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Sorry I didn’t write a blog yesterday – we had a big storm with thunder and lightning on Sunday night and the electricity has been very dodgy since! It kept coming back on but then me or Amy D kept turning things on and I think we kept blowing it again! Oops…
But since then we’ve still been having a great time! We are woken EVERY SINGLE MORNING by the Muslim call to prayer at the mosque! It goes a bit like this: ‘aaaaa eeee uuuuuuu waaaaaa’ on and on and on for about an hour – 5am ish! Then at about 6 we have this annoying bird which flies past and goes ‘mwaaaaaaa’ – sounds like its dying! But we have to get up at 6, yes that is 6am, anyway every day.
Yesterday was our first day of building. We traveled to Suubi village which is in the middle of nowhere! It is nothing like we expected but is beautiful and on the top of a big hill – there’s amazing views right the way round us and in the morning it can be foggy and look a bit like we’re at Hogwarts! Our team is building a classroom block. Its half done already but we are building the inside and outside walls over the week and we expect to finish on Friday! All the bricks are huuuuge – they weigh about 5kg each and we have to carry and shift hundreds of them each day! There’s also more bricks in another place we are helping with which weigh about double! So we have sore wrists and elbows when we get back! There’s also red dust absolutely everywhere – we all turn orange when we are at the building site and it is really hard to get off – you look a bit like you’ve been tangoed! Actually, the dust is everywhere in Uganda but is especially bad at Suubi.
The first day we were there we took bread and jam and pineapple to eat. However, they forgot to pack knives so neat sandwiches were impossible! The pineapple was gorgeous! Really nice and juicy so we had to perfect a ‘bite and bend’ movement so it didn’t dribble all down our chins!
Today we were doing more of the same but the windows and door were fitted which was quite exciting! It was so so so hot today though – we drank a lot of water between us and used a lot of sun cream! It was nice and sunny all day so we had to take lots of breaks in our little shelter which they gave us to keep our stuff out of the sun.
When we drive back we go through all the little shanty towns which is so different to what its like in Kampala… there are just odd houses in amongst the banana trees and little ‘shops’ made up of just a few planks of wood, which look like they’re just going to fall down any second. The shops are open all the time as well, they never seem to close in case they miss a customer coming past.
Every time we come back there is a huge rush for the showers, everyone fights except our room because we have our own bathroom. Not that it means people don’t get in a huff about who goes in first! Tiredness is making people a bit snappy and there is a bit of tension sometimes when people disagree… but hopefully a proper sleep will help things a bit.
Dinners have been good here and basically the kind of stuff we have at home – except there are no puddings really. We’re having a good time, despite some little disagreements, but some of us seem to be more knackered than others which can make it hard sometimes.
Tomorrow we’re back to Suubi again for more building – everyone’s hoping we might get a bit more breeze than today (but a suntan would be nice too!)
Got to go now – nearly time for dinner then I’m going try and go straight to bed – although judging by the last few nights that will not happen!
Lots of love and I miss you all,
Naomi x
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