This week has been a real pleasure. As a start, we welcomed our fellow interns (Team B) into the guest house that we are currently staying in. Team B is comprised of an amiable group of one sophomore from Wake Forest University, and five graduated seniors in addition to one graduate student from U.C. San Diego. The team offers great diversity in the fields they study/studied and hopefully they make the most of their experience as interns here.

Later in the week, we had the opportunity to build a little more on the work sight. The community construction team had us utilize the broken bricks that weren’t put to use, by breaking the bricks into smaller pieces and leveling out the rooms. Afterwards, we transferred concentrated dirt into the rooms that were leveled out to begin the foundation process for the flooring. On top of this, the construction workers prepared for the roof installation by coating the crown of the building with cement and forming the support beams to hold up the roof. Overall, the workload was a bit lighter than what we had already done prior this week, but we’re excited to see the project swiftly coming together.

Towards the end of the week, on June 16th, all the interns were invited to a program in Amaji Primary School–in the Kamdin Sub-County for the commemoration of the day of the African Child. In 1991, the day of the African Child was founded by the African Unity organization, in honor of the students who participated in the Soweto uprising in 1976. On that day thousands of children marched on the streets in protest for better education, hundreds were gunned down and killed, thousands were injured. This day raises awareness for the improvement of the education system for all the children in Africa.

During the program our seats were placed next to many different political leaders in various capacities and civil servants of the Oyam district. We watched the children from primary schools all around the county preform the national anthem, march, sing, and perform speeches. The speeches were made up of excerpts of original remarks of the uprising, dances, short skits, poetry, and essays. Afterwards we heard speeches from the different Chairpersons all over the county, speaking about the importance of the day and a closing speech by the Chief Guest- who happened to be a child by the name of Adong Vicky Amayi. Her speech spoke about the importance of protecting children rights and the responsibility of a child. As a closing statement she stated, “Concussively, let us all join hands together to protect children’s rights. I say this for God and my country.”