Hey everyone!
It's now been 5 weeks since I left the UK and it's been an awesome time... I've experienced so much in this last month that i'll never get the chance to do in a lifetime. So far, in the last month We have....
- Starting teaching 25 Hours a week at Kayenje Primary School
- Starting teaching Integration to S5 (Year 12 ) at a Secondary school
- Kieran is also teaching economics to S5
- Watched Football in a shack
- Been to an 18th Birthday Party of a girl who Kieran is now teaching!
-Done magic tricks with about 30 people crowded round me
- Started regularly attending a Boarding school Chapel/Church
- Been to the Equator and stood both sides of the World
- Been to a couple of African Markets
- Baked Banana Cake
- Played An actually football game for the local football team (Kayenje Kibulo)
- Been to a confirmations
- Thrown up due to de-hydration (Don't worry I'm fine!)
- Worked in a HIV Clinic with 95 HIV +ve patients
- Lived like Kings for one night only and spent less than 15 quid!

Now it's been 5 weeks, We've already noticed a pattern on how we live...
Every day we wake up around 6ish to the sound of other people getting up ( because there's no roof for each room), we lay half asleep in bed until 7, then we get up and put the charcoal stove on whilst we wash/change and prepare food. We eat breakfast about 8 15 just in time for lessons which start at 8 30 (Although one day we were running late and had to set the class an exercise at the start of the lesson then go eat and come back!) We then teach on average 25 hours a week
Shaun - Maths, Science, PE
Kieran - English, Sst (Social Studies which is essentially geography,history and re together) and PE
Lunch is from 1 - 2 and we started off eating the school lunch of Posho and Beans but we just couldn't hack it so we went a week without eating lunch and now we just rustle up some rice although sometimes it's a hassle having to get the charcoal stove going, boil water (We have to anyway for drinking water which can be a nuisance), and then cook the rice. After lunch we teach some more and the school day finishes for the younger students at 4 00 after assembly. P5 - P7 (Year 4/5/6) have their big exams coming up (Within the next fortnight) so they stay for extra lessons and often don't leave until 5 30! They also come in on Saturday Mornings from 7 30 - 1 30 ish... It's ridiculous for Primary School because they push them so hard at such a young age and we've noticed that a Sad matter of fact is out of a school of 840 pupils... Maybe 10 might make it to University, if that and the rest are just stuck in the vicious circle of poverty :(
After school, we often do chores (Washing, lesson plans, sweeping etc) until about 5ish when we either decide to play football (by that we mean train the Kayenje football team on the field which is less than 50 metres away) or do a bit of reading/writing. By 7 it's sunset and 7 30 pitch black... We then start cooking and eat around 9 30, go to sleep at 10 and the whole routine starts again!

We have started a little rota for during the week, for example on mondays we will start walking into Gombe to see the Superintendent about Internet access once a week (Hopefully!) and also if there are any community projects we could do like the HIV clinic work we did on Wednesday just gone. All we did was record data but it was quite humbling to see such high spirits and making their day that a "muzungu" had come to help them at a HIV clinic of all places. On tuesday/wed we walk into Gombe and do our mid-week shopping where we pick up any food we might eat and treat ourselves to Chapatti's and a Soda (Chapatti's are 200 shillings each (6p each) and are lush and a 500ml bottle of coke is 1,000 sh which is the equivalent of 30p. On Saturdays we go into Gombe and buy more food as well as watching any possible football matches for 500sh each... It is literally a wooden shack with 2 24inch tv's and a satelite. The quality is pretty good but the atmosphere was incredible, especially watching the Man Utd Liverpool game where BERBA Scored a Hat-trick?!?!?! (David Spereall if you're reading this, I told you I would give him a chance this season haha)

On Sundays, we go to a Boarding school which has a Christian Union. The church is just students so we fit in quite well and the service starts at 8 00 am! That's 6 00 am in the UK, I'm at church before you're even awake, nobody can call me lazy now! Also, the Church is quite big, they use the main hall and last sunday at the confirmation (Where we met the Bishop of Central Buganda) and there were over 1000 people there although the average congregation is about 600... eventually by the end of it. They really have made us feel at home and are eager for us to teach them songs.... Next weekend I am going to try and teach them "How great is our God" although I was shocked last weekend to hear Yahweh by Hillsong played in the background. In fact, the first song we heard walking into Church was "The Heart of Worship".

Teaching has become a norm for us... although as time has gone on, we have started to experiment... After getting bored one lesson, I decided to teach the whole class to shout "Buzzinga!" (For those of you that are Big Bang Theory fans, It really is hilarious to hear 80 kids shouting it in a classroom and have no idea what it's all about) The class sizes vary from 60 - 100 and it can really be difficult, especially given their english is limited (which adds to the vicious circle) and so they barely understand and also, every child seems to insist on cheating! We've now come up with inventive ways to humiliate the children into not cheating (E.g. Writing a big "C" for Cheater on their forehead and getting the whole class to point and laugh) It sounds horrible but tbh it beats corproral punishment which i'm sad to say does exist in our school...

Another big thing worth mentioning is the Football. We started playing football just for fun and 3 weeks later, they tell us their a football team and the week after they invite us rto their first away game! So o we travlled in the back of a pick up truck with 20 other players/coach (Jackson is the manager's name) blowing whistles and the atmosphere was just incredible! Kieran started at Right Mid as that's where he has been playing for the last month and I started as the Striker due to the fact the day before I scored a Hat-trick! So the game went on, about 156 minutes in we had a corner... It came in a boom! I scored a header, in the Back of the goal! I had scored on my debut! Technically i'm their top goal scorer as we went on to lose 2-1 although i really don't mind. Now i'm kapampale i've already bought a uganda football shirt for 8 quid and i need to buy football boots because my plimps are just too slippy and not appropraite. That so far has been the best experience of our month, hopefully there should be photos of the game on fb but I'm not sure... but it really was incredible because it was an actual match with a crownd of about 150 people by the end and I scored (and hit the post later on) although both Me and kieran were subbed off in the second half.

Other general feelings/emotions.... We find ourselves so much more grateful for the litttle things in life, for example, we went to the african market last thursday (Prettyh much like a car boot although there ar eloads of t-shirts because what happens is the t-shirts we donate here are then given to people here to sell at markets so quite often we see people walking around with random t-shirts and even random football shuirts on, so far we've seen a bradford city, Castleford tigers (rugby) and Hartleppool shirts. Anyways I digress, so we were at the market and all of a sudden we see peppers! Peppers, green peppers of all things, it's nothing for you but it was like heaven and we spent the whole night sniffing them because they were so fresh as is all the food here because it's produced and cooked locally so it's so much fresher, tastier etc. Also, We know already that our priorites have changed because for the same cost of a night out in the UK (20 - 30 quid) we could feed a whole family for a month. Also, magic tricks go down a treat here... some people actually think i'm magic and it really puts a smile on people's faces when they see some of my tricks and I get a real buzz out of it. One day i did one trick in the town and within 3 or 4 minutes there were literally 50 people standing around me in a circle wacthing all the different tricks!

Another thing worth mentioning is that every time we walk into gombe(it's about a 25minute walk) the same yuong kids call us muzungus... At first it was precious but as the days go on it gets so tiring and sometimes it almost gets too much for me. I do seriously need your prayers for peace and patience because it seems to get harder every day...

I think that's more or less everything I can write about the last month really, We are in Kampala for the weekend seeing our hosts and it's also independence day (48 years!) on Sunday so hopefully that should be a good celebration. We have another 9 weeks or so until the Start of December when we have 2 montyhs holiday... we have no idea what were going to do but it looks like we may spend christmas in Zanzibar! Also, me and kieran are looking into the possibilities of climbing Mt Kilamanjaro in easter but we know it will be very cosrtly and more or less the only thing we could afford. It's unlikely but possible...

Also, We have only found out that the school does actually have a postal address after being originally told there was no address... The address is on my facebook but here it is again...
Shaun Maclachlan/Kieran McKeown
Kayenje C/U Primary School
Po Box 145
Gombe, Mpigi
Uganda

We would love everyone to write to us... letters take about a fortnight we thing to send/receive and we will try and write back to anyone... write us letters on how things are where you're at and what's happenning in the news etc because the only news the school told us was when the Undertaker was supposedly murdered!!! Who knows if that's true or not but... T.I.A (This is Africa)

That's all for now... if you have any more questions we haven't answered, send either me or Kieran a fb message and we'll answer as soon as possible (Given that in Spetember we spent only 90 minutes apart!) so we are pretty much inseperable.... Yeah, write to us! We'll love you forever.

Take care, God bless
Shaun and Kieran =)
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