As I walk down the dirt road to the market, I quietly enjoy watching my feet become covered in dust. It reminds me of the afternoons I spent playing outside as a child, only to be met at the door by my mother, washcloth in hand, refusing to let me inside until my blackened feet were scrubbed clean.

During my internship in Uganda, I'm rooming at the CARITAS Learning Center on the same campus as the Stella Maris Primary and Secondary Boarding Schools. I'm fortunate to have Teddy prepare meals during my stay here.

During my internship in Uganda I accompanied Sr. Carolyne, CARITAS Program Coordinator in Nkokonjeru, on a visit to meet with Bishop Christopher Kakooza who was installed as the new head of the Lugazi Diocese on June 5, 2015. We traveled with Fr. JohnBosco Wasswa, the Catholic parish priest of Nkokonjeru Parish where CARITAS For Children has one of its child sponsorship programs. The Nkokonjeru Parish Choir was also along to meet with Bishop Kakooza.

On Sunday, June 7th, Teddy and I attended Mass at the Stella Maris campus church for the celebration of the Feast of Corpus Christi [The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ].

This past Saturday afternoon, the CARITAS students who attend St. Peter Secondary School met at the Nkokonjeru Parish to help clean up the church and the grounds. Tasks included scrubbing the church floors, weeding along the church steps and weeding, raking and hoeing the parish yard. The activities occurred just in time to spruce up the parish for the Feast of Corpus Christi on Sunday, June 7th.

From church choirs to school recitals, singing and dancing in Uganda are almost always accompanied by drums. Even the nursery school students are learning how to tap out a rhythm on small drums. Drums also accompany the choir during Sunday Mass—when they echo through the airy assembly hall, the sound is really incredible.

This evening I visited the Sisters' garden with Sr. Carolyne, Program Coordinator for CARITAS For Children's child sponsorship programs in Nkokonjeru. The Little Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi have some land behind the convent and Sr. Carolyne spends many Saturdays there working in the gardens.

When I was a kid, I used to love playing with water in the sink. There were so many questions to answer – what happens to a Kleenex when it gets wet? Does hot water taste the same as cold water? Can my doll swim? As I played, my mother certainly had to worry about the sink overflowing, but she never had to worry about whether I would get typhoid or cholera from the water.

Ester Masane and Deborah Zuluka are sisters 

For many people from outside of Uganda, however, the sisters’ presumably different surnames make their relationship confusing...

This is because they do not have surnames in the manner which people outside of Africa do – instead, they have clan names.

Like most Ugandans, rather than receiving given names and surnames at birth, Ester and Deborah received religious names and clan names.

Four-year-old Benedict lives in a two room house made of reddish-brown mud plastered over a wooden frame, woven from sticks. In places, the mud has crumbled away from the frame, letting small pools of light inside, where they dot the dirt floor. Angela, Benedict’s grandmother, wants to patch the holes, but, at about eighty years old, she cannot manage the task on her own.