Greetings from the Land!!!

Greetings from the Land...the 100 acres on which the Village of Hope is being built! And what a beautiful piece of land it is!
We arrived yesterday about 5PM after a much delayed start from Gulu due to van trouble. We were originally going to be at the Land by noon, and they still had "lunch" served to us when we arrived...around 6PM. (And dinner still followed about 1 1/2 hrs later!). We were greeted by another team of 6- all college-aged folk here for four months for a variety of reasons including social work, making a documentary, helping with administrative stuff, and working in the medical clinic. What a fun and motivated group of young people!
We were also greeted by Mike and Janelle, the missionary couple who is essentially running the construction and administrative aspects on the Land.. It was wonderful to see them again as I had grown so fond of them during my short stay here last year. And of course, we got to interact with the children for a bit as they did chores and such. I took the opportunity to walk around the 4 homes in which the children are currently living and saw some of the precious faces of the children I met last year. They were quite taken aback when I called some of them by name, and they just smiled their wonderful smiles! It is overwhelming to see the children living at this place that was just in progress of being constructed last year. Since last year, there are three finished homes, 2 more pit latrines, another school building, a medical clinic, an "all purpose" building, plus more that I'm probably forgetting to name! Can hardly express the emotions that are swirling in my brain right now!
After a lovely fire-side conversation time post-dinner, we headed to bed in our mud huts- girls in one, boys in the other. Molly, Nic and Johanna have been troopers with the rugged conditions which include pit latrines and "bucket" baths or showers with solar bags hung on a hook in a cement "shower stall". I'm a bit more used to such conditions but this is all a bit of a stretch for them, especially Molly and Jo and they've been so flexible and accomodating! Bill and Ronny seem to be really enjoying themselves and are learning a lot from the local workers and from conversations with Mike.

Today has been a bit of a lot of different things. We organized and sorted the many supplies our team brought- much of them thanks to all of your donations. It was awesome to see everything set out and to know all of the children who will be blessed by the supplies! Then while the rest of the team got a walking tour of the Land, I spent some time at the medical clinic with Susie (one of the college students who is starting nursing school) and Maureen, the hired Ugandan nurse. I helped to explain some of the multiple medications our team brought along and actually did some hands on care for the children who stopped by. Maureen left a few times and it was up to Susie and I to take care of the children who stopped by for various medical needs. It was definitely having to make a good educated guess on most of the diagnoses and treatments due to the simplicity of clinic, but I felt we did a pretty good job nonetheless. It was neat to be able to interact with the children one on one and to learn the names of those who stopped at the clinic. I look forward tomorrow to helping to organize and streamline more of the medication and medication paperwork.
Oops, looks like I have to go. Apparently the nurse left early today and Susie just came to tell me that there is a girl at the clinic with an abcess on her leg that Susie doesn't know what to do with!
Hopefully i'll update more tomorrow and add some pictures!