Here's the start of my trip to Zanzibar... the rest will follow next time I have internet 

Long bus journeys were a defining feature of my trip. The journey from Kampala to Dar Es Salaam was no exception,  smoke began billowing through into the coach when we were only an hour out of Kampala, so the driver pulled over to find out that the wheel was out of line, so the solution was first to jack the wheel off the ground, then later we stopped again and the wheel was just completely removed, so we did the next part of journey (to Nairobi) with 7 wheels rather than 8.

Switching buses in the middle of Nairobi, which (not surprisingly) caused a road block.

The cockrel that was hitching a ride into the centre of Dar.

Leaving Dar Es Salaam behind, thank god. Don't like that city.

The sky over the sea between Dar and Zanzibar

First view of Zanzibar

heading to town

the main form of transport on Zanzibar is by dala dala, we counted 35 people at one point on this journey 

A family in matching saris 

A dead blow fish which Calum decided to put in his mouth

photo finish in Calum's race against himself

Jake burying Calum

Hitting the road in Uganda

There’s no way I can write about everything that happened during the five weeks we had off school between the 13 and 9 week terms. Instead, here's some pictures, I know it's a bit of a cop out, but hope you enjoy the next 2 photo blogs anyway.

Here's my first trip...

30^th April-6^th May. Road trip from Masaka to Kampala, a very long way around, through Queen Elizabeth National Park, the crater lakes and Fort Portal.

This is Dylan, our car that we picked up in Masaka and became very attached to over our week with him, he served us well. Bumping over dirt tracks, through biiiig puddles and over fields on our adventures across Queen Elizabeth and beyond. 

Tea pickers in Agara district, using pretty advanced technology to pick the  leaves.

This was our first view over the plains of Queen Elizabeth, this photo doesn't capture it, but it was like something out of the Africa series, it really was stunning and so unusual.

This was a place at the side of the road selling really good honey, in glass waragi (Uganadan gin) bottles. We got overly excited about the fact we could stop whenever we wanted to, up until this week we'd only ever used public transport in Uganda, which doesn't allow for much stopping.

Posing next to Dylan

This was as close to that lake as we could get to, which was infuriating because  we saw several herds of different animals, but we couldn't quite see what they were

Holly and Svandis watching the elephants, hoping there were no lions nearby...

The best animal viewing is from the roof of Dylan, our loyal companion. When we spotted the elephants, me and Jenny were straight on the roof

We brought our little charcoal stove with us, which gave us some yummy dinners on our trip.

This is a small section of a much bigger salt farm which covered the majority of this small lake, we couldn't quite work out how salt is actually farmed here, but it was a pretty spectacular sight, with white, bleached sticks standing upright, marking the edges of hundreds of glass water pools.

Driving in the park was so much fun! Especially as it was rainy season,  which meant LOTS of mud.

The iguana that walked across the road in front of us

Another view over Queen Elizabeth plains, from the Crater drive, which took us high up into the crater hills in the park.

This is one of the crater lakes

This is a tree that was blocking our track, instead of moving the tree, a new route had been made around it! After a failed first atempt to get Dylan up the very steep muddy verge I managed to conquer the obstacle! 

We were just driving out of the little car park to a hotel in the park where we treated ourselves to a really good lunch one day, when these little fellas appreared out of the hedge omn one side of the road, and very confidently trotted across infront of us, to disappear into the hedge on the other side of the road.

This was taken at about 7am. The highlight of the whole trip for me was when we woke up in the dark in order to be out on the Kasenyi plains for the sunrise. Only 15 minutes or so into Kasenyi we drove past a big herd of elephants. They stopped next to us and then turned around The sight of twenty or so elephants crossing in absolute silence infront of us in the pre-dawn light of Uganda is etched into my memory. We watched until they were completely out of sight, then sat in silence, stunned, for some time.

The biggest chapattis I've seen in my life! This little village that we stumbled up on in the middle of the park  gave us a welcome takeaway breakfast, that ended up being lunch as well.

Later on the same drive, we turned a corner, to see a pair of hippos wander onto the road. I was driving, and was torn between wanting to get as close as possible, and being rather nervous of these powerful animals, as they weaved across the road and back again, disappearing behind bushes, then reappearing only metres from the car.

Queen Elizabeth is a Kob breeding ground, we saw countless numbers of them roaming around.

On our drive up to the crater lakes from Queen Elizabeth (different from the crater lakes in Queen Elizabeth)  there was an amazing clothes market. We all picked up some great bargains. Markets in Uganda are incredible. hundreds of thousands of clothes get shipped over from Europe and sold here for next to nothing. It's great!

This is our little hut which we thought was perfect. Until we were inundated with  screaming bats and rats in the night, all night.

The crater lake next to our campsite.

This was awaterfall we walked to, we were nervous about going in to start with...

but we all ended up getting plummeted by the cascading water in the end. 

This is Fort Portal, the cleanest, most orderly town in the whole of Uganda., and the last stop on  our road trip, before the long road back to Kampala.

Settling back into life in Kiwangala

  - 10th June

I’ve been home for just over 2 weeks, and it feels as though I never left. As though my mad month of travelling never even happened. I think, coming back to Kiwangala from travelling has made it feel even more like home. Everything feels familiar, and it was such a comforting sight when Kiwangala came into sight, across the valley, on the road from Masaka.

Unfortunately, my body realised that now it was home, it didn't have to push through and keep going, as it had done whilst travelling, and I fell into a state of disrepair shortly after arriving. Not before I had the opportunity to make a round of all of our friends, and our lovely family though, who made me feel even more as though I’d returned home. Sunday evening, after a lively church service which almost had me in tears at the joy of the familiarity of everything, and lunch down with the family, my body gave up the gun and the sickness I’d been holding off, took over. It took all of my energy to pull myself out of bed the following morning, to sit on a boda, to take me to the other end of the village, and the sight of Kiwangala health centre. Where I spent the next 4 hours half asleep, sitting in the narrow corridor, waiting, along with around 60 other people, to be seen to by the single doctor. She diagnosed me with malaria, very nonchalantly, and sent me home with a set of pills. Luckily for me, Calum’s family were staying that week, so I had 2 mums to look after me! Justine came up one morning at 7am with Dan and Elinah and toast and hot milk, to check that I was taking my pills and recovering. I was. I had another mum on the end of the phone, rather helpless, wishing she was here to look after me too! After spending the next few days in bed, I felt much better. At the end of the week I phoned Dr. Stockley, the big gun doctor in Kampala, who P.T. are closely linked with. He told me, straight away, I hadn’t had malaria; I was almost disappointed! Apparently 19 in 20 cases diagnosed as malaria in rural clinics in Uganda actually are not. After I told him my symptoms he was even more certain, saying I would have been hallucinating and unable to get out of bed if I’d had 3 fevers with malaria. So, sorry for worrying everyone! Panic over.

Since then, everything has been focused on the start of a new term at Children’s Sure House, and Moses’ radical ideas for change in the school, which has meant the introduction of a whole new timetable. The secondary school now has only 6 students, and has a pretty uncertain future. We continue to teach the unstoppable pair of girls in senior 2, who are a credit to themselves and work so hard, in a difficult situation. Senior 4s are being taught by Moses. And that’s it for the senior section.

Which leaves the primary, where there are nearly 300 students, spread over 9 classes. With a mixture of pressure from us, and Moses’ recent trip to America, where he saw how things could be done differently, the curriculum has suddenly become a hundred times more diverse and exciting for the students, which is also exciting for us! In the new timetable Jenny is teaching drama, Calum sports and art, Holly Music, French, baking and sewing. And I’m teaching Spanish and art, and hopefully going to get the chance to join in with some baking classes! We’re all really fueled up about it, even if it does mean no more 3 day weekends and 7.30 starts most mornings!

Spanish has been great fun; the children are so excited about it and have fun shouting out new Spanish words, in surprisingly good Spanish accents. It’s so rewarding to hear them shouting hola and introducing themselves to me in Spanish out of the lessons. Art is great; Holly and I are working together so, as she teaches new recipes to the students in baking classes, we are creating recipe books to catalogue them all in our art lessons.

I have also started teaching English in the primary school, using the book Funnybones, which is incredibly popular. The children have been so starved of any kind of fun in English lessons, but Moses has specifically said that he wants us to teaching reading and writing. This is so exciting, as previously lessons have consisted solely of grammar and sentence structure, leaving no room for imagination! So, the school suddenly has a new burst of life, Moses is ensuring all teachers go to all their lessons (theoretically, there’s still some work to be done there) and the children are actually getting to do things other than just copying from the board. Leaps and Bounds!

We have a plan to take all of Justine and Moses’ children along with Robinah’s (a teacher and neighbour) four boys, swimming in Masaka on the 29^th June, which everyone is already buzzing for! Emma, our friend who lives a few miles away in an orphanage has said she’s going to come with her 8 children too, so it looks as though we’ll be taking over the pool! We can’t wait. Holly has started a very self-disciplined exercise regime, which involves running most evenings, and I’m beginning to get sucked along too, which is good, as Uganda is not being kind to my waist line! So, life in Kiwangala continues. It’s hit us all how numbered our days left here now are, and I think we all feel as though we have to really make the most of the little time we have left in this special place which we’ve all become so attached to.

Just arrived home from a walk with Jingo James and Calum to a tiny coffee processing place in Kiwangala. It’s coffee season and I couldn’t pass up on the opportunity to buy some fresh coffee beans. . It’s so interesting to see the bare roots of where the coffee comes from. All around Kiwangala are plastic sheets laid out with beans in their husks, drying in the sun, then they are taken to one of five little factories in Kiwangala (competition is rife!) where they are laid out again, before being hauled up the most rickety little staircase I’ve walked up in my life to be dropped into the top of the machine where the husks and beans are separated. I now have a little tub of green beans and am going to try to make my own coffee…

Blog about my travels to follow!

April in Uganda

FINISHED 29TH APRIL

 So, it’s been a long time. Life continues in Uganda, in Kiwangala. The rainy season is well and truly set in, which is great, as it means we almost always have a supply of water, straight from the sky to our buckets to our jerry cans. The mornings can actually be quite chilly, I ventured outside one early morning this week, and had to go back in to put on a jumper.

I’m currently in Masaka, where there is a power cut all over town, apparently it’s common in the grasshopper season, as really bright lights are used at night to catch the little fellas. (It’s grasshopper season now, they’re not great, they taste a bit like a lump of over cooked fish batter). Also, I don’t have my diary with me, so I’m not sure exactly what’s been going on, in what order since I last wrote, so I’m just going to write about things I can remember.

Starting with my jigger, which I got a few weeks ago, it was exciting,  I found it in my art lesson, on my baby toe, and went straight to mama Justine, who expertly removed it with a needle, intact, until there was a small pea sized white grub sitting on my toe. Amazingly, I didn’t feel a thing, although I held tight to Jenny’s hand throughout the ordeal. They can grow to the size of baked beans and  Justine sometimes pulls several out of one child’s fingers or toes in one sitting. I got off lightly.

At the end of March, it was Easter, and I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to cope without the annual Easter egg hunt. We decided to introduce some eggs to the Easter in Kiwangala. Children’s Sure House is also a parish, with Moses as the pastor. So every Sunday, there is a lively church service, with drums and an electric keyboard and dancing and jumping and shouting and praying and a man translating the whole thing into English for us. Easter Sunday was no exception, it is the biggest annual holiday hear after Christmas. We decided it would be good fun to have an egg paiting competition, so we took all the children into one of the classrooms. An hour later, after paint managed to find its way into all sorts of places. After lots of laughter, and a few tears over dropped eggs, 30 children emerged with their painted eggs, to carry them back into the church, where the rest of the congregation voted on their favourite. Following this, everyone lined up outside, eggs in hand, to roll them down the hill. The egg that got the furthest won, and as soon as the children cottoned onto the fact the prizes were in the form of chocolate, competitiveness rocketed, with some eggs being thrown, more than rolled! All in all it was a really great morning, many, if not all of the children, had never touched a paint brush in their life, and it was nice to bring something from our celebration of Easter to the children of Kiwangala. The rest of the day was spent down at Moses and Justine’s eating too much, and playing scrabble, which is more amusing than you might think, when playing with people who have a slightly different take on the English language!

Moses left again, this time for 3 weeks, to visit America, to try and get more sponsors, and have a bit of a jolly, on the back of said sponsors! Whilst he was away his father dies, a very highly respected man in Uganda, we were going to go to the funeral, but Justine had too many people to accompany her, a whole bus load left from Kiwangala to go to the capital for the occasion. Apparently there were thousands there, even President Museveni showed up to pay his respects. Upsetting that Moses was out of the country though.

Sports day at school was good fun, and the first of the 2 day event coinsided with Jenny’s birthday, which made for an exciting day at Children’s Sure House! After a present opening session on jenny’s bed, we all hunted for clothes to match our colours. I am team red, which is the superior team. Jenny is yellow, and Holly is blue. Wearing everything we could possibly find in our team colours, including a broken blue umbrella, a red oven glove and a full yellow football kit. We left for the Kiwangala football pitch (just across the road from our house, where all major sports events in the village take place), the site of the sports day! The event itself was the epitome of organised chaos. The children were incredible, the boys longest race being 25 laps of the whole field. The whole placing system was far from correct, with some boys running 27 laps instead of 25, and the teachers became far too competitive, a fight nearly broke out when one teacher gave a place to a boy is his colour, when he shouldn’t have! But all in all it was a good day. We left to get a jerry can full of water, as the children were baking in the sun, and everyone was fed glucose to replace lost sugars.

The biggest trip we’ve had in April was to theSsese Islands, on Lake Victoria. We met 3 Project Trust girls who live down in Kabale, in Masaka and headed over on the free ferry. Storms followed us over, and we thought we were in for a weekend of rain. We were wrong, by the time we arrived in the little hippy campsite at the other end of the island, the sun was hot, and spent the rest of the day lazing on the beach, and swimming in the bilharzia infested water. It does feel strangely like you’re on the coast , Lake Victoria is so huge. That evening, we were joined by 4 more PT volouteers, 2 girls and 2 boys, and then 2 of Holly’s friends who happened to be in Uganda too. On Saturday I managed to visit the 11 year old girl, Tina, who I formed a little bond with the last time I had been there. The owners told me shelives on the campsite during the school holidays and that she was at a school up in the village. With a bit of searching I managed to track her down. It was a magical moment, when she came out of her room and saw me, after a sharp intake of breath, she remembered my name and ran straight over to give me a huge hug, after that, she got all shy. It was so lovely to see her though.

Our latest project, this last week, has been to paint S4’s classroom. Last Sunday we bought almost 80 litres of paint and, starting last Thursday, with an undercoat, and finishing just now (it’s now Monday evening) with 3 yellow walls, and a blue wall. It looks 100 times better, I’m so so pleased we managed to do it, and the students were a great help, real team work!

There is so much more I could write about, but I have no time left. I have to finish packing. Early in the morning Holly, Jenny and I are leaving with two girls, who we met a couple of weeks ago in Masaka. They live only 5 miles from us, with 2 other volunteers, working in a really lovely, small children’s home. The girls are called Emma Mills and Swandiz (not how it’s spelt! From Iceland). We had a night out in Masaka with them and the other two they’re with, as well as a woman working nearby. We started in a pork joint and then headed to the biggest night club in Uganda, which just happens to be conveniently placed in Masaka! They came to ours for dinner on Friday, and we were at theirs yesterday for lunch (Mills has been a chef in London for the last 3 years, working under Gordon Ramsey, so needless to say, her lunch was incredible!) Anyway, we all get on really well, so we decided to go on a road trip together. We managed to secure a 4x4 for a week for $360, we’ve got a route planned to go through Queen Elizabeth National Park and Fort Portal, and I’m so excited!

Reflections

It’s April, well into April, and I can’t believe I’ve been here for 3 months. This week has been a bit of a time for reflection. For the first time since arriving I’ve started to miss the variety and complexity of life in the UK. When I first arrived in Kiwangala, I loved the simple, basic way of living here.

With all of my things fitting easily into one room, with little clutter.

With the village just outside our front door, where there are little shops selling vegetables and oil and sugar, and flour and eggs and rice, and chapattis. All there, ready to be brought home to be cooked on our little gas stove, in our outside kitchen, (or our oven!) where we have just enough to cook with and eat with, but nothing extra to get in the way.

With almost everyone I know in the whole country, living within 200m from our house, calling on us, to chat and drink tea and laugh.

With limited electricity, and no TV or internet to waste hours in front of.

With our living room, an outside shelter with a big table to sit around.

With the weekly market in Kiwangala selling everything a Kiwangalan could need, and bustling, well into the dark every Saturday.

With my three small classes of students in school, consisting of 13 students who I am getting to know better each day.

And I still do love all of these things. In so many ways life here is more satisfying or something similar. But, I would kill for a good theatre performance, or a proper coffee in an interesting art gallery, or good bacon butty wrapped up on a comfy sofa, or a canoe on lake Coniston. Or a hot bath on a cold day or a good shopping trip. And of course, I miss all the people I could do these things with.

I have a feeling that, if I’d come home before this week, I wouldn’t have appreciated all of these things any more than I did before I left, because I hadn’t yet missed them. But the people who live here will never experience many of these things that, back home I just completely took for granted. They won’t ever have the chance to miss them, because, to them, these things don’t really exist. That’s what is making me realise just how lucky I am with my life in England. With the traffic, and the rain and the too many people everywhere and the thousands of shops, all trying to get you to spend your money. I miss the vastness and the unlimited opportunities.

Of course, one of the opportunities made available to me was to come here, and have this experience, to taste this life, and I’m determined to soak up every moment.

Enough.

The return of the main man, Moses

So, last Friday, Jenny set off with Justine, and the rest of the family, Caleb, Kaka, Dan and little Elinah, in their big car, with their slightly crazy driver Moze. They were bound for Entebbe, where Moses; husband, father, head teacher, pastor, and the man in charge of setting up and running Childrens’ Sure House, was returning from a 3 month trip around Europe, picking up new sponsors. At about 10pm, I got a text from Jenny saying they’d broken down and were stuck in the bush on the way to Entebbe, we later found out that one of the axles had completely snapped off.

Everything has been going wrong for the family in the last few weeks, including Charles (one of their adopted children) being badly bitten on the face by their large, male pig, he was rushed to Masaka hospital, and the pig was rushed to the pork shop. He had to have extensive stitches from above hi eye, down to his chin, and his face really was very swollen. Jenny and I visited him I hospital, the day after the accident, and it was quite upsetting to see him lying there, in this ward full of men, all ages, all with different ailments. His bed was falling apart, and we took him on a walk around the compound, just to get him to stretch his legs. Another part of the hospital is the most impressive building I’ve seen since being in Uganda, apparently designed and built by a Japanese company, as a gift to Masaka. We also visited the anti-natal clinic, where Emma’s (one of the male teachers at CSH, who stayed with Charles, on the floor of the ward next to his bed whilst he was in hospital) aunt is charge. She was a brilliant lady, and told me 35-50 babies are born in that hospital every day, with 8-10 caesarean sections. Their anti-natal service is pretty impressive too, with 4 visits during pregnancy, and at least that many after the birth. Charles is home now, and doing much better, in fact, he’s along at the health centre with  Emma and Calum having his stitches removed.

Back to the story of Moses’ return.. The break down ultimately resulted in the whole family, plus Jenny, staying overnight in Entebbe. The following day was meant to see a full day party to celebrate the return of the pastor, and people began early in the morning, preparing large vats of matoke and rice, beef and g-nut sauce (mandatory to every celebration), and setting up the sound system in the church. Rogers came to the house at 12 exactly (an exception to the rule of Afrcian Time), the party was due to start at 12pm, and he needed my laptop to start the music, despite the fact no one had arrived at the church yet, and the man who the party was being thrown for was still in Entebbe. We were the first to find out that they were still in Entebbe (a good 4 hour drive away), at 2pm, when I rang Jenny to see when they’d be getting back. So I ran round telling everyone, it didn’t seem too much of a big deal, everyone is so used to things going wrong here, they take it in their stride, and plans can be modified at the drop of the hat. So everyone ate, and it didn’t matter the man that the party was for, was absent. The party was postponed until half 8 that evening, when a very tired Moses and his family crawled up to the church, exhausted. Everybody ate again, and we were sat at the front with the rest of the family, I really do feel a part of the Kiwala family. Which reminds me, I now have a Lugandan name, given to me by Justine, I am Kisakye, which means grace. Adding to my feeling of inclusion. So we ate, Moses gave a speech in Lugandan, and we danced. By half 9, everyone was flagging, and the party drew to an end, short, but sweet. And everyone, especially Justine, was glowing with the return of the main man. 

A day at Matia’s family home

Matia's sister preparing lunch

dressing up in Jane's gomezes

Matia and his pigs and sister

lunch at Matias

the lunch queue

In the hair salon...

the beautiful barbie doll (not sarcastic, from Jenny)

Matia's mum and their house

Friday morning last week, Holly, Matia (one of the other teachers) and I piled into the car which takes the daily trip to Masaka to drop off Justine’s eldest children at school. We were taken to Nyendo (the residential area of Masaka) which has grown from a few houses, to a sprawling, mash of tin roofed houses in the last 10 years and from there walked to Matia’s family home, arriving at half 8, I was still waking up, we were met by a very bubbly 40 year old woman (Matia’s eldest sister, jane) and his 70 year old mother, neither of whom speak more Engligh than I do Luganda. We were made to feel so so welcome though, and never have I been so aware of how hospitable and generous Ugandan people can be. Jane was preparing lunch when we arrived, she’d already wrapped a pile of matoke the size of a small child in matoke leaves, and sat the parcel in an even bigger pot, she then proceeded to lay chopped pumpkin, cassava, sweet potato, and the biggest yellow bananas I’ve ever seen, on top of the matoke package, then, in the middle, she sat a pot of rice. The whole thing was then covered in more matoke leaves, which she tucked neatly inside the rim of the pot, and placed over the charcoal fire, to cook for the next 4 hours. I left like I was given a real insight into the runnings of a close knit, very sociable, grown-up, Ugandan family. Matia has 4 sisters, 3 older, who are all hairdressers, living in Nyendo, and one younger, in Kampala. Jane, has converted their garage into a hair salon, where she trains girls who have given up on education, to braid hair, in order for them to go on and set up their own salons. Jane and Matia walked us to their piggery project, where we were shown a tiny concrete structure with 4 piglets and a pig, they have just started, but hope to produce lots of piglets, some to give to other people, so they too can bread pigs, and others to sell for themselves. We then went on to visit an orphanage school, run by one of Matia’s old teachers. It seemed like a brilliant place, full of happy children, who all sang for us. Again we were treated like royalty and fed pineapple and watermelon. I do sometimes feel akward and wonder if we get special treatment for being white. But Matia assured me that people are the same to Ugandans, and it’s part of their culture to be hospitable. Some of the files of the children who were living there were shocking. One girl was described as retarded, living previously, with a mother who was “mentally incapable of caring for her”. The demand for such places of refuge for children is so great here, but so far they only had 7 orphans, although they have a capacity for 100. Back at Matia’s house, we feasted on Jane’s lunch, after which she wanted to show us round her salon. I foolishly obliged to let her “do” my hair. She started by brushing it, which made me realise what poor quality it’s in! Then she French plaited it, before taking it out and doing it in a second hairstyle, much to the amusement of the trainee braiders, Matia, Holly, Matia’s other sisters, and the lady who was in the salon having her hair braided. It gets worse. She is also a wedding stylist, so happened to have a couple of wedding dresses stashed away in the salon, she proceeded to dress me in a  particularly hideous one, veil and all, I felt like an ugly Barbie doll! Everyone else was amused to no end, and I had no choice but to join in with the laughter and try not to look at myself in the wall to wall mirrors! Overall though, it was an enjoyable day, full of Ugandan handshakes and smiling faces and singing and laughter, and food! Everything always involves matoke.