If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen

...or, more appropriately, if you can't stand the heat then don't do heavy physical work at the equator. Yesterday, we went to build drying stands and dig rubbish pits for rural villages. I was having great fun doing the digging, even though it was very tough because the ground is so hard and we only had really heavy hoes. But when we'd almost finished digging the hole I suddenly went very dizzy and nearly threw up - it seems I got dehydrated. So for most of the afternoon I had to sit around feeling pathetic and useless while everyone else did useful stuff. It was very frustrating because when I sat or led still I felt fine, but as soon as I moved I felt like throwing up. Also apparently I looked drunk whenever I tried to walk around!

Late in the afternoon I recovered enough to go and watch the school's football and netball matches. They name the teams after continents and Europe won the netball, yay! On the way home we passed a group of children who were thrilled to shake my hand, so I stayed with them and did some dancing and silly games for a bit. They were incredibly cute.

Late last night I had another wave of feeling ill, including being very cold and shivery at one point. I was kind of worried I might have a fever but I went to sleep and felt much better when I woke up. Still not well enough to walk anywhere though, so I couldn't go to the lesson I was meant to be helping in this morning :-(. At lunchtime I felt a bit better though, so I headed down to the school and helped Muhoozi with some chemistry and some physics. It's frustrating how much physics I've forgotten! But we managed to work through some problems together, like balancing equations in chemistry and specific heat capacities in physics.

The house I'm staying in has solar panels on the roof, but obviously they only work when it's sunny. In theory we're linked up to the Ugandan power grid as a back-up, but the transformer's broken so that's not working. Since it was cloudy yesterday and rainy today (and I mean *really* rainy - the saying "It never rains but it pours" is so true here!) we've had no power in the house. Luckily the laptop that the Chinese volunteers brought along has a really good battery!

We volunteers have a new favourite saying - "TIA" which stand for "This is Africa". For example, yesterday just before the football match we drove to a nearby town to attend a meeting. When we got there, we found that nobody was at the meeting because they were all going to a funeral. But nobody had thought to phone us and mention this! TIA. Also, at the end of the football match, some of the guys were having a kickabout and they were joined by a herd of cows. TIA.

I'm curious about how many people are reading this. Comment and say hello?