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After 6 weeks of searching for good internet connection I've finally found a strong stable link to update my blog. So where do I start to put the past 6 weeks into words? The only way that I can describe my experience so far is utterly bonkers, from seeing people cycling on pushbikes with sofas tied to the back to 11 people being squished into an everday mondeo car - Uganda is nothing like home!
September 2nd at 7:15am myself and the other 21 volunteers touched down in Entebbe as fresh new musungu (white/foreign person) meat. We all stayed the night in Kampala and the following morning 6 of us shared a long 8hr journey down to Kabale where our projects are closely located. We spent a week of luxury at the Edirisa (a charity we're working for through project trust) bungalow in Makanga where we enjoyed hot water, eletricity AND a washing machine. We were then escorted to our project in a small rural village named Bukinda. When we arrived we were given a tour around what would be our new home. I was feeling very excited and eager to unpack. However, it just took one look at Georgia's face for me to realise how she clearly felt the complete opposite. I had to admit that our new home was going to take some getting used to. Our lavatory is a long drop with a hole in the concrete ground with a metal stool with a toilet seat hovering over the top to help aim. The shower - or should I say knee high tap and plastic basins didn't seem too bad until we realised that all water which flows from it is ice cold. 6 Weeks later and and I don't know any different, we soon got used to the facilities and home luxuries feel like a whole world away.
Everyone we've met so far have been extremely friendly and welcoming, almost every Ugandan shouts 'you are welcome' when they see us. 'Musungu' is a very common phrase that is constanly shouted at us, somehow I have managed to attract a lot of attention from people in Kabale and quite literally everyone in the village. This is because they're so use to seeing either black or white people not someone in the middle who is mixed race. It's amazing how confused people get when I tell them that my mother's white english and my father's black Jamaican and I'm from England. A good friend of ours Mark from the village asked so innocently if there are "any black people in England". This is when Georgia and I realised how unaware people are of life outside of the village.
At the moment me and Georgia are working in the nursery at Ryabirengye primary school where we work 8:30am until 12:30pm. Surprisingly the children know good english for their age and at the start of November we begin teaching pupils in the upper school once the student teachers leave.
Last Sunday we threw a house party at ours to celebrate Mackline's (a local girl's) 17th birthday and wish farewell to our German housemate Johanna who was retruning home. The party preperation started with the be-heading of animals to be eaten for dinner - grim I know! Johanna was nominated to kill the cockerall because she was leaving. The procedure started with James plucking the feathers from the birds neck to allow Johanna to make a clean cut. You could immediately see that this stunned the chicken because it became silent. Once Johanna plucked up the courage to kill the bird (mind the pun) - I wacked out my camera and started a photo shoot haha. The boys stood on the wings to hold the bird down securely during the beheading. To my surprise there wasn't much blood however, the birds wings flapped like crazy due to the nervous system. Afterwoods the boys took the chicken into a field to pluck and disect it ready to cook.
I won't describe the rabbits slaughter because it's a bit too much.
Once everyone arrived we pigged out on an African feast, ate birthday cake then sat around the camp fire in our garden.
My time so far has been thoroughly enjoyable and even though me and Georgia spend every waking moment together neither of us are dead yet muahah.
-It's true what they say 'you haven't seen the stars until you've been to Africa'.
- comments
Nareece Dearsley Ong (in the words of Evie!) I have just laughed out loud at your first entry. What the hell has happened to the hotpant wearing, Disarono swilling teen that is constantly styling her hair up then down then up then down then up........you are throwing yourself into African life aren't you! Poor bleeding rabbit (excuse the pun) cannot wait to hear how you executed him! Sounds barbaric! Sounds like you are having a very exciting adventure out there. Stay safe and keep typing!!!!! Loads of love from Peter, Nareece and Sid xxx