We hope you all had a Merry Christmas

& wish you a Happy New Year!!

Christmas Cup Final

Just before Christmas, the final game of the cup took place. Of course, the game couldn’t start without a little bit of drama. The Taxi Drivers did not want to start the game until the grand prize cow was paraded down to the field. After all this was sorted out, the game began.

Just 3 minutes into the game, Our Kibaale Community Centre team took the lead. We managed to hold onto the lead for the rest of the game, winning an exciting, end to end game 1-0.

This tournament has been a great way for our centre to reach out to the community.

The Christmas Cup

This year our centre has sponsored a soccer tournament. It has been called “The Christmas Cup”. There were 6 local teams including our own team of builders, teachers, maintenance workers, kitchen staff, students and even a mzungu (white guy)! The other teams have come from local villages. There have been some great games with huge crowds. The whole town comes out to watch.

The favourites to win are the taxi drivers of Kibaale. They won the last organized tournament. This coming Friday is the championship game. It will feature the Taxi Drivers VS the Kibaale Community Centre team.

We were even able to buy the biggest, most delicious looking cow as the grand prize. Second place will receive a goat.

The crowd as you walk towards the field

The guys in blue are from Byakajula, a neigbouring village, and KCC is in grey.

This is the semi-final game which we won 2:1 in dramatic fashion.

Grand prize cow!!!

Farm

One of the biggest projects we do here in Kibaale is the farm project. We have 3 major departments on the farm; cows, chickens and trees. Our farm is approximately 65 acres.

Chickens. We have around 400 chickens and they lay around 220 eggs per day. We use those eggs to feed the children that go to the school. Any left over (which is a lot), gets sold to local shops or even some bigger hotels in nearby cities.

Cows. We have 17 dairy cows. 2 of which are milking right now. Every day they produce around 12 Litres of milk. This milk is also used to feed the children at the school. Another 7 of those cows are due to give birth any day now. We recently lost one of our cows after it was bit by a cobra snake.

Trees. Last year we planted around 14 000 pine trees. This is an excellent source of income, if you have the patience to wait. These will mature in the next 15-20 years and can then be sold for around $400 per tree. Each seedling only cost us about 30 cents! We hope to plant another 10 000 pine trees in the next year.

Elkanah is our Farm manager. He is a former student here and has a Bachelors degree in Vocational Studies of Agriculture.

Staff Loans

There are many different branches to the Kibaale Community Centre and a lot of staff needed to run it, right now there are almost 150 staff members! A large number of our staff have spent their entire lives in Kibaale and are not very well off.

Byinda is one of those staff members. He grew up in Kibaale and even went to our school many years ago. He is now 30 years old and his job is to man the main gate and the visitor’s guest book. He makes a very modest salary of around $42 per month. He is the only member of his family who has a steady income. With that money he supports his mother, sisters family, his brothers family and of course his own family. He has one small boy. His newborn daughter died 2 months ago from tetanus.

You can imagine how difficult it is with those circumstances to have spare money to do anything with. His 70 sq ft house was made of mud, and every time it rained, it would start to cave in on him.

One thing we offer to employees is a staff loan. Many people use it to buy cows, or other livestock. But many use it to improve their houses. Byinda was able to build an entire new house with his staff loan! Construction of the new house!

Byinda and his wife in their new home!

Byinda's sister and her children who also live there.

Mom, neices, nephews...

Enjoying a local treat, jackfruit!!

Nursery Applications

Every November the school and the sponsorship department begin the agonizing task of taking in the nursery school applications. I say agonizing because there are so many needy children and we just can’t accept them all into the school. This year there were 398 applications. The kids that live too far away, are too young or haven’t yet learned how to speak are the ones that don’t go on to the next step. The 398 children were shaved down to just 132. Now it’s up to the sponsorship department to visit their homes and their families to determine which of these kids are the neediest. At the end, we have just 45 spots.

Please pray for our staff in the sponsorship office that has to make these difficult decisions.

Jamie Davis hard at work in the KCF office!!

Special Gifts

Once a month, our child sponsorship program, KCF, gives out special gifts. Special Gifts are purchased by the sponsor back in Canada. They can choose from a wide variety of things from gift baskets, to goats, cows or even gifts as big as water tanks, kitchens or houses for the children ands their families.

Today is gift basket day. The children are SO excited for this. The gift baskets have things in it like soap, toothpaste, salt, sugar and other food items.