SCHOOLS OUT 4 SUMMER!!

SCHOOLS OUT 4 SUMMER! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!! finally school has ended and i have completed my first WHOLE year at my new school i finished yesterday at half 12 exactly then got picked up by my sister and had a margherita pizza for lunch!!!!!!!! But today there is absolutely nothing whatsoever to do so i a just going to write this!! I will be in 3rd form next year ( September) and i am really looking forward to it! My class gets mixed when it goes into 3rd form and all the people i wanted in my class are there so i am really really happy! i have a few boys in my class next year which i don't want though but i will try my hardest to get on with them!! Anyway; i must conclude because i now have to go out to Tesco's! Goodbye my blogger readers and ib am indebted to you for reading my blog! Thankyou!

Immy xoxo xoxo xoxo xoxo

Dear Immy...

This week's blog is going to be in the form of a letter to my lovely sister Immy, who has read every single one of my blogs and sent me very excited emails in response to them :) Immy - I love you!! This one is extra specially for you...

It's Monday as I write and we're in Mukono for the last time. It's so weird getting used to doing things for the last time, seeing people for the last time and all of that... Today I'm really excited about coming home :D Sometimes feeling sad outweighs it but today it's all happiness and excitement :) I need to finish my packing tonight and sort out all the mess in the house. It looks like a rubbish dump at the moment - sort of like my room at home! We need to clean out the cupboard tonight and dust the table and sort out the craft boxes under the sofa so that they're nice and clean for the next team that comes. When we arrived it was pretty dirty, and it wasn't very nice for us to start cleaning and disinfecting things as soon as we arrived... If another team comes it won't be till October but hopefully it'll stay quite clean.

I'll do the usual blog thing now and tell you about my week :) Ims, you would've loved doing the mural at Lilo! We got all the handprints finished on Wednesday and it looks really colourful. It catches your eye whether you walk into the school from the front or the fields at the back. The kids had fun doing it and we played some games with them too; Nicky and Ell took some stuff so they could draw pictures of themselves then talked to them about how special and unique they are. That's one of the most important things we've been teaching them. Cos some of them are disabled, sometimes they're laughed at and treated not very well. It's just not fair, and that's why the school is so good for them - it teaches them in a way that works well for them :) We didn't have V.W.G in the afternoon cos there was some other meeting going on, so we're having it tomorrow instead. A few days we talked to Ugandan-Dad about all the plans for the group so we just need to remind the women tomorrow. It's very cool to think that they're trained now and know more than they did 5 months ago. It's a big achievement for them!

One lady called Rose always turns up on time and she's lovely, doesn't speak English but you can tell that she's over the moon to see us. She came round yesterday afternoon - Mama Rachael and some other ladies who live nearby cooked LOOOOADS of food for people from a few local churches and some teachers from the schools we've worked at so we could spend the afternoon with them and say goodbye. It was lovely but also quite sad :( They made some really kind speeches and said they want us to come back soon, only go home for a short time then come back and see the fruits of the work we've been doing! We had to give a few speeches, which obviously resulted in us crying then they prayed for us. We've made some good friends here :)Some of the older kids from Gilgal School came along - a boy called Kenneth, who's AWESOME and helped do translating for Saturday Boys Group and Sarah and Florence, who came to Girls Group and are 2 of my closest friends here. I'll miss those three a lot :( It was good to have time to say goodbye though. We prayed with them and Sarah gave me a watch to remember her by... I didn't want to take it cos it obviously meant a lot to her, but she was being really kind so I couldn't say no. I miss them already :( Church in the morning was a bit sad too, the last bit of all-singing-all-dancing African worship that I'll have for a while. It's so free in church here, you can do whatever! I know it's the same at home, but I always feel a little bit more nervous! We gave the church their presents (communion cups and a bread basket) and did David and Goliath in Sunday School. I'm looking forward to returning to Transformers at church :) I've missed the space you all have to play games! At church in Uganda we don't really have much space at all, but sometimes we sit under the mango tree (remember that song Nick sang from Zambia about the mango tree and how he made us laugh with it?!?!)

Hmmm what else did we do this week... We had Kids Club on Saturday, which was very cool cos we did a treasure hunt all around the compound. I made proper treasure maps of the compound and made them brown with a teabag then burned the edges and wrote out some challenges for the kids and did the same with them. They looked wicked! :D We hid the challenges round the compound then gave the kids a clue about the area they were hidden in, then they had to come back to the front and do the challenge before we gave them the next clue to find the next challenge. The best challenge was to run round and catch a chicken!! And we had another one where they had to stick their hands in some gunk and guess what was hidden in it :) The big prize at the end (hidden in the shower) was a crate of soda and some biscuits for them. They had so much fun! It took ages to get ready but it was definitely worth it... We said our goodbyes, the only one I haven't cried in so far, and then did Boys and Girls Groups at Gilgal. We played a type of rounders, except we didn't have a rounders bat so we used a washing bowl...!! But it worked surprisingly well! Girls vs. Boys, guess who won ;) Girls all the way! We talked to the girls about being strong women of God again and it was really good. A bit like the email I sent to you earlier, about how strong and brave they can be and how they can make good choices for themselves because they're free and loved by God. It was good - some of the deaf girls from Lilo came and one of them tied Becky's scarf round my head so I looked like a Muslim! Some of the kids asked me if I'd become a Muslim lol... It was a little bit worrying cos none of the older girls from Gilgal were allowed to come :S Pastor Murenzi was there and cos of that I think he made them stay in their dorm room. Mama Rachael went to talk to them to get them to come but they weren't allowed. It was a real shame...

I'm running out of time, not sure how much more I can write.. I'm trying to make sure I talk about what we've been up to this week so that everyone else who also reads this blog is updated! Maybe I'll just talk about food instead.... I CANNOT WAIT for tomato soup, crusty white bread fresh from the bakery and cheddar cheese :O I might explode if I think about it too much! Yummy yummy yummy :) Ooo I also can't wait for lasagne and salad. Esp that bacon, pear, tomato and avocado salad that Mum does! Mmmmm. Only six days!!!!! :D :D :D

Anyway! Is there anything else I can talk about? Gilgal on Thursday, we talked to the kids about prayer and why it's important and how we can pray. They all have this idea that you HAVE to raise your hands up in the air when you don't! It was great to hear what they thought about it though. When we said goodbye in the praise and worship session I tried to say something then started crying halfway through and had to stop :S So embarrassing! Leaving gives us an excuse to say really important things to them though, like talking about how wrong prosperity gospel is (that's when people say you're a bad Christian if you're not rich because God doesn't think you're good enough to give you money) and telling the kids how awesome they are. It's good to be able to tell them all of that :)

I have to go now, gotta go get lunch then head home. Busy evening and afternoon ahead! I'm quite dehydrated, I really should drink more water (don't tell Mum!) Love you millions Imo, not long till we get a hug! :D *does excited dance*
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And to everyone else - thank you for keeping in touch with me and reading my blog the whole time I've been here. It means a lot :) This is my last blog that'll be written in Uganda so the next time you hear from me I'll be at home! Please pray that our last few days are full of God's peace and that he protects us on the journey home. Please pray that our family gets used to us not being there and that we'll have fun today, tomorrow and Weds morning and that our last bit of time together will be full of God's grace and that we'll be able to show them how much we love them. Please also pray that our families at home are prepared for our return, that the culture shock doesn't knock us to the ground and that our debrief time in Kampala goes well from Weds - Saturday. Sorry I know there's a lot of prayer requests there! Please also hold the projects and schools we've been working at in your prayers; they need practical and spiritual provision so that they can keep on running. We'll be praying that God pours his love and life into the kids we've met and the women and families we've spent time with :)

Lots of love to you all - very excited to see you so soon xXx

27th January - 8th February 2010

Helloooo everyone :)

First of all, apologies about the lack of bloggage - internet has been hard to come by for the last few weeks. Cos of the crazy amount of time I've missed, this will be pretty long :S But I'll miss out days where nothing much happened, so don't fear, you won't be here reading this for hours! Secondly, thank you for all the birthday emails and texts and Facebook messages I got; I really appreciate it. Even though I didn't get them on my actual birthday, they're making me smile today as I read them. I'm planning on having a big fake birthday celebration when I'm back, so you'd better get your dancing shoes on :) Now, onto the actual blog...

Wednesday 27th - Not much happened, got back home and it was lovely to see the family as usual. Mum had three deaths in the family, so she still wasn't back from Kampala sorting out the burials and had been away with Josh, Junior and Esther the whole time that we were on holiday. The family all seem ok, none of the deaths were unexpected, so they're being strong and getting on with it as all Ugandans do. Please pray that they have the time and space to deal with their grief and support one another in the wider extended family unit.

Thursday 28th - Pretty standard day; went to Mukono and chilled, had lunch at a nice hotel then went home and watched Doctor Who :) It was still our holiday till the 31st so we had nothing much to do. Was lovely to be able to lie in and relax and have nothing to think about!

Friday 29th - Ell and Nick went to Kampala to sort some stuff out while the rest of us stayed at home and watched Doctor Who :D We seriously are addicted to the thing; we've somehow managed to watch all four series AND all the specials from the last few years in the space of a month and a half!!! You guys know what I'm like with music, it's essential to my survival, and I thought I'd write the words to a song that I really love at the moment:

"When the night has come and the land is dark, and the moon is the only light that we're gonna see.. No I won't be afraid, no I won't shed no tear, just as long as you stand by me. If the sky that we look upon should tumble and fall, or the mountains should crumble and fall into the sea, I won't cry. No I won't shed a tear just as long as you stand by me. So stand by me, stand, Oh stand by me. Oh stand, stand by me..."
That's Jason Mraz's cover - you can get it off iTunes and it's WICKED!! Ooo also have a look for Black Swan by Athlete; it's a fantastic album, and the bonus album also called Black Swan that comes with it is great too.

Saturday 30th - Bex, Luce and I went into Jinja to do some final present shopping and have some yummy coffee at Flavours :) The matatu on the way was MENTAL - 27 people all crammed in when they're only meant to sit 14! Plus it was really old and barely managed to chug its way to Kayunga, where we had to change onto another matatu.. Bit of a crazy journey but it was worth it when we got there. When we were having lunch, Alison (one of the Oasis International Placements) randomly walked in with her friend Dawn so we ended up eating with them! Small world :) Alison, Helen, Zoe (other Oasis IPs) and Dawn were staying at Explorers Camp where we were on holiday the week before, so we decided to go stay there for the night on a whim. Ell and Nick brought all our stuff from home and we ended up booking another trip white water rafting the next day! It's half price if you do it a second time so we figured it was worth it... Not that we needed much of an excuse. Plus we got our room completely free cos we did the rafting. Good times... I've been reading an awesome book called "Glittering Images" by Susan Howarth, read it if you get the chance. It's a really clever, intricate book (Thanks Sam L! Good choice of present :D) Aaaanyway, had a chilled evening at Explorers enjoying the view and chatting with the IPs. I love that place!

Sunday 31st - White water rafting day :D Had the same safety talk from Arrogant-John, the guy who took us rafting last time, ran out of life jackets and helmets though so that was a bit of a worry but they sorted us out! Becky decided to come rafting too this time, which was very cool. The group going was MUCH bigger than last time; there were 11 boats on the river, about 70 people altogether, which made the whole day take a lot longer. We got to watch all the other boats coming down each rapid, which was pretty funny.. Our guide was a Ugandan called Juma, who was HILARIOUS and had the worst sense of political correctness ever. I am honestly not joking when he yelled at another Ugandan on a different boat to "Pass the anti-nigger cream" i.e. suncream :O We didn't know whether to laugh or cry with embarrassment! How English of us?! People here just don't have any concept of P.C.ness, it's very funny :) He was a nice guy though, we had a laugh with him all day. The water level was much higher than usual so the rapids were all huugeeee. We flipped on a Grade 3 rapid called Retrospect and were all heading for some rocks which was a rather worrying moment! We also flipped on another one called Jaws, straight after the waterfall rapid, and I got stuck under the side of the boat where there was no air to breathe. That panicked me a bit, I have to admit! It was probably only for about 5 seconds but it feels so much longer when you're struggling to get out. The boat was heavy so I couldn't move it, was a bit worrying... Anyway! Bex flew out on a massive Grade 5 one called Silverback with these big waves. If she hadn't fallen out, the boat would've flipped completely. When she surfaced she looked so worried bless her! She enjoyed it though, had an awesome day. The funniest episode was on the waterfall rapid - before you go over it there's a lot of fast moving water leading up to it, which is really shallow over some rocks. Basically, they tell you not to fall out there at any cost. So guess what I went and did: We hit a big wave and the boat tipped onto its side and I fell out and almost went over the waterfall on my own :S It was terrifying! Juma grabbed a paddle and I managed to get it and he pulled me back into the boat :S Bad times! All the other guides were panicking cos I was literally a metre away from going over the falls on my own. Funny times! What a story though :) I sat out with Bex on the last one cos I was shattered after the waterfall episode and getting stuck under the boat straight afterwards. The others did it without flipping though and even surfed a few waves right at the end! All in all a brilliant day :D

Monday 1st Feb - Pinch punch first of the month! We went into Kampala with Jona and Timo to visit the Kasubi Tombs cos they've been wanting to take us there for ages. The journey into town was epic cos all the kids are going back to school, so matatus were packed and the centre of townw as HEAVING. Getting round the new taxi park was crazy; we nearly got lost and this was in the heat of the day after 45 minutes of walking without having lunch. Not good.... Anyway, eventually we got to the tombs but (no joke) we had to pay 10,000sh to get in because we're white. Seriously I'm not even kidding - because we're not local, we have to pay more. Now that's fair enough, but they assumed we weren't local cos we were white. We've lived here for FIVE MONTHS and we're broke students doing voluntary work!!! We should've been allowed to pay 5000sh like Jona and Timo. I have to admit, I nearly lost my temper with the woman. What about mzungus who live here full time working?? Must have been 35deg that day too, so I wasn't in the best of moods! It was nice spending time with J&T though, even though the tombs weren't amazing - we saw a stuffed leopard though :S And this massive grass roofed palace where the king used to live with all his portraits and spears there. Very different to how it is now! The Kabaka of the Buganda tribe still exists but he doesn't have political power anymore, although his tribe want to change that. He lives in a palace near the Tigers Club project's football pitch that I visited a few months back (Wow, can't believe how fast those few months have gone..) After that we got some internet time at Steers cos we had to send our team project off to Oasis UK and I caught some highlights of the Premiership weekend matches - Arsenal lost to Man U :'( AND now we've lost to Chelsea too. CRINGE. Shattered and dehydrated, we returned home and had sausages and salt bread for tea :)

Tuesday 2nd - Drunk THREE litres of water during the day and yet was still dehydrated; that's how hot it's been lately! We had a nice, slow start to the day which I spent in bed reading, then after lunch we got a load of planning done. Wrote V.W.G's funding proposal and I typed it up in the evening, then planned the final design for the mural at Lilo and Ell and Nicky drew the outline onto the wall so that we could get it painted on the 3rd. Also sorted out speakers and arrangements for the V.W.G. seminar afternoon on the 3rd and generally got our lives into some semblance of order! When I was walking down the road to give an announcement about V.W.G. to the local shop, I had one of those loving Africa moments :) Groups of kids kept popping out of the undergrowth, saying hi and singing songs that we'd taught them at school. It was lovely :D A little group of kiddies came up to me on my way back, all trying to hold my hands and walked all the way home with me - Very cute! The air had that warm Africa smell of burning and flowers and car dust and the sun looked beautiful cos it was setting in those gorgeous burnished golden colours that you get, like in autumn at home-home :) Molly and Jessica and Kevin ran up to us to say hi... Little things like that are what I treasure about the village and will take home with me.

We've been praying more as a team lately, which has really helped us to plan more effectively and generally feel more peaceful about leaving Namaliri and the family. It's a very weird time; I'm so excited to come home, but at the same time I get really upset and cry all the time! I know it's to be expected but I can't find my feet, can't get a proper measure of how I'm feeling. I just want to know that we did everything we could here, that we've given all the love that we could to the children and the people who we've shared time with. I don't want to go home with any regrets or worries - I know God works in amazing ways, that we can't even begin to understand. He was already working in the people in Namaliri before we got there, and he'll safeguard the work we've done and it'll carry on if it's right for that to happen. Please pray that the last few days in the village will be full of joy for us, our family and friends and that we can really enjoy the time. Please pray that boys and girls group, V.W.G and kids club will flourish even when we've gone and that God will do wonderful things in the community. Lastly, please pray that we complete the purpose God has for us there and that he changes us in exactly the way that he wanted to when he brought us here :) This is such a beautiful country, such a special place, and I already can't wait to come back... I'm going to miss the sun and the colours, the smell of the air, the people who are so open and generous with themselves and their time. It's a privilege to get to live here and spend so much time with the people...

Wednesday 3rd - Birthday, woop! To be honest, it didn't feel much like my birthday; I was thinking how weird it is that a year ago I was surrounded by snow and ice, going to Loch Fyne for dinner with Mum, Dad, Nick and Ims. I'm going to have an awesome proxy birthday when I'm home :) In the morning the girls gave me some lovely glittery cards that they made for me, then I bought some kerosene from the petrol station, sorted out paint stuff and we went to Lilo to do the mural. We had a load of medical gloves for some reason so we used them to do the kids' handprints on the wall - we decided to do the prints in rainbow colours coming out around the school crest in the middle and we're going to write a Bible verse over the top. Not sure what yet... The wall isn't totally done but it looks fantastic! :D They really enjoyed doing it. I'm so glad that they'll have something to be proud of that they made when we leave, so that they can remember how gifted they are and how unique they all are. Plus handprints are pretty easy :) We've left quite a lot of space for next week cos a load of the kids weren't back at school yet - Ugandans are as lax with timing returning to school as in every other area of life! I saw Isaac at the shop near our house (he's one of the guys who used to go to Lilo) and he said he's finished P7 now so he's not at school anymore. Exciting news for him! I'm really going to miss him actually; he always says "how are you Madam" when he sees me and gives me a big smile and a hug. I wish he could speak more English then we could actually get to know him a bit better, hear about his family and stuff.. I want to learn Luganda better for when we come back!

After that we came home and Pastor Kernicky came from Kabimbiri (the next village along the main road from us) to do the V.W.G. seminars. None of the women came at 2, so we started the HIV/AIDS one at 3 and it went awesomely - he talked in a lot of detail, brought learning aids and all sorts. We had some drinks and doughnuts halfway through, then started the financial management talk at 5 and it ended up carrying on till half past 7!! Thankfully people rang me to wish me happy birthday so I could escape :) The women really enjoyed it though and learned a lot; it's going to help them manage the business side of the group in a really good way. Hopefully it'll really take off once we leave; we've given them all the training they could possibly need so now it's up to them. We had soda in the evening with the family as a birthday treat and then watched some Doctor Who before going to bed :)

Thursday 4th - We went to Gilgal in the morning as their term started again this week. There weren't as many kids as usual, so it was quite chilled, only about 30 or 40 in nursery.. We did the story of Jesus washing the disciples' feet and talked about how we can love and serve one another. Acting out the story with actual water made the kids laugh a lot! We did some songs with the younger groups and different games with all of them, led different bits each time.. It went brilliantly! I was surprised by how easily we slotted back into the pattern of working there to be honest. Sarah was back at Gilgal after being in Jinja for ages so we saw her after the praise and worship session, which was nice. She's starting S1 at Kabimbiri High School next week, which is awesome. She seems sad though, there's a sadness in her eyes that always catches me when I look at her in the face - she gave me a long hug at the gate of our house when we said goodbye and I really think she's hurting about something. It's difficult because what can we say? After that, we went home and had lunch and chilled for a bit before going to Home Cell at sister Esther's place. It was quite a walk, but it was nice seeing parts of the village again. We saw Lydia and Justine again too :) We had the usual prayers, singing and talking at Esther's then she gave us a ridiculous amount of cassava, matoke and cow peas to eat until it was dark, then we walked home in the pitch black, stumbling all the way! Good times... Got home and then had to eat dinner. Seriously, I've put so much weight on there's no way I'm going to fit into my jeans at home!!! Major salad eating for all meals when I'm back in the UK I think...! :) I carried Esther home on my back, then we watched some Doctor Who and prayed for a bit as a team then hopped off to bed..

Friday 5th - Bambejja training again. Bad times getting up so early in the morning! We talked about going home and the ways that we might respond to our experience here in terms of prayer or financial giving or eventually coming back.. I know Oasis always have to plug themselves to get funding etc but sometimes it feels like we're on the receiving end of that a little bit too much! It was good to talk about it as a team though with Gill, who's the mzungu head of Oasis cos she understands the process of culture shock and going home etc. So strange to think that we'll be coping with all that in such a short space of time!! In the afternoon we led the prayer meeting and did washing of feet again, got all the staff to wash each other's feet in groups and answer questions on different parables Jesus told about serving others. It worked awesomely even though we planned it very last minute :) Nicky and Ell went to the cheap railway market at lunchtime and bought a set of table mats and an apron for Mama R and the family as some of our leaving presents. Then we headed to the post office to pick up packages - Luce got FIVE!! I got a lovely Christmas present from Auntie Lucy - thank you :D xxx

Saturday 6th - Sorted out all the craft boxes and medical box for the next team and made an inventory of everything that we really need to type up soon.. Then we all got a load of packing done. I know it seems early but there's so much rubbish and all sorts of stuff round the house that we can't leave it all til next Monday! It was very strange to pack - my black suitcase weights a ton :S I'm not sure it'll be allowed on the plane. It's got a load of toiletries in that I need to take home, presents for people, photographs and cards and stuff... I'm giving virtually all my shoes and clothes away, so they won't weigh my other bag down too much. I just hope I don't have to pay an inordinate amount of money to check my suitcase in at the airport!! Kids Club didn't start till half past 3 cos no kids were around, but when they eventually turned up we did the banner that we've been planning with them. In the morning Luce and I wrote Kids Club on it and painted the letters black, then we put the kids' handprints all around it. It looks fab :D It's for the counselling centre when Mum and Dad eventually get it built, so that they can hang it up for the kids club meetings that they do in there. They've already bought the land and cleared it of trees etc so now they're just waiting for enough funds to start the building work. We want to fundraise that money for them when we get home. Even Molly and Jessica and Kevin came to do their handprints, which was lovely :) For once Molly decided that she wasn't terrified of us! After that, we cleared up reeeeally quickly and went down to Gilgal for boys and girls groups. They went awesomely too! We talked about being strong men and women of God - I did girls group with Bex and Luce and we played a few games then got the girls to say qualities that a woman of God should have and wrote them on the board. The hot potato game made sure that they all said something rather than just sitting in silence! Then we looked at some of the Bible stories about women that we did before Christmas and the qualities that they had, and then looked at how the girls could all be strong women of God in a practical way too. It doesn't feel quite finished yet though, so I want to buy some mirrors for them to write the qualities on next week at our last meeting, so that they have something to keep to remind them who they are in God :) I'm going to miss those girls so much - Florence, Sarah, Bright, Victo, Mercy, Sarah no.2 (!) and Precious were all there with a load of other girls too. How nice are their names?! It's like that Quaker tradition of naming your kids after characteristics... Aaanyway that's about it from Saturday!

It's now Monday and my internet time is almost up, so I have to go. No time to talk about Sunday School! Sorry for how long this entry has been - congratulations for getting to the end!! :) We're in Kampala today, buying medication and having health checks done before coming home, having our last nice lunch at Cafe Javas before we go home too :D Can't wait, I'm hungry! 3 mins left.... Sending tons and tons of love to everyone at home and really looking forward to seeing you all again, especially lovely little Maggie who I haven't met yet :D Take care of yourselves and I'll try to write again before we leave the country. Millions of love and the biggest hug ever especially for Mr Dan Bentley, who I know will pull through the latest saga in his soap opera life ;)

xXx

Holiday!!! (18th - 26th January 2010)

Hey everyone :D

I'm in an internet cafe in Jinja today, wearing a loooong floaty, colourful summer dress and big sunglasses. Good times! We're on the last few days of our holiday, staying at a place called Palm Tree Guesthouse for a bit of luxury before we go home. We have a swimming pool and proper sheets on our beds - everywhere else we've slept here, they have these horrible think woollen blankets that make you unable to breathe, so actual cotton is a bit of a relief! It's a lovely place. I got a load of present shopping done yesterday in the little shops down Main Street in Jinja. We've been getting boda bodas everywhere, which is lots of fun :) Don't know why we don't do it more often, aside from the blatant dangerous side of it!

Before we arrived here in the centre of Jinja we were staying at a place called Explorers Camp right near the Nile. It had a beautiful view and a great bar where we just spent a few days relaxing and reading and eating good food. It was very cheap but we had such a lovely time. It was a centre for water sports and stuff, so a lot of people stayed there permanently so we got to know some of them. I met a lady who had a shop just outside; she had a little 18 month old boy called Nathan. He saw me and ran up to me, clung to my legs and wouldn't go back to his Mum. Quite embarrassing! :S Apparently he used to be looked after by a white lady so he loves white people, whoever they are. Very sweet!

We arrived there on Thursday and then on Friday we went white water rafting, the activity company linked with Explorers Camp. It was EPICALLY AMAZING!!!!! We did a whole day of rapids from Grade 3 - Grade 5, which is the highest raftable grade I think. There were 6 of us in a boat (we met a great couple from Australia and spent the day with them) and we had an insanely arrogant guy caled John from Explorers who basically took the trip. To be fair, he did have some reason to be arrogant, being a muscly tanned water sports instructor, but I just wanted to push him out of the boat into one of the larger rapids by the time half an hour was up! 2 other boats went down the river with us, causing lots of splashing competitions the whole day. Needless to say, we were soaked and had an awesome time. There was one waterfall we went down where Ellie and I accidentally let go of the boat but somehow managed to stay inside it, whacking our heads. She couldn't do the last 2 big rapids and I now have half a black eye! There was another one we went down called Silverback, which was huuugeeee and choppy and a bit mental, and Nicky fell out of the boat and was holding on to the side from OUTside the boat, then got swept away into the rapids. Looked like so much fun! Obviously we all had life jackets and helmets (no need to worry Nina, Mum and Nanna!!) but even so it was really disorientating being in the rapids. We were the only boat not to flip over right till the end, and we flipped in this massive Grade 5/6 rapid cos John tipped us over. Bad times! It sounds silly, but I can now see why people drown cos even wearing a life jacket, in the 5 seconds before I popped back up to the surface, I couldn't tell which way was up. The whole day was amazing and finished with a big bbq which made it even better. I have a DVD of us doing the rapids so you can all see that when we're home.

Speaking of which, only 3 weeks and 5 days now - how weird is that?!? That could almost be the length of a holiday... We get back to the village tomorrow, then work starts again on Tuesday the 2nd Feb, then we leave the village on the 16th before we do 5 days of debrief in Kampala. Crazy... At the Explorers place, there was one night when a load of Americans were staying. I wanted to go down to the bar in the evening and have a drink but they were all in there getting absolutely wasted and going a bit mental. It was nowhere near as big as in clubs or bars at home, but it totally freaked me out - part of me wanted to be there but another part of me wanted to run away cos it was so loud and busy and generally different from what we've been doing for the last 5 months. When I get home I can't wait to go out with friends, but at the same time I think I've underestimated how much of a shock it'll be. Maybe I'll just hate it! :S On Saturday after white water rafting my back and arms were pretty painful (we paddled down 30km of river, and most of it wasn't fast-moving rapids!) so I had a back massage at a spa near the camp place. Loveeely times! In the evening we had a nice meal out at a more expensive restaurant to have some nice team time and good food. It was a bit disappointing, but we got dressed up and made an effort anyway :)

So back in time to before we arrived at Explorers Camp. We stayed on Ssese island for 2 nights. Getting there was fairly epic! Our vehicle arrived to pick us up an hour and 10mins after it was meant to, so we almost missed the ferry across Lake Victoria from Entebbe. It was a loooong 2 and a half hour journey to get to Entebbe, then the ferry took 3 and a half hours, so we were pretty tired by the time we got there. When we got to the port, it was 5 past 2 and the ferry had already left. We literally sprinted to get to it, looking ridiculous carrying all of our bags, but they very very very luckily reversed the ferry to pick us up. Apparently that never happens! God was definitely keeping an eye on things for us :) Our rooms weren't wonderful at Ssese but we were right on this white sandy beach and went swimming in the lake and for short walks up and down the beach. There was a beautiful sunset and the food was good. So all in all not bad! We did a lot of reading and sunbathing on our full day there, then had a BBQ on the beach in the evening round a bonfire, which was lovely. The ferry left the island at 8am every day, which was gutting cos it meant we barely got any time there, and we had to get up at 6am on the 21st! But at least we got there in time and got to Explorers without too much trouble.

I think that's pretty much it for holiday news... Not sure if there's anything else to report! It's the 26th today (Happy birthday Nonno and Oli! Lots of love) and my English teacher's baby is due - it's been a complicated pregnancy, so please pray that it goes well and that it's a safe delivery that is peaceful and calm for her, her husband and their little 3 year old Tom. Not sure what else there is to write... I'd better stop I guess, got a few emails to send. Hope everything at home is good, for all of you reading this. Sending lots of love and a big hug, as always.

Flick xXx

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

6th - 12th January 2010

Hi everyone :)

Sorry it's been 2 weeks since I wrote a blog. We had internet at home for a while, but now the laptop's broken so we're back to once a week internet time again. It was nice to have it while it lasted though! The main news for this entry I guess is this: I got into Cambridge! :D So big smiles and high fives all round! As you can imagine, I'm over the moon and very very very excited. Thank you to everyone who prayed when I came home for the interview; it really did help. I felt so peaceful about the process this time! I'd better start with the blogging now as I have 2 weeks to do and it's going to take me forever :S

Wednesday 6th - Found out about Cambridge, good times! A couple of us went to Mukono to buy fruit juice and biscuits for Kids Rally at the weekend while the rest of us stayed at home doing housework and bits and bobs. We had V.W.G. in the afternoon and it was mainly a social one. We intended to have training on that week but we couldn't organise it with the lady from Bambejja who does our training, so we had to postpone. The ladies were really good about it though - they're used to Ugandan time - and we had soda as a treat to apologise. We had a special dinner cos it was Becky's 3 year anniversary with her fiance, which was pretty difficult for her, so salt bread, sausages and chips went down well. Then hot chocolate, marshmallows and popcorn while we watched Doctor Who in the evening. It doesn't get much better than that, even in the UK! Maybe a takeaway pizza would've been good though... Anyway, the girls made me a beautiful banner to say well done for Cambridge, very sweet of them, which I'm going to take to my room and hang up over my desk :D Ah how cool to think that I'm actually going there!!!

Thursday 7th - Didn't do much, bit of a random day. We met Reverend Livingstone, the director at Lilo school at 9am to talk about the mural and get his approval. He agreed so we're using one of the outside walls near the pit loos...! We're planning to paint it white all over, then do the school crest in black in the middle with the motto underneath, then get the kids to do their handprints all over the rest of the wall in red, yellow and orange. It should look awesome :) If we can find a ladder then we're going to write some Bible verses over the top too. Please pray that we think of the right ones to put up there! We had a bit of an awkward situation with Lilo; the director and headteacher asked if we could give them some money to build a permanent structure at the back of the building they already have. They asked in a lovely way, it's just they have a need for it more than they have a need for the mural cos their temporary wooden classrooms are being eaten away by termites. The problem is, we wanted to do something interactive with the kids, that they could appreciate as their own lasting work. That's why the mural is such a great thing to do with them - no matter what their abilities physically or mentally, they can all put their handprints on the wall. We don't have enough money to pay for the building and we felt terrible about it. We can't use our budget money and we just don't have enough personal money, but that's really hard cos we love that school and more than that we love the kids, and if we could do it then we would. It's an urgent need for them, such a shame that we can't help. It's especially difficult when Oasis over-budgeted for us, so we DO have team money sitting in a bank account but we just can't give it away like that cos of the precedent it sets for future mzungu teams. Ah well. We can pray for them :) In the evening we spent HOURSSSS sorting out crafts for the kids rally - we're expecting 150 kids at most, so we prepared that many stars, holepunching them and tying them together with ribbon for the kids to decorate them. EPIC!!! It was a pretty late night as we tried to get all our packing done for Kids Rally over the weekend...

Friday 8th - Training in Kampala as usual - Zedde Mzungu from Calvary Chapel church ran the session on suffering. It was pretty good... I'm still not a massive fan of the training or the 6am early starts, but it's all for a good reason I guess. We left Kampala early in a vehicle that we hired to get to Tororo in Eastern Uganda for the Kids Rally. We went home to pick up all our bags then set off on the almost-4-hour-long journey. It went suprisingly quickly though; the land looks very different. There are barely any banana or matoke trees, but lots and lots of flat land with bushes and not so many trees, lots of pineapple plants and sugar crops and some maize crops too. There are way more cows because traditionally the tribe of Eastern Uganda is called Teso and they're cattle farmers. It was really interesting to see the differences in the area - the houses were pretty much all circular mud huts in the villages, with straw rooves. The towns were similar to Central, with iron rooves and bricks. Watched Scrubs in the evening after lots of soda and fish and chips for dinner, then had an early night cos of the insaneness of Kids Rally the next day. The guesthouse we were staying in was really nice, with toilets and running water (albeit cold running water!) and an actual bar. Not that we used it!

Saturday 9th - WHAT AN EPIC DAY. There are no words to describe quite how mental, awesome, stressful yet fun and generally amazing this day was!! But I'll try and describe it anyway :) We prayed for the day on Friday night and prayed that lots of kids would come, that it would go really well etc. We were expecting about 100-150 kids at the very most and prepared everything for that estimation. We got THREE HUNDRED children!!!!!!! Ah it was insane... We put them all into teams and gave them name labels and spent the morning playing games as planned. We did the balloon game, the get-the-domino-out-of-the-flour-with-your-mouth game, a clothes relay, ball and spoon races, musical statues and musical bumps, wheelbarrow races (which almost killed me when I had to demonstrate!) and a memory verse game with balloons. They loved it - their fave was definitely the flour game! What amazed me the most was the way we all worked together as a team, depsite the craziness and flexibility that we had to show cos of the change in numbers. Some of us did name labels and put the kids into teams, some demonstrated and explained the games, Bex spent ages making extra star crafts for the extra kids to do. I was so proud of us as a team! Even though it was stressy, we made it work and it became fun because of that. It shows how far we've come cos we definitely wouldn't have been able to do that right at the start of our time here. Anyway, lunch was meant to be after the memory verse and games at 1, but it ended up not being ready till about half 3 / 4 o'clock! Typical Ugandan timing again... We improvised and Nicky did the talk and we did the drama sketches to go along with it before lunch. Our theme was shining like stars for Jesus so we talked about what we can do to love other people like Jesus did, and acted out the parable of the Good Samaritan and Jesus washing the disciples' feet as examples. Then Nicky talked about how we're all unique and made differently, just like every star, and we each shine out who Jesus is in very different ways. It was an awesome talk and went really well with our memory verse - "You are the light of the world. Let your good deeds shine out for all to see." Good times! We didn't have enough of the craft stuff for all the kids, so we decided to do that at Sunday School the next day instead.

After we were done with the kids stuff, we had lunch in the Pastor's house (they cooked us meat, SUCH an honour from them) and then went for a walk around the village to see Dad's home. He grew up there so it was lovely to see all the places that he can remember from his childhood. The poverty in that village was astounding. The houses were so small for large numbers of people. There's a culture of polygamy there so there are far too many children for the adults to look after. There's also a high rate of HIV so the adults die of AIDS and the kids are left to fend for themselves without any access to food, education or safety. It's a very difficult cycle to break without ruining their culture in a lot of ways. You have to westernise them to some extent to give them different ways of overcoming the problems they're having. For example, they used to be cattle farmers and have tons of land for grazing their herds, but now there are lots more people living in the area using the land as farmland for crops, so there's less room for grazing. To help break the cycle of poverty, you have to introduce more western ways of generating income, like we've done with V.W.G with the soap and candle making. But to me it just seems presumptuous to wander in and tell these people with such a different culture and history to us to do things our way... Dad has some land there left to him by his grandfather where he wants to set up a community project with an orphanage, tailoring school and vocational and healthcare training for people living tbere. It's an awesome vision and they're not farming the land in faith for when it happens :) We saw the house where he was born all those years ago and it's still standing. His eldest living sibling was born in 1936 so it's been there for a huge amount of time - it was great to hear him speak his own language (Atteso) and be greeted by long lost cousins and members of his family. We didn't meet many of his brothers because they have big problems with home-brewed alcohol addiction and were down at the local drinking shop while we were there :( Such a different side of life. It was amazing if a little shocking to see it. The views were beautiful and we had about 50 kids following us through the bush while we walked! The situations those kids are in is awful - if they have parents/carers, they often earn only 1000sh a day. That's about 30p. Plus global warming is having a huge effect and ruining the seasons for them, so farming and crops are being thrown way off kilter and are failing much more often than they used to.

Anyway, I'm rambling now. Sorry, it just really shocked me in some areas. So many geographical and cultural contributing factors into their poverty, as well as social ones - it makes it so hard to solve the problem. I guess we can just do little things to make the kids smile :) In the evening we watched an Arsenal match at the guesthouse (I was SO happy!!!) and had chips for dinner, but it took over an hour and a half to arrive. I was not impressed. We complained, cos it seriously can't take that long to deep fry some sausages and chips. Half an hour at most but over 90 minutes?!?! :O We were quite hungry... Watched Doctor Who with Jona and Timo for a bit, then headed off to bed.

Sunday 10th - Church in the morning was fantastic! We did Sunday School for an hour at 9 and made all the star crafts with the kids - they loved it :) It was good to leave them with something to take home. We also left glitter glue and pencils with the teachers to keep cos they had so little. Some of the children led us in some praise and worship, very talented kids here! After that we went back into the main church meeting, which ended at 12 so that we could eat lunch and leave promptly. It was brilliant, lots of singing and dancing and the people were really happy to hear us sing and introduce ourselves. The pastor's wife stood up to welcome us and said that we'd really blessed the kids and they'd come home talking about the day they had on Saturday, which made us feel so happy! And then she said that all the adults were proud of their kids, which surprisingly overwhelmed me cos I've never heard a Ugandan say that before, especially to such a large number of children who are mostly orphans. The choirs were lovely, then Ellie preached on church unity and the images of the church as the body and bride of Christ, which went really well. All in all, a good morning :) We saw baboons on the way home in the vehicle so we stopped to take lots of photos :D It was soooo cool!!! We fed them bananas and we saw Mummies with little babies clinging to their tummies. Epic! After a loooong journey we got home to see Mama and arranged to meet Danny, a mzungu guy who came on an Oasis GAT team last year - he came for dinner then stayed the night and travelled back to Kampala with us on Monday. It was great to finally meet him cos we've been in contact for over a year since I was on the summer team last year and it was good to spend time with a mzungu guy for once! Ah I miss all the banter of my guy friends at home...

Monday 11th - Good but bad day... We went into Kampala at about 12, had a lazy morning so the family could spend time with Danny. He's doing a Theology degree at a Bible College in the UK so we had some good chats about what to expect from it and how to challenge your faith then piece it back together again so that it's stronger as a result of the intellectual study. He said some cool things, I didn't realise how much there was to think about in terms of matching up all the different parts of my faith. I've realised that there are things I accept just cos they're what I've always believed, but studying religion means I won't be able to do that anymore. I'm really excited about that actually :) I won't write about everything we talked about, it would take far too long! When we got to Kampala we had lunch at Cafe Javas again - yummyyyy!! I had chicken and cheese quaesadillas and guacamole and chips, happy times :D Becky was feeling really ill though, with a fever and aching all over while all the rest of us had headaches and bad throats and blocked noses. We decided to get a special hire home when I randomly threw up in the loo after my lovely lunch *cries* It was horrible! What a waste of good food. When we got home, everyone felt pretty crappy :( Bex hda a temperature of 39.2 - she basically had the high temp thing that Nicky, Ellie and I have had already. It sucks big time! She recovered pretty fast though, by Tuesday in fact, so that was good.

Tuesday 12th - We were meant to meet the builder at 9am to talk to him about plastering and painting the wall at Lilo in preparation for the mural, but he didn't turn up. BAD TIMES!! We got up early when we could've had a lie-in... The DVD player was broken so no English TV to pass the time :( :( :( And we all felt like crap! As you can imagine we were feeling pretty sorry for ourselves and wallowed a bit. I'm making it sound worse than it was; we had a pray and went to the tailoring school in the afternoon and did actually do something with our lives :) There were no ladies there though, very disappointing, so we just talked to Pastor Alex for half an hour then left to go back home and look after Becky. I wish that part of our programe was easier, I really do. The builder ended up coming at 5pm so we sorted out a price of 140,000sh for him to buy the materials to plaster the wall and to pay for his labour.


So that's it for now - as I write it's actually the 17th January, and I haven't had internet until now cos we've just come into Mukono, so there'll be another blog entry for you to read too in a bit :) My hands and back are aching now from all the typing (I had to do our team report for January and send it to Lisa, and I've already done my emails...) so I'm going to go and get lunch then come back in a bit.

Sending lots of love and hugs back home,
Flick
xXx

29th December 2009 - 5th January 2010

Happy new year!

It's hard to believe that it's the start of a new decade... Hope you all had an awesome new year celebration, whatever you were doing, and that this year is full of exciting adventures and fulfillment for you. We spent the new year in a place called Mto Moyoni in Jinja, on the banks of the River Nile. It was an absolutely beautiful place, full of trees and flowers. It was nice to be in a different place, with such lovely surroundings but it felt a bit weird too. I'm not a massive fan of going away from home cos it feels quite detached from what we've been doing in the village. We stayed in little circular rooms and even had running water :D It was heated by solar power and we had two days of rain though, so hot water was slightly too much to wish for. But still, it was awesome actually feeling properly clean and soap-free! My favourite place was a hammock on top of a hill, with an amazing view down the river. We spent new year's eve there, round a bonfire and watched some fireworks that the posh hotel across the river set off at midnight. It was a very different experience but one of those once in a lifetime things that's really important to appreciate. I missed our traditional family meal - we always have venison stew, wild boar stew and pheasant (my Nonno loves game :D) It's one of my fave meals of the whole year, so they promised me we'd have a fake new year dinner when I come back :)

The retreat itself was good, but not all that relaxing. I don't feel very rested since coming back; it feels like a bit of a dream that didn't quite happen, like the retreat wasn't really there. I think it's the underlying stress about hearing back from Cambridge this week. I'm not panicking about it cos I know that God will sort it out, I did my best and couldn't have said or done anymore. I'm content about it in that sense, happy within myself and proud that I managed to go home and actually manage the situation even though it was so crazy! But of course I still wanna get in :) I just want to know now to be honest. Thank you everyone who did pray and is still praying and sending good luck etc for me. We did some cool prayer and Bible stuff on retreat but I wish it had been a bit freer, with more time for self-expression and writing and painting. I like space just to be quiet and still and rest with God without feeling stressed or busy or pressured, but it felt like we had a busy programme with 'appointments' to keep, instead of God-led time. Hmmm...

I sound like I'm complaining a lot, sorry! We had a hilarious canoe ride on the Nile, in which the boat began to fill with water and the guy taking us out had to scoop it out with his hands . Good times! We're waiting to do the white water rafting till our holiday, when we're staying in Jinja for 6 days. It's scary how fast the time is going now; after our holiday, we only have 2 weeks left in the village and we've got less than 2 weeks till the holiday now. Argh!!! The food at the retreat place was yummy, we had pasta bake which was actually DELICIOUS (I'd forgotten how much I loveee pasta...) and lots of fruitage :)

So that's Thursday till Sunday covered. Wednesday 30th we planned for the kids rally, which goes from the 8th - 10th Jan (this weekend). It was surprisingly quick and easy to get the games and story stuff decided, thank goodness, and we're now really excited about it. We're going to a place called Tororo in Eastern Uganda, where people tend to be a lot poorer than here in central. It will certainly be a different experience to what we've become used to. The tribes there are different so we won't be able to understand any of their language. Luckily we've requested to have 5 translators, so we can manage to organise the potential 150 kids we'll have for the Saturday funday thing. We've been not as busy as usual for so long that it's nice to have lots of things to plan for and do. I feel a bit discouraged when I think about December, as if it was a bit of a floaty month when we didn't really do anything, but I forget how much we've done. Vulnerable Women's Group had their candle-making training and we've organised the soap/shampoo and financial training for them, we did a week at Bambejja, we did the kids Christmas party and the youth seminar and the gaps in our programme gave us time to spend with the family, getting much closer with them. I'm really glad we had that space now :)

The schools all restart in the first week or so of Feb, so we'll be back at Lilo and Gilgal then. This Thursday we're meeting with Pastor Livingstone, who's the director at Lilo, so talk about our plans for the mural on the wall outside the school loos. I CAN'T WAIT for that!!! Soooo excited to be able to make something lasting with the kids that they can look at with a sense of pride and achievement cos they made it :) How exciting! Today we visited a project run by a local youth pastor called David - he has a 'family' of young guys and they have a brick-making project that they're trying to grow. He rents land for them at the moment but they're trying to buy the building they live in at the moment so they can provide better care for the guys. They have an awesome vision :) Please pray that God encourages them and gives them hope and excitement about where he's taking them, and that they have their spiritual eyes so fixed on God that they know where he's leading them, even if it seems weird! I might go for a walk through the village later just so I can see some of the ladies and spend some time with different people, who don't necessarily come to the groups we run. I don't do that enough.. We're going to the tailoring school in 20 mins I think, at least if we manage to get lunch before that!

Not sure what other news I have... I am very grateful to everyone who stays in touch, thank you :D It's been a massive blessing to have people caring for me from home and watching over us in prayer while we're here. I was reading a bit in Colossians 3 today about prayer, and how important being grateful is. I was thinking, when we view everything that we have as a blessing and provision from God, it makes not having certain things much easier. If we're expecting loads of material things and have unrealistic expectations of what our faith will do for us materially, then we'll always be disappointed and bitter and angry with God. That's the danger of prosperity gospel in Uganda; if you don't have stuff like cars or money or nice clothes, it's because you haven't believed in God enough, you don't have enough faith, God isn't satisfied with you. It's a disgusting, destructive message to teach, which undermines everything I believe about God. His love, his acceptance of us no matter what, the unconditional nature of his grace and friendship... Anyway, sorry, rant over!

Something you guys could pray for or raise awareness about is the law that the government are currently trying to pass here in Uganda, making homosexuality a crime and the punishment in some parts of the law is the death penalty. It's a horrific idea, and the USA and UK have already said they'll withdraw all the financial support they send here if the law is passed. I've attached some links at the end which gives more information about the law itself... The president here is Museveni and he's imposed himself for an illegal third term in government. It's a democracy here, and politically things are stable and it's one of the richest countries in Uganda, but that wealth is shared by a tiny minority, and the resources that Uganda has aren't used wisely by the government. This could be a hugely prosperous country, an example of what Africa could become as a whole, but because of stupid levels of corruption normal people have much lower standards of living than they should. The anti-homosexuality law is just one part of a morally corrupt government. Please pray that the law doesn't go through, that politicians' eyes are opened and they don't stand for such awful treatment of people. There is lots of debate going on in the country as a whole about this at the moment and it's a time of great change, so please pray that it stays stable and that God moves in ways that we might not even see but that will nevertheless change the nation for the better. Please also pray that the church takes an honourable, loving, gracious stance on the issue - there can often be a lot of condemnation and horrible treatment of homosexuals, and it NEEDS to stop.

OK I have to stop now, time for the tailoring school. Thank you for reading this far again! Sending tons of love and a big hug to you all in the new year .. Only 46 days as I write until I'm home. Can't wait to see you all :D

Flick xXx

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/29/uganda-death-sentence-gay-sex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uganda_Anti-Homosexuality_Bill

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/28/ugandas_do_ask_do_tell

22nd - 28th December 2009

Hi again everyone :)

First of all, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and that you enjoyed your time with family and friends. It was good over here, if a little strange! Christmas Day itself was better than I expected it to be; we decided to watch Love Actually before midnight, then toasted our Ugandan
Christmas with hot chocolate and mince pies :D It was awesome, made the day feel special. We stayed up till half 3 (stupid idea, we had to be up early to wash our hair before church on Christmas Day!) then went to church the next morning. Managed to get out of doing Sunday school and just spent the whole time in the service; I have to admit, it was much less enjoyable than normal Christmas church at home. I missed seeing friends and families all together on Christmas Day. It's so much smaller in the village, even though it feels like a little family to us now it's still not the same. I missed singing carols and candlelit Christmas services at school and the little traditions we all have at Christmas, like writing our letters to Father Christmas and putting some water and a carrot out in the garden for Rudolph :( I only thought about those bits in the quiet parts of the day though; once everything got going and it was all busy with the family, it was difficult to stay homesick or upset.

After church we had a huuuugeee African lunch, Mama must have been cooking for days! There was chapatti, matoke, rice, Irish potatoes, pumpkin, cassava, beef, chicken, cabbage AND greens :O We were all stuffed by the end of the meal, although somehow I managed to get away with only having one medium sized portion, which was lucky otherwise I reckon I would've exploded. We watched Shrek in the afternoon, and did crackers with the whole family, then gave them their presents and just chilled out for the rest of the day. The idea of Christmas here isn't so much about presents like it is at home-home; it's about spending the day with your family, doing nothing and eating ridiculous amounts of food. That's the main similarity with home :) I missed having cold weather desperately, it didn't feel like Christmas at all in the lead up to it, but on the day itself it was grey and rainy! Sod's law - my one opportunity to have a hot Christmas, and it does the opposite!!! It was a lovely day though. I realised yet again how blessed I am to live with the family and to have the girls here.

The other days before Christmas itself were fairly uneventful... Jocelyn, our new coordinator came to visit on Tuesday 22nd, which was kinda tense. We've had a couple of organisation / communication issues with her lately, which were difficult to discuss and led to a lot of tension on Monday when we were in Kampala. We seemed to resolve it on Tuesday, so there's no point recounting all of it now cos that would be pointless, but please pray that our relationship with her is strong and improves and that we become closer friends with her. She's only just starting this job and has never done anything like it before, so please also pray that she has wisdom about how to do it and that God helps her through all the different and stressful stuff that she's doing. We had all our decorations up by this point, so the house looked like a crazy explosion / mush of shiny paper chains and hangy things and tinsel :D

Ooo they've just started watching Shrek in the other room, LOVE that film! Which reminds me to tell you that we now have internet at home :D :D :D :D Emailing is gonna be much easier.. So anyway, on Christmas Eve we had a kids Christmas party which was awesome fun! We decorated the room that we normally have church in and played loads of games and acted out our Nativity that they made lots of crafts for. The sheep masks and shepherds' beards looked particularly cool i.e. hilarious :) Little things like the sweets and balloons that we gave out at the end made them seem really happy. I love being able to do things like that for the people here, especially the kids while we're not working at the schools during the holidays. It's made me think a lot about getting involved with more voluntary stuff when I'm home, but outside of church too.

Boxing Day we ran a youth seminar for a load of young people in the area. We did tons of planning for it but it ended up going a bit pear shaped! We thought we were using Gilgal, with access to lots of space and rooms, so we planned for craft stuff and a big game of football and all sorts to be going on at once, but in the morning it turned out we could only use 2 rooms at World Vision, where we have church. Plus it was raining so we couldn't play any games outside :( We reorganised everything, not without a little stress, but it was fine and we fitted in all the seminars that we'd planned, and some that we'd asked other pastors to come and do for us. It was a very full day cos we had a lot to cover, so we wanted to start at 10 on the dot, but in typical Ugandan style, nobody turned up till gone 11! We're kinda used to reorganising the order of talks and general day arrangements now though, so by this point it was just funny.. We ended up having no crafts or games, and just doing praise and worship to divide up the talks. We didn't get as many people as we wanted, but it's a start.. We were thinking about running another day, or maybe just an afternoon for the young people to do some creative self-expression time and some creative prayer as well. We really didn't want to miss that stuff out on Saturday but we had to :( It was exhausting doing that after so little sleep and the craziness of Christmas! Thank goodness, yesterday church was called off and we could just rest and read through the whole day. Admittedly, I was reading the Secret Dreamworld of a Shopoholic series, which I've guttingly now finished :( I'm starting on the Twilight series to fill my mind with meaningless non-theological fiction over the holidays, my reading for interview actually nearly burned my brain out!!!

Some bad news from the Christmas season - on Boxing Day a man who comes to our church died after being ill for a month or so. He was a well-known guy; when we went to pay our respects, the whole village was outside the house sitting on the floor and mourning. The grieving traditions and... rituals I guess never fail to surprise me. The women sit around the body wailing and screaming for much longer than the men, some of whom don't see the body and others of whom pass through quickly. Mama Rachael slept over at the house through the night to comfort the family with the rest of church, who went to give them their support. Such a lovely custom. The girls and I were talking about how the grief is very melodramatic at this early stage after the death; there's a real thing here with vocalising your grief and it being a communal expression of grief, so different to the UK, where people are more accustomed to leave you alone till some time after the death. Mama went to the burial yesterday but we didn't. I think it was enough to see the body and pay our respects; the burials are very difficult to handle. It sounds depressing to talk about it and it is in some respects - he has left 13 children behind, and they're only the ones who live in the village. He had 2 wives before he got saved; one of them had 16 children, but 10 of them died. Can you imagine the pain? I can't even begin to. But at the same time as being difficult and painful for his family, death here is so real and the people are resilient as a result. People don't shy away from details, they don't make excuses or put their lives on hold. In some ways I wish they could, so they could have more space to grieve, but maybe that's just an English reaction. It's teaching me that death is real for all of us, it could come at any time and that's ok cos it's natural. It's always been that way.

So that's basically the last few days, onto nicer subjects now. Today we went into Kampala to check the post and had a nice lunch (chicken sandwich with ENGLISH TASTING MAYO in it!!!!!! Woop!) and did some supermarket shopping before heading straight home. We bought sausages, bacon, eggs, salt bread and baked beans for dinner tonight - I'm so excited! We have tons of our budget left over; the money we gave to Oasis was far too much for the budget they gave us, so every now and then we buy a nice meal with it. We're having a cooked breakfast in Uganda!!!!! How cool?! On Thursday we're going on a retreat to a place in Jinja called Mto Moyoni. Apparently it's a really beautiful place where we can relax and focus on God and just chill out with hot running water for a while :D We're having New Year there, on the banks of the source of the Nile - once in a lifetime thing I think! I want to see the sunset on the 31st and have a toast out there at midnight with some music while we look at the stars *grins* By the time we get back on the 3rd January, I should have heard back from Cambridge. I reckon by my next blog entry, I'll be able to tell you whether I got in or not. That's given me masses of butterflies in my tummy!!!

Anyway, enough now. I'm hogging the laptop and I should go! Again, thank you for reading this far, I really appreciate that you're all keeping up with me and sharing my experiences while I'm here :) Sending you tons and tons of love and hugs,
Flick
xXx

8th - 21st December 2009

It's been a while since I wrote on here! I think I missed a week when I was at home in the UK - brief recap of the week :) I had my Cambridge interviews on the 15th and they went well. I did my best, felt as relaxed as you plausibly can in that situation and felt like I was myself and came across confidently. They felt like interesting conversations, such an awesome opportunity just to be able to talk with people who are so ridiculously clever! Whether I get in or not, I know it's in God's hands, so I feel at peace about it and happy either way. Obviously I'm hopeful, but Nottingham would be SUCH a great place to be too :) I think I find out somewhere around the first week of January.. It was pretty weird being home too though. Although the weirdest thing was how not-weird my house felt! I know that sounds strange but it's hard to explain it. The running water, toilets, fridge and washing machine felt totally normal even though I thought they'd freak me out. Maybe cos it was just a quick 6 day stop I didn't have time to get totallly comfortable, so I had to accept it for what it is without really thinking about it. It was lovely seeing my family and some friends :) Thank you to everyone who made it go more smoothly and peacefully than I expected. And thank you to everyone who prayed; I really do believe it made a difference.

I missed Uganda-home a lot. In fact, when I got back it kinda felt more like home than England did. I guess that's not surprising because it's been normality for me for the last 3 and a bit months, so it becomes what you're used to.I'm really going to miss it when we go home. Having a wash outside in a bowl was actually nice when I came back! I've been realising that home isn't just about a place, it's about the people who live there with you. This feels like home too now cos I have such a wonderful family here. I have two homes, what a blessing! :) But at the same time, it kinda felt like I have no home last week. Not because I don't fit in or because nobody wants me, but because i can't just take things at face value in the UK anymore. I question things that used to just be easy and simple, taken for granted or explained away without really thinking about it. Now I look for answers where I didn't have to before. And it's the same here in Uganda; because it's a different culture, there's a constant process of 'translation' from culture to culture going on in my head. Reading things differently, modifying my own perceptions of people and actions compared with how I know they would view things as Ugandans. Ultimately that means that life in either country feels a bit more difficult, a bit more of a struggle. But what an amazing thing to be learning :)

I wonder how God will fit into my routine of life at home too. Here, everything is centred on God in a practical way. All the work that we're doing and our general way of life involves group prayer twice a day (theoretically, we're not always very good at sticking to that!) and planning Bible stuff, doing church things and bible studies and all sorts. I'll need to make a load of extra effort to keep up with Bible reading and all that sort of thing when I get home. Getting used to the change of pace in life and the different focuses I'll need to have will be a bit of a challenge.

Right, so when I got back to Ug the girls all came to meet me at the airport with Tata :) It was awesome! They didn't recognise me when I walked through cos I had my haircut when I was home-home and now have a full fringe. Only Bex saw me, the others were just peering blindly into the distance! They made a sign for me and everything, and totally embarassed me by screaming when they finally knew who I was, then jumping over the barrier to come and bundle me :D Ah I love them! We stayed at Helen and Zoe's overnight in Kampala cos the girls had to be at training early in the morning and I got in at half 10 pm so they needed sleep. We drank tea and chatted till the early hours then I stayed at Helen and Zoe's all day on Friday to catch up on sleep and journal writing! Going home was lovely on Friday night - we booked a vehicle back to the village, which was surprisingly cheap, so it was stress free and comfy(ish!). Mama didn't recognise me either lol but once she did she picked me up and spun me round, bless her. Such a lovely welcome home :D While I was gone the family put up their Christmas tree, which looks hilarious and very Ugandan, and in the evening we put up all the decorations in our little house and made paper chains with the kids. It was so good to be home, made me quite emotional! I didn't quite realise how much I'd missed it.

While I was gone the girls also got the candle making training sorted out for V.W.G. cos it didn't happen the week before when we tried to organise it; the woman didn't bother to turn up. Frustrating times! Apparently it went brilliantly though and the ladies loved it, can't wait to make more. Bex got lots of photos :) Kids Club had a good meeting on the Saturday that I missed when they did the second part of the Christmas story and made sheep masks and shepherds' beards for the Nativity that we're doing on Thursday at the Christmas party. Some of them are quite funny! Today we went to Aristoc, the craft shop in Garden City (the shopping mall) and got a load of really cool craft stuff for the Youth seminar on Boxing Day and for the party. We're planning on making the kids little gift boxes and bags with sweets in to take their crafts home :)

Not sure what else there is to update you on.... Ooo the Bambejja holiday programme! That started on the 7th in the week before I went away. We worked with the girls at the Oasis project for 4 days during their Christmas holidays, doing games and crafts and christmas carols etc. It was great fun! We reallly enjoyed having some organised routine in our days because with the schools breaking up recently and girls and boys groups stopping for the holidays we haven't had as much to do. Admittedly, we ended up running everything at Bambejja which was pretty annoying cos we weren't meant to, but still! It was great to get to know some new kids and spend time with them outside the usual village context. We each had a team of girls, mine was the grey team, and they were awesome! I got quite attatched to them, they were definitely the best in the carol singing performances even if they didn't quite come first in the games tournament...! :D We made lots of Christmas decorations and then decorated the banda with their paper chains and angel chains and stars. We even had balloons! And we got them all to make handprints and then made a Christmas tree out of them with glittery baubles hanging on it. Ah it looked soooo cool! Made me finally feel like it's Christmas..

I've decided that I don't like being in hot sun at Christmas cos it doesn't feel like the right time of year :( I much prefer snow and coldness! Can't believe how much snow you have in the UK at the moment, it's crazy. I got a little bit of it when I was home, making the contrast of coming back here all the more harsh! We even saw it on the Ugandan news, pictures of Gatwick being closed and Kent and Esex covered in snow with the Channel Tunnel closed. Craziness! I hope you're all excited about Friday. Have a lovely Christmas with your families and friends, I'll be thinking of you from here.

I'd better go now; for once I still have loads of internet time left! And it's a bit shorter today, so enjoy. I brought a laptop back from the UK for the family so hopefully they'll have internet at home within a week. It'll make emailing much easier, so maybe I'll be in contact with you more often! Sending lots of love and hugs back home-home,

Flick xXx

1st -7th December 2009

Happy Advent everyone! :)

Can't believe it's nearly Christmas. Where did 2009 go?! I can't believe it's nearly a decade since the new millennium; I remember standing on the bridge near my house looking out over London and watching the fireworks. We had a big party at our house! Very weird that it's 10 years since then. This New Year will be very different and a lot more Ugandan I suspect! The main news this week is that I fly back to the UK on Thursday for a week. I have 3 interviews at Cambridge on the 15th which I have to be back for, then I'm coming straight back to Uganda for Christmas till the 21st Feb, when I fly home properly. I'm not seeing anyone next week, just so you all know! It's not that I don't like you, in fact I'd love to see everyone, but I'm trying to limit the culture shock / emotional stressy side of coming home. Seeing everyone would just make leaving again a whole lot harder.
Anyway, onto this week's goings-on!

Tuesday 1st - The day my sickness started :( For most of this week I was stuck with a fever, pounding headache, total loss of appetite and my body ached all over. Bad times! After going to Mukono on Monday, I continued having my hair braided and had to have it done again on Tuesday. I sat for EIGHT HOURS, feeling absolutely terrible and watching ER that Becky bought for an extortionate price at the one DVD shop in the area; it was the only English disc they had! However, I will happily admit that my hair looked awesome! While Bex and I were at home, Nicky went to World AIDS Day in Kasawo (apparently it was awful!) and Lucy and Ellie went to Kampala to pick up stuff from Oasis for the holiday programme we're running this week at Bambejja. We all felt tired and rubbish by the evening. I couldn't sleep cos of my 39deg fever so that put me in a pretty bad mood for the whole week! To make matters worse, over the next few days my hair started to fall out. I didn't realise what a bad job the woman had done on my hair!

Wednesday 2nd - Half my hair braids had fallen out, no joke, so I spent the day quite unhappily in bed, feeling rubbish and trying to read my books for interview. My headache made that kinda impossible though, so I just lay there feeling silly! I got up for vulnerable women for a while; we had arranged for a woman to come from Mukono to train the women to grow mushrooms, but she just didn't turn up. It was absolutely gutting... We organised everything so that it would go ahead, the women worked really hard to collect donations and we met with Pastor Ben and sorted out all the financial runnings of the organisation and the project, but she just didn't come. Such a pain! Then I stayed up for a bit of Bible study too (we're continuing with the teaching series on Hebrews) but then had to go back to bed again. The girls did a good job of cheering me up and looking after me though :D

Thursday 3rd - My brother's 16th birthday :) It's very strange to think that he's already 16. He's chosen his A Level options already too, I swear I'm still that age though...?! So on Thursday we had a fake day off cos working at Bambejja this week means that we don't get an actual day off. Instead of going anywhere we sat at home all day and watched ER being really lazy :D I started feeling a bit better and Bex undid all the rest of my hair braids that hadn't fallen out. What a waste of 20 hours of just sitting there!! The problem was I didn't have time to have it re-done and sorted out before going home for interview and obviously I have to look presentable for that, so the only option was to have them taken out :( They looked cool but they just don't suit mzungu hair; more trouble than they're worth I think. Ah well, at least I can say that I tried it out! Not much else to report... We had a few prayer times in the evening outside in the compound cos it gets harder to concentrate when the small spaces in the house get hot in dry season. We have to COVER ourselves with Deet but it's lovely being outside. The stars are amazing in the village cos there are absolutely no streetlights, and the moon was getting full this week so it looked stunning lying down out there. We've spent some time praying for people who aren't Christians at home, which is nice, and also for stuff that's going on here. It's difficult though; we're not disciplined enough with our team prayer times and we don't leave ourselves enough quiet time to really meditate on God together as a group. Beating ourselves up about it just won't help, so there's no point in that, but I wish it was easier. I want to be better at that in myself as well as the whole team being better... I read the Bible more here and it definitely gives me more strength but it's not enough, I want to do more. It's easy to say that though, the discipline is hard!

Friday 4th - Training at Bambejja. We had a talk from Auntie Jovia, the lady who runs the whole Bambejja project, about the background of the project and all the work it does, then we visited a home in the local slum community. A girl called Florence lives with her 4 siblings and her mother in one tiny room near the project and she goes there every Saturday with the other 120 or so girls. They pay for her schooling and give her life skills training, healthcare, counselling and they give social care to the family. They do all sorts of awesome stuff,it's very cool to be a part of. Hopefully we'll visit some other houses in the community soon too. We left the project at 1 and didn't stay for the prayer meeting as usual cos we had to go to Garden City which is a posh shopping mall (mzungu central) to buy craft materials for the Christmas holiday stuff at Bambejja this week. I had large margherita pizza for lunch so I was happy :D I was starving after the lack of food during the week! By this point I was better in case you didn't realise :)

Saturday 5th - Two of the Oasis International Placements from the UK, Zoe and Helen, came to visit us in the village so we could show them where we live and work. They live in Kampala so they hadn't seen what life was like in a village before. It was SUCH a lovely morning! They brought Refresher chew bars with them, which was a ridiculous answer to prayer cos I'd been saying for about a week and a half that I had a craving for them :D In all seriousness, it was God having a laugh :) I love God!! He even provides Refresher bars! :D
Anyway, we showed them Lilo and Gilgal and Mama cooked us a giant lunch, with matoke and chapatti and rice and beans and meat and greens and everything else under the Ugandan sun, and then they left just before kids club. The kids made angels as the craft for the first part of the Christmas story and we told them about the Nativity and Christmas party on Christmas Eve. We're going to use all the crafts they make in the performance, hopefully it'll look awesome. I'm really excited about it :) We told them about the angel visiting Mary and next week we're doing Jesus' birth and the shepherds, then the week after we're doing the wise men bit. In the morning we met Albert, a guy who we first saw a few weeks ago, who does African dance and music workshops and performances all over the world. He's awesome! He's coming to kids club next week to teach the kids African dance that they can use in the choir performance when they're signing Christmas carols in the Nativity. I really hope it works out ok! He's also going to teach us how to dance like proper Muganda women :D

After kids club we went to Gilgal for boys and girls group, knowing that it probably wouldn't go ahead and our suspicions were correct :( We were all gutted, so we decided not to give it up just yet. We couldn't announce it to the village because the louspeakers have been cut off from the mains cos the people who owned the shop weren't paying their bills! We're going to tell the young people in the village by word of mouth and really commit it to prayer this week and hopefully on Saturday we'll have lots of people turning up for the groups. Please pray that we have wisdom, that people feel it on their hearts to come and that the football pitch at Gilgal will be free for the boys to use, cos that's what draws them to come along.

Sunday 6th - Church for a good few hours as usual in the morning; half past 10 till 2! Sunday School went really well. We did the same part of the Christmas story as we did at kids club, but we made 3-D angels to stand on the stage and hang around the room at the Christmas party :) (I say stage, I don't really mean a stage at all!) Then in the afternoon we had the youth seminar that we planned with Tata. It was meant to be about an hour long and it started at 3. We didn't leave till HALF PAST 6!!!!! This is sitting on backless wooden benches, so we had totally numb bums by the end! Funny times :) It was awesome though. We met a guy called David who used to work at Gilgal, who we've arranged to meet and form a choir with in the next week or so. He might be able to talk to us about Pastor Murenzi if we play our cards right... He led some fantastic worship stuff, which was a real blessing. I do miss my home church because the worship here is very different and I love that part of church at home. Bex did the talk and it went great, she kept it short and sweet which was a real blessing given the timing circumstances! :) After that we headed home and had an early night after sorting stuff out for Bambejja today.

Monday 7th - So today we've been at Bambejja. We left the house at 8, got to the project at 10 and started a few hours of games at 11 and then led the first part of the Christmas story in a devotion this afternoon. The girls are all lovely and it went really well. They even discussed in the devotion time! :) Now sitting in Steers, our usual hangout on Kampala Road, before we go home. We wanted to get a bit of internet done cos otherwise we'll have quite a few days without it. It's always nice to get emails from home etc :)

I'd better stop writing now cos I still have a few things to do - Thank you for reading this far again! I'll write when I get back to England just so you all know that I'm alive and surviving the weirdness of culture shock etc. Sending lots of love and hugs,

Flick
xXx

24th - 30th November 2009

Oh my goodness - it's December tomorrow. What happened?! Can someone please tell me where the year went??? It's officially 11 weeks since we left the UK tomorrow - that means roughly halfway through our whole trip. It's a scary thought; I'm realising more and more by the day how much I LOVE this place. I now call it home! If I'm talking about England-home I say "home-home" to distinguish between the two. Leaving is going to suck :( BUT at the same time, all of you at home are such a big part of my time here. Your support, prayers, emails and letters keep me going to an extent that I really didn't expect! I wish I could take Uganda and people from home and just merge the two and mush them up so that I never have to leave either of them :) Onto this week's update...

Tuesday 24th - Sat around in PJs all morning talking about going on holiday, life, girly stuff etc. Felt like a sleepover, twas nice! Strangely normal... Schools have broken up now so there's nowhere to visit. On reflection I should have been more sensible and read more of my books for interview but I wasn't sensible, so I don't know why I'm bothering to reflect on that...! Bex stayed home from the tailoring school when we visited in the afternoon so that she could plan a big team Bible/personal time. She was really excited about it :) Tailoring school was good. The women still don't talk to us as much as we would like but it's getting better slowly by slowly. I cut some of my own dress templates and sewed them which was pretty cool; my fashion designer cousin Char would be proud! (Love you Lol and Char!)
Bex's team time was awesome; we had communion with Mirinda (purple soda) and doughnuts :D Then we all wrote something encouraging for each other on a bit of paper, did some creative stuff and listened to some music. We've been talking a lot about gifts of the spirit and praying that God shows us what our specific gifting is and that he grows them all in us more. We think mine is wise prophecy, which is pretty cool :D Bex gave me a Bible passage from Hosea 2, which keeps cropping up for me.. Interesting!

Halfway through the team time, we had some terrible news. You might remember I wrote a while ago about a tiny 18-month old baby who came to church called Derek, sister Esther's grandson. Well, he was getting gradually more healthy; even though he was insanely malnourished, he was apparently much bigger than he was when his mum first abandoned him. He died very suddenly on Tuesday from pnuemonia, which Esther couldn't afford to have treated. By the time she was on the way to a hospital it was too late and his little body couldn't deal with the illness. It's absolutely gutting to know that a baby you've cuddled and played with has died. I can't imagine how awful and painful it is for Esther. Please pray for her and for his older sister Angela, who lives with Esther. At first it just didn't sink in. I guess you never know how you're going to respond to things like that happening. We all felt strangely numb. A bit later it sunk in and I just wanted to get out of Uganda as quickly as possible. It's hard to explain. This is the little boy Ellie and I joked about taking home sitting in my flight bag so that we could buy a house and keep him forever. It sounds stupid and melodramatic but it's heartbreaking and if I feel that way, I can't begin to imagine how it is for Esther.

Wednesday 25th - Went to Lilo as usual in the morning. Not many kids there cos they've all gone back to their families in various places now that term has ended. Ellie and Lucy sorted out a game of 'Capture the Flag' for them, which they loved :) The paper flags got completely trashed and loo roll that was tied around them to show if they were in or out was left strewn across the school compound, but it was good times! Then headed back early cos we had to leave the house at 12 to go to Derek's burial. The vehicle we were expecting didn't turn up till 1, so we were insanely late esp cos we had to go into the depths of the village to pick people up! THEN the matatu we had hired broke down on a random countryside road and we had to wait another hour for a vehicle to come and get us. The burial was due to be at 2 so we were really worried about missing it. While we were waiting I played with a load of kids who lived nearby.. At first there were only a few but gradually more and more congregate to see the strange mzungus, so there ended up being about 25 of them! They taught me a load of Luganda words... "amaso" is eyes, "nindo" is nose, "omuwuumba" is mouth and "eviri" is hair. And "cubina" is bottom, which is kinda rude, but I didn't know so I was saying it and wondering why they kept bursting out laughing!!

Eventually a vehicle came to get us; we thought earlier that we were getting a truck, then turned out we had a matatu but we were gutted cos we wanted to be able to say we'd gone on the back of a lorry, so we prayed that God would send a truck, then we broke down, THEN a truck came to get us!!! WOOP! It was awesome :D :D :D We had to climb up over the wheel and sat with the wind in our hair on the bumpiest journey EVER! We really made Mama and Tata laugh :) Got to the burial late, we missed seeing the body and hearing about his life and all the talking bit. I was gutted cos I so wanted to be there for that... When we got off the truck Esther came up to us crying and wailing - it was so awful to see her grief. They're very expressive here; in some ways it's really good for them, cathartic, but it's hard for us to see cos we're not used to it. I wish I'd seen his body. I know that sounds weird, and it would have been horrible, but it doesn't feel real or properly done without seeing him. They carried the coffin to a hole that had already been dug round the back of his father's house (that's the tradition when children die) and filled it in straight away. His father wasn't even there, and his mother turned up despite abandoning him, screaming and wailing. It's hard to feel sympathy or compassion for her; I don't understand how someone can neglect their child so completely and forgo their basic mothering instinct like that, then turn up when the child has already died. I felt so angry with her! Wrong I know, but it's so hard to respond to someone like that. Mama Rachael actually shouted at her; the women were all really angry :S Got home and just rested with the family cos we were all so tired emotionally and from the crazy truck rides... On the way back there were tons of us on the back of the lorry, 46 in fact, cos they crammed a load of kids on with their school bags!

Thursday 26th - Dossy day :) Gilgal is closed now so we didn't have to go there in the morning and Home Cell was cancelled cos the person we were meant to visit wasn't there. We sat around in our PJs, did some reading and some long-term planning for V.W.G while Becky had her hair braided. It looks very cool :D It's in thick braids flat to her head with red and white beads. Took me a while to get used to the change; I kept doing double takes every time I looked at her! We saw the lady from the village who makes dresses and she brought some beautiful material round, so I drew some dress designs and she's making them to fit me in the silk material :) I'm so excited to see what they look like! Found out that the Christmas programme at Bambejja is from the 7th - 10th December, just before I come home for interview, so we have to plan for that soon... That's about it for Thurs!

Friday 27th - Went into Kampala but didn't have to go to training cos it was a public holiday. Met Maree in town cos it was our last chance to see her before she stops being our coordinator and leaves for NZ on the 3rd. Sad times :( We went to Lubbobbo's, our usual Kampala hangout (how cool are we..!) for a drink, then walked down to the craft market. She needed to go to the pharmacy so it was a kinda quick and abrupt goodbye, but I think that was how she wanted it so we didn't mind :) She wants to come back here and marry Yesen, who she's been with for over a year, but the situation is very uncertain. She needs a full-time paid job first, and that's hard to find, so please pray that she is comforted and strengthened as she goes home and that whatever happens, she would find joy in God. Bit of internet time after the craft market (where I went a bit mental and bought myself 5 pairs of insanely gorgeous earrings as a treat) then back home for samosas as normal. Not much else to tell about Friday!

Saturday 28th - Went to Lilo at half10 to help them plant some trees in the compound and around the boundaries of their piece of land. Saw a few of the kids and talked to the women who make the crafts; the 5 of us all bought a necklace then gave it to someone else on the team, so we all have vaguely matching ones :) A lot of Japanese people were there to visit cos they support the school financially and send volunteers over to live here, so it was good to see some kinda-mzungu faces! Typical African timing meant that by 12 the trees that needed to be planted hadn't arrived, so we had to leave and plan for Kids' Club at home. Before we went though we got some price quotes about sorting out an outside wall with cement and plaster so we can do a mural with the kids in Feb - exciting stuff! Planned for K.C at home, then started at about half 2. It was wicked, did some cool team games and face painted them all into the same teams as last week, so the sticker chart was brought out again. Definitely the best way of doing it! We did the flour game, where we hid bottle lids (we had no sweets!) in flour and they had to get them out with their teeth. Reds were short of team members so I had to do it but I was laughing too much and breathed flour in... I think I still have flour at the top of my nasal cavity!! Funny times... Clothes relay made them look silly and thus made us laugh like last week, wheelbarrow races and dodgeball... Ah don't you wish you were here with us having this much fun?! I love the kids :D Spent ages before we started getting a craft ready for them; we drew out keys, but round them and threaded them with ribbon so they could wear them and wrote "I am the key to the kingdom of heaven" on them. They looked very cool :) The kids decorated them with glitter and feathers etc and really enjoyed it.

Boys and girls group at Gilgal was very different - we had barely any older kids cos they've all gone home, which sucks majorly :( We basically just had the smaller ones from K.C so we just played dodgeball and netball, then called it a day. A group of men keep taking the football pitch at the same time as us and obviously we can't just kick them off so that makes boys group very difficult to run. We need to get the boys to run around and work off their energy before we can do teaching/discussion stuff, plus the footie is what attracts them to come in the first place! Please pray that this is resolved soon.. Also, please pray that we have wisdom about whether to keep running the boys and girls groups over the holidays or not. We really want to stay in touch with the young people and we believe the groups are very important but if the practical stuff isn't in place for us to carry them on then we just can't do it.

Sunday 29th - It rained all through the night and the morning so church started extremely late; we were still at home at 20 to 12!! We planned an awesome session for Sunday school but just couldn't do it cos of the rain and not having enough time... We're starting our Christmas teaching series and making crafts with the kids that they can use in their nativity on Christmas Eve. It's really exciting, we can't wait! :D Shame that we couldn't make the angels that we planned to at Sunday school though, they looked so pretty... I didn't end up going to church cos a lady came to braid my hair at 12 and I thought I would've gone to church and already arrived back home by then, but no. It's kinda 20% done now, even though I sat for HOURS yesterday! It's in really thin braids and it's a lot longer cos I have extensions being put in. I hope it'll look OK, once it's done I'll try to show you some photos on here so you can see :) Luckily meant I could do some reading for my interview though - "What the Bible Really Teaches" by Keith Ward is a really interesting, well-written book (See Mum, I'm doing the reading!!! Hehe, love you)

We visited some of the ladies from V.W.G in the afternoon - trekked out into the middle of nowhere! It was lovely though, to hear their stories and hear how encouraged and uplifted they are by the group. It gives them hope in a way that we just can't imagine. In a lot of ways, it's their lifeline as they struggle to feed and clothe their kids and pay for their school fees. They're in very difficult, stressful situations as a lot of them are dealing with bereavement of husbands or abandonment and they have nowhere to turn. It's very humbling to hear them saying thank you to us, and saying that they never imagined we would come to sit in their homes. I'm so used to it here now; I don't think twice when I sit in their houses. I don't compare it to England cos this is normality now. I don't think "Oh they have so little" or feel pity for them. Yes, they do have so little (Mama Rachael had to give one women some maize cos she literally had nothing in the house for herself and her 4 kids, not even tea leaves) but they're not weak and they're not seeking pity or anything remotely like that. I'm proud that I know these women and that I get to sit in their beautiful homes, and I'm privileged to be trusted with their stories. In the third house we visited there were some absolutely BEAUTIFUL children, particularly one little boy who was looking after his baby brother and being soooo polite and kind to us. We lack lots at home and you only realise it when you meet some of the people here. Last night we just chilled at home, I did some reading and caught up with my journal etc. The whole family are back from various schools/unis now, so the house is full and noisy and lovely :)

And so now it's today, Monday 30th and I'm sitting in Mukono with backache and wristache. Ouch :( Writing this much is never a good plan! It's just gone 11am; we need to leave at 12 so I can be back for 1 cos the lady's coming to finish my hair braiding and I need to go to the supermarket in a mo to buy much needed team supplies! We have some of our household budget leftover so we're going luxury and buying some really nice coffee and hot choc today :D We're currently drinking disgustingly old/crystallised "Good African Coffee" which is good cos it's fairtrade, but good in NO other sense, especially not taste!!! I should probably stop rambling now. Thank you for reading this far again lovely people :) One last prayer point actually: It's 10 days till I'm home for my Cambridge interview. Pleeease cover me with prayer for that! Please pray that the journeys are easy and safe and that the culture shock isn't too intense and that I don't get too panicky or scared about the actual interview. Also, please pray that I'll be able to leave my family for the second time without too much emotional upheaval or loneliness. Thank you :)

Right I really am off now - sending you all tons and tons of love *HUG*
Flick
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