Thank You from the Menya School!

Many of you will remember our dear friend, Rachel Magoola, who visited us earlier this school year as part of the 2014 Spirit of Uganda Tour. In addition to be a singer and entertainer, Ms. Magoola also runs a school in rural Uganda. Through our friendship, we learned that the school in Uganda does not have any classroom projectors. So, our UA Technology Department was happy to donate some of the portable classroom projectors that we no longer use here at Ursuline. And so today we were surprised and thrilled to receive these visual thank you notes from the students of the Menya School in Iganga, Uganda. We hope that the projectors will benefit their school community for many years to come!  

Bring Back Our Girls

It has been over a month since a group of over 200 Nigerian girls were kidnapped from their boarding school in northern Nigeria by a local terrorist group known as Boko Haram. Ursuline joins the outrage of the international community in response to this barbarous act. Over the last few weeks, we at Ursuline have joined girls' schools all over the world in praying for the safe return of these young women to their families and communities. We continue to hope and pray that they will be home soon and that those responsible will be brought to justice.

Reflections on Uganda

Our Uganda delegation  reluctantly left Uganda on Tuesday and now we are back home in Dallas. Yesterday we met to reflect on our experience and our students had a lot to say about misconceptions of Africa and about how their perspectives on the world have changed. It was touching to hear how this experience "humanized Africa" for them as that, of course, is the goal. Some other great quotes from our meeting were "People need to understand that Africa is not a place that needs to be fixed" and "I left something in Uganda... my heart." Indeed, this experience will challenge us and will continue to live in our hearts forever.

Here is a look back at our happy days in Uganda ....

Sanyu Babies Home

One of our last activities in Kampala was visiting the Sanyu Babies home and volunteering for the afternoon. The Sanyu Babies home has been a home for abandoned babies in Uganda since the 1920's. Babies from 1 day old to 4 years old are cared for there. It was a very busy afternoon changing the babies and playing with them. Of course, it was very hard to leave them and a few tears were shed (by us, not so much the babies). It was an afternoon that will live in our hearts long after we have returned home.

Visiting Betty's family

On Saturday, our Ugandan delegation headed out of the city to a rural area about 2 hours from Kampala. As you know, we visited Hassan's family in an urban area earlier in the week and the goal of this visit was to understand the home life of those in villages and rural areas.  We were hosted by Betty, another Empower African Children scholarship student and her family. Our visit was great fun but also great work as we attempted to do the chores that are typical in African villages - including planting, digging up potatoes, fetching water and preparing lunch. We were most grateful for the help and the company of our friends from EAC. It was a humbling but fascinating experience for all!

Happy Easter from Uganda!

Oh what a glorious Easter Sunday we celebrated today in Uganda! We went to Mass at the Catholic YES (Youth Encounter the Savior) center with our favorite priest in the world, Father Joe. Father Joe made us laugh and sing and enjoy Mass so much that we didn't even realize that 3 hours had gone by! Then, we organized (or rather, tried to organize) an Easter Egg hunt at the church. It was quite chaotic but still very fun for all.
After Mass, we headed to the Kisugo house to eat lunch and spend time with our friends from Empower African Children. And, of course, we had to have another egg hunt. This hunt was even more festive than the first as we were all wearing bunny ears (shout-out to Maxine Sims for providing the much-loved ears!) and we decided to break a few confetti eggs along the way.
All too soon, it was time to say farewell to our friends. We already miss them more than we can say!!