K i s i i z i

From photos I'd seen, I expected Kisiizi hospital to be one big building. So when we arrived, I was surprised to see that the hospital was more like a little community. The wards were spread out over the site, and there was also lots of little houses and offices dotted around. The whole place was surrounded by mountains, and Kisiizi waterfall looked out over the scene. In fact, it looked just like the Ewok village from Return of the Jedi...

As we travelled to Kisiizi, we stopped off at the equator.

The team at the equator, looking rather jet-lagged. We flew with British Airways, and the night flight was about 8 hours.

We also passed by a national park, and saw zebras, gazelle and Liz Paceys wandering around.

We arrived in Kisiizi at 19:30. The girls stayed in the Round House, and the guys stayed in the Winfrey house just behind. We used the Winfrey house as our base.

We had a great view of Kisiizi waterfall which was about 75m away from us, across a little meadow.

In the mornings at 08:00 we alternated between chapel (left) and the school assemblies. The chapel service was in Rukiga, with an English translator. The worship in both locations was always very lively, with clapping and drums.

We went to the school assemblies in order to say hi, and to teach the children the theme song for the mission. The children began their day by lining up outside in front of the flag and singing the national anthem.

We did the waterfall walk a few times, which consisted of climbing up a steep hill to get to the waterfall, then descending on the other side, crossing a river (as modelled by Doug opposite) and coming back through Kisiizi Lower.

Doing the route backwards involved coming down the very steep hill, which often meant witnessing the very funny sight of people (mostly Oly and Doug) slipping and making it down on their bottoms.

After the children's mission was over, we had an opportunity to do some odd jobs around the hospital. Chris designed a murial for the crafts classroom at the school, and we all mucked in with the painting.

The finished wall, showing Jesus, the boy with the loaves and the fishes, and the 5000 people in the background. (They're hiding).

People also went up onto the wards to play with the children, and to help the staff out. Rachel even delivered a baby!

We also had the opportunity to go out with the Hope Ministries team, which supports people with AIDS and also orphans whose parents have died of the virus.

We were taken to see a women dying of AIDS who lived in a mud hut with her children. (She was in the final stages).The house (left) was being built to replace the mud hut so that the orphans would have somewhere to live when the rains came.

The team on our last night at Kisiizi. Carolyn and Helen the house maids had baked a farewell cake for us, and we were just stuffing our faces when the Shutt family and friends came round with another cake.

Amazingly, the cars were only 20 minutes late coming to pick us up. Even more amazingly, Janet and Niamh managed to get up in time to come and see us off!