What we brought with us

Long before we left our home cities, we were each telling everyone we knew that we would be coming to Uganda to volunteer. We collected tons of donations from co-workers, family members, friends, and friends of friends to bring with us on our trip. We asked for things like clothing, toiletries, toys, sporting equipment, books, and school supplies. The response was overwhelming - we ended up with too much to even carry! We had to ship several boxes to Kampala ahead of us. The remainder of these random donations, we stuffed into hockey bags and split amongst all of us. As a carry-on bag, we each brought a backpack, containing a laptop computer - donated by one of our Softchoice vendor partners.

After our day at the Street Kids Centre, we realize none of us are quite sure what the contents of all of our hockey bags, exactly are. We don't know what we have in there that would help the boys. The group that spent the day at the Babies Home has no idea what bag, if any, contains baby supplies. No one knows quite where our stash of software and digital camera equipment, which we were planning to donate to the OCA Computer Centre, is. Chaos! Utter chaos!

So, tonight we organize all of our donations, spreading them out on the floor in the lounge at our hostel and sorting them by common themes and appropriate-for age group. We find tons of clothes and sporting equipment to give to our new friends at the Street Kids Centre. (Many of the boys were wearing rags: torn and dirty shirts and pants, shoes either too large or too small, falling apart.)



We find toys and baby supplies for the baby orphanage. We pack up bags of kids clothing, books, and school items to take with us to Gulu and to Tororo - day trips we have planned to rural villages. Katie, Melissa's cousin from Chicago, and one of the non-Softchoicers on the trip, creates a detailed inventory list of what the donations are, and what's packed where.

As we're sorting, we all recount the highlights of our day, so we get to hear what volunteering at each of the three project sites was like. Those of us from Softchoice made sure to earmark some money from our year of Softchoice Cares fundraising for Uganda-related causes as soon as we knew we'd be here volunteering. The team as a whole decides unanimously to spend up to $2000 CDN of these funds on bunk beds, mattresses and bedding for the boys we met, hours earlier. We'll talk to Milton and get his blessing when he comes to meet up with us tomorrow. With the goods all packed and organized, and a plan to put some of the fundraised money to use, we feel energized. We feel like we have accomplished something small, already.