“Divine Appointment”

When Mary returned from her experience we had long discussions about what she saw, and how different this trip had been from the previous ones. She also made several new friends chiefly Pastor George Nsamba and his dear wife Beatrice from the Wingate Guest house in Kampala. This was what they call a “divine appointment”. 

Mary and Polly at the Wingate

SMI had been working closely with a company here in the states developing and installing rain catchment containers for local villages. The beauty of these systems is they literally catch the rainwater as it comes off the roofs and is gravity fed into 10,000 gallon containers. These containers can be filled within two days during the rainy season. The down side to this simple technology is filling the containers during the dry season. George Samba is the Ugandan representative for the U.S. Company developing these systems. 

He is also a local pastor responsible for several local churches and well-connected throughout the area.

Mary had the opportunity to stay at Wingate and go on excursions into the Kampala Markets looking for supplies for the jewelry making and craft business that SMI was helping to develop. Beatrice was an excellent guide and helped the muzungu get the local prices and not the two hundred percent markup reserved for foreigners. 

We started to talk about what it would look like to come back just the two of us. How would we cope and adjust when we were not “protected” by that larger group crowded onto a bus and fared through the city on the way to the countryside eight hours away?