Preparations!

I've wanted to go to Africa for a really long time. And I mean a really, really long time. So much so that when I was almost fifteen I started volunteering with CARITAS For Children. Mr. Christopher Hoar was the only person involved in charity work who decided to take a chance by letting me help out - everyone else told me to wait until I was eighteen, or even older.

I walked into the office to meet him for the first time (insisting on leading the way instead of following behind my mother) and told Juan, our Program Administrator, who was working diligently at his desk and took the time to look up and say hello, that I was looking for Mr. Hoar.

I was incredibly nervous that day, but here I am three years later at eighteen, and everyone who works with CARITAS For Children is part of my "Caritas family".

I'm Madeleine - I'm starting my sophomore year at the University of Saint Francis in Fort Wayne, Indiana (my family moved away from Milwaukee shortly after I started volunteering with CARITAS For Children). Currently I'm working towards a bachelor degree in History. I love to write, so you'll hear from me a lot as I blog about my time in Uganda - part of my job as an intern is to keep everyone up to date on what we're doing in Uganda, and to spread the word about CARITAS through my school and diocesan newspapers and other media outlets.

By the time this posts, I will have arrived in Uganda after joining Joseph Kkonde, Deputy Headmaster at Stella Maris Primary Boarding School and Technical Coordinator for CARITAS For Children on his flight home, Wednesday, August 27th. I'll be staying until November 23rd.

I didn't realize this before, but looking back on the year of preparation, and especially this very busy and sometimes stressful summer, I can see that it takes more than just me to go to Uganda. It takes me, and a year and a half of hard work saving and making plans, my parents helping with passport, bank accounts, health records, school enrollment, and so much more; it takes my Caritas family supporting me, pointing me in the right direction, and stepping up to take the reins when coordinating plane tickets is far too confusing for me. It takes all my professors at Saint Francis thinking outside the box so I can stay enrolled in college this semester; Jamie Starkey, the Passport Health Vaccine Specialist in Fort Wayne who took a huge amount of time to walk me through everything I would need and is quite honestly the most incredible nurse I've ever met, and all the bankers at Wells Fargo who can all now spell my name backwards since I've been in six or seven times in the past three weeks. If my parents had only known eighteen years ago that by adding that extra E in my name (Madeleine instead of Madeline) they are taking so many hours off my life by making me spell my name again and again!

Another thing I never realized is how much preparation it would take. If I had to make a list, I'm sure it would only cover half it, but here it goes!

The list goes on! But I think that all of the work is going to be worth it.

I think what I am most excited about now is not what I had first expected. Going to a foreign country, living away from my parents and four siblings, and encountering a new language and culture, are all very exciting things, but what I am most looking forward to is meeting everyone. I've heard so much about the people I am going to work with, all of it wonderful, that I can't wait to meet them in person.