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School visits, fainting and D+V!
Jambo!
The last 24 hours have been the hardest yet. I have just sat down and hopefully i'm on the road to recovery after being violently sick last night. Unfortunately one of the girls brought what we think is a virus from the UK.... Now 7 people have gone down with it, including myself. It basically wipes you out and is really hard to deal with in this environment. I was up all night with kids who were ill and Dominic the teacher also went down with it... As I share a tent with him it wasn't long until I was bad!
We have just had a crisis meeting with Yusra, leader liaison, and we have increased monitoring and hygiene... It's a bloody big pain!
Anyway.... Yesterday was just one of those days. We set off in the morning for our walk to see the local area. This was more than we had bargained for as it was actually a long way up and down Mt Kili. First stop was the old Mamas house. This is our main project here and we met the lady herself. One of the kids had knitted her a blanket so her presented this to her... our first touching moment. Then we made our way to the local school. Here I met lots and lots of children and took over a lesson about angles! :) I gave out all the pens children from my school had given me and the smiles on the children's faces were amazing! They all send a huge 'thank you!'
After this it got eventful! On our way down a steep path one of the lads had mentioned to me that he faints when he gets too hot. As we started to climp back up the other side of the vally I told him to sit down because he was really hot and sweating alot! Then about 10m infront of me another girl had a slight panic attack! It was very steep, slippy and hot. I was just calming her down when the boy sat down fainted! I rushed back to him and got him in the recovery position with the Camp Manager, Joel. Had came round pretty quick but was in a bad way. It was very scary and stressful as we were along way from camp on a steep hill... It took the best part of an hour to walk him back at a snails pace. When we got back he sorted himself out and I dealt with yet another girl who was feeling sick.
While all this was going on the Founder and CEO of Camps made a visit to camp! A very special moment! He had a chat with me about Dubai as he lives there and has very strong links with the Gems schools! I was buzzing as this is the company of schools I want to work for and he said he would be able to give my CV into the right people! I got his email address and was over the moon!!
After lunch I went to school with some students while the others went to do project work. At school some of the girls had a go at teaching, which they couldn't do, and I taught a class Ke Ke Cu Le. I had a great time singing and I also taught them how to play naughts and crosses. The girls then decided to give out biscuits, which more or less led to a riot!
We headed back to camp in good spirits and had a good evening... We played a game of logs on the field and spoke to more locals :) All was good until people started to fall like flies!
The virus was now spreading and another girl went down with it. I made a call to my liaison and monitored the situation. I didn't get much sleep as every 10 mins someone else threw up! Dominic, the lead teacher, went down with it in the middle of the night and at about 5 I started! Things were hard!
I gave up leading the group and they sorted themselves out as we weighed up the situation. I was out of it :(
Everyone chilled for a few hours and things began to calm down. Yusra arrived and crisis meeting was held. We have separated the group and some then went off to do project work! I crashed and went back to sleep.
Now I feel ok, hopefully I'm on the up! The kids had a great time doing project work and things are calm over lunch. I hope they don't continue much longer!! On the plus side.... I have just arranged to get one of the bags back we have lost but not for another week!
Anyway.... I'm off! Things can only get better :)
Tom x
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