Happy days

Peace and Prossy, two of the children staying with us during the school holidays, are currently bouncing around the room singing ‘Happy Birthday Emily’. Never mind that my birthday was yesterday, and my name’s not Emily. After a few weeks of trying to convince them that my name is Amy I’ve just given up and got used to it. So depending on who’s speaking to me, I can be Amy, Emily, Bilungi or Biochemist!

Last weekend was very exciting as I traveled up to Kampala. On Saturday the URF organised a ‘leadership symposium’ with various talks relevant to young professionals or university students. Although some of them were things I’ve heard to death, like how to write a CV, there were some interesting differences between the UK and here. For example, the woman speaking about the CV writing was adamant that you should write your tribe, marital status, religion and so on in the personal details section. When somebody asked whether that would make an employer biased, she said that it would be better for them to find out in the CV than in the interview – a fair point, but I’m sure that in the UK it’s illegal to ask in the interview as well. The speaker then proceeded to give a list of possible interview questions. There were at least 100 of them, and she read all of them out slowly with a short explanation, but without elaborating too much on good ways of answering them, so that got a bit tedious! Another speaker talked about general career guidance. His main point was that people should discover their ‘career personality’ early so that they can choose a suitable career. Very good advice, but he insisted that parents should aim to find out their child’s career personality by the age of six, because that’s when David Beckham decided he wanted to be a footballer, or something like that. I don’t think most people can possibly know their career personality at that age, because the next few years have such an impact on your personality and interests!

The third talk was… engaging, but I hated it. It was based in some way on the book ‘The Cash Flow Quadrant’ by R. Kiyasaki, which I haven’t read and now never want to. The idea in general was ‘leveraging’ of time. In other words, if you employ people, the eight hours a day that they work goes into your ‘time bank account’, so if you have thousands of employees you can ‘live several years in one day’. The speakers were very charismatic so everyone was shouting along and afterwards said that they had learned a lot and gained a lot, but really all they said was that you have to work hard, aim high, and employ people. Unfortunately, they also kept coming back to the URF motto of ‘Belief that a better life is possible’, which in the examples they were giving is true for the few people at the top of the pile who are controlling the businesses, but not for the tens of thousands of people who are working however many hours per day in their tea plantations and so on. Anyway, maybe I’m just too left-wing or something.

After this came the talks that, in my opinion, were the most useful. One was about basic Ugandan legal information when starting up a company or charity, as well as some more general anecdotes about the law. The speaker talked about the constitution for a bit, and then everyone laughed at the idea that the UK doesn’t even have a written constitution and operates on ‘common law, which is kind of like common sense, mostly’. Next was a very very interesting talk about ‘The importance of gender mainstreaming in the project cycle’. Gender is something that I would have considered to some extent when planning my own project, but this talk made me realise how much deeper the issue is than I would have assumed. The speaker gave a wonderful anecdote about the time when she was doing her PhD research into sleeping sickness (the same thing I’m studying for my Masters next year!). Her team were trying a new method of controlling the disease by setting out traps for tsetse flies, which carry the disease-causing parasite. The traps were made of a lovely blue and black fabric to attract the flies. They put out 2000 traps, and told the local chiefs what they were doing. The chiefs agreed that they would look after the traps and not remove them. When the team came back a month later to review how many flies had been caught, they found only 50 of the 2000 traps still there! The chiefs insisted they hadn’t touched them… but they soon found out that women had been removing them to make their traditional dresses because they liked the look of the fabric! The moral of the story being that you have to consider all stakeholders in a project, not just the ‘obvious’ ones.

The final talk was about how to source for project funds, including how to write a good project proposal. It’s not a topic I knew very much about, so hopefully it will increase my chances of getting good funding for my project! Again he emphasised the need to involve the whole community in a project rather than just those directly being targeted. I’ve been planning to interview teachers about my ideas, and I’d also considered interviewing students, but I hadn’t really thought about interviewing parents or local authorities as well.

After the meeting I went to stay with Ivan, a member of the URF Kampala chapter, first year law student at Makerere University (the Cambridge of Uganda) and the future president of Uganda. Since the lecturers of the university are all on strike, his roommate had gone home, leaving a free bed in his room. I discovered that the only thing that gets more stares than being a mzungu in Uganda is being a female mzungu wearing only a towel walking across an all-boys dormitory in Uganda J. It was really lovely to stay at the university and it felt very much like being at home. It seems that boys in Uganda have the same sense of humour as those in the UK… I will put the pictures up on facebook when I get home to show what I mean by that! On Sunday morning I wanted to go to a good, lively church in Kampala so Ivan suggested Watoto Church, a Pentecostal church set up by an American several years ago. It has five sites in Kampala because it’s expanded so much! We headed to the central site as it was closest, but there was a sign up saying that instead of the usual services there would be a ‘Festival of Hope’ at Watoto West. They were providing transport there so we headed over… and I was so overjoyed at what we found. They had a huge stage in a huge field, with thousands of people there to worship. On the stage were a massive children’s choir and a band with guitars and drums and singers. They were serving food in tents and had bouncy castles for the children. The music was so lively, with everyone dancing and jumping and being undignified :D. I was thinking about how much it reminded me of Greenbelt festival, which I was very sad to be missing… and then it became even more like Greenbelt when the heavens opened! The rain here is really quite impressive when it comes – even under the marquees the water was running over the top of my shoes, and the noise was deafening.

Since it was a festival rather than a service, there wasn’t really a sermon, but everyone went to split up into their cell groups for discussions. Since we didn’t want to stay all day, we hitched a lift with someone else who was leaving and who very kindly dropped us exactly where we wanted to go in the city! In his car he had a CD of worship music playing and it was just the kind of songs we have at HT. I almost didn’t want to get out of the car! However, we were being dropped off at Garden City which is a big Western-style shopping arcade which has a cinema, and my excitement about watching Harry Potter outweighed my love of the music. We eventually found the cinema (though I got distracted by nearly every shop in the arcade, like a child in a sweet shop, because after six weeks of seeing mostly the same things in shops (bread, flour, soap, skin lightening cream, paper etc) seeing all these shiny things was just too exciting)… only to find out that they stopped showing Harry Potter last week. GRRR. I didn’t stay sad for too long though, because I discovered ‘Pizza Hot’ in the arcade! It has just the same logo as Pizza Hut, but sadly it doesn’t offer the same all-you-can-eat lunchtime buffet. Anyway, the vegetarian pizza was delicious.

In the afternoon and evening we wandered around chatting and then watched the Manchester United vs Arsenal football match. We were watching it in a bar and I ordered a pot of tea, which turned out to be enough hot water to make five cups of tea! I was very happy about that, especially as someone knocked over my cup of tea at the church festival by dancing very enthusiastically. People here can’t believe that I don’t support any football team, so I decided to support Arsenal during the game just to go against the flow. Ivan and I decided to bet a bottle of soda on the result. Definitely a mistake! Everyone else in the bar (apart from a few people who mostly kept quiet) supported ManU so they were jumping around and shouting and cheering for the whole match. For those of you who didn’t watch it, the score was 8-2 which is one of the highest scoring matches ever or something like that. After the match we ate rolexes and samosas and then stayed up talking until the early hours of the morning. It felt just like being at home.

On Monday we had a meeting with a supplier of laboratory equipment and chemicals in the centre of Kampala. He’s a friend of the headmaster at Hope so we will probably buy the supplies for the school from there. We chatted for a while about the joys of science, and then he gave me the price list, saying ‘but you know, it’s not like the Ten Commandments, you bring me the prices you want… we’ll talk about it… I want to build up loyal customers, y’know? So really, just tell me what you want…’. We liked him a lot. He also implied that if we made a big order he would donate a model skeleton to the school, and they are expensive!

We ate a late lunch of cheeseburgers, which were seriously amazing. Ivan had never eaten a burger before! Then we went back to the university and hung out with his friends for the afternoon. His roommate came back and we had a long discussion about gay marriage, Ugly Betty, Desperate Housewives and many other things. It was interesting to hear that in Uganda those shows are watched just as much by men as by women – there’s certainly no stigma when men watch them like there might be at home. Since the roommate wanted to use his own bed, I went to stay with Caro, a friend of Ivan’s. She’s the most westernised person I’ve met here, I think – we listened to rock music and watched American films together. She has a huge gas stove in her room, which isn’t allowed at all, but she bribed the porters of her halls to let her bring it in!

On Tuesday morning I had a really exciting meeting. The woman who gave the gender talk at the symposium, Dr Elizabeth Kyewalabye, agreed to come into Kampala to talk to me, even though she didn’t know what I wanted to talk about. I was really keen to see what she would think about my project idea, because she’s got so much experience that would be useful: she was only the third woman in Uganda to qualify as a vet, she did her PhD research on something I’m interested in, she’s been a lecturer at three universities and deputy vice chancellor of another, she’s president of the YMCA Uganda chapter, and she started her own NGO for women and youth in development. So basically the perfect person to be involved in an NGO focused on science, youth and development. When I talked to her about it, it took about five minutes for her to go from asking ‘How would you do X?’ to ‘How can we do Y?’. So I now have a co-director! I thought the meeting would last about half an hour or an hour, but we ended up talking for well over three hours. She even invited her friend, a lawyer/consultant, to come and discuss the practical legal issues with us. So we’ve now drafted a concept paper and hopefully within the next couple of weeks we’ll be registered as a CBO! Then we can pass a resolution to open a bank account, which is apparently very easy… and then I have to come back to the UK. Bother. But I think the plan is to begin offering the services at the start of the 2013 school year, which gives me a few months after I graduate to get everything in order, to get sponsors for the project and so on. It’s all kind of overwhelming, but I’m so passionate about this idea and everyone I’ve spoken to has said it would be a practical, sensible way of tackling a real problem in this country. The thought of living in Uganda for a very long time (a few years) is also pretty scary, but I’ve made some really good friends here and with the internet connection improving all the time, I’d be able to keep in touch with everyone at home OK. And you are all invited to come and visit me at some time! I don’t think I would even miss western food that much – in Kampala, after two days of eating the pizza and cheeseburger, I was craving rice and beans and avocado and chapatti. I would just have to make sure I got hold of plenty of vegetables!

I was sad to leave Kampala on Tuesday but the journey home was very smooth and I made it back in under 3 hours – a record I think! Knowing that the city is so close is quite comforting, it would even be feasible to do a day trip there if I needed to, which makes this rural area seem far less remote, even though it is to most of the people who live here. I spent Wednesday compiling the order for all the science equipment and chemicals. I’ve bought three practical-focused textbooks and used them to select a range of experiments that illustrate most of the important points in physics, chemistry and biology, but use the minimum amount of equipment and chemicals possible, or at least use the same equipment as many other experiments. The total cost, based on the price list, comes to 2.5 million (about £500 at current exchange rates) but I reckon I can get that down to about 1.5 million. Still more than the 400 000ish that we have, but I think that amount will go up in the next few days so it should all be well.

And the most exciting thing: yesterday was my 21^st birthday! I woke up in the morning to find a ‘parcel’ by my bed – some fresh chapatti and a rolex with egg and tomato and avocado from David. I spent the morning relaxing, drinking tea and playing the guitar. In the afternoon, the plan was to go to Masaka for dinner at Ten Tables, a very reasonably priced western-style restaurant which supports the charity AidChild. Only Katie and I could go from the URF, but I also wanted to take my friend Christine who’s in S2. She’s staying in Mbiriizi at the moment, which is just down the road. I phoned her and she told us to meet her at ‘the police’ in Mbiriizi, which we took to mean the police station. We got there… she wasn’t there. Called her up, and her grandparents (who own the phone) said she was already there. There was a long period of confusion, where we couldn’t leave the police station to go and search for her because the rain was the heaviest I have ever seen and we were surrounded by a very fast-flowing river. We kept asking if this was the only police station and the officers were saying yes, they think so… and it took a full hour before someone pointed out that although this was the only police station, they have barracks at the other end of town. One phone call to a colleague there established that Christine was waiting there. So by this point it was too late to travel to Masaka, especially as the rain was making the roads very dangerous and we wouldn’t want to get stuck there. So we waded through the rivers of rain until we found a chapatti stand still bravely cooking, and we bought more rolexes! By the time we’d also bought sodas the rain had stopped and we sat outside on a bench, eating and drinking and chatting. Then we ate samosas and played pool, which always amuses the locals. Christine had never played it before but she was pretty good for the first time so we’ll have to practise some more in Kyetume. I gave her my present (an O-level biology revision guide) and she was really excited. Honestly, it was better than getting a present.

When we came back to the house we were going to put on music but, typically, the power was off. So we sang and played the guitar, blew up all the balloons (which all popped because they were only from Poundland), lit up the glowsticks and played games with them, including skipping, and had a very lovely evening even if it wasn’t the one I had planned! Very African, and I went to sleep very happy.

Now, as always, the power is about to run out…

Tonight, more than ever, I am reminded of an old song I used to love. I can't find the lyrics anywhere, but it's about a woman who moves to the countryside (I think the outbacks of Australia since the singer is Rolf Harris), far away from her friends, her family, and the city life that she loves. She's writing a letter to her old school friend, Narelle. The tone of the verses is brave but sad, but my favourite bit is the ends of the choruses where the music rises...

But oh! Dear Narelle, I wish you could be here
When the rain finally falls, and the country turns green
And the wind moves the hills in an ocean of grasses
And the gulleys sing loud with the song of the stream.

And oh! Dear Narelle, you should be here at sundown
When the easterly breeze hunts the heat from the day
And the stars shine like diamonds in a sky of black velvet
And I'm glad that my city life's far far away...
And the moon shines as softly as a far away bushfire
And I'm glad that my city life's far far away
I'm glad that my city life's far far away.

Ask and you shall receive

"But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today." - Deuteronomy 8:18

There's not a whole lot to write about at the moment. The students are still on school holiday, which I wasn't expecting. A slight miscommunication meant that I thought they started lessons again on the 12th August, but actually they won't be here until 5th September! So I'm finding other ways to fill my time.

David and I are working at the school in Kyazanga to paint a world map on the wall outside. We were supposed to go last week, but the school's director, Bannet, needed to get the wall plastered first. Sadly his mother had a heart attack at the start of the week so understandably the plastering wasn't his highest priority. She is now recovering well, so we headed there yesterday to do the first lot of painting. Of course, more miscommunications meant they'd plastered a slightly different area of wall to what we expected so David spent most of the day plastering the rest of it while I did some painting. Hopefully the plaster will be dry by tomorrow so we can paint paint paint. Also, hopefully tomorrow it won't rain quite as much as it did yesterday! We were working underneath the overhang of the roof but we still got rather wet and even cold! Bannet kept asking me if I was too cold, since I was only in t-shirt and shorts, but I was very happy and told him that it's frequently much, much colder in the UK. He thought that was funny.

I've been spending quite a lot of time composing e-mails to various people asking them to donate money towards Hope Academy's laboratory. I calculated that it will cost about $1500 to put in all the work benches, water and gas pipes, equipment, chemicals and so on. I don't expect to raise all that while I'm here, but so far two people have donated a total of $350 which is a really good start, and someone else has pledged to donate more when they return to the UK. It's quite overwhelming having the responsibility of using the money carefully and wisely, especially when I know that many retailers here are only too happy to charge 'mzungu prices' if I'm not careful! But I'm working with the headmaster and some of the teachers, so hopefully we can do the best job possible. Today I was sizing up the lab to decide the best way of arranging furniture in there. It's only about 5m x 6m but it needs to hold a class of about 40 students! I think it's possible, so long as we make creative use of storage spaces. All those days of reading Ikea catalogues with their interesting arrangements of furniture are coming in useful. I even suggested putting in a mezzanine level since the ceiling is quite high, but it would be rather expensive... and I'm not sure I'd want someone using acid on a cheaply constructed platform above my head!

Another thing I've been doing is researching an idea I've had for a longer-term project for the future. While I'm really excited about furnishing the lab here, and I hope it will have a really positive effect on the education of these students, it's clearly not feasible to install good science facilities in every school in the area. However it would be possible to have a 'mobile lab' in a van that could visit schools, to run experiments that fit in with the national syllabus. Projects like the Book Bus do this successfully with a library but so far I can't find anyone doing it with science equipment. Obviously it would be more difficult financially (books are harder to 'use up' than chemicals, and easier for normal people to donate) but with some good sponsors (individuals, schools, universities, scientific companies etc) it should be possible. I've started discussing it with teachers and the response has been very positive. Next week, or maybe later this week, Bannet is going to take me round the other secondary schools in Kyazanga so I can talk to their science teachers too. I think the biggest challenge in this project would be convincing my mother that it's a good idea for me to move back to Uganda for a longer period of time...

So, thanks to problems with internet, electricity and laziness, it's been two weeks since I last posted. Many many things to write about!

Teaching has been going well, though for the last week or so the students have been having exams. I've done several experiments with them, with varying degrees of success. I have to remember that the students just aren't used to doing things for themselves, so even though they've written out the method for an experiment (1. Label two test tubes "A" and "B"; 2. Put a clean nail and some water in test tube A; 3. Put some boiled water in test tube B and add a layer of oil; 4. Leave for one week) they have no idea what to do when presented with test tubes, nails, water and oil. I finally empathised with an old teacher of mine, who used to say very frequently "It's like trying to get blood out of a stone!"

We tried to do some chromatography with S1, to separate different pigments in leaves. It would have worked fine apart from the ethanol, well, wasn't ethanol. There were several unmarked water bottles containing clear liquids in the lab, so the teacher went through and sniffed them all until he decided that one was more likely to be ethanol than any of the others. To be fair, it probably once did contain ethanol, but since it's been left open in the lab it's now very dilute. I think the students still enjoyed doing the practical stuff though.

Marking the exam papers has been amusing and frustrating in equal measure. Some of the answers to the questions have made me giggle:
Q - why do we study biology? A - to acquire skin.
Q - list five ways of separating mixtures. A - magnesium, by burning paper into ash, by buring bush into ash, by burning clothes into ash, by burning firewood into ash, soil and water, dies in ink, water and athonal, filitration.
Q - how can you separate a mixture of oil and water? A - We first make the apparatuse very well and then we have expand them well organised. We put their Beaker, a filter paper and filter funnel the we should start mixing oil with water the we mixing them in the time then it gives the the truth what we have to do at the last moment. And we have to check them at one second. and we should live them whe one second is already left we should remove them in the apparatus awe should see oil heavey than water what is it when we have finished to see the heaviest when it is water or oil we shall no the truth.

(And the truth will set us free?)

In the past couple of weeks I've visited two other secondary schools, Mbiriizi Modern Secondary and another school in Kyazanga whose name I've forgotten. MMS was very nice - it's about ten years old compared to three years for Hope so it runs much more smoothly. They have dormitories for both boys and girls, a large assembly hall, and even two science labs! The labs aren't much better equipped than the one at Hope, but they're considerably more spacious and there are enough benches for a whole class of students to work in there. As a result, all the classes of students there do an average of one practical per week, according to one of the teachers. The school in Kyazanga, on the other hand, is even poorer than Hope. They don't even pretend to have any scientific facilities. David and I are going back there on Wednesday to paint a world map on one of the walls outside the school, and maybe fill up some of the other blank wall space as well. Maybe I should draw out the periodic table?

Last Wednesday I went to a local market with Clare and Tammy. All the taxis and cars going in that direction were already full (and "full" in Ugandan terms means at least 12 people in a 5-seater car) so we walked for an hour or so to get there. It's not a touristy market at all so it was very interesting, though we were stared at and shouted at a lot. The market is loosely organised into zones... after our first walkabout we learned not to spend too long in the fish section! They sell these tiny dried fish, which I tried once the last time I was in Uganda. They're not too bad, but when you have piles of them at least a metre high the smell is overpowering. A much better area of the market was the part where they sold banana pancakes. These are about 7-8cm diameter, made from flour, water and banana and deep fried. When they're hot they are incredibly tasty, and at USh100 for 3 (=3p!) we can afford to indulge in them. Mmmm. I tried to buy a children's book in English and Luganda (Akatabo Kange Akasooka Mu Luzungu n'Oluganda) but the guy wanted USh6000 for it which I thought was a little unreasonable. I later found the same book in Masaka for USh3500 and another good one for the same price... and later the same day I saw them in another shop for USh2000 each. Hmph.

A weird thing happened in Masaka the other day. I found some science posters in a bookshop and decided to buy them for Hope. They were just the right kind of level and presented the information nicely. The students have no textbooks, just the notes they take down from their teachers, and posters could be a good way of getting more information across to them without having to buy a textbook for each student. Anyway, I asked for the price and the woman in the shop said 10,000 each. I offered 20,000 for three and she said yes. I chose three and paid. We were just about to leave the shop when a man who also worked there grabbed the posters from my hand and said they're 12,000 each. I explained that I'd already made the deal and paid, but he wouldn't let go of them! After arguing with him for a few minutes I picked up my money off the counter and walked out of the shop. I'm pretty sure in the UK what he did would be illegal but TIA and I couldn't be bothered to carry on arguing. Similarly, in Kyazanga we tried to buy some chapati. The guy said they were 500 each, which is expensive but they were pretty big. I paid 3000 and asked him for six but they gave us three and then said they're 1000 each! Ridiculous. I know we're richer and all that, and I'm used to them trying to charge us slightly more than they would charge each other, but changing the price after the money has been exchanged? Really? It's hardly going to make us want to go back to that trader.

Last Saturday morning I did a homestay with one of the S2 students, Christine. She's super-lovely and very bright. I've marked the biology and chemistry exams for S2 now and she came 2nd and 4th in the class (out of 30ish), with 90% and 81% respectively, a distinction in both cases. Considering in the chemistry exam two thirds of her class failed (under 50%), her marks are very impressive. She wants to be a doctor so I hope and pray that her parents will be able to afford her education. The homestay was very relaxed since by the time I got there (at 10ish after she'd come to pick me up) she'd already done all the cleaning and digging for the morning! So we drank tea, ate chapati and banana pancakes and nuts, chatted, did some revision for the exams, played with her sister and brother, and spoke some Luganda (she taught me how to tell the time). When I left she gave me nuts, sugar cane and pineapple! It still amazes me how generous some people here can be.

In my last post I wrote about the wedding we went to. Last weekend we went to a graduation party for one of the teachers from Hope. It was much like the wedding with many many speeches. When we arrived we were fed with some of the family (though the teacher's family were fasting for Ramadan). There was rice and matoke obviously, and also chicken 'soup' (pieces of chicken in broth) cooked in banana leaf parcels. Opening the food is like opening a present because you don't know which body parts you'll get - mum, you'd hate it! Tammy got the necks (and promptly swapped parcels with someone else) but I had legs and wings which were much nicer. It was the most African meal I've had so far I think, particularly because we had to eat everything with our fingers. I challenge you to eat a plate of rice and chicken broth with your fingers without making a complete mess of everything! During the party itself there was lots of dancing but only specific groups of people are called to dance at any one time, while everybody else watches. So obviously they called up us bazungu to embarrass ourselves in front of everyone. There were also 4 other white people, from Holland, but we didn't get a chance to meet them other than raising our eyebrows at each other as we danced. There were a couple of hundred people at the party so it took a very very long time for all the 'important' groups of people to come up to the front and dance. Another very African thing about the party... the village had precisely zero toilets, so we just had to walk out through the banana plantations if we wanted to go! It felt slightly exposed, but I guess the people in the houses on the surrounding hills are quite used to the sight by now.

As a nice contrast to the slightly negative feeling of the last paragraph, I'm going to write about one of the most amazing things I've done here so far. Last Wednesday David and I went to visit a friend called John who keeps bees. He was harvesting the honey which was so interesting to watch. He had piles of dried leaves which he set on fire to smoke out the bees, then used a machete and his hands to get the honeycomb out of the hives. He got stung quite a bit and burnt too, but he kept going for about an hour. It was really stunning to watch because it was completely dark, but there were thunderstorms in the distance so there was almost constant lightning and of course the fire from the leaves. I took some photos but they really don't do it justice.

Some other fun things. We have racist turkeys here which are HUGE, like waist height! Some previous volunteers antagonised them so now they attack white people. Slightly more scary than the turkeys, Tammy and I got followed home by a crazy man who then tried to attack me. Luckily Martin grabbed him and placated him somewhat (though he was still shouting something about mzungu) though he did manage to hit me in the neck. Everyone was impressed that I stayed so calm during the whole thing, so it seems my Jitsu training is paying off :-). If he turns up again, or tries to attack us in Kyetume, I won't hesitate to defend myself properly!

Time for our daily walk to Kyetume to buy chapati and soda now :-) :-) :-). It would be really really nice to talk to people on the phone - my number is +256754168015 and if you get credit on Skype it's only about 15p per minute, and really cheap to text. I'm free most of the time and it isn't considered rude here to answer a phone call even during a meeting so anyone can call whenever. Best time is probably between 9pm and 11pm (7pm-9pm in UK).

Mbera bulungi

TIA TIA TIA

Firstly, a little reminder to myself: "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others." - Philippians 2:3-4

Deep breath. Africa can be so frustraaaaaating. I'm very hesitant to use the words "corruption" or "laziness" about any of the people here because they seem such dramatic words, but they're serious problems, at every level of organisation. Because they're so widespread and just 'part of the culture', it seems very difficult to do anything about them without feeling like a colonialist coming and stamping our own values and systems onto everything. On the other hand... there's a complete lack of accountability here ---

[[OH MY GOODNESS THERE IS THE MOST MASSIVE SPIDER I HAVE EVER SEEN ON THE WALL OPPOSITE ME AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE COME HERE AND TAKE IT AWAY?!?!?!?!]]

More deep breaths. Complete lack of accountability. High levels of distractability. There's not really any need to keep proper financial records, or to get accreditation for a charity, so it's then very easy to, y'know, divert funds. The URF volunteer website gives the following breakdown of what the $400 donation might be used for:

On-ground Admin: $100 (airtime, taxis, internet, stationary, jjajja's services, etc) - So why are we paying for our own internet, and then the URF staff are borrowing the modem from us?!
Hope Academy: $90 (teachers' salaries, electricity, photocopying, stationary, chalk, etc) - Electricity, haha. Engineers Without Borders provided the solar panels for free, and the other power isn't even working. Maybe once it's fixed that will be a reasonable expense. Teachers' salaries etc, fair enough.
Orphanage: $90 (food and daily upkeep)
Health Care Fund: $60 (clinic/ clinic trips untill clinic is built ) - We've heard some complaints about the clinic; it's supposed to be a free service but charging for drugs to cover costs. However, locals are saying that they have to pay to see someone there. There's either a miscommunication between locals & clinic, or between clinic & us.
Women's Programs: $60 (crafts, piggery, poultry, etc)

So, in general this isn't so bad, but as I said there's not a great emphasis on record keeping so it's difficult to see how much the money is really being spent on this. When I sent my $400, the volunteer coordinator said that it would go towards the building of domitories for the school which is supposedly in progress. There are some half-built brick structures here, but they're not 'in progress', though they might have been a couple of years ago! I'm going to make some enquiries with the staff about the building work - like who's being paid to work on it, what's the schedule, where are the materials and equipment coming from? And why isn't it happening right now? And if they can't answer those questions, I'm going to take that $400 and spend it on doing up their science lab and computer room so they're of working standard, then set some kind of system in place so they will actually be used when I'm gone. As for the rest of the accountability questions, we're going to work on setting up some kind of spreadsheet for the finances so everything can be tracked properly. I don't mind donating this much money, but when I do it's incredibly frustrating to see the inefficiency with which it's used.

Right. Rant over for now.

Yesterday we went to a Ugandan wedding. I thought this would be super-exciting but we turned up at the wrong time. The event goes on all weekend, with the 'introduction' (hosted by the groom's family, with lots of speeches) on Friday, then the ceremony (at the church, with lots of speeches) on Saturday afternoon, the reception (hosted by the bride's family, with lots of speeches) on Saturday evening and the dancing and partying continuing until Sunday. We decided not to go to the ceremony since it was all in Luganda, so turned up just for the reception. The whole village, and everybody from the surrounding area, was invited. We thought it started at 6 so turned up at 6.30 knowing that 6 means at least 7 in African time. As it happened, it didn't start til at least 9. Then the bride and groom didn't turn up til 10 (in the meantime we had a lot of excitement with the power randomly cutting out and turning on again, giving us brief glimpses of the stunning night sky) and the speeches and present-giving (SO. MANY. SPEECHES.AND.PRESENTS.) went on and on and on and on until at about 11 I decided to go home because I found myself napping in my chair. It seems that was a good decision, as according to the others the dancing part of the party didn't start until past midnight. Anyway, the sitting around wasn't so bad as we got to admire lots of beautiful dresses and laugh at the alcohol being served - cloudy brown moonshine in clear plastic bags being handed out to everyone. Including pregnant and breast-feeding mothers. We didn't laugh at that bit. Also it was reeeeally strange when the bride and groom turned up because the bride just looked at the floor the whole time and almost never smiled. But we found out later that the bride isn't allowed to look at the groom until after the ceremony, so that's probably why. Seems like a silly tradition to me, but hey, TIA.

I feel like this post is coming out very complainy. It wasn't meant to be that way! In general I'm having a lovely time here and feeling very positive. Today (Sunday) some of us headed into Masaka on a very pleasant and reasonably-priced coach (let's ignore the fact that he dropped us off about 2 miles out of town) and had lunch at a very nice Western-style restaurant (with lovely Western-style prices to match) and then Katie and I headed to the orphanage sponsored by the URF, Nazareth Children's Home. The children are delightful though many of them are sick. One young girl, Bridget, has had TB recently and has a 'TB spine' and a nasty cough. She's adorable though, and curled up in my lap to sleep for a while. The others just love any attention you can give them, whether it's singing or dancing or playing with a ball or reading their alphabet poster to them for the millionth time. I know that of all the projects I can help with here, the orphanage is the one that I will probably have the least personal effect on in the long term, because although playing with kids is fun it's not exactly life-changing... but they're so beautiful, and even if they are snotty and half-naked I just want to burst with love when I play with them.

Today I had ice cream. It was a lovely treat. Also I bought more airtime for my phone so I can call home again. If anyone wants to phone me and say hello, you can buy credit on skype and then call Ugandan numbers for about 15p/min which is cheaper than I can do from here. I can't use skype cos the internet connection isn't fast enough. I'm not entirely sure what my Ugandan number is cos I threw away the paper with it on by mistake, but maybe someone I've texted will post my number on here?

Less complaining next time, I promise!

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?

"Educating of girls is a wastage of money"

This afternoon I phoned my old school's chemistry department to ask if they have any old equipment that they would be able to send over to the school. The staff all seemed very positive about the idea so hopefully they'll look into it! A school in Cheltenham recently closed down and merged with another so they've been getting rid of a lot of stuff, so the staff from my school are going to see if any of that is left and send it over. The school has a charity committee who raise funds for various causes so maybe some of that will be put towards postage. In a bit I'm going to try calling someone in Cambridge as well.

Carrying on in the tradition of asking me to do things very shortly before I have to do them, this afternoon I was asked at 2pm to teach the 2pm chemistry lesson. It was only about balancing equations, and the students are quite good at it already, so we just worked through a set of examples. It was good fun and I'm amazed how confident I am at standing up in front of a class even after only doing it for a couple of days. The girls who sit in the front row are SO keen, they remind me of me at school, haha. I had to explain to them halfway through the lesson that I want to pick different people to answer each question, not just the ones who have their hands highest in the air!

The final session on Wednesdays is a debate for S1 and S2. This week the S3s joined in too because their biology teacher didn't turn up. How are students expected to learn if their teachers don't even come to school?! And they're short of staff anyway, it's not like they can just call up a substitute at a minute's notice. Anyway, the debate was on the motion "Educating of girls is a wastage of money" and it was very educational for me in many ways. Although obviously I strongly oppose the motion, I ended up agreeing and disagreeing with points on both sides. For example, points for the proposition included:

• Educated women don't show respect to their elders (i.e. kneeling in front of older women)
• Educated girls go to night discos and leave their homes because they think they can live by themselves (an interesting point of rebuttal to this one, from a boy, was "Surely that's a good thing because then I can land more chicks!")
• Girls often get pregnant before finishing their education and they have to drop out, so all the education before that was a waste of money.
• Girls in mixed schools seduce boys.

And for the opposition:

• Marriages where both the man and the woman are educated are stronger, and the family gets more respect
• The standard of living goes up when girls are educated
• Girls often have more practical skills than boys - when this is combined with education the result is a very skilled person
• Education for girls improves communication between men and women, both through speaking and writing
• Men cannot make decisions for women as well as women can
• God created men and women together and told them both to look after the planet, and women must be educated in order to play their part in this
• Many businesses have been mismanaged by men - they need women as well
• Education for women can prevent prostitution
• Having girls in schools reduces homosexuality (this one made me cringe a lot)
• Educated women can educate their children

At the end they asked me to stand up and give my points. I got a lot of cheers! It always feels a bit strange to be treated like a celebrity. I made three points in general - firstly, countries which treat men and women more equally and educate women well have a higher rate of development, so if Uganda wants to develop as a nation they need to make education of women a priority. Secondly, I said to the girls that being educated is no reason to be disrespectful, and that everyone (boys and girls) should be respectful to their elders. I told them that they should be as respectful as possible, and then nobody will be able to use that objection to their education. Finally I talked about girls getting pregnant/ seducing boys etc. I pointed out that girls can't get pregnant on their own (this got a lot of laughter) and that boys have to take an equal responsibility for this and not go about getting girls pregnant! And everybody laughed, but I hope they took the point seriously. I wish I'd had more time to prepare things to say, but surprise surprise, they just pointed at me and said "Madam Mzungu, what will you say about this motion?".

At the end of the debate I was chatting to a student called Muhoozi (or Ronald, but he prefers his Luganda name). He said he enjoyed chemistry in S1 but because he moved to Rwanda for S2 and now back to Uganda for S3 he's fallen behind in it and now he has no passion for it. So I'm meeting him tomorrow to tutor him. He wants to be a doctor or an engineer but he knows he can't do either of those if he's not good at chemistry. After we'd talked for a while he gave me a Luganda name - Bilungi, which means beautiful and great. Yay!

First lesson!

Today has been super-exciting. The biology teacher for S1/S2 asked me to be at the school at 8 for his first lesson. I was so excited that I woke up with the cockerels at about 6.30, in time to watch the beautiful sunrise through the banana plantation. The lesson was about insects - reasonably interesting, but do they seriously need to memorise the full classification (from kingdom to species) of all these different insects?! It seems a little pointless. Sure, it's interesting in some ways that mosquitoes, houseflies and tsetse flies are all in one class while cockroaches are in another and so on, but does it matter that the classes are called Diptera and Orthoptera? In total they have to learn 7 classes of insects, with their Latin names, and examples for each one. I know that all this knowledge is useful to someone in some way, but surely there are more important things to teach S2 students. Anyway, it was interesting to see the teaching style. One thing the teachers do a lot here which I find very odd is they finish a sentence halfway through the final word and then the students have to say the whole word. For example, teacher: "Now we're going to have a discu...", students: "discussion". Or they miss out the whole word and substitute it with "Whaaa?" - like "The heart pumps whaaa? Pumps blood." EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE. I feel like I'll fit in better if I do the same but I don't want to come back to the UK with all these different speaking patterns!

I suggested to the teacher that instead of just drawing diagrams of the different parts of the insects, we could actually look at them down the microscope. That might prove to be too difficult since there's rarely power in the mornings, and the plugs on the microscope don't match the sockets. Not that that is always an obstacle for them - they just remove the head of the plug and insert the wires directly into the socket! I almost screamed when I saw that! Uncovered live wires hanging out of the wall. Eek. But anyway, if we're going to look at insects, whether it's with microscopes or magnifying glasses or just with our bare eyes, we need specimens. So the teacher set them an assignment for next Wednesday - bring in a cockroach, dead or alive! Also a housefly, which might be even more tricky. Eeeurgh. I was very happy to have seen no cockroaches yet, and now I'm going to have to go to a class with about 30 of them.

For some reason the S2s have biology twice on a Wednesday, so the teacher asked me to take the second lesson. Well, I say asked, it was more "So, the next biology class is at 11.15, you can teach them something." ... "Something?" ... "Yes, anything you like." Bear in mind that this was at 11.05. So... I decided to teach them how to do experiments! The simplest one I could think of on the spot that would almost certainly give good results was how heart rate changes with exercise. They've never carried out any experiments before so I also had to explain how to formulate a hypothesis, design the method, interpret the results, evaluate afterwards and so on. It worked really well - 8 students took part (one from each bench) and of the 8, 6 showed exactly what we expected and 2 were anomalous for the 'gentle exercise' reading. It was very lucky really - one was higher than expected, and one was lower, so we could have a good discussion about possible reasons for that. One suggestion was that the lower one was because he eats lots of vegetables so he's healthier! And they found it very funny that I suggested that it might just be that someone miscounted (a pulse rate of 200 after gentle exercise seems a little excessive, don't you think?!). At the start of the lesson it was a bit difficult to make them write sentences in their own words because they're used to having everything dictated to them, but by the end they seemed a bit more relaxed about it. It felt really good to give the kids their first experience of actually doing science. Yay. The teacher's really enthusiastic as well so we might be doing another one this afternoon!

Now, the most important part of the day - lunchtime! Hooray!

Mzunguuuuuu I am so happy to see yoooooou

Yesterday was one of the least productive days I've ever had, just waiting for someone to turn up who never did. I was going to go and make an inventory of all the science equipment but then it turns out they already have one, although it is slightly out of date. I was going to check through it all but then the girls came to clean the lab so I got out of their way. Today I'm meeting the biology and chemistry teacher at 2pm, and then the physics teacher at 5pm, so I'll probably actually meet both of them at 6pm or something like that. African time. It's maddening.

This morning, after a lovely breakfast of a banana and jam sandwich, a group of us walked to a nearby village about 30 minutes walk away to help a child-headed family in their garden. The family are AIDS orphans - the oldest boy is 20 and he's in grade S4 at the school (so taking O-level type things soon). Recently the URF built them a house and also a drying rack for their washing up which helps prevent diseases. When we got there the first thing we had to do was collect water. Although boreholes are available in a lot of Uganda, this area doesn't usually have good groundwater and it often tastes very salty. So despite the fact that water from the "surface wells" (actually just muddy ponds) can spread diseases, they drink it because it tastes better. They do usually boil it first, but they water their plants with it before it's boiled. We walked for about a mile down a hill to this pond and then had to carry all the water back up again. It was a very authentic African experience :-S. I wish I knew how to carry the water on my head but last time I tried I ended up spilling the whole jerry can full of water over my head so I didn't try this time!

On the way to this little village we passed through Kyetume again and I stopped to buy a soda as always. A very drunk man came up and was hugging me and shaking my hand and shouting how happy he was to see me, and then he was asking me for money and didn't seem to understand "no". Luckily Charles and Martin, who live in the house next to ours and work for the URF, were with us, and Charles dragged the guy away.

One thing I've found really funny since I've been here is how many people ask how the queen is. When I mention the royal wedding they get very excited and say they all watched it! They must have all crowded round some of the very few TVs there are here. I wonder what it looked like through the eyes of the desperately poor people around here.

It's about 2 o'clock now so I'd better head off to my meeting :-)

African tiiiime

 So, when they say they have science equipment in the secondary school here, they mean they have some pots of chemicals, about 8 test tubes, some variable resistors and some stopwatches. Still, they don't really know what to do with any of it so they're using the lab as a store room at the moment. Also, they keep boasting that they have 8 computers, but what they mean is that they have 8 monitors. Of those, some have no processors attached, some have no mouse or keyboard and some just don't work. So overall only about 3 or 4 can be used. Then they have about 50 kids per grade and 4 grades... and power only in the afternoons once the solar panels have charged up... so the result is that even though they have these 'facilities', they never get used. I'm hoping that part of my project for the summer can involve sorting this out in some way, maybe starting up a science club and a computer club. Particularly I want to teach some of the older students to use the computers and encourage them to then pass on the skills to the younger ones. A problem that's been mentioned here is that kids aren't keen to mentor each other and help each other with homework because they want to be the cleverest or whatever. It would be good to persuade them that teaching and tutoring others can actually help your own progress.

Oh, bother, I didn't notice that the power cut out again so the laptop's about to run out of battery. All these things we take for granted in the UK!

Today I walked to Kyetume with David and we bought rolexes and bananas and sodas for breakfast. I saw a fruit I'd never tasted before so asked the lady at the stall if I could buy some thinking I was buying a piece... but ended up buying the whole thing, about the size of a football! It's jackfruit. Not bad, but smells funny (kind of like its namesake Jack Jackson).

All out of power now. Love xxxx

Only 20 minutes of battery remaining on the laptop so this will have to be a short one. The power here cuts out every evening, usually sometime between 8 and 9, so we have to remember to charge everything up before then.

Yesterday's sex education class was pretty interesting - the kind of information we take for granted just isn't available for these girls. They asked things like "Why am I bleeding?", "Am I going to die because it hurts so much?", "Can I wash pads and re-use them?". And then they told us about things their peers tell them - like you're strange if you don't have a boyfriend - which don't seem so different to the UK. Several of the girls (who were aged between about 13 and 18, I guess) said they had been pressured into sex by boys who offered them soap and vaseline in return. Horrible. One of the volunteers from Kampala gave a really powerful speech to the girls about how soap, vaseline and even money might seem really tempting now - but if they have sex and catch HIV, they may have to give up all their dreams and plans for the future. It's a really big problem round here, especially as about half the kids in this school are AIDS orphans.

The village visit in the afternoon was great fun, even though it was all in Luganda so I only understood occasional words (amazzi = water, that came up a lot). I introduced myself in Luganda and told them I couldn't speak much Luganda. They thought it was hilarious. Then I took photos of the kids wearing my very British sunhat and they were delighted.

First marriage proposal yesterday! From a drunkard in the village. He even bought me banana pancakes to try to woo me. But I showed him my ring and told him I'm already engaged, haha :-).

The power's about to go now, so I'll write more another day. I'm looking forward to tomorrow because the kids will be at school so I can go and see how I can be useful. Hopefully in the science labs cos one of the problems they've reported recently is that they have equipment but don't know how to use it! So I'm going to go tinker with whatever they have.

Love to everyone. Please leave comments - missing you all!

Go!

I'm here! Hooray!

The journey was all very smooth, at least until I reached Uganda. When I stepped off the plane I was smiling so much I thought I might break my face. We were the only flight to arrive that late at night so there wasn't much of a queue for visas. I had been a little worried about getting a visa on entry in case they turned me away but it turned out that of the 100 or so people who got off the flight in Entebbe only about 3 had already bought visas, and there was no problem at all. After I'd got my bags I headed to the airport pick-up point to look for my car. Having searched the crowds of signs for several minutes I concluded that there was nobody there to pick me up... so I went to the information desk and asked them to phone the hotel, who informed me that someone had come but because the flight was slightly delayed they went home again. Hmph. Anyway, someone gave me a lift for $10. The hotel was lovely and I was very glad to have a double bed to myself so I didn't bash into the mosquito net when I slept. I HATE sleeping under mosquito nets. It's much worse here in the house because I'm on the bottom bunk bed so the net doesn't hang very high. I woke up this morning tangled up in it and very confused. Anyway, the hotel was pretty luxurious by Ugandan standards - flushing toilet and hot shower!

On Friday morning I thought I'd set an alarm on my watch but it turned out I'd just set it to beep once every hour (why would you even want it to do that?!) so I overslept until 11.30, when the receptionist phoned me up to inform me that checkout time is 10am and was I planning to stay another night? So very sheepishly I rushed down to reception with my bags. Adrian was due to pick me up at 2 so I thought I might walk into town quickly to change money, buy a phone etc. When I left the compound the security guard asked where I was going and laughed at me when I said I was walking into town. I couldn't take a boda-boda (motorbike taxi) because I'm not insured if I ride one without a helmet, so he asked his friend with a van to take me there. That turned out to be a good thing because Entebbe is bigger than I thought. Also, the guy helped me out by taking me to his friend's money exchange place and making sure they didn't charge me any commission! He also helped me pick out a phone - it has a torch on the end which has already come in useful as my hand sanitiser leaked all over my head torch (the one bottle I didn't wrap up in a bag, typical). The network isn't exactly reliable or fast. I sent a few texts and I know that my mum replied to them yesterday but the replies STILL haven't come through 24 hours later. So maybe that's not the best way of communicating.

As I said above, Adrian was meant to pick me up at 2. I added on a bit in my head to take into account 'African time' but by the time he turned up at 5.30 I was beginning to lose hope! The drive from Entebbe to here wasn't the most comfortable ever but I did have some company in the form of volunteers from Kampala. I was sitting next to a girl called Rita who's really nice; she thinks it's hilarious that we don't have boda-bodas in the UK, and that we have something that's like maize but much softer and sweeter (sweetcorn). We arrived at the house just after midnight and I moved into the room that will be home for the next 10 weeks. It's bigger than my bedroom at home! Though that's not saying very much. I'm sharing it with another volunteer, David, for the next couple of weeks.

After a cup of tea (very bitter compared to what we drink at home, and with no milk) I fell asleep very quickly. Breakfast this morning was roasted cassava... I'll get used to it, I'm sure! Then I sat outside chatting to some of the other volunteers for a bit until meetings started. This weekend is unusual because volunteers from Kampala have come down for a conference. We had a talk for about an hour and a half about what's going on this weekend, in which they said the same things many many times - firstly, we're meeting students from this school (Hope Academy) to do some mentoring, encouraging them to plan for their future and so on. Often they say "I want to be a doctor" or "I want to be a teacher" but they really have no idea how to make these plans a reality. Then this afternoon they'll split into boys and girls for talks about puberty and sex and other such fun things. Later, we're going to visit some of the nearby villages to do assessments of their needs. The principle of the URF is that they don't help people unless they really can't help themselves - so the assessment of their "needs" will also include an assessment of what resources they have, and what they could do to use those resources better to fulfill their own needs. Then the URF can 'fill the gap' and help them to reach their potential. But they were very emphatic about it not just being 'give, give, give'.

I'm so happy and comfortable in this house - the toilets, despite being outside and just holes in the ground, are cockroach free and very clean. There are sofas and armchairs in the living room, an indoor shower room, a TV and... God answered my prayers and there's a guitar! Another volunteer left it here in the past. It's missing two strings and one of the tuning knobs is broken but still, a guitar! Adrian said they have a problem because nobody knows how to play it so I'm going to see if I can find some strings for it (anyone want to post me some? :-) ) and then I can teach people some basic chords and so on. Happy Amy. Also, some past volunteers left their old laptops here and there's a wireless modem so I can use the internet whenever (so long as the power is working, which seems to be about 50% of the time).

We've just had lunch, including fresh pineapple which is so so so nice. It was self-service from a whole range of things so I could just pass by the posho. I did prod the spoon to test its consistency though and it is pretty rubbery and bouncy, though not as much as that disastrous attempt I made.

Special message for Katie: someone told me "tuula wansi" last night! I thought of you :-)

Lots of love to everyone. Please do comment and let me know how you're all doing. Time to go talk to some African kids about sex now!

Get set...

Postal address when I'm in Uganda:

Amy Buchanan-Hughes
c/o Waliggo Family
PO Box 1220
Masaka, Uganda

I'll add my mobile number to this post once I've bought the phone and sim card.

Everything's packed now! About 45 minutes til I leave the house to catch the coach.

"If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast."

On your marks...

It's about 27 hours until I leave to spend 10 weeks working in Uganda, and my to-do list is currently two pages long. It worries me a bit that pretty much everything about this trip was my responsibility, and nobody's been checking that I've sorted everything I should. I think all the really important stuff is done - I have a passport, all my vaccinations are up-to-date from last time I went, the transport is all booked, I know where I'm staying... well, I know the rough area I'm going to anyway! As my dad says, what could possibly go wrong?! And as my heavenly Father says, "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." Hooray!

If you want to know what I'll be doing while I'm out there, I suggest reading this page, because I don't know a whole lot more than that. In my discussions with the volunteer coordinator, he suggested that I should make it known to students at the school that I can tutor them in maths, physics, chemistry and biology, as well as how to use the computers. As well as that I'm particularly interested in helping with the health projects and the "women empowerment program", but we'll see what happens when I get there. I think God's got some ideas of what he wants me to do so I'll have to wait to find out.

I don't know what my access to the internet will be like when I'm out there but I'll try to check e-mails and blog fairly regularly. I'm also hoping to get hold of a mobile phone so I might be able to send and receive text messages but that might cost a lot. Please feel free to send me e-mails about anything at all, I would love to keep up-to-date with how everyone at home is doing and even if I can't reply to loads of e-mails individually it will probably help me feel less homesick. Not that I've ever felt badly homesick before, but then I've never gone away on my own for 10 weeks to a place where, for over half the time I'm there, I'll be the only mzungu (white person) in the village...

I'm going to stress myself out if I keep thinking about how nervous I actually am so I shall finish here :-)