Hi Everyone!

I've been incredibly lazy with my blog but I thought it's about time to do one as it's almost been a month since the last one. This won't be a day by day blog as it's been too long so I'll do it week by week.

Week 1 - Monday 29th March - 4th April

For Monday and Tuesday of this week Molkie, Boz and I were hard at work painting the house (after teaching of course). We painted the blue bedroom on the monday and the creamy yellowy (kind of gross looking) living room on the tuesday. It gave the house a much more homely feel. Much nicer than the concrete coloured, bird poo splattered walls that we lived in before hand anyway. Easter weekend began on Thursday 1st April for us, when all the volunteers (bar Georgia and Rosie who were at Lake Bunyonyi and Oscar who was in Kenya) gathered at Isabel and James' house. On the wednesday before everyone gathered we went to Shaun's to stay the night at his project, along with Sophie, Caitlin and Heather. The next day we all hitched into Kampala and to James and Isabel's house. We stayed there for 3 days. On the thursday we watched 3 films, had a lovely dinner and just chatted with the other volunteers. Friday started off with Isabel going round the group asking about the different projects. Positives, negatives, whether it should run next year etc. We talked for a couple of hours and it was quite tedious at times, but we were rewarded at the end with a lovely lunch and a trip to rainbow school pool. Saturday we left Isabel and James' and a few of us went out after a trip to Owino market where i bought a jacket, a t-shirt and a pair of shorts for 25,000/= overall (about $15). I spent a couple days at Sophie's project then headed back to project on the Tuesday.

Week 2 - Monday 5th April - 11th April

Like I said, I spent a couple days at Sophie's project then on the Tuesday headed back to Kitega. After teaching (revision revision revision for the following weeks exams), Molkie and I headed in to Kampala for rehearsals and found that two parcels for Molkie had arrived as well as two Guardian Weekly's, which was quite exciting. More rehearsals made up this week pretty much. Not such an exciting week.

Week 3 - Monday 12th April - 18th April

This week was much more exciting! As the students had exams and we were MEANT to have gone with Joseph our host to Mbale but in the end couldn't, we had the week off school. On monday, we planned to go to Mabira forest, which is quite close to our village, but when we got there wearing flip flops we realised that hiking might not be possible so we just sat at the rainforest lodge bar enjoying the silence and a cold beer. On tuesday we travelled all the way to the west of Uganda, to a place called Kasese. We were going to Dan and Rob's project, but as they live in the bush and wild animals roam around at night, we couldn't make it all the way there that day as we only arrived in Kasese at 8pm. Wednesday we got going to Dan and Rob's. After a trip down a bumpy dirt track we arrived in their village at the Kazing channel. The kids were so excited about having other mzungus in the village that they followed us everywhere. We went to the lake where there were lots of fishermen getting ready for the night. Water buffallo, hippos and gazelles were all quite close. After two tourist shuttles went down the river (one of which had Martha and her parent's on it, which was weird to say the least!) one of the fishermen offered to take us a short way into the lake. We passed the hippos and saw some elephants through the trees. On the way back to shore two hippos started fighting, and the fishermen started saying 'tugende tugende' (let's go let's go!). Sure enough 1 minute later the hippos were where we'd been 1 minute earlier. The next day we chilled at their school for a bit, as their school had broken up for holidays already. We saw an elephant a matter of meters from the school (I'll try and get picture on here soon) which was amazing, and had a really nice Ugandan lunch with local fish. We also bought fish for dinner and cooked it ourselves. It could have gone worse. We travelled back to Kampala the next day and good God I've never been as scared as I was on the back of the pick-up truck from their village to the main road. I felt like I'd fly off at any moment. 17th of April was day 100 but nothing too exciting happened. On the Sunday, poor Sophie felt really sick and went back to her project. We also went back to the village thinking school went for 1 more week. Turn's out holidays started this week.

So here I am in Kampala. Other news...Sophie's illness turned out to be malaria! She spent a night in the surgery and is now staying at Annex hotel slowly recovering. Molkie's dad arrived today, 2 days later than he was meant to arrive due to the Iceland volcano, but 2 days earlier than he had booked after the volcano, so that's quite exciting. My dad arrives in 2 weeks time and is staying for just 5 days, but I'm very excited!

That's about all from me! I'll TRY and be better about keeping the blog, so hopefully you'll be hearing from me again in the next week or 2.

Cheers,

Ben xx