With EMI Uganda Gallery

A visit to EMI Uganda — Kajjansi Airfield, 2021

Note: My last visit to Uganda was in 2012. When your children are with you every day, their growth is imperceptible. Only visitors enjoy the privilege of celebrating growth. What a joy to see how EMI Uganda has grown in nine years!

EMI constructed this building in 2015 in partnership with Mission Aviation Fellowship. Located at the MAF airfield in Kajjansi, the EMI office is on the first floor.

EMI Uganda Director Phil Greene prepares to take a call just outside the office. Phil is a missionary kid with roots in East Africa.

In the engineering office, current interns Fortunate (structural) and Elly (electrical) prepare to start the workday.

A sample of the creative mess on the tables in the R&D office. This is a trial study prototype of a UV water purifier powered by hand crank — 1 minute of cranking for 1 gallon of water in the box…

One morning, Workshop Assistant Henry surprised Jesse with a beautiful hand-drawn ink illustration. He had commissioned it as a parting gift for Jesse, who had been the Workshop Manager for several years. It is being present for moments like these that I enjoy most.

The MAF base in Uganda is a major hub for airplane maintenance and repairs for all its operations in Africa.

Site Engineer Richard zooms into a construction detail on Staff Architect Matt’s phone at the Amazima Secondary School site in Jinja.

View of one of the student residence buildings at Amazima Secondary School campus. EMI’s design and construction support for Amazima goes back to 2014. EMI now self-performs Amazima construction.

Amazima staff place books on shelves in the new library building EMI just handed over. The interior wood and metalwork was produced in EMI’s Workshop.

Jasper from EMI’s Construction Management team poses from the auditorium mezzanine. The whole crew of over 120 men and women are rightfully proud of their workmanship on the campus.

Beautiful pink Frangipani in bloom at the Amazima Secondary School site.

My EMI Global colleague John is so calculating, studied, and precise that I’d joke he was an engineer posing as an architect. All that cleared up when I visited the home he is building for his family outside Jinja.

To recognize John’s tenure as EMI Uganda Director, EMI’s Workshop produced this commemorative steel plaque. He built it into the masonry of his study.

John has actively cultivated his property near the Nile with nearly 20 different types of fruit-bearing trees. I had the pleasure of eating star fruit right off the tree.

At a back-alley shop in Jinja, hardware sparkles like silver, nuts and bolts like gold.

One of the smallest creatures you’ll find in Entebbe’s botanical gardens along Lake Victoria.

The EMI Workshop started as an experiment in the stacked shipping containers on the left. It quickly outgrew this and moved into the hangar space in background. The container space will be repurposed as an R&D lab.

EMI’s Workshop Manager Benj leads a tour of the new Workshop, which is four times larger than the old space and custom-built by EMI. Now it’s Benj’s turn to keep building the culture of discipleship, care, and quality, on-time production that make EMI’s Workshop unique.

Peeking into the metalworking side of the Workshop. All these steel window and door frames are being made for an EMI design & construction project for a special needs children’s home outside Kampala.

When I asked Victor (Carpenter Technician) what it means to him to be part of EMI’s Workshop team, he shared passionately for several minutes. “My work has to be a symbol to show that Christ is living… even in the little crafts we do, someone sees and appreciates the nature of God in it.”

September, 2021. All photography by author.