So this is just a blog for the events of what I've done in the last few months. I will do one more blog just before stepping on the plane with an evaluation of everything and my final thoughts, hopes, dreams, memories etc, you get the idea.

Everybody told me it was going to be a great year, and it has been. A year I will never forget, and as project trust say, 'A year to be proud of'. It's been quite a nice last few months, my last entry was about Kenya but since then, it's more stories than adventures but I hope you enjoy them nonetheless.

So about a week after coming back into Kenya; Kieran, Roxanne and myself decided to take on the enduring task of climbing the second highest mountain in Uganda, Mt Elgon. Mt Elgon is situated on the Uganda-Kenya border and the highest peak, Wagagai Peak stands at 4321m, which is about 4 times higher than the highest point in Britain. In fact, we discovered recently that where we live in Gombe, Kayenje is actually higher than the highest point in Britain. We think we live at about 1500m altitude. So we arrived in Mbale, We went to see Michael, the co-coordinator and he gave us our permits ($50 a day for park entrance and guides) and advice. We then headed up that same day to a small village nearer the park entrance in a 7 seater car taking 15 of us there! The next day we were up bright and early ready to start the trek. After a long journey to the park gates (My boda boda got stuck in the mud and we had to walk the last 3 kilometers or so with a fairly big bag. We all arrived at about 10 and by 10 30 we were ready to start our trek. What they didn't tell us was that the first day is the longest days walk, being on average between 8 and 10 hours long, walking 37km on the first day! Truth be told, it wasn't the easiest of first days, giving our nutritious meals. Breakfast was tea and chapattis, Lunch was bread and biscuits and then dinner was spaghetti. We did eventually manage to pick up the pace, and we arrived at our first campsite, at n altitude of 3200m. The campsite was very, very basic. When I say basic, there was grass (for us to put up our tents), 1 shack with a hole in it as a long drop toilet, 1 hut barely held together by wood and metallic sheet roofing with a place to start a fire in the middle of it. As well as that, you can probably imagine that it wasn't the warmest of nights, actually making it my worst ever nights sleep in a tent. The next day we repeated the same routine, this time climbing a mere 30km to reach the main campsite which was at about 3800m. It was somewhat more comfortable, and sheltered,making it warmer. Finally on the third day we reached the summit, taking us 4 hours to get up to the peak and just 2 hours to get back down. The peak was pretty awesome, as we could see hundreds of kilometers into Kenya and given I had my morphsuit on, made for some fun pictures. It was weird to think how high we were but it was quite an achievement given getting to the peak alone was about 60km. The guides just laughed at me and tried to egg me on to keep just the morphsuit on the way down… I didn't. We stayed at the River Sasa camp at 3500m, which was a surprisingly pleasant night's sleep and gave us a nice energy boost for the next day. Finally, on the 4th day we left the park gates and headed back to Mbale, slowly remembering what it was like to feel our fingers and appreciating warmth. I just managed to make it back to Kampala that day, albeit at 11 30pm and had one of my best night's sleep of my life. This made me a very happy boy and capped of a very enjoyable week J

I still had one week left in the holidays after that, and I had always said I wanted to do a secondary project. Luckily I had met some people that left an open invitation to do with a baseball project going on and it looked promising. I'm not going to lie here, I don't know anything about baseball but after 5 days there I felt like I'd known the sport for years. The assured me that I was needed and fair enough I was the scorekeeper for each of the games going on(About 3 games a day, each one about 2 hours long) What is happening is that there is a project called Uganda Little League Baseball and when I went they were having national qualifiers, where children from all across the country were coming to this site I Nakirebe to compete for a place in the national squad. May I also add this was a 12-14 year old category and the talent was of a really high quality. The games were competitive and you could see some promising players out there. If you were selected in the national squad, the team would then go to Poland for the European/Asian/ African Continent qualifiers. This means that Uganda and South Africa would be representing Africa, although S. Africa were using mainly expatriates for their team, whereas Uganda were using boys who had a typical African upbringing, some of them living in Kampala's Slum areas. This competition was to qualify for the World Series in America. Last year, they didn't quite win the competition in Poland, but they came 3rd. This year, they went around the start of July for a week and arrived back just yesterday. The result; they won the tournament! They beat everybody against the odds in a truly inspiring story. It only saddens me that I couldn't go to see them myself to congratulate them (Given I'm leaving the country in 3 days) but I really wish them the best and I will be keeping a close eye on them by checking up on their results on the internet or even watching their games on ESPN is an option.

So that was the end of my holidays. Let the final term commence. I had 8 weeks at project, they seemed like they were going to go really slow but in hindsight, it depresses me how quickly the time seems to have gone. The first milestone was 2 weeks in when it was the birthday weekend of Leyna, Naomi and myself. On the Saturday, there was an African cup of nations qualifier between Uganda and Guinea Bisau, and boy was it a day to remember! The tickets themselves, only cost 15,000 UGX which is about £3.50 but given my ticket number was 167,832, it worried me how many tickets they had actually sold for a 40,000 or so capacity stadium. We arrived 2 hours before kick off thinking it would be fine, given we already had our tickets. The fun was just about to start. There was a queue which took 45 minutes to get to the ticket turnstiles. However, as you can imagine, Africans don't do a nice British queue. Oh no, they will push, shove, kick, crush. You say it, they did it. You were lucky if you could move any of your limbs, the idea was literally that you were propped up by the person in front of you and behind you. One person dropped their phone, and unfortunately realized that he couldn't bend down to pick it up, a) because he physically couldn't and b) If he could, he would have died because people would have just walked over him. It was quite an experience; we saw some other muzungus come out of it crying. I personally enjoyed it, but most of the volunteers couldn't see the funny side of it! So, as we got in, the atmosphere was just incredible, I have many a video taken where I'm maybe shouting and you can barely hear me because of the noise the crowds were making. They had so many vuvuzelas and whistles, and throughout the 4 hour time we were there, there was always a chant of "We go, we go, Uganda cranes we go" Ask me in person if you want a demonstration, it's quite catchy. It's certainly something I don't think I will ever forget, the atmosphere and passion was so much stronger because of Uganda's patriarchy and love for their country and football all combined into one incredible event. Luckily, the result was positive with Uganda winning 2-0. It wasn't the best football, maybe championship or league 1 standard but when Uganda scored, the stadium lifted the roof with Euphoria as everyone celebrated. Even I couldn't help myself from jumping to my seat and blowing my whistle and joining in, in a goal which was meant to be a cross but went over the keepers head and into the goal, but nonetheless the celebration didn't die down for 10 minutes. As for my birthday itself, I didn't actually do that much, we went for a nice meal so I decided to get a steak, then we went to watch a film ,my only one this year but it was nice to just treat myself for a change. I almost felt like I deserved it.

The next month pretty much passed by uneventful. A couple of weekends away and finding some American med students doing research were in our village for the summer was a nice surprise. Time came when we had to start saying goodbye to some volunteers. So far Roxanne has gone (We went bowling for her leaving, although Kieran wasn't too impressed, given he didn't do too well), Gregg and Justine have also left, having a pajama party which was interesting to say the least. Now it's my time to leave L

As for leaving project, It should be nice to write about this because the way they said goodbye was really heartwarming and may even bring a tear to my eye as I recollect the events. From the start of the term, they have been planning some sort of secret party. After the first staff meeting, they asked me and Kieran to leave, after we asked why, they said "We have to plan something for your leaving" which was nice given we never asked for anything in return but they just wanted to show their gratitude. In my last fortnight, that's when I started to realize how little time left and that's when I kicked myself into action, making sure that I saw everybody before I left, so in the last week, we only cooked 2 times because we were at other people's house having dinner, taking photos and sort of saying our own personal goodbye. On my last Sunday at Project, Patrick the Reverend invited us to his house in Maya and so we went there so we could meet his wife, family and enjoy a meal. It's something of a cultural thing to invite somebody to your house, it's shows that you are part of their family which was really nice to be accepted into Patrick and other people's home and family. The meal, was top notch, I'm now going to boast about this and you at home are going to think, this is distinctly average! So, we had… Pork, Beef, Matooke(Unripe Bananas), Rice, Spaghetti, Irish Potatoes and fizzy drinks. See, I told you haha. However that meal there is actually more or less the best meal you can have in Uganda in terms of Ugandan cuisine. It's either that or Posho and Beans (Posho is literally a mix of flour and water).

The school had organised a party for us on the Thursday, because on the Friday, the school were going to the town to compete in football and netball to see if anybody was going to be selected for the town to compete at the district level. We didn't actually know what was going to happen. All we knew is that we should dress smart, and turn up… on time. The party was essentially a meal, then a little goodbye ceremony with a couple of gifts and a lot of speeches from staff members, local community members, the deputy mayor and the Med Students also came along. It was a really nice party, and brought both me and Kieran to tears at different points. One of us when having to give a speech our self and the other during a song talking about how we will miss the Kayenje love which was very emotional. The whole party was really sincere and heartfelt as each of them recollected their favourite memories. A lot of teachers looked teary eyed themselves which didn't help things for us, realizing that actually, we meant just as much to them as they meant to us. Some of you may notice that I am often using the past tense when talking. E.g. I used meant there instead of mean. It doesn't mean that it's in the past, it just that for the time being I'm trying to not think about things too much and to see it as a thing of the past and that I need to move on, otherwise it would've been and will be a lot harder to think back on this year. Back to the party, they did give us a really nice certificate of gratitude recognizing our volunteer service to the school throughout the year. We were also given one of the long robes that African men wear for special occasions (it's called a Kanzu in Uganda) which was really nice although I'm not sure when I'll first dare to wear it. I always wanted one but never got round to buying it so it was very much appreciated. After the staff function had finished, we then went to Primary 7 and 6 classrooms who had all chipped in money to buy us a chicken each which was really nice because we know that most kids probably gave up one or two days lunch money so they could buy us the chicken, which was lovely of them. I just wanted to hug every one of them there and then but I couldn't; mainly because there wasn't enough time to hug about 200 students! Also in the last week, it turned into a competition to see who would be the best behaved to get some of my clothes I wasn't taking back. 4 lucky students, Frank, Moshi, Bridget and Lydia got 4 t-shirts and the Wilberforce family got some other stuff and they were really grateful for it.

On my actual last day, It was like a school trip because all the students went to the town to either compete or support the school. It was a nice way to finish because you could just walk around and at various points, watch the school compete. A lot of pupils were chosen to compete at the next level which is promising, hopefully this year, they'll reach the national competition. It was just nice to stand, talk to the students and see them performing well as they just enjoyed our company for the last time.
That night, we cooked our last meal of matooke, rice and the chicken the pupils gave us.

On the final morning, we had our final goodbye. Patrick invited the people from the church and we had a nice biggish breakfast. The nicest moment of the morning was that 1 student, Sserawagi Muhamad had asked his mum for permission to come to our house and walk with me for the last time to Gombe and to the taxi. That kid is precious, one of my favourite students; he always tried hard, he always wants to learn English and cook for us. So we said our final goodbyes, Patrick gave me the verse of Psalm 35:4-6 and it was a nice way to say farewell. It wasn't too personal which was exactly what I needed. I also suppose I need to thank Kieran because on the journey back, he just kept me chatting to stop me realizing that I was actually leaving Gombe for quite possibly my last ever time.

So that's it for my gap year… all the stories, memories, quotes,people brought to you by me, Shaun Maclachlan. My time is up for now, stay tuned for my last ever blog from Uganda. It will be possibly the best one (in my opinion) because it will cap off this whole year and how much it's meant to me (although you can probably guess from my blogs).

Until then, take care and thank you for reading!
Shaun x