Day 1
The journey was extremely tiring for all. Flight from Heathrow to Addis Ababa was full of excitement and an attack on all the snack reserves we had stored in our hand luggage. Arrival at Addis meant we had a 4 hour wait, which was extremely tiring, as the area we were in was not bigger than the exam hall, so you can imagine how cramped it was with so many people. The flight from Addis to Entebbe was a contrast from the earlier flight, as everyone was exhausted and wanted to rest.
The drive from the airport to our hot was never ending, stuck in endless traffic on the only road going from Kampala to Jinja.
We were warmly greeted by staff at the Nile Guest House and realised they were expecting us 3 hours ago, we were very late. We quickly unpacked and rushed for dinner, as no one wanted to waste time, we just wanted to sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
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Day 2
We woke up at 8am, which was nice and you could see from the faces of all the team, people were relaxed and recharged. Brekkie was nice and we were able to take a little nap after breakfast as well, which no one refused.
We went for a walk around the guest house, to see the local area and possibly meet some locals. The people were very friendly, every one said ‘hello’ and the children greeted us warmly with handshakes and Harriet even got a curtsey, which surprised her, as he did not know whether to return it or say thank you.
Sally met a Jaja she remembered from the last visit, it was like two long lost friends had been reunited, they both gave each other a hug, Sally towered over her, as she was a lot shorter. They didn’t exchange many words, but you could see they were equally happy.
Our shoes were bright red because of the dirt tracks we were walking along.
Ahmer spent the rest of the day showing off his card tricks to the group, although we were all convinced that he was cheating.
Andrew went out into the garden when it was raining and the rain her is not like it is in England, the droplets are normally the size of your palm. It was incredibly funny seeing Andrew hit by a droplet which nearly took off his glasses.
Curfew is 10pm, so we are all off to bed early, to get a good night’s sleep before a long day tomorrow.
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Day 3
Today we went to demo farm to help the Jaja’s (grandmothers) clean the land and plant some cabbages. Most of us thought it was going to be a doddle, but many of us were put to shame by the expertise of the Jaja’s, whom were many years older than us.
We woke up and left at 7 which I think was the earliest some of us had ever woken up in our lives. Some people were still half asleep, but Jaja Eva was ready to get us all working. Firstly we had to clear the plot of land, but unfortunately Sufian got a bit carried away and cut down a banana tree, as Andrew had told him that ‘everything’ had to be cleared, but it seems that Andrew has a little work to do on his gardening skills. After we had softened the soil, we had to make mounds in preparation for the planting. But Ahmer and Harriet couldn’t seem to recognise what a straight line was and were constantly being corrected by the Jaja’s. Once we had planted the seedlings, a few of us went to collect some water. We didn’t realise how far we had to walk or how heavy the water was going to be. We were put to shame by young children, as they were carrying much more than we were, where two of us were struggling to carry one container with sticks. The locals found it quite amusing, and one even offered to carry it on top of their head for us.
Later in the day when we were all very tired from the gardening we went to visit St. Moses School. When we got to the library it was an absolute dump as the staff ate their lunches there. We managed to do quite a lot of sorting of the books, and were very impressed with the amount we managed to do in the small space of time.
At last we returned to the accommodation, for what we thought was going to be an early night. How wrong we were. After dinner, some made incredible use of Ahmer’s snacks that were meant to last two weeks. Also, I think we kept up most of the other guests as we were quite excited as it was the first day of hard work.
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5/7/2011 - Shante's account
After a 7 hour flight, a four hour wait, another 2 hour flight, a lost passport and a six hour drive, we had finally reached Njeru. But it was worth the wait. Today was our first official day of action! We trekked down a long dusty road to St. Francis… Well 15minutes… St. Francis is a medical center and temporary home for children dying of aids. We were given a tour around the compound by Grace, the Jaa Jaa coordinator (for those of you who don’t speak fluent Ugandan Jaa Jaa means grandmother). Wondering around the corridors, the need for such an establishment in a community like this was apparent. There were many people using the facilities provided for free and they had even begun to build a new maternity ward, however they had to stop due to the lack of funds. We then moved on to the temporary homes of the children, it was really uplifting, the rooms despite the size were beautifully decorated with characterized safari animals, and each room was named after an African country. We saw the canteen/kitchen area which some of the group thought wasn’t quite up to par, however Sufian explained that it was an excellent facility which was really quite progressive. Even the gardens surrounding the center were kept prim and proper; however the playground that had been built a few years ago had unfortunately disintegrated as the wood had rotted. After the tour we were SUBJECTED TO A 3 HOUR SPEECH from Ali and J.K (they were lovely really) the coordinators of the Shadow Idol club and the Young Positives, they explained the purpose of the clubs and explained our task; we were to plan a presentation on a subject of our choice in groups of 4 for Saturday. Carlotta (bless her little cotton socks) was worrying about how she would cope as she hadn’t really done anything like this before, whilst Shanté was moaning about the subject choices as she was worried they wouldn’t keep the youth engaged. You’ll have to keep reading if you want to know what subjects we chose and how everyone coped with the tasks…
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End of Week 1
We are writing this on Monday 11th July acutely aware of the fact that there has been quite a gap in the updates. The reasons for this are many; we only brought one lap top with us and the competition to use it each evening is fierce. If you are a close friend of one of the volunteers try looking on Facebook as my view is that it gets quite a bit of attention, also evenings have been busy with eating laughing and playing an awful lot of card games which expose strange personality traits in some ( mentioning no names Carlota and Emma)!
Since we last sent an update we have spent several mornings gardening which has been both rewarding and exhausting, we quickly realized that it really is worth getting up at 6am (no really!!!) and getting to the garden by 7.15am so that we can get as much digging in as possible before the sun gets too hot! Some days it felt like we made little progress on the patch we were given and some plots were quite quickly transformed. The afternoons have been spent at St Moses’ orphanage. We have been given a quite large brick built room in which to locate the library. We have washed and painted the walls, all of the books have been sorted and tagged by levels which involved moving 1500 books (brought by us) several times to ensure that the washers and painters didn’t drip on the sorters and taggers!! During the washing we used Ahmer to reach the high parts of the room and he enthusiastically held onto a curtain pole at one point which fell out of the wall, Ahmer fell but was expertly caught by Sally who always has an eye on health and safety issues!
Each day we were joined by groups of children from the orphanage and a kind of impromptu reading club and sports day happened. If anyone had any doubts about this project, 30 minutes with these children and the books blew them away. We have loads of pictures (which sadly won’t load to be sent) with 10’s of children at a time laying on the grass reading books. The children are responding to the books the way children at home might respond to a free give away at a sweet shop. After the first afternoon we realized that we couldn’t let the children into the library when we were working as all of our sorting was rapidly turned into chaos. The next few days we set people to guard the door and the children swarmed around asking for books (just like at College!) and then took them away to read and share with friends. ‘The jungle book’ and ’ Lion King’ were very popular as was the ‘shoot’ annual. We were all a bit stunned and amazed by the effect of these books on the children, it seemed like the greatest treat in the world to have a book read to them or them to read to us. We were delighted with the reading ability of the children and felt that the full range of books will be useful.
Shelves have been ordered and we waited as long as possible to see them but a dusk curfew meant that we all had to go home before they got delivered, we are keen to go back and finish the job off.
The library decorations done by everyone are spectacular, Ahmer, Cree, Andrew and Katy constructed a solar system and stuck it to the ceiling. The alphabet has been drawn out and illustrated by the more artistic amoung us and numbers are up as well as Liz likes to remind us that Maths really is fun!
We are planning a grand opening next Friday so by then we will have been back to load the shelves finish the decorations and do a final tidy up.
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9/7/2011
Saturday was a really important day for us as we were running the program at The Shadow Idol club, which is the Youth Club, attached to St Francis Health Care services. We were told to prepare presentations for The new group called ‘The young positives’ who are all children and young people who are HIV positive, shadow idol is for anyone affected by HIV so some have lost parents but may be clear of the disease themselves.
To say there was anxiety is an understatement. Topics were chosen Health and Hygiene for Emma, Fiaza, Harriet and Khyati, Health eating for Ahmer, Jenelle, Shante and Andrew, Education Katy Kathryn Dami and Cree and Sport and Hobbies Carlota, Sarah, Sahra and Saba. We had a few days warning of the topic and time was spent preparing resources. Cardboard boxes suddenly became valuable and were turned into cardboard food and posters, the group worked late into the evening and left stuff out on a table only to find it thrown away next morning! The sport and hobbies group had a world map and planned to locate the site of previous Olympic games and devised a hilarious charades game…. Act out a sport and see if the group can guess which one it is. Health and hygiene came up with a song about washing your hands to the tune of ‘row row row your boat (we never want to hear it again!). The education team tried to remember all the key stages they had gone through and it that mattered.
The day dawned and a pale a strangely quite group walked to St Francis carrying cardboard peas, posters and various pictures, we had the usual African wait which stretched the nerves even further.
Sport charades went well and we clearly are ready as a nation for the Olympics. The hand washing song was horribly successful with the children wanting to go over it several times as we demonstrated the correct way doctors and nurses in England wash their hands. Cardboard food was sorted into healthy and unhealthy and somehow education strayed into music and when asked if they liked Michael Jackson the person replied straight faced ‘no…. he is dead’ Ah well you can’t get it all right!
We ate lunch with the children guess what…. It was rice and beans (and some odd looking meat) again, we will end up looking like a plate of rice soon and some people have started dreaming of cheese and chocolate.
The afternoon was enjoyed by all, partly because the presentations were over but also as we could all just muck about.