Volunteering with EAP

On Wednesday the boys and I went out to a local village called, Kitengessa, to volunteer with East African Playgrounds (EAP). EAP is a U.K. based charity that builds proper playgrounds; slides, swings, monkey bars, climbing areas for primary schools. I have gotten to know the founders, Tom & Carla, pretty well in the last 2 months and since the boys are on School Holiday they invited them out to help with the project. EAP has 7 persons from the U.K. volunteering on this project for 3 weeks, but they welcomed me and the boys help. They are in the 2nd week of the project. All of the welding and structural building has been completed, so it was time to paint.

When we arrived that afternoon we had our instruction of the do’s & don’ts for the project; don’t touch the metal surface with your hands, because the paint won’t stick and how to apply the paint etc. Then it was time to wipe down all the surfaces, as dust had collected on it in the morning. We also found that despite telling the local village kids that they couldn’t climb and play on the playground before it was completed they decided it would still be “fun” to do so! That left a big mess of red Uganda dirt to clean off before we could paint.

We then started painting and mingling with all of the U.K. volunteers. It was a fun afternoon painting and getting to chat with everyone. The boys rather enjoyed meeting the new people and getting paint on themselves. Well actually I got more paint on them then they did on themselves. I was standing on a bench and just as I brought my brush down Robert walked under me and I painted his head. It looked as if he was going gray…too funny! Thanks EAP for a GREAT afternoon!

If anyone thinks that building a playground in Uganda would be FUN and is interesting in joining EAP in 2012, as an individual volunteer or creating their own group of 7 to 10 volunteers please contact me, Rita Beach, at rita.fhlm@yahoo.com. Thank you!