5Crawfords

PART III The project team (L to R): Long-term volunteer Denis, Long-term volunteer Megan, Intern Ryan, Intern Suellen, Volunteer Ben, Intern Tim, Intern Andrew, and me. The Master Plan, designed and sketched by Megan Saturday May 23rd: Presentation day – after a late night we got an early start to make sure we were ready for the presentation. Since we had finished everything the night before, it was actually a pretty relaxing morning. But just as we were feeling really good about being ready ahead of time, the power went out! All week, the power had only been out a couple times and for short periods. This time, it went off around 7:30am and stayed off all morning. So with the presentation to begin at 10am, we asked the hotel staff around 9:30am to turn on the generator. Unfortunately, they were out of fuel so they had to go get some. After waiting for an hour, they finally returned with gas and started it up. The topographic survey, performed by Interns Ryan and Andrew. It's pretty...

PART II Tuesday May 19th: This morning, we sent the surveyors and civil engineers off at just before 8am to the site to begin their work. We then set up a work room on the top (4th) floor of the hotel. The entire top floor is an open conference room. We checked and no activities are planned for the conference room all week, so the whole thing is ours! The architects Megan (on right) and Suellen get to work while intern Tim sets up his computer. Our work room was fantastic - a huge open room with no people traffic and a great cool breeze that blew all day since we were 4 floors up. About mid-morning, intern Tim and I went into town with Pastor Richard to do some research on various building materials. Since our office has extensive data on material costs around Kampala, we picked about 10 things to price so we could compare with Kampala prices to get an idea of what the comparative building prices are. Having Pastor Richard with us was a necessity, as very few people in Tanzania speak...

PART I Sunday May 17th: The trip to Tanzania got off to an early start – up at 3:30am and on the road by 4:00am. We’d packed the van the night before and parked it at the office so we could get right on the road. The 220km (137 mi) to the border was pretty uneventful. At the immigration office, we almost got stuck as one of the interns was about a month past due on his visa. The immigration officer was threatening to send him back to Kampala, but after about 15 minutes of apologizing and asking what we could do, he finally stamped it and allowed him to continue (free of charge, surprisingly). The Tanzanian side was a breeze, and we were on our way in Tanzania! This is how we sat for 14 hours before finally arriving at the ferry. The first 150km was amazing – the road was better than anything I’ve seen in Uganda so far, and the surrounding terrain we were bisecting was so beautiful. The terrain is hilly, but with large, circular valleys between the hills covered in green grass with clus...

This past week, myself and interns Ryan and Lindsay completed our project report for New Hope Uganda's new Musana Camps site. Since we've been back from the project trip, I have been overseeing the staff, interns and volunteers from the trip as we've finalized the project report. This process typically takes 3 months or longer, but due to time constriants with my next project our timeline was shortened to 7 weeks! Civil Engineering Intern Ryan, working on site during the trip Architectural Intern Lindsay, sketching renderings on the project trip Last week, the process of making corrections, printing and binding the reports and preparing them to mail out to the ministry and trip volunteers has kept us all busy. In all, the eMi team has spent over 1700 hours working on this project! I don't have any pictures of the completion process, but our outgoing Director Chad Gamble made up a great photo essay of the whole process for his trip, which printed this week. So if you...

Graysen dressed as Jack Sparrow for a Pirates and Princesses birthday party a friend threw. (We brought this costume back with us from the States in February). In this picture, Graysen is eating a fried grasshopper - the first in our family to try one of these local treats. Even though he thought it was ok, he may be the last of us to try one too! The last few weeks have felt very 'normal'. No major sickness, no major problems - just typical life stuff. We did go away to Jinja for a couple of nights since the boys were off school for their 2 week Easter break. We went with our neighbors the Kelly's and another family (the Stride's) here who are a part of a small group of families who we hang out with. We had a fun time, visiting the Welcome Home orphanage (we love going by and checking in with the kids and goings-on there), letting the boys swim, going to see Bujagali Falls where I rafted last Summer, and mountain biking (my neighbor Brian and I went for the morning) ...