Building a house

The focal point of our trip to Uganda was to build a house. A house like this one:In this house live 8 children and a house mother. One or two of the children may be the natural children of the house mother, the rest are orphans. Victims of the AIDS epidemic or the brutal civil war from which the country has known peace for a few years now.
When we turned up, a little past 8am on the first morning of the build, this is what we saw:

The corners had already been completed by the team of local builders. The corners require skill. Following a straight piece of string can be done by the inexperienced, i.e. us:

And so, the walls went up.

The large piles of bricks had to be moved around the site to where they were needed. Every so often we would set up a brick chain. Some of us passed the bricks along, some threw. Can you spot the flying brick?

And so, the walls continued to rise. I am third from the right, in the bright, clown trousers. Apparently they looked like pyjamas!

And so, the walls went up and up:

And on the inside:

The remainder of the skilled jobs, the pointing, the roof and the plastering, were left for the team to continue.

Job Done!

All that is left is to go back on the next trip, in two years, and see the family growing and living and loving in the house that we built. A house where the Watoto mission of rescuing a child, raising a leader and rebuilding a nation is lived out.