03/06 - 28/06 Zanzibar...MAINLY Zanzibar

So I started the next few weeks expecting the arrival of Matt on the 10th June... Seems I was the absolute last person to know he was swinging by two days earlier!

After the initial shock of the surprise (I mainly blame Connor) and a few days bumming around Jinja - mainly visiting ASCO, Sonrise and watching the first of the terrible England matches at Martin's pub - we set off for a week's holiday in ZANZIBARRRR!

We got a night bus to Nairobi - we were plonked at the back with the worst seats on pothole filled roads, a swear I nearly got whiplash we were thrown out of our seats so much! After a night being surrounded by the most white people than I have been in 5 months in a backpackers hostel (it was really quite surreal!), we got a taxi to the airport at stupid o'clock in the morning. Being in Nairobi felt like being in London, including London prices (grrr...). We went past Windsor House, Oxford Gardens, and other such aptly names places.

We flew with a local East African airline, Fly 540, and there were definate T.I.A. moments! We were the only airline desk in the airport without a computer so our boarding cards were filled out manually, and our names ticked off a list on a piece of paper to show we'd arrived.

Coming back flying from Zanzibar was just surreal - our hold bags were weighed on giant scales that you used for cooking twenty years ago, we had to then walk around the desk, collect our bags again and take them to the x-ray machine. Once they were cleared we were sent to immigration to get our exit stamps but there was no one there so the security guard just told us to carry on through. Once we got our hand luggage checked (my bag got searched containing mainly books and Matt's bag didn't when it contained mainly liquids), we were called back to immigration to get our stamps and had to be checked all over again. Finally the total ten passengers were shouted at the board the plane to Nairobi via Mombasa. We touched down in Mombasa and we were all asked to leave the plane in order to get our new visas. After a big muddle trying to find out which forms to fill in and which queue to get in then a wait of ten minutes for the immigration officer to find the book with transit visas, we collected our hold bags and were sent to Customs. We put the bags on the Customs table and pretty much as they touched the table we were told they were cleared. They were then taken away from us to go back on the plane and we were asked to get back on the plane...naturally going back through immigration we had just passed. Then we took off for Nairobi and everything went back to a normal plane journey!

I apologise if that last paragraph is a big muddle and doesn't make too much sense but the whole journey didn't make sense, although it seemed completely logical to the airline.

So Zanzibar itself!

We arrived in Stone Town and it's like Africa meets India, it was amazing! As a muslim country I saw very few women showing their hair so i felt even more like a prostitute than usual even when I had covered my legs and shoulders. Every where you go there are masala spice smells coming from all the restaurants and shops, and the architecture is what I'd imagine in India - I've never seen anywhere in Africa like it! There's no point in having a car because very few streets can fit a car down them, some I could touch both sides of the street at the same time! The story goes that at one time it was THE place for the Indian slave and spice market and was one of the most profitable towns in Africa and so built these magnificent houses and mosques and gardens. When the exporting stopped so did the development, businesses slowed down and all the huge buildings stopped being maintained and have now started the crumble. Literally. Having said that, there are some areas which are still quite rich and the gardens are still well exploited as tourist areas. So we stayed two nights in Stone Town discovering the maze of streets and shops, visiting the worst museum in the history of the world and relaxing on the beach looking over to Tanzania mainland.

After Stone Town we headed to Pongwe, described in Lonely Planet as 'quintessential tropical paradise'. Which it most certainly was, but would explain why it's more of a honeymoon destination as opposed to a backpackers spot. We saw a lodge advertised on a few walls in Stone Town so we briefly checked it out on the website and booked for two nights. We got two dalla-dallas (the Tanzanian version of a matatu) which are open sided trucks with a roof and benches inside, and we got off in the middle of nowhere. We were the only two people in our lodge/resort and the only two people we could see on the whole beach...until we discovered the $200 a night resort for the honeymooners next to us. This meant that there was ever only one table set in the 'restaurant', one pair of footprints around the resort and complete and utter silence the rest of the time. But the beach was absolutely amazing - there were your typical paradise wooden boats out at sea, bright blue/turquoise shallow water, white sandy beach and rolling waves...heaven.

NEXT STOP - Kendwa. He headed up to the north of the island for the weekend as it's where all the travellers go for a bit more atmosphere. We stayed at Kendwa Rocks, the place where they hold the biggest beach parties and Full Moon parties in Tanzania. Here the weather was pants and drizzling for two days, but hakuna matata as we went SCUBA DIVING! That was honestly one of the most incredible things I've ever seen, I felt like I was in Finding Nemo! We had a two hour boat trip in the pouring rain to Mnemba Island - the best coral around Zanzibar - and anchored on a sandy patch where my breakfast swiftly made reappearance from all the rocking... But as soon as we got in the water it was so calm the sea sickness went away. We'd practised some skills like getting rid of water out of your equipment on the boat, and did a real practice down on the sandy patch. I was doing a dive with another English girl, Catherine, and an English instructor, Darren. We then swam to the coral which was just incredible. We saw sting rays, giant catfish bigger than me (!),
we got about ten cm close to about twenty yellow fish pecking away at some eggs completely oblivious to our presence there, luckily no sharks, but unfortunately no turtles. A little stupidly, I didn't have enough weights on my belt so even though my jacket was deflated I spent so much energy trying to swim down all the time. This meant that when we got back up I was absolutely exhausted and missed out on swimming with about forty dolphins...lame. However, after stomaching some sugar biscuits I was ready for our second dive. I was so much more relaxed on the second dive, I wasn't swimming so much because I had more weights and I was used to the weird feeling of breathing underwater. I've literally spent my free time ever since working out how to get enough money to go diving relatively soon!

So after Kendwa, we started our long journey back to Jinja. But if I'm honest, Matt's last few days were spent still on holiday, mainly chilling out by the pool :)

But as a Jinja update, Sonrise is now renting a second house only a few hundred metres away from the babies home where the toddlers now stay which allows for more babies to join the main house. The newest addition is a two year old girl called Sonyu, who is smaller than some of the three month old babies. She's absolutely tiny, her skin is pretty much hanging off her bones but she's got almost a full set of teeth and her smile it gorgeous! She was found in the Kampala slums, some ten year old street kids were found looking after her as her teenage mother went to work in the days - she gets very excited when you put food in front of her and she'll stuff herself until her little belly is about to explode, but as soon as you take food away from her, or you eat in front of her she gets really worried and upset as before, she never knew when her next meal was going to come!

ASCO is still doing well, however a lot of the boys are suffering from malaria despite having the nets and a few of them have typhoid. So the next priority when more donation money comes in is to buy equipment and coal to all them to boil large batches of water for safe drinking.

SO THAT'S ABOUT IT. I think. Everyone in the Guest house leaves in the next two weeks apart from me and Connor so we're making the most of having everyone around.

Loveee x

17/05 - 02/06

Jeez so we've gone past the four month mark now! How scary!

So after the family left, and a few lonely days at the guesthouse on my own with Yohan the missionary and Heather the 38 year old teenager (she was actually amazing though!), THE ETHIOPIA LOT RETURNED HOME! They had some amazing stories and awesome photos, it was great to catch up. The only problem was when I jump hugged Tom when he walked in the door and he said "I've got to go to Kampala, I forgot mine and Soph's passports and credit cards on the bus." Luckily they did get everything back...

We had a mental trip to Rwanda planned with Joe, Dom, Tom, Marianne, Soph and I from the Friday for a few days, but then Sophie's parents heard about a few bombs here and there in Kigali so it ended up being just Joe, Dom, Marianne and I...wimps.

So at midnight Friday night, we embarked on our 13 hour bus journey to Kigali! Needless to say we had no sleep due to VERY potholey roads, so it was probably a very bad idea to do the Genocide Museum first thing after lunch on the Saturday. We got there all excited that we were in Rwanda we swiftly became very ashamed of being white and human when seeing the museum...I'd go as far as saying that it was actually on a par with the holocaust that's how bad it was, mainly because the holocaust was psycho Hitler controlling a nation, where as this was a whole population who just turned on their friends and neighbours with machetes and no one tried to stop it. There were rooms full of skulls, full of dug up clothes, full of the killing instruments... There was also a room which was lined with hundreds of photos of victims and messages, and a video was playing in the background of stories of survivors who'd lost their families. A Rwandan woman was watching the video with us, and she told us that the person on the video was her cousin...2 minutes later she'd thrown herself on the floor and was sobbing her heart out yelling about her family who'd died...it was one of the most heartbreaking things I'd ever seen.

Despite our stomachs were in turmoil after that, we hadn't eaten for a good 20 hours so we went to the main shopping centre in Kigali which was like walking into a mini Mall at Cribbs!! It was very surreal considering I've been shopping at markets and wooden shacks for the last four months. Being an old French colony, we managed to find a boulangerie selling fresh bread and croissants...I COULDN'T HAVE GOT MORE EXCITED - first fresh bread since January!

Down the road was THE Hotel des Milles Collines from Hotel Rwanda so we went and had a drink there which was pretty cool.

So after a very intense day and a half in Kigali, we got a bus up to Gisenyi by Lake Kivu. We hadn't really done much research about it but it was the easiest place to get to by the lake. It turns out Lake Kivu is the first lake in the world exploiting methane for energy which means if something goes wrong the whole lake could have blown up, and when you're swimming you have to watch out for bubbles of methane as they can give you serious burns, and we were 1 km away from Congo and we could hear explosions and see smoke rising from burning buildings and could see a constant trail of UN planes flying in and out, and the HUGE inactive volcano was definately glowing red at night... So really I'm quite surprised we left alive!!

Marianne and I were having a whale of a time busting out our French and showing up the boys :) we found a 'Maison du Lait' (House of milk) and Joe's been missing fresh milk terribly so we went in. Turned out the milk was like sour yoghurt and was more like Fromage Blanc we find in France...Joe couldn't have been more disappointed!

We mainly spent our time chilling out by the lake but they way people stared was UNREAL. I thought Uganda was bad! We were just reading our books, Mazza and I were covering our legs and shoulders and everything, and there were at least ten people, grown men and women (kids always stare so they don't count) just looking at us and staring...for no reason! When we were waiting for the bus back to Kigali we were playing cards on the pavement, other Rwandans were playing their own games too, but there was at least 30 people watching us play pairs - policemen, shop keepers, motorbike drivers - just watching a very uninteresting game! It was WEEEIRD.

So then the Tuesday night we got a 20 hour bus back to Jinja (it had a lot more stops and detours) and Jinja couldn't have felt more like home :)

Since then, it's just been trying to get back into our routines. Last weekend was the last weekend with all of us in Jinja as Joe, Dom and Ollie left for South Africa yesterday. On the Friday we met the new set of AVs who had just arrived in Jinja, most of them are very nice but 3/4 of the boys were just posh idiots, but the girls were cool. The Saturday was our big Busogee night - we had a five course meal of our favourite foods: Tomato brushetta and mini homemade rolexes to start, homemade burgers as our main, nutella banana and chapati for dessert, then to finish we had Joe's famously disgusting 'At Ease' which no one ate but is a classic. Ollie and Miles, while they were travelling in East Africa, wrote a Busogee song with a verse about the worst bits of each of us and the chorus was about how we all like to snuggle a lot:

The snuggle's on on the Busogee sofa where the
sofas are soft and the snuggles are long,
Tonight's the night so lets take this opportunity
to keep on singing our Busogee soooooong.

It's the honestly the cheesiest and best song I've ever heard.

So now the Busogees are slowly starting to disband, the Hampton boys have now gone, Miles is leaving in two weeks, then Sophie two weeks later, then everyone else apart from Connor and I two weeks after that! Luckily we've got friends floating in and out so it'll be good :)

Love and that! x

01/05 - 16/05 Safari and a really yellow shirt...

So my laptop busted out on me so I can't put up photos quite as easily due to RUBBISH internet :( So I won't bother with writing about our safari because you really need photos to SHOW you how awesome it was! But here's a little teaser - we got charged by a Silverback Mountain Gorilla and got stuck in a ditch surrounded by a pack of lions. I kid you not.

So by now, the parents have experienced quite a lot!

Their job for the last week was to spend the money they’d fundraised for on my mum’s birthday last year.

Valley View was first on the list this time. The parents had offered to concrete the floors in the brick building. It will make all the difference for a) the safety of the kids b) the teachers won’t be tripping up when they’re teaching c) the kids won’t cut their feet anymore if they don’t have shoes.

Next was spending some of it at ASCO. When we were on safari, all the boys moved into the ASCO house and spent their first night on mattresses! They had a big party (I was so gutted to miss it) with good food, dancing and Will entertained them with fire sticks and fire poi. However they don’t have what every house should have – mosquito nets, especially as it’s coming into malaria season now. The old man went with Moses to Soft Power Education at Bujagali and managed to barter his way to getting mosquito nets for 3000/= (around £1, Nomad mozzie nets for £25 are a rip off!) and they bought the kids a TV and DVD player. Admittedly a TV is a luxury for here, but realistically, keeping 22 boys entertained 24/7 with activities just isn’t possible! And it’s the kind of thing ASCO would never be able to buy with donation money anyway.

We were all expecting the boys to find it difficult going from living on the streets with no rules to living in a house where they need permission to leave the grounds but actually they’re settling in really well! Kanyike, a seven year old who used to come to the project but stopped coming as he was ‘controlled’ by the older paraffin crew street kids, came back too – although seeing such a little boy on a come down and sleeping for 3 days solid is pretty heartbreaking. But at least he’s back now and has fitted in really well.

Moses, Wes (another English volunteer at ASCO), my dad and I went to Massese, the Karamajong village where some of the boys come from, to get our final permission form signed. Peter P’s mum has disappeared and whenever ASCO’s been to Massese in the past his dad’s been passed out drunk in the middle of the afternoon. This time we went in the morning and we found him sober so we got him to fingerprint the form (he can’t write) without any fuss! As ever, we were surrounded by children, but this time we could compare the ASCO kids with the Massese kids. As well as Peter P, we’d also brought George along as he wanted to give something to his mum, and James as our translator. None of their clothes had rips in, their hair was cut short, they weren’t dirty, they weren’t ill, they didn’t have fresh scars from seeing witchdoctors, or whip marks on their backs from their families, they were very healthy, smart boys in comparison, and that’s down to Moses and Sarah at ASCO because four months ago they were worse off living on the streets than the Massese kids we saw. But seeing that poverty, which is pretty much as poor as you could imagine for a whole village, always makes you feel really helpless and you don’t really get over it for the rest of the day.

I did my own little project with the kids this week too! Jess, from BCS, told me about her mum’s art exhibition called Heartfelt. The aim is to get 500 people to decorate a 20 x 10cm heart according to their most heartfelt memory, then attach a piece of card explaining the story. We had to adapt the project slightly mainly because the kids can’t write and we have limited resources. We asked the kids to draw their favourite memory on a tea stained heart in pencil, then Amos, Dan, my mum and I added colour to the drawings with paint (the kids can’t be let loose with paint, they would’ve just painted the whole heart blue or something…) then added pen outlines. On the attached cards, we stamped them with the ASCO stamp, added a photo of each boy and asked them to sign their names. I added their full names and ages which was quite a mission to get – Kanyike said he was 39 years old, and James, roughly 13 years old, said he was 2 years old – none of them have birth certificates or have ever celebrated their birthdays… But I think the hearts look great! Hopefully they’re done right and that’s what we were supposed to do 

Then it was time for the family the leave, I think everyone was genuinely sad to see them leave! All the boys keep asking when Uncle Will’s coming back then bust a few break dancing moves, Moses now refers to my mum as his English mum and my dad now owns a hideously yellow African shirt from Moses, Dan and Amos…it can only be a sign of affection!

18/04 - 30/04 The Newbies arrive!

Then comes the arrival of the family!

But first of all, a few days before everyone arrived, Joe, Dom and I offered to do a night shift at Sonrise. In the meantime, Sonrise had acquired tiny little boy twins only days old, and for some reason they put us in charge of them for a night! WHY?!? Neither of the boys had ever changed a nappy, and the last time I had was on Alice, my little cousin, years ago! I was terrified. We sneakily watched the other staff mamas change nappies, and then we let go of all pride and just told Richard we had no idea what we were doing. He didn’t seem too phased and quickly explained how much to feed them and where to find everything. However he didn’t know which twin was which so we renamed them little Joseph and Dominic.

Then we were left all alone.

We started watching a film on a laptop as it was only ten o’clock, and pretty swiftly little Joseph started making a fuss and crying – the beginning of a very loooong night. Big Dom took charge and we all helped in successfully changing little Joseph’s nappy. Then was little Dominic’s turn to cry so I sorted him out with some grub. Big Joe had in the meantime fallen asleep. After an hour with the little ones big Dom and I went to bed. About ten minutes later, little Dominic started crying again but it was big Joe’s turn to look after him. I learned that both big Joe and Dom sleep like logs. For the rest of the night I had a system going. When it was Dom’s turn to look after the twins I’d kick him from the bottom bunk (he was on the top bunk) until he got up, and when it was Joe’s turn I’d pick up the baby then poke Joe in the face til he woke up and shoved a baby in his arms. I think I had a grand total of two hours sleep the twins woke up so much. Neither of the Joes and Doms were not my favourite people the next day!

THEN everyone arrived!

Will and Sophia (Will’s girlfriend) were in Uganda for two weeks; my parents were in Uganda for three weeks.

The first week was absolutely exhausting! For the first time ever, I was the one in the know on most things, I was organising where they were going, deciding where to eat, being the tour guide essentially! The first few days were spent visiting the projects. First off – ASCO.

So we trotted up to ASCO, and everyone was introduced to the kids – Will was known as the dancing man! They spent an hour or so getting to know the kids – playing with them, looking at their exercise books and pictures – and getting the ‘low down’ on ASCO from Sarah and Moses.

Next, Will got down to business with the break dancing workshops! During that week, the kids couldn’t have been happier: there was constantly music playing, kids dancing or practicing their exercises like cartwheels etc! As it’s the holidays, Paul and Thomas who’re sponsored into Lords Meade (secondary school) are back at ASCO, so our lesson timetable’s more flexible so that the kids can have a break too. They were all amazing by Will’s demonstrations of break dancing; they won’t have ever seen a music video to know what it is! It was also great for someone to do something active with them, Moses, Amos and Dan are all painters and not exactly sporty! At the end of each session we’d make a circle and everyone would have to dance in the circle

The second project for the week at ASCO was to teach them all how to make Devil Sticks. Some of the kids have devil complexes as that’s what witchdoctors or parents have told them so that’s why some are on the streets so we had to rename them Rhythm or Magic Sticks. Will went out with Moses to get all the wood, tape and inner tubing and all the kids made their own set although at the time they were using them more like tools to hit each other… Most of them used them properly though! So all in all, that week, Will and Sophia won the hearts of all the kids as the ‘cool’ uncle and auntie!

We also made a trip to Sonrise to visit all the babies. We spent an hour or so playing with the younger ones at first - everyone was a bit hit to be honest! We took the older toddlers for a walk, two little people for every big person, one in each hand, negotiating the pot holes and eroded mud tracks. Will and Sophia made the mistake of playing a game of lifting them up with their little ones right at the beginning so then when they stopped for a break they’d have three kids throwing tantrums! AMATEURS.

Last project we visited was Valley View. Hope, the Head teacher, showed us round the unfinished brick building and wooden shack classrooms, I think the parents were shocked, especially by the jagged rock covered floor in the classrooms in the brick building. But generally, they agreed with me about the atmosphere of the school after having met some kids in P5 – P7 doing extra catch up lessons. After a chat with Hope, the parents offered to concrete the two floors in the brick building with the money they’d previously fundraised which made Hope absolutely ecstatic!

07/04 - 18/04 Back to Basics...

Firstly, I do apologise for the lack of blog entries but my laptop's died on me... And secondly, I apologise in advance but this is going to be a looooooong post!

So since the Ssese Islands, we had the not so smooth arrival of Morgan, Joe's best mate from London. Joe stayed true to African time and picked up Morgan from Kampala not a few hours late, BUT A DAY LATE. Classic.

As for me, I went with HYT to Kaso Kosa, a small rural village about an hour and a half away from Jinja, and lived there for a week. HYT is the Haileybury Youth Trust with two gappies at the Guest House, Tom and Marianne, and they’re essentially builders. This year they’re trialling the ‘One village at a time’ scheme where they spend one week every three weeks in the same village doing work at the local school. In Kaso Kosa, the school is called the ‘3 Rs Secondary School’, the Rs representing Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic…even if it is a phrase used at home I still think it’s silly because they are CLEARLY not all beginning with R!

ANYWAY, the HYT trainers, Philip and Henry, are training full time the HYT trainees, around eight local Ugandans from Kaso Kosa, to build using ISSB bricks – pressed bricks instead of burn bricks which are not only eco-friendly but also cheaper. HYT supplies the pressing machine from Kenya, and then leaves it in the village to encourage the community to build with ISSB bricks and use the newly trained builders. As the gap year students, we were just extra sets of hands. So the trainees were working on two new classrooms and a library, and Marianne and I were working with the Ugandan gap year students, James and Winnie who’re former students of the 3 Rs, on a new kitchen and school hall. Tom slacked off the week because he’d broken a knuckle at the weekend and was now in a plaster. TYPICAL. However, we managed to finish the kitchen so that it was fully functioning by the Friday, instead of using an old chicken coop to cook for 400 students!

As for living there, we had no running water and no electricity. It was definitely back to basics! By 7:30pm it was dark, we had dinner at around 8ish and after that we had not a lot to do but to sleep, but quite frankly after a long day that’s all you want to do! Our meals consisted of posho and beans, posho being boiled solid maize flour…it’s not very inspiring, but occasionally in the evenings we had a chicken or beef stew as well. Washing facilities was a half open wall of concrete and a tub of water to splash yourself, needless to say hygiene pretty much went out the window that week and my hair was not a pretty sight!

On the Wednesday of that week, Tom, Joe and Morgan arrived to do a bit of building and to finish organising a football tournament. Once school had finished that day, the students cracked out the traditional drums and skirts and taught us how to dance African style! Needless to say we were rubbish in comparison, somehow their pelvis seems to be totally detached to any other part of their body so they can wiggle it any way they want, it was amazing!

Thursday, all the Busogies descended on Kaso Kosa! The teams competing in the tournament were Team 3 Rs, Team HYT, and Team Mzungu. Our Team Mzungu was made up of the twelve Busogies, Dom’s little brother, two AV friends and Morgan. The girls, having never played football in our lives, were only allowed to play half a match each…and for very good reason! Tom had supplied us with our strip – bright yellow shirts from the market at 60p each with our names and numbers marker penned on the back, something that will stay in my wardrobe forever! After losing 2-1 to the school’s B team, we didn’t hold much hope for our match against the HYT builders who’d been the school’s A team, but somehow we won 2-1! In the end we came second! In traditional football spirit, we cracked open some beers with HYT builders and out came the drums so we showed off our lack of bum wiggling skills. After the builders well and truly showed us how it’s done, we did some traditional Ugandan wrestling – you lower your top half until you are shoulder to shoulder with your opponent, grab the back of their shirt with one hand, the other going behind your back, and then move in a circle jump pushing the other person until someone’s head hits the floor whilst surrounding spectators throw grass over the wrestlers, it was awesome! Somehow my contact lense disappeared behind my eye when I wrestled Rachel, and they still called it a draw! In the evening we entertained ourselves with a bonfire, barbeque and the worst camping experience of my life. At 2am the heavens decided to open on our poorly-pitched-in-the-dark tents for the next ten hours leaving us with two flooded tents, two other very wet on the inside tents and six people sharing two single bunk beds (I was not one of the lucky few…).

Tired, grumpy, soggy and in desperate need of a shower, the last thing I wanted to do was camp another night by some waterfall, but that turned out to be one of the best camping experiences! When we arrived by Ssezibwa Falls late Friday afternoon, they helped us pitch the tents in daylight, cooked us desperately needed chicken and chips after a week of posho, and let us build a bonfire and we sang the night away thanks to Morgan’s ukulele skills! Plus it didn’t rain :D EXCELLENT.

02/04 – 06/04 SSESE ISLANDS!

Honestly this weekend was the best weekend of our trip!

On Friday there was a ‘Fun Rugby’ tournament at Jinja Rugby Club so along with our local Nile team, there was the Ugandan National team, the Rwandan National Team and the Kenyan National team… So our Nile boys did pretty well to get to the semi-finals (although apparently, because Nile Special was sponsoring the tournament the most, there was some blatant fixing of the groups competing!). Some were even invited to play for the Rwandan team for some reason! About six companies were sponsoring the tournament, putting in about 25 million shillings, around £8000, so there were loads of freebies and in the evening there were some big names of Ugandan music like Chameleon performing in the evening! We took the ASCO kids along with us for the day which they really enjoyed too which was really nice.

Getting in the spirit with the freebies! :

The ASCO kids joined us for the party afterwards in their new clothes donated by Livy and Liberty’s parents! :

9:30 the next morning we were packed and ready for our Easter break in the Ssese Islands! Because we had to get to Entebbe to catch our 3 hour ferry, we hired a matatu for the ten of us to bypass Kampala and avoid the horrible taxi park and go straight to Entebbe – BEST IDEA EVER. We rocked up to the ‘port’…

…and bought our £3 tickets for the ferry ride. That ferry ride was one of the best parts of the trip! Even though we were following what everyone said about being there an half an hour before, there were still no seats anywhere so we were on the top deck in the blistering sunshine for the whole trip…

…but luckily we had the Factor 50 to hand so none of us got sunburnt. The views on that boat were stunning, the clouds, the islands, the still lake, it was all AWESOME…

We arrived on Buggala Island around 5ish to see these views…

…it looked like tropical English countryside! Until of course sunset when our views were more like this…

…and then came the night sky – I’ve never seen more stars in my life, it was absolutely stunning. We spent most of the night like this…

…on our campsite beach – bliss.

On the Sunday we woke up to torrential rain, so naturally we decided to go for a walk! It was really good fun actually, I was totally sodden in my very un-waterproof waterproof. We walked up the hill to the other side of the island to the ‘town’ by following our noses through Ugandan forest/jungle, only to remember when we got there that it was Easter Sunday and it was DEAD apart from singing coming from the church. I’d have loved to have joined in but considering there were kids playing outside in their Sunday dress, we could barely rock up soaked to the skin and half the boys had no shoes on, we honestly looked like street kids! But after a cup of tea in an ‘cafe’ we braved it back through the jungle to the campsite just as the sun was coming out.

Sunshine obviously led to the first ever Busogie Ssese Island Games involving Midget Sumo…

…Agressive Wheelbarrow Races (one armed slapping was allowed)…

…and finally, the Bridge Competition which was a team effort so unfortunately no pictures were taken of this game. Obviously Team Nelson won (Nelson was a dog that followed us for the whole trip)…

…and we’re eagerly awaiting next Easter where we’ve all vowed to hold Busogie Easter Games wherever we are, so parents, WATCH THIS SPACE!

The journey home however was probably one of the most unpleasant I’ve ever had – we were up and packed by 6:45am, ready to leave at 7am for our ferry which was supposed to leave at 8am. 7am SHARP, the torrential rain starts on our walk to the ferry so we all got soaked. Dom, who was a few minutes walk ahead of us, rang us to say the ferry was leaving within the next few minutes and that we had to run! We hopped on just in time at 7:10am and off we sailed at 7:15am – EARLY!!! Stuff happening early in Uganda is pretty much unheard of!!! Turns out that the boat was so full that the captain had no choice but to leave otherwise people would’ve climbed onto the boat etc. At first we were shoved back to our spot on the top deck but this time in the torrential rain for the first hour of the trip, although eventually we found shelter in the corridor of the toilets – classy, eh?!

As a result, half the group (somehow not including me even though my bag was a puddle) have lost their phones, cameras, iPods and chargers to water damage but overall, the weekend was one of the best ever :)

<3 BUSOGIES 2010!

22/03 – 01/04 We’re daaancing in the rain

Well the last week or so have been pretty standard to be honest! Last week there were six people in the HYT village so that meant only six of us were at the Guest House – Rachel and I took advantage of not having the boys who only eat meat around and had a veggie week, amazing!

On Tuesday I realised that teaching kids how to write is NOT my life calling… I was trying to teach two young ASCO boys, George and Michael, how to write numbers and failed miserably! Flicking through their exercise book it was obvious many had attempted to teach them and failed before, but I was determined! With inspiration from the film ‘Goodnight Mister Tom’ I made them repeatedly trace one number I’d written, then join the dot-to-dot numbers, then trace a very faint numbers – and they both did it so well! – but when it came to writing it on their own, ‘3’s become ‘m’

We were invited round Brook’s house last Wednesday – he’s one of the AVs but went to school with 3 Busogie boys so he practically lives with us! He lives with 2 other girls and 1 boy, all are really lovely. They live on Wangange Primary School grounds so they are constantly surrounded by kids and the teachers’ children who also live on site. Our guest house literally looks like a PALACE! They have 2 tiny bedrooms, their kitchen consists of one gas plate, no running water and only electricity between 7pm – 12am, it was actually really cosy though and because it’s a constant AV gap year house they can write what they want on the walls etc. But to be honest, I’m happy to have running water instead!

On Friday, Connor, Rachel, Joe and I went to Valley View. P4 have definitely become MY class, they seem to like me and there’s one little girl, Grace, who honestly comes across as crazy! She’ll repeat what Joe and I say like ‘Minutessssssssssssssssss’ and then pull a face for no reason, or she’ll start to cackle when we write the sentence ‘The girl runs to school’, and in assembly she’ll stand up and dance when no one else is! I actually love her! Plus she’s recently had her head shaved so she looks even more crazy now! Here are more Valley Views pics…

Joe and P4 class (although you can’t really see, crazy psycho girl is the one he’s marking the book for):

A few years back someone donated the money to construct 2 brick buildings for classrooms but, as is the story for a lot of things, the money mysteriously disappears… Imagine health and safety issues in this baby! :

The rest of the week has been pretty normal, Livy’s parents were here for five days so they were just touring the projects. At ASCO on Tuesday, they got involved in our Good Samaritan sketch: the kids had asked to learn about Jesus so an American lady came and read them a shortened story about Jesus, and they came up with some pretty challenging questions that she couldn’t answer so we decided to do some drama sketches of Bible stories to help them understand, and they went down a storm!

Other than that, today was my last day teaching at St James’ this term as exams start next week! I marked their last exam papers and they were TERRIBLE so hopefully I won’t have made things worse, I’ve given them some exam tips which may help… Now I just have to be able to read their writing!

The netball court and my classroom:

My 23 pupil strong S1 class! :

My 45 pupil strong S2 class…remember, this is half the size that the other Bosogies are teaching at their schools! :

18/03 – 21/03 They can’t hear your scream on the water…

Thursday and Friday were business as usual. However, Saturday was THE DREADED RAFTING DAY. Friday night, we stayed in dorms at Adrift, one of the rafting companies, with all the AVs. The dorms were 4 sets of FOUR BED HIGH bunk beds, IT WAS ACTUALLY AMAZING! I was the third bed up and it turned out to be pretty tricky to navigate my way down in the middle of the night!

So we were up at 8am (despite someone’s alarm having gone off at 7am…grrr) and down to the bar for breakfast. We then split into groups of eight and nine – there was eight in my group all from the Guest House aptly named Team G.I. (Get Involved!), six girls and two boys. After embarassing team photos we set off down the river!

The first hour or so was practising how to paddle in time, learn the instructions, flip the boat, and what to do if you get chucked out of the boat into a rapid! Turned out, our instructor was the trip leader and so wasn’t taking any crap from anyone – I’ve never known anyone to be as sarcastic either – but his no crap from anyone attitude actually made me feel safer when watching the rafts with Ugandan guides who are actually just MENTAL.

So the first big rapid was Bujigali Falls, one of the 3 Grade 5 rapids (the biggest rapids possible to commercially raft) of the day, I WAS TERRIFIED. Everything is so much more impressive when you’re at the same level and can see waves about twice your height ahead of you! Tom, Rachel and I ended up being chucked out of the raft and even though you’re told to hold on to the safety rope, it is actually impossible sometimes!

A few tame rapids later was a Grade 4, still pretty big, and naturally, me being the one who wanted to be chucked out the least, was the only one chucked out this time!

Time for lunch on the Adrift private island and I literally stocked up on veg for the week!

Back on the water and guess what’s next?! A WATERFALL!! Obviously a Grade 5 but somehow we all managed to stay in the raft even though Tom who was sat at the front very gentlemanly flew into my face! Again, naturally, more rapids followed and I got chucked in but this time with everyone on my side of the raft (I swear it was cursed!!). WE THOUGHT WE WERE GOING TO DIE. No joke.

Next rapid the whole boat was flipped but we didn’t have time to be terrified and think we were going to die because we had to get back in the boat before the next set of rapids only a few meters away!!

THANKFULLY we all survived! There were lots of bumps and bruises, ripped off toe nails, sunstroke and dehydration sufferers but now that I think about it, it was an amazing experience…one that I will definitely not live again though!!

Hopefully we’ll get some photos soon so I’ll pop them up when I do!

Love and all that jazz! xx

12/03 – 17/03 GRAVITY SUCKS

Had a pretty awesome week so far!

Friday, Joe and I went to Valley View, I taught P4 Maths pretty badly as it was long division and trying to explain subtract and bring the next number down to them when they obviously didn’t understand was a little frustrating! However after watching assembly WHICH I LOVE SO MUCH (!!) with all the dancing and clapping, Joe and I joint taught an English lesson about adjectives. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN. We explained what it meant, where an adjective came in a sentence, and gave them some examples. We then split the class in half and made a competition as to which half could think of the most adjectives. We were stared at with totally blank faces… However, they got SO into it! Unfortunately my team lost by 3 words but they really enjoyed it, they ended up singing to us so we busted some moves out which they found hilarious apparently…

The weekend was THE BIG ONE in Kampala. Five of us bundled in a matatu (which was unusually comfy!!) and arrived early for the rugby as 6 of our friends are on the Nile team at Kampala Rugby Club so we sat down and had a drink. Naturally, it turned out we were at the wrong rugby club, but we soon got to the right ground and watched the most entertaining match ever – Jinja Nile got a spectacular first (and only) try…only to then get thrashed for the next hour or so. Four red cards and two yellow cards later, the game was called off ten minutes early for fighting!

RANDOM:

The evening was awesome, we met up with the AVs who were also in Kampala and went to a bar called Iguana. The occasional night of English music is massively welcomed, but it was the hottest bar I’d ever been to so we swiftly moved onto Casa Blanca! A random Ugandan at Iguana had told us about this place, it was a house converted to a club so it just felt like a massive houseparty! AMAZING.

The morning after however, was HORRENDOUS! It was a Sunday morning, and in Jinja it’s pretty much dead because everyone’s at Church, but in Kamapala it was HEAVING. We braved the worst two taxi parks in East Africa - there were cars EVERYWHERE, matatus weaving in and out, bodas trying to run you over, the smell so bad you gagged…HO-RRI-BLEEEEE! It was so amazing to come back to Jinja and walk up our little orange road hearing the birds and trees to the guest house!

Kampala:

Our road in Jinja:

This week also saw the rebirth of ASCO (now legal and everything!) which is exciting!! They have a great new house with tonnes of land and so much potential:

Here are a few old pictures of a mural they painted a few weeks ago just off Main St, and some of our trip to their village, Masesse:

Me with two Annette and Agnes from ASCO. Unfortunately, they can’t be part of ASCO anymore as the long term plan is to provide a home for the street kids and apparently they’re not allowed to have both boys and girls…

7 year old Peter (far right) and his family in Masesse:

Imagine at least a mum, maybe a dad, an auntie, about four or five kids, maybe a gran all living in that one  mudhut… :

 

Wednesday was BUNGEE DAY and Joe’s birthday and we literally went ALL OUT. Most of the day was spent in preparation because, naturally, in Uganda, nothing is ever done early if not on time! Miles and I went splits on some African shorts we knew he loved and wrote him a SHORTSTYLE GUIDE involving pictures of how to wear the shorts: The Tweedledee, The Badass, The Turban, The Superman. Tom and Sophie made ‘The Ten Commandment of LAD’ all about how thou shalt not wear clean underwear etc. All in all, one of my favourite days so far!

11/03 PHOTOS…

I haven’t had an interesting week at all since I’ve had a rotten cold and lost my voice so I haven’t been teaching or working with kids, I’M SO BORED. So here are some random photos…

I strongly dislike teaching about something I learned the night before…!

Me, Moses (who is setting up ASCO), Liz (fellow Bristolian who works for Soft Power Education) and Rach:

ASCO kids:

 

Joe and I cooked a Pancake Day extravaganza! :

Rachel with Thomas. Thomas was an ASCO street kid who had finished primary school but as his mum is an alcoholic he was forced onto the streets. Rachel’s family are now sponsoring him through boarding school at Lords Meade for £350 a year plus pocket money.

Mark the little legend at Sonrise:

Sophie’s MENTAL birthday night in African dress! :

Antenatal outreach:

I really shouldn’t work so much with babies, the possibility of becoming broody is very high…

27/02 – 08/03 It’s really hard to knock a door down!

Our weekend was pretty standard, Friday night we went to Two Friends and I realised that darts is not at all my forte in life, and my motto is now that fluke shots are the way forward!

Saturday we watched the boys play rugby and, in true BCS style , lose…

(This is not cool, I just saw a mozzie fly in front of my screen UNDER my net… DEET TIME)

… but the evening we were invited to another Graduation party. Luckily we skipped out on the speeches because “we’d already promised the boys we’d watch the rugby” so we rolled up just in time for free food and party, only to realise it wasn’t a Graduation party but a Jinja Rotary Club party which at some point we had been invited to by Mark Malinga, Headmaster of Lords Meade, anyway so it was fine :) Then on to Rendezvous and Sombreros for a night of boogie-ing on down!

Four girls I live with: Marianne (also half French!), Livvy, Soph and Rach :)

Naturally Sunday was a write off and we treated ourselves to Chinese food at a local hotel for about £2. AMAZING.

Monday was fairly standard, teaching then Sonrise. At this point I was finding teaching a little difficult, my S1 class are really boring and my S2 class just laugh at me the whole time so I was set on finding a way to win them over, more on that later!

TUESDAY HOWEVER was well interesting!! I spent my first proper day at ASCO which didn’t involve painting or cleaning or anything like that. The morning I taught Lomer how to spell his name and him with another boy called Michael how to write the numbers 1 – 10. Will (my brother) gave me the awesome idea of teaching them to make devil sticks and learn how to demonstrate them so we could sell them on at arts and crafts fairs that happen occasionally in the high tourist seasons, so I took them along and showed some of the kids how to chuck them around and they proved to be really popular! So when ASCO’s up and running officially we can start fundraising.

Kalisto mastering the sticks! :

In the afternoon, we went to Massesse where the street kids’ families live. Many of them have parents or guardians and ASCO needs their permission for them to come to the project as it’s treated as a youth club for now, and also their opinion on us finding them sponsers for schools: so far Thomas and Paul have been sponsored by Rachel’s parents and Miles’ parents to board at their link secondary school! Massesse is a fair few kilometres out of Jinja and the kids usually walk there once or twice a week but we took them on bodas, some of them for the first time! It’s basically a village of mud. It’s EVERYWHERE. The huts are made of mud, the tracks are mud, the kids are covered in mud etc. Think poorer than the poor – I peeked into one of the huts of a family of four and inside a tiny room was a fire with 3 straw mats on the floor and a pile of about 4 pieces of clothing. That was all their worldly possessions. Within the first five minutes of us arriving, we were surrounded by 70+ children which made our visit turn into a bit of a mission! We found most of the street kids’ mothers - some were cooperative, others not so much. Our main responses from parents were:

1) I would love him to go to school and live at home but I can’t afford another mouth to feed.

2) He can go to school but not live at home.

3) If he goes to school, he can’t get me money and I can’t feed my family.

4) Why do you think he’s on the street? It’s because I don’t want him, I’ve never wanted him, do whatever you want with him, I don’t care.

That last one in particular was hard to hear, Kalisto is about 14 years old (none of them are sure of their age) and he was so ashamed and embarrassed that his mum was shouting this in front of a crowd.

Overall, it was one of the days which really stands out so far. It totally opened my eyes to people living with nothing, although you know it’s there in some communities in poor countries, you can’t fully appreciate it until you’ve seen it with your own eyes.

Wednesday was not so full on (thank god) and I went with Sophie and Rachel to the antenatal outreach. Luckily we weren’t sat under a mango tree for that one, it was at the clinic in Bukeeka, because I haven’t ever seen more rain in half an hour, let alone the a solid 4 hours of the morning. All in all it was a bit of a fail day as there weren’t any women braving the rain, or enough natural light in the ‘lab’ (there’s no electricity) to use the microscope to be productive.

Thursday HOWEVER was very eventful. First of all, I won over my classes by using them as volunteers which I think was a first for them and taking a pineapple to my S2 lesson to explain fruits better, they even named it Prosper the Pineapple!

So as I knew ASCO feed the kids pineapple every day, I took Prosper along after my teaching only to find Moses being arrested. I couldn’t have arrived at a worse time saying ‘Guys, meet Prosper the Pineapple!!’… So Sarah, an English social worker who’s all set to live here now, and Liberty, one of the gappies at the Guest House, got dragged down too as their names are on the CBO paperwork. The details will be for another time when I can give an open opinion on it but it’s all sorted now, we’re just not allowed to go to ASCO until it’s registered and the CBO stuff’s gone through which is turning out to be quite difficult when you see the street kids on Main St asking why ASCO isn’t happening and that they miss Uncle Moses and Auntie Liberty. Yesterday, I bumped into Luka who seemed pretty upset and was asking for Auntie Liberty, so I called her she brought with her some bananas and toothpaste. Luka had been saving up and bought himself a toothbrush so Libs gave him some Colgate and it literally made his day! Then a Ugandan man who’d seen us with the kids came over and said thankyou for the love we were showing the kids and gave them a football from his car to play with. That was definately one of the best feelings so far, and just shows that ASCO is needed even if it seems that everything is going against them right now…

And Friday couldn’t have been more opposite! I spent the day at Sonrise but in the afternoon I got locked in their toilet for 2 and a half hours as the lock broke on me! It was a pretty solid door so Connor and Joseph’s (a volunteer) combined effort to break the door down failed miserably so they had to get a friend of Joseph’s who owns a hammer to chip away at the door, break the lock, pull it out, all that business, in order to get me out. In the mean time, I had a nap in the bath, it was really quite comfy :)

After a fairly chilled weekend, today is Women’s Day, a national bank holiday here, so no teaching for me! Instead the boys are just making us cups of tea and tonight we’re allowed to watch Twilight: New Moon :)

GOOD TIMES!