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Struggle to survive is sometimes year-round

They have no electricity, plumbing or air conditioning. Families have been displaced; disease and civil unrest have claimed hundreds of lives.

That's daily life in post-Katrina New Orleans.

It's also routine in Uganda, from where Cynthia Lake returned last month after a three-month sabbatical volunteering in the African nation.

Lake, who is executive director of the Children's Dream Fund, has made a career of helping children who are seriously ill.

Some time ago, she learned about the Rafiki Foundation, a nondenominational Christian religious charity based in San Antonio, Texas. Its stated mission is "to turn helpless children in Africa into godly contributors in their countries."

Back in her St. Petersburg office last week, Lake said the village where she worked consisted of an orphanage and a girls center. "In Africa, it's important to have the identity of living in a village," she said. The foundation organized its community on 58 acres about 10 miles outside Kampala, the Ugandan capital.

The Rafiki Training Villages house some orphans, and Lake said that about 30 teenage girls came in as day students, some walking an hour each way.

Lake taught art, music, business machines, and food and nutrition. For a special occasion, she baked a Texas Sheet Cake, an amazing chocolate concoction that is baked on a cookie sheet or in a jelly roll pan, then frosted while it is still warm.

"There was not one girl there who has an oven at home," Lake said, but all of them wanted the recipe.

"That means they have a goal in life," she said, merriment in her voice - "to live in a house that has a stove." More seriously, she said, the villages offer the youngsters they serve more than a roof over their heads. The goal is to "train them to be leaders so they can change their country."

Less than 3 percent of the nearby villagers have electricity, and none have running water, Lake said. They cook on wood or charcoal stoves and draw water from a communal well. Those who commute generally live in one-room brick buildings that have dirt floors.

Lunch at Rafiki often is their only meal. They have a tea break every morning and access to a shower room, couches and a library.

"It's a real nurturing place," Lake said. She stayed in "a delightful guest cottage" and wrote e-mail on the school's computers, storing it to discs she took to Internet cafes in Kampala. She wrote informative missives home but sent only four. Sometimes the computers didn't work; sometimes the equipment was incompatible with the discs she used. "Communication was a bit of a challenge."

For the most part, the Ugandans "dig," or garden, on weekends, growing corn, carrots and other produce to sell. "Everywhere you go you see these little roadside markets" offering bananas, cucumbers and tomatoes.

The capital city has stores. In one, Lake purchased the cocoa powder for her famous cake. "It's not the cheapest thing, and it's not the easiest thing to find," she said. "You buy something, and two weeks later (the stores) won't have the same thing."

Africa's countryside is indescribably lush, she said. "I saw the most beautiful flowers and trees, and I think Florida is beautiful." Paved roads are called tarmac, but most of the paths she rode, in four-wheel-drive vehicles, were packed earth.

"The dirt is like Georgia red clay," she said. "You'd be driving down this horrible dusty road, and huge roses would be growing on the side of the road."

In one nearby village, a church has bought property and will build a church there. Members of its youth group, Lake said, get together weekly to shape bricks for the new church and fire them in an oven they constructed. Before she headed to Africa, Lake planned to combine vacation days and paid leave to fulfill her goal of spending extended time there. The Children's Dream Fund board of directors offered the sabbatical, and fellow members of Northeast Presbyterian gave and helped raise money for her expenses.

On the way back to St. Petersburg, Lake said, her mother offered to meet her in Chicago, where daughter Katharine Katzenberger is a student at Moody Bible Institute.

"I'm going to fly up and bring you home," Katharine Ann Lake said. The three women are ardent baseball fans, and Katzenberger works at Wrigley Field, caring for children of some Cubs players.

Re-entry was enlightening. The women went to the Grand Lux Cafe on Michigan Avenue, a subsidiary of the Cheesecake Factory that offers its patrons sumptuous portions.

Lake said she watched servers "take enough food back into that kitchen to feed everybody in the village outside Rafiki for a week. That is not an exaggeration. The stuff that we waste in this country - what it would do in Africa."

We are reminded, as the devastation of coastal communities in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama becomes more clear, what that bounty would do to alleviate the suffering of our neighbors.

Jabil Circuit's chief executive, Tim Main, wife Donna and their blended family - the couple have five children from previous marriages and twin sons, Carson and Cooper, born in March - spent time in Boston this summer. The coterie included Brian, Timmy and Melissa Main, and Haley and Cody Tyler.

They took the top floor of their hotel, but "Tim's trying to build character, so we flew coach," Donna Main said.

She's back to jogging and sounded not at all overwhelmed.

"Having twins has been just a total life-defining thing," she said. "It's been a really good bonding experience for the kids and the family."

The Mains are renters these days, continuing to live in the residence they sold before construction begins on a new eight-bedroom house nearby.

Friday

FALL TEA: GFWC St. Petersburg Woman's Club event for guests, new members. 1 p.m. St. Petersburg Woman's Club, 40 Snell Isle Blvd. NE. 896-5097.

Saturday

ACT ONE: American Stage season preview, gala. Black tie encouraged. 6 p.m. Tramor Cafeteria, Second Avenue and Third Street S, St. Petersburg. $90. 823-1600, ext. 217.

Sept. 11

RAYS OF HOPE FASHION SHOW: Benefit for Rays of Hope Foundation, A Gift for Teaching, features hors d'oeuvres, live music, Tampa Bay Devil Rays, their family and friends modeling fall fashions. 6:30 p.m. Nordstrom. International Plaza, Tampa. $100. 825-3470.

Mary Jane Park can be reached at 727 893-8267; fax (727) 893-8675; e-mail park@sptimes.com P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731.