It Takes a Lot to Build a Playground

We are so thankful to have projects to work on to help us pass the time. However, I think they are helping us pass more time than we expected. From the first trip to get wood; which turned out to be a six hour adventure to and from Kampala for Bill. To the new hand saw breaking on the first cut today, God has been teaching us a great deal.

At home we joke that every good house project takes at least two trips to Home Depot. In Uganda this is also true except there is no such place as Home Depot. The lumber yard in Kampala looks more like this:

And there are four choices for wood, from there you plane the wood and cut and form it yourself.

The taxi ride to get there looks like this:

(and this would be considered not crowded)

We have been so thankful for Joachim and the wood shop at African Village. It has cost us more than we expected, but there is no way this project would have happened without the use of their machines. However, even in this God has taught us how privileged we are to have power tools and work benches at home. It has been humbling to have to wait on someone else to make progress on your project. Often Bill will be told to come at 8am for his wood only to be told to come back midday and at midday told to come at 4pm. Work scheduled for Monday quickly became a project for Friday as we waited patiently for our turn on the machines. However, Joachim is a master craftsman, he has made every bed, door and desk (and probably more) for all of African Village. Bill probably could have made all the cuts of wood on his own, but Joachim took great pride in helping us and making sure everything was perfect.

workshop at African Village

Joachim

We also learned why so much construction in Uganda is done with brick and mortar. Not only is it difficult to get wood and tools, but we have arrived several days ready to work only to find that the babbies home is without power and we cannot plug in our power drill. (It's a good thing we had a lot of sanding to do.) Today Raymond, our driver/guide, took it upon himself to drive the half hour back to down and get a haircut so that he could take advantage of their electricity and plug in the drill to charge at the barber shop. It worked! The charge the batteries received was enough to get through all the projects on today's agenda.

It has been amazing to watch Bill turn this project into reality. Everything has to be done off site and then assembled at the orphanage. Each visit he takes measurements, makes notes of angles and calculates the next need. It's not like at home where you can hold something up, mark it, and then walk to the other side of the room and make the cut. What starts out as piles of wood:

Quickly becomes this:

There is still much work to be done, but we are thankful for the progress we have made. It has been humbling to figure out how to do a job with all the wrong tools or no tools at all. I used to complain about the 15 min drive to the superstore that had 65 choices for every possible construction need. I used to be annoyed by the clutter of tools, screws and nails on Bill's work bench in the basement. When I get home I will take time to stand in our workshop and be thankful for the mess. We have so much that we don't even realize we have until we are without it. I am so thankful for this project and the way it has helped me to understand blessing at an even deeper level.