we have our usual area projects that are not as expensive, under $15,000 each, but still we have to go through the procedure of submitting a request to our bosses in South Africa, having it approved and then making it happen. All of this is so interesting and we spend a lot of time driving around checking on potential projects, but it is also paperwork intensive.

Since we are the Humanitarian Directors for the Country of Uganda we have been involved with the major flooding problems that are going on in the northern part of Uganda. Uganda is among the nations hit hardest by floods that have swept across 17 countries in Africa in recent weeks. The government has declared a state of emergency, which prompts international help. At least 200 people have died so far and many farms have been destroyed and crops lost - so the next problem, when the floods recede, is a strong possibility of famine and water related diseases. We contacted Salt Lake and asked what would be an appropriate response as representatives of the Church in this situation. We were given permission by the Church to provide aid and they asked us to find out what was needed and to find a suitable partner to bring this aid into the country. The Church said the Dept of Defense in the U.S. would transport the aid to Uganda, but we would need to find an organization on the ground here to get it into the country. We spent an afternoon on the phone and computer trying to find out names and organizations that could help us in this area. We contacted UNICEF and they were very appreciative of any help from the Church. UNICEF is providing the on ground coordination for the relief efforts and have arranged for food for 6 months to the area and said that blankets, clothes and mosquito nets were in urgent demand. They also agreed to partner with us in getting these items into the country. The flooding has rendered most roads impassable, so the UN is using a helicopter to drop some supplies. We are impatiently waiting to find out how we can arrange for our supplies to be delivered and when they are coming.

So we have a few things to do. We have also moved from our compound into an apartment. All the senior missionaries have had to move before Oct. 1st due to leases running out and rent being raised and new people arriving. This was not a good time for us to move, but we did it. We are on the top floor of a new apartment house. There are 70 steps to climb to get to the penthouse and moving and carrying boxes and things up was a test of sheer endurance. We hired two guys from the street to help carry things up and they worked very hard and really earned their pay. We do have a nice view, but the construction here is terrible and many things are not working properly. We have electrical, plumbing and things just not completed problems. We have a pizza sized hole in the wall under one of the bathtubs that goes straight out to the outdoors. We leave the door closed so that creatures and mosquitoes will not fly in. Anyway we are slowly getting settled and there are three senior couples and one set of elders that live here also, so we have more than each other to complain to.

Now the good part -- all the senior couples, even those in Ethiopia, along with the mission president and his wife went on a Safari last month. We drove way up north to a place called Murchison Falls. It is about an 8 or 9 hour drive from Kampala. We all met at the mission president's home early in the morning and piled into the trucks and drove in a caravan all the way. It was so much fun and the drive was very beautiful and the roads not too bad. We had all packed a lunch with a lot of treats to eat and stopped along the way, bought soda and shared food. In order to get to the park we had to ferry across the River Nile and our lodge/accommodations sat on a bluff overlooking the river. The ferry boat was very small and could carry only 5 or 6 cars at a time. As we loaded our trucks on the ferry, we could look across the river and see a hippo grazing right where the ferry boat landed. When we got off the ferry we all had our cameras ready to take pictures. Along with the hippo there were many baboons with babies on the road and in the trees watching us. We drove to the lodge, which is called Paraa Safari Lodge. It was very nice. The staff met us in the lobby with hot towels to wash our hands and trays of cold juice. We unloaded and put our clothes away and went to the dining room for a lovely dinner. We walked around the grounds and took pictures and watched a beautiful sunset over the Nile. Early the next morning we went on a boat ride up the Nile River to the bottom of Murchison Falls. The boat ride was wonderful. We saw dozens of hippos with their young on the banks and in the water. We saw all kinds of crocodiles and many varieties of birds and elephants coming down to the water for a drink. The trees and bushes were very lush and looked like pictures you see of Africa (wonder why?) We had a guide on the boat and she kept us informed of what we were seeing.

We returned to the lodge for lunch and then piled into our trucks, each with a guard with a gun, to do an animal drive around out in the savannah. We also did a drive around the next morning. It was one of the most thrilling things to see giraffes, elephants, and all different varieties of antelope, water buffalo, and even a lion in their native habitat. Some of us stood up in the back of our pickup trucks and just took hundreds of pictures. Everywhere you pointed your camera was a picture. In the afternoon of our last day there, we drove to the top of the falls and looked over the mighty Nile being funneled into a small gorge. It was noisy and very beautiful. It was hard to get in our trucks and return to the lodge knowing we would be leaving for Kampala and to our real life the next morning. It all seems unreal now. We hope to go back and do it again, when we have family and visitors come to see us. Hope this inspires some of you to visit.

Thanks for your prayers and your support and your E-mails. We are so far from home and it is wonderful to turn on our computer and see a message from a friend or loved one. We print them out so I can read them again and again. We are healthy and happy, but we miss home also.

Love to all.

The Beans