13th - 17th January 2010

OK so second blog entry of the day, the catch-up continues...

Wednesday 13th - Nicky and I got up at half past 7 to take an announcement down to the shops at the bottom of the main road so that the ladies would know that V.W.G started at 2pm because we were having training. When we got there, it was closed. BAD TIMES!!! We decided to buy cake and come home and make coffee, which was a surprisingly pleasant start to the day :) We found out from Mama that Kevin and Ivan's Dad (a family that live down the path towards Gilgal School) died last night and the burial was later on during the day. We couldn't go because we were running V.W.G - we saw Kevin as we were walking back from the shops and he looked so different. Usually he runs up to us, grinning and clapping, but he was with a group of older boys and looked totally blank, didn't respond to us at all. Later he came back to the house when we were doing our washing during the morning and seemed a bit brighter and more cheerful though. It was very odd - please pray for their family, especially the children. Their Mum will now have a real struggle on her hands to provide for them all.. We tidied the house, did washing and sorted stuff out generally before Alison (an Oasis International Placement) came to visit us with Nusuula from Bambejja, who came to train the V.W.G how to make liquid soap and shampoo. They came at about half 1 and we showed them around then had some lunch before the ladies came. They had a great time learning a new skill and really seemed to enjoy it. I went up to Lilo to check on the wall with Alison to see the work the builder was doing and he was already finished! :) It looks great, much much better to paint on compared to how it was before. The training went well; the ladies seemed really excited to be learning something new. It's good to see them that happy. We've asked Nusuula to come back next week while we're on holiday to train them how to make bars of soap as well. Hopefully by the time we leave we can set them up with some resources to start producing the stuff properly so that they can start selling it locally. The sooner they have some income the better. Nicky led the Bible Study after V.W.G then we had a chilled out normal evening before bed...

Thursday 14th - NIGHTMARE last night! At half past 12 Lucy and Bex discovered an ant infestation in their room, complete with ant eggs, safari and soldier ants, little normal ones AND flying ones :( It was awful. They were all over their stuff, coming in through holes in the walls and through the ceiling so we had to clear out everything to sweep the room, clean their stuff and spray insecticide over EVERYTHING. It took us till half past 2! Such a Ugandan experience... Dad came to help us though and poured paraffin on the massive nest round the back of our house. It was one of those situations I won't forget for a while :) We slept in a lot in the morning to make up for the craziness, watched some Doctor Who and Scrubs then did a load of planning. We're getting better at organising stuff - we've got a plan for each of our groups for the last 2 weeks we have in the village in Feb and we got the January team report done too. Should be awesome, we've got some good stuff planned. You'll find out all about it in my next few blogs... My back was pretty painful all day, I pulled a weird muscle on the bottom right hand side which stopped me from moving properly all day - I definitely took too many painkillers but the pain still didn't shift :( We had a chilled prayer session in the evening and that made it better though, so good times! It was a really lovely time relaxing and spending some time with God.

Friday 15th - Up at 6:30 because we all slept in :S Training with Zedde again at Bambejja, and I bought a load of presents for people at home from the bead shop there :) Cost a bomb but everything I got is beautiful! Then went to the internet cafe on Kampala Road to try to sort out a money transfer between my accounts before holiday starts but it wouldn't work. I tried everything; it was incredibly stressful. Managed to get Mum to sort it out from home, thank goodness :) I love my family!! We got to the taxi park late, everyone was tired, then when we got back to the village we were surrounded by drunk men when we tried to buy phone credit at the shop. It was just ridiculous! I was so tired I even fell asleep on the way home, despite the insane bumps and potholes :) We had beans and sausages and cheese on toast for dinner though, so that kinda made up for it.

Saturday 16th - We slept in till quarter past 11. Amazing!!! I don't think I've felt so rested since we got here... We were meant to have Kids Club in the afternoon but Mum thought we were on holiday already so told everyone it was off, so we had the day to do housework and rest. It was a shame that we couldn't do what we'd planned with Kids Club, but we're going to try and get it done the next time we see them. We went to the wall and got the first coat of water based paint on there and then a coat of oil based paint on top too, so it now looks very white and ready to paint properly. It was really fun, we took some music and Jona and Timo came to help too :) I got a lot of paint all over me and in my hair, but it came out with a bit of scrubbing! I don't think we really did much else during the day... Made noodles and watched 3 episodes of Doctor Who. Ah man we sound like such TV addicts, I swear we do work too!! We're not just bumming around out here :)

And now it's Sunday 17th and our 2 weeks of holiday time officially started this morning :D :D :D :D We're going to Sesse, an island on Lake Victoria on Tuesday for a few days, then we're going back to Jinja on the River Nile and going white water rafting and staying there for about a week. I'm really excited to get there :) Hopefully we'll find an internet cafe there so I can email home and write a bit on here. It's quite cold and cloudy as I write (by Ugandan standards!) and it's going to rain soon. You can feel it in the air... We're just going to some gardens at a nice hotel here to chill out with some music, so hopefully the rain will hold off for a bit! I might get a nice cup of English tea :D

Under 5 weeks till I'm home now - scary to think about it. Not long till I see you all, really looking forward to it :) Sending tons and tons of love and a big hug,

Flick
xXx