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Judah’s Journal: Uganda, December 7

December 07, 2008

About Judah Yarberry

Judah Yarberry is a 9 year old in Hilo, Hawaii. Since he was 6 years old he has been traveling with his mother to East Africa where she does relief work with RMF. Judah raises money for these trips by selling plants and greeting cards at his mother’s clinic, and doing yard service and other chores for friends, neighbors and supporters. He often collects and takes school supplies, toys, and other needed items to children in Uganda and Kenya. His favorite part about his travels is meeting and playing with other children, and being around all the animals of Africa (he wants to be a wildlife conservationist when he grows up). When in the US, he shares these trips through slide presentations for local schools.

Last week, we were in Tororo. I really enjoyed seeing my friends, the neighborhood kids around Mama Kevina school. When we walked toward the school, all the kids who remembered me from last year came running, saying “Jude, Jude!” They call me Jude, which is the name of their primary school, the St. Jude Primary school.

They took me over to their village, and showed me a kitten that I had gotten last year. It is pretty big now. We went into the soccer field, and it was nearly night, but the good thing about that is that there were a lot of frogs, and we caught a bunch of them.

Over the next few days I played a lot of soccer. On the last day we were in Tororo, we invited the kids over to Mama Kevina school for bread and tea. About 70 kids showed up from the area around the school, including all my soccer buddies.

Sister Clare gave a prayer, and gave a speech about how I had told my friends in America about my Ugandan friends, and that I had taken a suitcase to school and kids from my class brought clothes for me to bring back to Africa.

After tea, we gave out the clothes. They seemed really happy to get the new clothes, and put them on right away. Sister Clare said it was like Christmas for those kids. I was sad to say goodbye, but we could not stay longer than 4 days.

Now I am in the Country Inn, in Masindi, Uganda. We are going to a refugee camp every day, and I have soccer buddies there that I look forward to playing with every day. It is really dusty there, and I am all orange when I come home. The ball we are using is made of plastic bags in plastic bags tied together with rope.

Today it was 15 to 14. The 15 was us, and the 14 was the other team. We were scoring goals left, right and center. I learned that “gawa” means “ pass the ball.” It also means “divide” or “share”. I am trying to learn some Swahili every day. Next week we will give out the school supplies and toys my auntie and I put together for the kids here.

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