Our project manager described the retirement home as 'a place where we stay until we say goodbye to the world'.

Here, we tended to the gardens (most awful job in the world) and help prepare breakfast for those living at the home. This meant waking up extremely early! But, to be honest, we had to wake up most mornings at half six any way, so I was slowly getting used to being up excruciatingly early.

Once these jobs were done we had the church service I have previously spoke about. After, we gather in a circle with the elderly and each week a different person would tell us their life story. They would speak in their own languages and our project manager would translate for us. These stories really do tug your hear strings. The different struggles each of them had been through to get to that point in their lives was remarkable.

It was coming to the third week and I hadn't cried yet. If you ask any of my friends (especially Sophie) they will tell you that I am not a crier. I don't really cry at fictional films, I'd get slightly emotional and maybe shed a tear or two, but all I can think is this isn't real. It hasn't actually happened.

There is so much difference between fictional stories and reality for me. A woman in her eighty's called Sophie was at the retirement home with her husband Helmet. She told us her story:

When Sophie and Helmet first lived together they lived in a homestead, in a hut. She had three children under the age of five. Suddenly, all her children fell sick due to the hygiene levels and at such a young age the children didn't have very strong immune systems and because of a lack of medicine there was nothing that could be done. In the space of a year all her children died.

That was her story and her life. It was not fiction. Non of the other volunteers seemed to have been too affected by this story, but once it was over and it was time for us to leave I had to walk off, on my own for a bit. It sounds so clichéd, but I was just thinking that any problems I'd been having in England are non-existent when you hear stories of death and illness in day-to-day life in Africa. We honestly take life for granted!

On a happier note, they must be doing some thing right at the home, even if they don't have any electricity, because (not trying to be rude) they were all pretty old and still going strong; one woman even celebrated her 102nd birthday! Let's hope I can hit that target! Only 84 years to go!

(The woman in the attached image is the 102 year old. She looks pretty cracking for her age, doesn't she?!)