Taking a break from my work in the Rehaboth computer lab, I ventured out to find my family. I found Jen in the Primary 6 classroom, helping children write letters to their sponsors back in America. A boy named Mayirigiti Afani sat in the front row working on some pretty amazing artwork.

I was impressed with Afani’s talent, especially for a kid his age, but his talent was even more impressive when I caught a glimpse of the thing he used to create his drawing. He called it a “pencil.”

When I was in school, kids used to chew on their pencils (was that yellow paint toxic?) and wage “pencil wars,” that ended when at least one of the combatant’s pencils shattered. In those days, we were never short of school supplies, so we never worried when we lost (or broke or ate or incinerated) our gear because we knew our parents would replace them without too much fuss.

Thankfully, the twinge of guilt I felt about my wasteful past was fleeting; we had come armed with enough gear to outfit the entire school thanks the many donors that had given pens, pencils and bags through our Swag for Charity campaign.

But it wasn’t as simple as rolling into Uganda with thousands of pens and pencils and nearly fifty donated pens. It took us several hours of studying the school roster and calculating what to give to whom. Eventually, the breakdown worked like this:

Primary 7: 29 Book (Conference) bags, 29 boxed premium metal pens from Experian

Primary 6: 47 pencils from General Dynamics, 47 Yello pens from Shmoocon, 47 premium pens from L3

Primary 5: 39 Pencils from General Dynamics, 39 Silver pens from Shmoocon, 39 premium metal pens from SafeNet

Primary 4: 50 AOET.org pencils from Jim Kelly, 50 premium metal pens from SafeNet, 50 Yellow pens from Shmoocon

Primary 3: 148 AOET.org pencils from Jim Kelly

Primary 2: 120 AOET.org pencils from Jim Kelly

Primary 1: 64 AOET.org pencils from Jim Kelly

Nursery: Private donations of crayons, markers, colored pencils from Girl Scouts at Grace Community church
Once we had this all worked out, we still had 500 plus pencils to sharpen. I couldn’t see handing the kids unsharpened pencils. So the entire family pitched in and started sharpening pencils.

So far things are going really well. We’ll keep you posted!