Looking for the right organisation

"it belongs to my childhood friend and soccermate"

Looking for an organisation that welcomes us as volunteers appeared to be pretty hard. Even though there are alot of agents that offer these kinds of opportunity, many of them ask for alot of money for their service. That's not what I wanted. There are a few that manage to give their volunteers a scholarship (e.g. weltwärts), but most of these organisations don't accept couples and for the few that did we were already too late with out application. A close friend told me to try and get in touch with the organisations directly. We searched the internet for organisations and wrote lots and lots of applications. Our motivation went up and down like a rollercoaster: Some answers gave us hope, but the majority was devastating. After a few weeks we let go of the initial hope to work with (and for) children in Africa. It just seemed impossible. We switched and started looking for any community service outside Europe. And then we waited...

... until Leonard Kazooka wrote me a message via facebook. Leo and I know each other from my trip to South-Africa in 2010. I was a little bit angry with myself that the idea of asking him didn't come to my mind earlier. So I told him about our plans and asked him if he knew an organisation that might need volunteers. Leo is from Uganda and told me about his "childhood friend and soccermate" who is the founder of a charity organisation named Abato. Julian and I immediately checked out their website and excitement came up. It sounded almost to perfect to be true so we hurried and filled in their contact-sheet. 
The next morning I had a friend request on facebook from a stranger. I almost ignored it (because you know - random facebook request) but Julian didn't: The request came from Moses Kalanzi, Founder of Abato Foundation Uganda! Oh my god - NOW I was thrilled! Julian and I put some info about us together and sent it to Moses. And then we waited...
...Every day we checked our inbox several times, everywhere we went we asked each other: "Do you think he already replied?" I expected every message that I got to be from Moses and every message that wasn't made me more nervous and curious. 

Then, on December 23rd, after seven incredibly long days, Julian and I got the answer we were waiting for:
Moses message blew my mind. I got so excited when I first read the long text that I didn't really understand half of it, I just couldn't believe it. We both said in front of the PC petrified. 
Julian broke the silence: "Anne, we are flying to Uganda..."


Anne

Deutsche Version