Wednesday 28th August- Hungover and Kraft market

I found myself in the early hours of the morning running to the bathroom to be violently sick for a while. It wasn't great. As a result of being so hungover and ill, I decided I wouldn't go to visit the Kraft market until later the afternoon.

Around 1 ish myself and a group of others went into the vans to head to the kraft market which is only a half hour journey away. Along the way we had to stop off at a petrol station to refuel and to use the cash point. While queuing with everyone for the cash point I had to quickly leave the queue and throw up again all over the floor by the gas pump. A lovely fluorescent greeny yellow puke. I got some strange looks from the Kampala locals who would be greeted by a puking Londoner when they turned the corner by the petrol station.

Eventually I felt good enough to get back in a van and go to the market. At the market I instantly went to the cafe and stayed there basically passed out on the seats for a couple of hours while everyone else went around the market. After I had ate a toasted sandwich at the cafe I felt good enough to walk around the market for an hour or so. I bought a North Ugandan tribal mask, a yellow Ugandan national football shirt, some kind of goat skinned harp and a Ugandan bottle opener.

After the market we went back to the hostel for dinner, chilling out and to wave off a group of the volunteers who were leaving.

Tuesday 27th August- Night out

I stayed in most of today, just going online and catching up on things that I have missed. The other half of the volunteers arrived in the afternoon. Once everyone arrived, Caz and Laura began handing out the shirts that we had all ordered, which would have a number of our choice on the back, and something written on the back, chosen by the other volunteers. I was number 15, and on my back was, 'Idiot Abroad'. Super.

In the evening, myself, Pav, Rachael and Ella headed off on our own into Kampala to try and find a film festival that was supposedly going on, while the rest of the volunteers headed to a restaurant. The 4 of us turned up at where the festival was supposed to be finding absolutely nothing there other than a lot of lorries and cabs. Pav then started going up to everyone who walked past asking them about the festival, but no one knew anything about it. We called a cab to take us to where the rest of the volunteers were at the restaurant and got something to eat. I had a spicy beef dish, which was really nice.

After the meal we headed to a night club for a few hours. At the club Dec and I got a big apple Shisha and started smoking it for an hour and a half with a load of Ugandan guys and some other volunteers. The drinks in Uganda are pretty cheap, a pint only costs roughly £1 and as a result a lot of the volunteers, and myself were pretty drunk. By midnight, there was only half a dozen of us left in the club as the rest had gone back to the hostel. When we had finished all the shisha, I headed off to get another and on my way over, I must of somehow angered some bloke as the next thing I knew I was being lifted into the air and was being yelled at by a couple of blokes, before being thrown to one side. I wasn't 100% sure what had just happened, but I didn't stay around to find out and went back to the bar to get another drink. Around this point I randomly hear a geordie voice blaring out over the sound system, I went up to the DJ booth to see Paige DJing and yelling random stuff in the microphones.

Towards 1am when the last of us were thinking of going back to the dorm, Me, Dec and Paige got a last drink. Immediately Dec and Paige started being severely ill, Paige especially so. It was quite difficult getting into the van to go back to the hostel because of it. We think that we had our drinks spiked due to how quick it happened after getting the drink. Eventually we made it back to the hostel and collapsed in our beds.

Monday 26th August- Journey back to Kampala

At 5am in the morning half of the volunteers woke up to begin the long journey back to Kampala, the other half of the volunteers would be leaving the following day.

15 minutes into the journey, Ross pipes up and exclaims that he left his passport back at the lodge, so we have to go back and get it. As a result we bullied Ross for the rest of the journey. 

A few hours into the journey before we got to the equator, a few of us in the van needed to take a short break, our driver pulled over in a village and asked the man outside if we could use their toilets. The toilet, as we expected, was a hole in the ground, but was thankfully clean. By the time we had all finished and were piling back into the van, a small crowd of locals had gathered and were waving at us and pointing at us.

We arrived at a nice small hostel where we set up our stuff in our new dorms and tried to use the wifi to watch the Chelsea Vs Man Utd game before going to bed.

Sunday 25th August- Last day of safari

Dec and I woke up in the morning to the sounds of Rihanna blasting through our tent from behind us, assuming that this must be the alarm we thought it was 5am and time for us to get up and dressed. It was just before 4am and was in fact the alarm for the staff, so we tried to go back to sleep, but were woken up again by the sounds of hippos. We both got up kind of worried and got out of the tent as quickly as possible; as there was no way that I wanted to be trampled to death in a tent by hippos. The hippos were clearly very close as the sounds were really loud and had woken up a couple of the other volunteers. We wanted to go to the toilets but they were a short walk from the camp and we would have to go with a security guard. Walking along with a guard who was panicky, shining his torch in every direction was both worrying and amusing. As a result me and Dec began laughing at the whole situation we were in, which angered the guard who started angrily whispering at us ‘STOP LAUGHING, WE IN A LOT OF DANGER RIGHT NOW! HIPPOS ARE BAD AND DANGEROUS!’ Straight after, we heard Hippos again and rushed to the toilets and got out of there as quickly as possible.

By 7am we were in the vans and heading out for the morning safari, our van was the 2^nd to leave, we caught up with the first van which had stopped and were apparently yelling something about seeing a leopard, we (…) decided that they were trying to trick us so we carried on past them. Along the main road we saw ahead of us a herd of elephants crossing over the road. We sped up so that we could watch them cross the road, at the point where they were crossing there were still some elephants in the foliage who hadn’t crossed including a huge angry elephant. The Elephant suddenly trumpeted at us which made us all jump, other than Dec who for the whole safari had been begging for something to ‘KICK OFF!’ We were all standing in the van 15 metres from the elephant when suddenly it properly ‘KICKED OFF’, we were watching it and from it casually watching us and eating, it did a fake charge at us. Everyone practically wet themselves, and was yelling for Aggrey our driver to drive away, Robyn managed to film our terrified cowardly reactions, and screams of terror.

The Elephant that 'KICKED OFF!'

Later we arrived at a small touristy place looking out over a lake, when we were there we found out from the other van, that there was in fact a leopard, that we had chosen not to see. At the touristy place, there were a group of Asian tourists posing with this huge camera that they had bought. Afterwards we went back to the campsite where we packed up all our stuff, got back in the vans and started the journey back to the lodge. On the journey back my red hat which had been on the floor of the van, must have been against some metal, as the front of the hat was melted. For some of the way back I sat on the back of the van with Dec and Robyn, my other hat which I was wearing suddenly blew off my head, never to be seen again. Somewhere in Uganda there is now a really cool Lion wearing my hat.   

Look at the size of that camera.

Driving back to the lodge we went over a large a pot hole where we all jumped up from the impact. I turned around to Robyn to see if she was OK and she was holding her head. She took her hand away and it was like something from a horror film, there was a thick red line of blood going all the way from her forehead to her chin. She had managed to smack head on a nail hanging from the ceiling.

That night was mine and several other’s last night at the lodge so we had some drinks and said goodbye to everyone as I and some others would be going to Kampala a day early.

Saturday 24th August- Safari

We woke up at 5am to be on the sunrise safari but didn't see much bar more cob, some bucks and monkeys. Our van decided to play a joke on the van behind us by pretending we could see a lion. We suddenly stopped the van began pointing in the distance towards a group of cobs while pretending to take photos. We told the van behind us that there were lions under the tree to the right of the group and then they all started saying how they could see them and how amazing it was. Apparently there was a male and two females watching the Cob, even team leader Graeme (TLG) was claiming he could see them. We played along for 5 or so minutes more before announcing that there was nothing there and then driving off.  By 9 we had gone back to the campsite, packed up the tents and were on our way to a different part of the Park that we would be spending Saturday night at.

The journey was about an hour and half long, on the way we saw baboons on the road so we pulled over and Aggrey (my van’s driver) threw crisps at them. The baboons were huge and some of them had babies clinging to them. After watching them for a while we carried on down the road before coming to a huge lone elephant standing facing the road half submerged in the trees.

Before getting to the new campsite we got to a restaurant where I had pork and chips for roughly £5, the majority of everyone else had fish and chips. The meal was actually really good despite it taking about 45 minutes for the food to arrive. From the restaurant we drove through the safari to the campsite, along the way we saw more elephants. We must of seen roughly 20 of them just strolling around and eating, but we couldn't stay too long as we had a boat safari at 5pm.

On the boat we went along the lake to the opposite bank where we saw loads more hippos, fish eagles, cobs and lots of buffalos as well as some crocodiles.  A lot of the buffaloes we saw were ‘loser’ buffalo which meant that they were outcasts from their herds which explained why they were on their own; it also means that their time is running out because isolated animals don’t usually survive long.

After the boat safari we headed to a Ugandan 5 star hotel for our dinner. The meal was a really good buffet with fish and a lot of meat. After all the food that we had been having (not that it was bad) everyone was going mental for the food. I as well as a lot of others went up 7 or more times for food which annoyed some of the hotel residents, but we were hungry. After the meal we hung out in the bar for a bit where Pav decided to buy a £25 bottle of wine. Sometime later the vans arrived and took us to the camp site for bed.

Friday 23rd August- Goodbye Kindergatten, hello Safari

Some of my class who had came in to say goodbye.

After breakfast Katie and I headed to Kinderkatten to see the teachers and some students one last time. Summer school had finished yesterday so only a few students were in so that they could collect their reports and exam results. At school I helped to remove desks from classrooms that had been leant by nearby schools in order to help Kinderkatten accommodate the large influx of students coming for the week.

The majority of my P4 class had turned up to say good bye to me which was upsetting. My favourites Maxim, Shivon, Moses and Martin were all there. I had written a message on the board to the class saying thank you to the class. Shivon had given me a bag of 18 avocadoes and Moses’ father came in to thank me, and the rest of my class gave me goodbye letters. I played football with Maxim and Owen for a bit before I went to the hall to check out the reports and exams.

Goodbye

At 12 o clock the VU van arrived to take me back to the lodge and then to the safari. Before getting in the van I said good bye to all the teachers and students and gave Martin my old Barcelona shirt as thanks for bringing my bag to me yesterday. I’m really sad about leaving all the staff and students but I will write to the school when I’m back in the UK.

Avocados

Back at the lodge we had a quick lunch before getting into the vans to the safari. The journey was roughly 2 and half hours and on the way we stopped off at a supermarket where I bought some cheap interesting looking alcohol. We arrived at a campsite owned by a nice but odd Kenyan guy. We set up all our tents and had a quick drink before going back into the vans to start going around the Queen Elizabeth safari. We would stay in these vans for the whole safari, I was with: Dec, Kate, Alice, Robyn, Erica, Freddie, Kya and Team leader Tom (TLT). After roughly 20 minutes of seeing nothing but Cobs (gazelle) we came upon a tree under which was a small pride of lions, we were only 10 metres or so from the pride. We stayed by the tree for a while but the lions were just lying around, occasionally yawning and rolling over. A cob came into view roughly 200 metres from the pride which attracted their interest, but they were clearly not hungry as they only stared at the Cob and made no move.

Lions

From the lions we headed to a river bank where we knew hippos would be bathing. We all got out of the vans and sat on the grass by some bushes watching the hippos in the water 20 metres from us. From the hippos we carried on driving around seeing buffalo and cobs until we went back to the lions which had only moved a few metres from the tree.

Back at the campsite we got ready for dinner which would be a BBQ on the side of the river which goes through the camp. We had mash, spaghetti and lots of goat skewers before going to bed around 11pm due to the 5am start tomorrow.

Wednesday 21st and Thursday 22nd August- Summer School and sports day

On Wednesday we continued with Summer school. I played football with my class and after lunch we had brick laying and continued with making rockets from the previous days. Maxim from my original class and from my summer school class randomly walked out of our last lesson and didn't explain where he was going. 5 minutes later he turns up and hands my a hot hard boiled egg. He had brought an egg in from home and during the lesson had gone off and cooked it and brought it to me.

Brick laying

Maxim and the egg.

On Thursday we had sports day between the houses of the summer school: Hippos, Lions, Gorillas and Elephants (my house). By the time sports day started the Elephants were doing pretty badly, sitting sadly in last place, but sports day was the chance for us to turn it around and win. The sports day consisted of races: sprint, javelin (throwing a ball) , skipping, egg and spoon race, wheelbarrow race and a couple of others. Each race was competed between 2 of each house between each year group. P3 would race each race first and then each year after wards. The Elephants were winning almost every race they were competing in, and in the javelin the Elephants came first in literally every year for it, with an impressive win from Maxim.

Close race.

The elephants had been absolutely dominating the sports day and coming towards the end of the day we looked as though we were in the lead. But we hit a snag, for the last couple of events we couldn't seem to find the students who were supposed to be competing, they had either decided they didn't want to compete or had accidentally sat in a different house, not knowing they were in the wrong one. As a result we had no one competing 3 or 4 races, the difference between the houses was tight. But the last race of the sports day was a race between the volunteers, representing the Elephants was myself and Kya. The race was reminiscent of the great race of 1872. Prayers were made, curses were uttered, our loved ones cried as they waved us off and then we had, begun. It was weird as I was actually genuinely scared and nervous about  the race, it was like the beginning of an exam. At the end of the race both I and Dec were running off to our respective houses celebrating winning the race. Confusion was rife, nails were bitten, questions were asked, what was to happen? And then someone came forward, the race had been filmed, we would find out who won. Even when watching the race on the camera it was almost impossible to tell who won, buuuuuut it was voted that I won. SO SCREW YOU DEC! ;) ;)

Handing out medals.

After the race was the ceremony to show who the winner of the Summer school was. Annnnnnd, the ELEPHANTS WON! To be honest I think myself and the other Elephant volunteers were more happy than the actual elephant students. We were told to bring up 2 students from the house who had made a massive contribution and give them the trophy to lift, Freddie chose one of the students and then I chose Maxim. They both came up, medals around their necks and then lifted the trophy to the cheers of the Elephant house. After the celebrations where the trophy was toured around the elephants we said goodbye to our students and Moses gave me some sugarcane and some other students gave me some letters. On my walking down the road into town where I would be playing a football game, I start hearing someone yelling 'TEACHER ADAM!' repeatedly, I turned around to see Martin sprinting barefooted down the dirt road with my back pack on his back. Seems I may of left it at the sports day field.

ELEPHANTS!!!!

None of the volunteers bar myself, Dec, Sam and the team leaders were in the mood for the football game so we only had 5 or 6 players, as a result we were made to take some of the opposition players onto our team. The game was a pretty tough one, the guys we were playing had boots and shin pads while we were all just in our trainers, which put us at a slight disadvantage. The guys were going in pretty hard for what should be a 'friendly' game and as a result after being 2 goals down I may of slightly lost my temper at one guy who had been kicking me for the last 30 minutes and may of been told to calm it slightly by the referee. Suffice to say we lost 3-1, and were mightily pissed off for the journey back to the lodge.

Ramsen in his new shoes and Sheffield shirt.

Dec and I asked to get out the van on the road leading up to the lodge as we wanted to go and see Ramsen and give him my old pair of converse and Dec's old Sheffield United shirt. We walked down to the football pitch hoping to see Ramsen to give the gifts, but he wasn't there so we tried to go back to his village to see if he was there. Along the way we saw Ramsen and got to give him the things, he was delighted with them and was really thankful.

Back at the lodge we had some drinks and started packing to get ready for the safari tomorrow, before going to bed.

Best photo ever (courtesy of Freddie)

Tuesday 20th August- Summer school and a walk with Ramsen

Our first lesson today began pretty poorly as we didn't have any A3 paper which we really needed for the lesson. Our topic was the ‘Perfect home’, so the class could provide some ideas for what they wanted their perfect home to consist of, the only issue is that the children aren't very imaginative; ‘fertile soil’, ‘no pests in the house’ being examples. However for the second half of the lesson the children were put outside in their groups where they started drawing and designing their ‘perfect home’ which was really good.

Kit teaching.

After the lesson, appropriately was brick making. Martin, one of my favourite kids helped me to make a brick which we wrote our initials in. Making bricks was a lot messier than I thought it would be and I ended up with clay all over my arms, but it was really fun.

The lesson after brick making was maths which was led by Melissa (northern Mel), her lesson was on space rockets and how to construct them from shapes. I sat in on the lesson helping out whenever needed but mainly spending the time sat at one of the benches with some of the class working in groups. The group I was with (Maxim, James, Ronald, Alvera) made a rocket called ‘shooting star’.

After lunch I went to P4a’s lesson instead of P4b as I wasn’t needed in the science lesson. Mel, Charlie and Emily were doing P4a’s lesson which was on our ‘Pulses’. This entailed us having to count our pulse for a minute and then going outside and doing games and exercises to see how our pulse changed.

The final lesson was ‘tutor group’ which is basically like Circle time for our classes. During this we continued designing our rockets, which basically consisted of kids going mental with glue and glitter and involved my face getting covered in glitter. The last half of the lesson we played football and netball until the day finished.

The view from the village

When we got back to the lodge, Dec and I left straight away to go on a walk exploring areas that we hadn't been to yet. We walked in the direction that we went when we got lost on our run and when we saw a turn off we decided to follow it. After turning down the corner we bumped into Ramsen (a local lad who we play football with regularly) who said that he lives up the road and would show us the village. On the way up the road we came across a huge ant nest that was spread across the path which we looked at for a while but myself and Dec got bit a lot as it turned out the ants were dangerous red ants. We continued up the road and into a small town where we eventually got to Ramsen’s house, at his house we met his family and village elders who were gathered together to sort out the budget of the village. We took some photos which the villagers were ecstatic at seeing and found absolutely hilarious. The elderly woman kept hitting and pulling the children out of the way so that she could look at the photos. After 10 minutes Ramsen said he knew another way to the lodge instead of the way that we’d came, so he led us through the rest of the village and through another village where his sister lived with his aunt before leading us though some woods and land after which we arrived at the top of the hill overlooking the lodge, from there we walked down to the lodge.

We arrived at the lodge just in time to write on Katherine’s 21^st birthday card and for dinner. Afterwards, there was birthday cake and some drinking and celebrating for her birthday before we all went to bed.

Ramsen and Dec

The village

Monday 19th August- First day of summer school

Today was the first day of summer school, I along with Erica, Ella, Mel and Caz were given P4b. Our class is supposed to be around 45 people, but ended up being around 34.  All the classes were made up of several schools, not only Kindergatten. One of the key problems of having all the schools together was the distinct difference in ability from children from different schools, especially the ones who went to schools that volunteers don’t work at.

In my P4b class I had half of my original P4 class from Kinderkatten including my favourites Maxim who was wearing my Charlton shirt and Martin. All the children in the school were divided into 4 houses; Elephants, Gorillas, Hippos (which suck) and Lions. I am in the Elephant house, in each class the students are all divided into these houses and compete against each other in the whole school. I rigged the way the houses were divided in my class and ended up with the best kids in Elephant (Maxim, Martin, Ronald etc.) and the less good kids I put in the Hippos.

The first lesson was pretty chaotic as it was hard to work out who was supposed to be in each class, as a lot of kids have very poor English skills. A lot of kids also look too old for their classes; there are at least a couple of 15/16 year olds in a class which should be 10 year olds. The activities were also really good, one of which being the weaving which involved giving kids machetes to cut very slim bits of wood. Maxim was a pro at doing it and had clearly done it before but still managed to end up with his hand covered in blood, he acted as though he couldn’t even feel it and was practically laughing at me while I’m sprinting around trying to find a plaster. But all in all everything seemed to work very well and it was very enjoyable.

Once we were back from Summer school I, Dec, Kit, Samir and Freddie jogged down to the local football pitch to see if anyone was there up for a football match. On our way to the pitch we saw some kids from the school that were still walking home despite school having finished 40 minutes ago. As we walked with them we got surrounded by a dozen or so goats as well as a couple of dozen cows and bulls with horns as long as my legs. Some kids were just walking along with huge sticks beating the cows ahead of us and occasionally trying to leap on them. It was the weirdest walk I have ever been on, 20 minutes of the 5 of us being surrounded by 20 or so Ugandan children, a dozen goats and masses of huge cows being beaten with sticks.

At the pitch we managed to organise an 11 vs. 11 match, with the 5 of us volunteers and 6 locals on one side vs. the others. Kit left the match after 20 minutes or so as he was exhausted but the match was one of the best football games I have ever been part of. On one side of the pitch there lots of cows occasionally being hit with sticks so that they didn’t interfere too much with the match. The match finished 6-6, I scored one and got the assist of 3 (I was pretty happy), the game was taken very seriously by everyone involved, it lasted roughly an hour and a half and involved one of the most controversial tackles I have ever seen. Ramsten (a lad who we have met several times and had been scouted by the local football teams) had the ball and was one on one with the goal before the mighty Samir absolutely wiped him out. From one side the tackle was amazing as the ball was won, but on the other hand it was absolutely brutal, I have never seen someone’s head hit the floor so hard and was genuinely worried for Ramsten’s health before he clambered back up.

After the game we went back to the lodge showered and had dinner before chilling and going to bed. 

Sunday 18th August- Lazy day

After having a lay in until 9 we had breakfast of dough balls and then I, Dec, Sam and Pav played darts in the sun for an hour and a half. Around 12ish it started clouding over so I did some lesson planning for my English lessons at Summer school tomorrow and Tuesday.

Ross covered in Jam

Lunch consisted of rice and g nut sauce which is basically a peanut sauce similar to a satay. Just before 2 o clock a group of us headed to town to watch the Spurs Palace match. Instead of going to ‘The Cave’ like yesterday, we went to ‘The Corporate’ which is just across the road. After the game we headed back to the lodge where we had dinner followed by a small talent show, which consisted of dancing on tables and lobbing jam at each other.

Saturday 17th August- HIV talk in Kanungu

This morning we did some more prep work for the HIV talk in Kanungu town square before we piled into the vans and headed off. We arrived at the square where stalls had been set up for us and there were already a lot of locals milling around. My group put our posters out and started trying to hand out leaflets straight away.

HIV presentation in Kanungu

The main issue we found was that the majority of locals didn’t have a good enough understanding of English for them to comprehend what we were trying to inform them. However they understood when we stated that there were free HIV tests for those that were interested. Overall we handed out a lot of leaflets and did a lot of demonstrations; we also managed to get just over 150 people into a tent for HIV tests. We later found out that 5 of those 150 were HIV positive, which is supposed to be an extremely small amount compared to previous years in Kanungu centre.

At 2:00 once the HIV activities were done, we headed to some bars; I and half a dozen others went to a pub called ‘The Cave’ where we watched the Liverpool vs. Stoke game and the first half hour of the Arsenal vs. Aston Villa game. At the bar we ordered a load of drinks and dishes of chips, chips only cost 50p in English money. We also met Ian again, our favourite lad in town who we always see walking around selling peanuts. We invited him to sit with all of us and bought him some sodas and bought peanuts off him.

We got back to the lodge around 5pm and then I went straight for a run with Samir before doing a workout with him and Tom. By the time we had finished and had a shower it was time for dinner; goat, rice and potatoes today. Afterwards we just chilled out before going to bed.

Ian

Friday 16th August- HIV prep work

Today was a boring day, as the HIV talk will now be tomorrow, instead of today. As a result me Dec went on a couple of walks so that we didn’t start getting cabin fever from being stuck in the lodge for so long. After lunch we had some HIV talk preparation, my group (Dec, Kate, Alice and Sam) were doing ‘How to contract HIV’ so we made about 50 leaflets and a couple of posters.

Once our prep work was all done we played cards until dinner which was Chapattis , beans and rice. After everyone had finished dinner, TLT introduced a game called ‘Assassins’, we all had to put our hands into 3 bowls and take out a slip of paper from each, which would be a name, a location, and an object. The objective being that we had to give that object to the person we had picked in the stated location, this game would continue until everyone had been ‘assassinated’ and so could last until the end of the trip. When everyone had finished picking their ‘assassinations’ we all sat down and put ‘Django Unchained’ on the projector to watch. By the end of the film only 3 of us were still up. We went outside to sit and watch the incredible lightning storm that was going on when Sarah started getting upset about losing her phone charger as she needed to ring her sister to find out about her A level results. She asked Tom about his charger but it wasn’t the right one, I said I had an old charger and that I would go and get it for her. I headed off through the rain to the boy’s dorm where I searched around in the dark for my old charger to give her. I found it and headed back to where Sarah and Tom were standing on the decking in the rain watching the storm. I should have known then that something was up, but I went over and handed over my charger. Sarah looked at it, said it was the wrong one and handed it straight back to me. As soon as I had taken it back from her, she said ‘sorry Adam, you’ve been assassinated.’ Turns out her task was to hand me a phone charger on the decking. Slightly pissed off that I was the first person to be assassinated, I handed her my task which she would now have to do and then I headed off to bed.

Thursday 15th August- Last day teaching before Summer School

Today was my last day at Kindergatten School before Summer school starts on Monday. We knew all the kids at school had exams until 1 o clock so we stayed at the lodge until 12:30, having a lay in and doing some preparation work in our groups for Summer School.

Kya having her hair played with by some of her and my class.

At 12:30, the 4 of us got into a VU van in our Kindergatten staff shirts and headed to the school. We had bought a big cake for the staff and had lots of small gifts in our bags for our classes. We arrived at the school and headed into the staff room where the teachers all hugged and thanked us, we also met the chairman again, whose son (Moses) is in my P4 class, as well as the chairman we met for the first time the director of the school, who had come in personally to congratulate and thank us for our work.

Our huge meal laid on by the school.

Once the introductions were made a huge lunch was brought out by the staff for us all to eat. We had plates of Posho, Mitoki, Rice, Avocados, Bananas, and bowls of beans and pork in a lovely tomato sauce as well as lots of sodas. Once we had eaten our food, the staff brought out a cake that they had made us, and we brought out ours for the staff. We all did a lot of dancing and cut both cakes, a lot of our cake was still left by the time we had finished due to its size, so P3, P4, P5 and P6 were led in so that they could all have some. After the cake we had a leaving assembly, where the teachers, the head teacher, chairman and director gave speeches before giving us certificates. Katie stood and gave a really nice speech of her own as she had been at the school the longest out of the group of us, and got very emotional towards the end. Once the speeches and talks were over, our classes were brought in and they danced and sang to us all.

Handing James and Ronald from my class cake

By 3 o clock, the assembly was all over and we were allowed to go to our classrooms to spend time with our classes. When I arrived in my class I found that my class had written thank you messages to me on the blackboard. I handed out sweets to my whole class as well as a couple of toy cars and lots of small bits and bobs. Pav had lent me his portable speakers so I played music to my class, and then brought my class over to Siobhan’s P3 class as her room was bigger so that both classes could play Musical bumps for a bit. My class then went back to our P4 room where we played some more games and danced to music for a bit before going outside to play football. As we were about to leave, my favourite student (and oldest at 13 among a class of mainly 10 year olds) Maxim came over and gave me a big bag of bananas. I was so pleased by this as when I got P4 class I was told about Maxim being unintelligent and a trouble maker, and, as a result I had put a lot of attention on Maxim to try and help him improve, he’s also by far the best footballer in P4 and probably the school.

BALLOONS!

Maxim and his Charlton shirt.

We went and played football for 45 minutes and listened to music as we played. When the bell rang for the end of the day a couple of students not only from my class came over and gave me some letters. One of my students, Shivon, also came over and gave me two 8 foot high sugar canes as I was heading back to the staff room. On my way to the staff room I told Maxim to come with me so that I could give him a gift without the rest of the class crowding around. I found my bag in the staff room and brought out my old Charlton from a few seasons ago which I gave to him. I was pleased to see how happy Maxim was by the gift and he instantly put the Charlton shirt on. I was very sad to leave my class and school as all the students waved goodbye as myself, Kya, Katie and Siobhan headed to our van, but all the students should hopefully be at the summer school on Monday as its set at Kindergatten this year.

Back at the lodge people were already getting ready to celebrate Sam’s 22^nd birthday, for dinner we had a really good meal of rice, goat and potatoes followed by yet another cake. After dinner we started drinking and partying to celebrate not only Sam’s birthday but also Siobhan’s excellent A level results.

Best present ever!

Wednesday 14th August- Marking

This morning we had our favourite for breakfast: dough balls and syrup. Afterwards we headed off to school. Seeing as Pav’s school was basically closed, he decided to join us at Kinderkatten. We marked P3 exam papers until 10:15 and then all walked into our small local town, where we bought a Coca-Cola and some bits and bobs.

We then stayed at the school doing bits and pieces and playing with the kids outside. The kids were ecstatic to meet Pav and were continuously touching his mass of curly hair until our lunch of the usual: Posho, Mitoki and Beans. By this point all the teachers were in love with ‘mad’ Pav, and he began teaching them all how to write their names in Russian and Hebrew. As there wasn’t anything for us to do in the school after lunch, we headed into town and after following a man down some alley and through people’s ‘gardens’ we found a stall selling pork. I and Pav went and bought 1Kg of Pork for 9000 Ugandan shillings (about £2.40), to be cooked and brought to Kindergatten School.

At school we began playing cards with the teachers, a Ugandan card game which is basically Uno, until the pork arrived. The Pork was mainly fat and bone, but the tomato sauce was really nice. The teachers were delighted, and the pot of pork was devoured pretty quickly. Once the pork was finished we continued playing cards with the teachers for an hour or so until the Volunteer Uganda van arrived and took us back to the lodge.

Once at the lodge we had dinner and then played ‘Killer Pool’ (which is basically where a group of us take one go each at potting a ball, if we miss we lose a life). Out of the 15 of us playing, I came 3^rd, which is good considering I’m shit.

Tuesday 13th August- Revision

We woke up knowing that Kelly had already left the lodge a few hours earlier at 5am for a 10 hour journey to Kampala. As I woke up I was wondering my head felt so cold, before I remembered having my hair shaved off.

I left for school with a hat on, as I wanted to surprise the staff and pupils. The classes were all in exams so I showed the staff first who were very amused and pleased by my new ‘Ugandan’ haircut. At break when all the children were outside for their porridge, I went out and found my class and showed them my haircut. The kids went nuts for my head, and soon almost every pupil at the school was hanging around staring at my head and trying to feel it.

After revision

After break, I, Kya, Katie and Siobhan marked some exam papers. It was incredibly frustrating seeing the simple mistakes that a lot of the kids made. Such as writing the answer to a question under the wrong question, clearly not reading what the question was asking and simple spelling mistakes. It was also clear when marking the exams that some kids have clear learning difficulties which Uganda still does not recognize, and as a result these kids often fail the year and have to retake, I currently have a 13 year old and several 12 year olds in a class which should really be for 9/10 year olds.

After lunch, me and Siobhan went to help my P4 class to revise. I did some English examples on the board for them for 20 minutes before they asked for help in social studies, which neither of us teach, or know how to teach. As a result we looked through their exercise books and Siobhan began testing and teaching the class while I sat with the kids and watched. After half an hour we began playing some games, and I started trying to get the kids around me to misbehave to wind up teacher Siobhan. All the kids kept putting my hat on and feeling my head, as well as continuously asking for photos. During this time there was an almighty thunder storm going on which made the whole class extremely excitable and meant there was yelling continuously by both the kids and us. I have never in my life heard thunder like I did during that lesson; it was extraordinarily loud and went on for so long each time it happened. It was also extremely close by because almost as instantly as the room lit up from the lightening the classroom was being rocked by deafening thunder.

Once back at the lodge we were put into our groups for summer school and put to brainstorming what the theme of summer school will be. The theme that was chosen by the lodge was the ‘future’. So this means that our groups have to plan our lessons around the theme of future. I’m in P4B group doing English with Emily and Caz. After all this was sorted out we had dinner of mash, spaghetti and aubergine sauce. Finally before bed, myself, Sam and TLT (Team Leader Tom) stayed up and watched ‘The Usual Suspects’, which I can’t believe I hadn't seen before due to how good a film it is.

My class

Monday 12th August- bald

Today was my last day teaching at Kinderkatten School before the exams began. I began the day with a maths test for the class about the topic of graphs. After a break of bananas and porridge it was the English lesson. I had already finished my topic in this so I spent the first half of the lesson with some brief English exercises and then did some general revision for the class. Because of how good the class’s behaviour had been, I allowed the last 10 minutes of the lesson to be some games and singing. I tried teaching the class to sing ‘Parklife’ by Blur again, as well as teaching them a new song, ‘Valley Floyd Road’, the song of Charlton. The class weren’t too bad at the Charlton song but kept persuading me to try and sing it instead. And every time I did sing, the class were in hysterics because of how bad my singing is.

Such memories

We got back to the lodge about 4:30 to find out that Kelly, who had been severely ill for the last week would sadly be going home tomorrow. As a result we all stayed up late to wish her luck and have some photos. During the night Sam (a volunteer who was staying 12 weeks having already done 6 weeks when we arrived) decided to have his head shaved into a Mohawk. Due to the fact that I've been tempted for a while to have my head shaved, and that my class had been asking me since our lesson on lice when I said if you had a shaved head you would be more protected against lice to get my head shaved, I decided I would do it. I got 4mm all over my head; the most terrifying part of the process was when people were showing me photos of my head during the cut, at parts I looked like a wise monk. I instantly regretted my decision as soon as Holly attacked my head with a razor. After all the stuff I've done on this trip; teaching, bungee jumping, canoeing and rafting, I was most scared of having my hair cut. A couple of hours after this unusual decision we all went to bed.

Uganda style

Saturday 10th/Sunday 11th August- Market and Gypsies

On Saturday morning we were afforded a slight lay in before breakfast. I spent the morning listening to music, writing some of my blog and reading ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ for the coming year at University.

Kanungu market.

At around lunch time we went into Kanungu town for lunch and a look around the market. Most of the girls were desperately trying to find clothes for Ashleigh’s ‘Big Fat Gypsy’ themed 25^th birthday party later that night. Me and Dec headed off to try and find some food and bought a bag of what we thought were pastries filled with rice, and turned out to be full of some kind of weird bean, which were pretty awful. When we were buying the ‘food’ we had a bit of uneasy moment where a man began grabbing at us and speaking at us in Wachiga which we couldn’t understand. Afterwards Dec went and bought an ‘I <3 Jesus’ hat for about 50p which locals seemed to like. We then went and found a stall that sold Rolex’s for something decent to eat. A Rolex is basically an omelette wrapped in chapatti, it’s by far the best food that you can buy in town.

Gypsies

Back at the lodge we relaxed, did some lesson planning and sunbathing before having dinner and getting ready for the party. Dinner was a lovely BBQ with plenty of rice and potatoes. Despite how chewy the meat was, everyone was just happy to have meat. After our meal we started celebrating Ashleigh’s gypsy themed birthday. I wore a hat, vest and shorts and lent Dec a vest, as well as lending out a hat to both Ross and Kit. The LRTT bunch were invited to the party but instead decided to seclude themselves and remain apart from the group.  A few hours in to the party, the group from gorilla trekking arrived back at the lodge. It turned out that that they had had a horrific time, having trekked for close to 10 hours through the jungle they were suddenly attacked by hundreds of wasps, all the members of the group were stung repeatedly and in massive numbers. But they all joined in on the party and had a good time. Around 1ish, some members of the LRTT group started giving abuse about the level of noise that we were making and generally just whining. By 2 o clock we were all back in bed.

Partying Gypsies

On Sunday morning a lot of people left to go to the opening of a new church in the area while the rest of us discussed in great detail the events of the night before, as well as to bitch about the LRTT group. A couple of us, including myself were spoken to about supposed behavior due to the LRTT’s whining and moaning.

The majority of the day was spent recovering from our respective hangovers, playing pool and just relaxing. We all then had dinner and watched Step Brothers on the projector, which is such an over rated film. After, we all just went to bed.

Tuesday 6th to Friday 9th August- School and football.

On Tuesday I implemented a new seating plan in order to see if I could further help the children in my class who were struggling. Thankfully my class had been very well behaved so I wasn’t moving anyone due to talking or behaviour issues. In maths I continued with tally charts and then went into bar charts for the rest of the week. On Wednesday I did a maths exam for the class which involved filling out a picture graph and then converting it into a tally chart and bar graph as well as answering several questions on the data raised. I had previously done a similar but easier test last week and wanted to compare the results and see if the class were improving. In last week’s exam there had been a difference of 16 marks between the highest and lowest results, while Wednesday 7^th’s exam had a difference of 10 marks between highest and lowest and was a more difficult exam. On Friday before my maths lesson, the other teachers at the school brought in teacher shirts for us to wear at School like the rest of the staff. Friday’s maths lesson was mainly revision and recapping of the topic in preparation for the coming exams next week. 

Some of my class posing for a photo.

In English I continued teaching the future tense by getting the class to complete sentences that I would write on the board and by writing a letter to someone detailing what they are going to do in the summer.

I put the class back into their science groups in Tuesday’s science lesson and got them to continue for half the lesson on their posters of cockroaches and ticks before bringing in Katie and Siobhan to judge their work. Each group took their turn to stand at the front of the class and display their poster as well as explaining to the rest of us what they had done. When they had finished telling us about their posters, myself and the other volunteers would ask them questions, testing them on their work before judging which group had done the best and giving them stars. For the rest of the week I continued with work on vectors such as Lice and mosquitos.

Me, Kya and Sioghan posing in our school shirts.

MIDFIELD BATTLE!

On Wednesday after school we went to a football pitch in Kanungu town where the VU team would be playing two games of football, one against the youth team of the area and the other against the proper senior community team. The youth game lasted 20 minutes or so which we lost before the proper match kick off. We started the game pretty well and by half time were 1-0 up and soon after half time we were 2-0 up, but were coming under a lot of pressure. We conceded 10 minutes before the end to make it 2-1 before we had a free kick near their area. The last thing I remember was jumping for the ball when it was knocked into the box before I apparently got punched in the side of the head by the opposition goalie and then having to dazedly leave the pitch for a subbing. The opposition kept piling on the pressure and finally after 6 minutes of stoppage time (was supposed to be 2) we conceded again with what had to be the last kick of the game to make it 2-2.

Monday 5th August- Funeral

After a relaxing weekend in Binyoni I was raring to go back to school and continue teaching my P4 class whom I already loved. When the 4 of us (I, Kya, Siobhan and Katie) arrived at the school we expected everyone to be in lessons or loudly milling around as we had come to get used to when we arrive. Instead the school was silent; all the students were in their class rooms and all the teachers were standing on the steps of the main building. We headed over to the glum looking teachers and asked what was happening, it turned out that a teacher’s child had died in the early hours of the morning.

We found out that for the last few days the child had had an eye infection but had apparently died this morning of hypothermia or a stroke. The child was 2 years old. The child was in none of our classes; however we always saw the kid in the mornings as it was in the nursery or hanging around the staff. We were all quite upset as we headed to our classes to try and teach.

Upon arriving in my P4 class the usual chorus of ‘WELCOME TO P4 CLASS, PLEASE FEEL AT HOME’ sounded very muted and forced. My usual reply of ‘Thank you P4 class, how are you?’ was met with a ‘WE ARE SAD TEACHER ADAM’.  For the first lesson which was supposed to be bar graphs in Maths I ended up having to play games with the class and do some singing instead of work as they were clearly not in the right mind set to work. After break we had English where I tried to do some light teaching as well as games, my class also asked me to come to the funeral which would be in the afternoon. After English I was also asked by the other teachers if I and the other volunteers at the school would come to the funeral so we said that we would.

Once we had had lunch at the school we helped the teachers to organise all the students into a huge line where we would all walk to the house where the funeral would take place. It took roughly 25 minutes to walk the whole school to the house of the deceased child. We walked through the local town/village, up a dirt road and then through a field and plantation before we arrived at the house. Upon arrival I was greeted by one of my students (Martin, cousin of the child) who showed me where I would be sitting. There were already a couple of hundred people there before the school arrived. The service involved a preacher talking in the local tongue, some singing and then a bowl was passed around for people to give donations to the family. From the service we were led into the home’s banana plantation in the garden where the child was buried after more singing and words from the preacher. The service was very sad and showed how strong community is in the area. It seemed mad to me that the child died around 4am that morning and was buried by 4pm that afternoon. We left as the child was being buried and headed back to the lodge, had dinner and went to bed.

Saturday 3rd and Sunday 4th August- Lake Binyoni

We all woke up, as expected, extremely hungover and confused about the previous night. Dec and I left our tent and headed to breakfast where we joined in on the mocking of the worst drunks of last night. During breakfast Pav, Dec and I decided that instead of getting the boat across the lake, which is supposedly one of the deepest lakes in the world at over 7 thousand feet, that we would take a canoe.

We left at about 12 aiming to get to the restaurant by 12:20, 12:30 the very latest. As soon as the 3 of us pushed off from the pier we suddenly realised that we don’t actually know how to row a canoe. After 15 minutes we were still a stone’s throw from where we had cast off spinning aimlessly in the water, by this point we were already yelling obscenities at each other, the lake and generally just everyone. One of the main phrases being thrown around was Pav yelling ‘WHY ARE WE SPINNING?’ I was sitting in the middle without a paddle as Pav and Dec had them, quickly remembering how much I absolutely hate canoes and regretting this decision to getting into the canoe. 10 minutes later and we have probably moved another 20 metres or so, I’m panicking as I think we are going to capsize and I’ll lose my phone, iPod and money, Pav is standing up still yelling about spinning. Eventually we manage to get some kind of system going where we would travel 50 metres before spinning around, then 50 metres again and then spinning. I got really frustrated and pissed off and ended up slapping the water, which covered myself and Dec in water. Dec wasn't all that pleased in this, and let me know by sufficiently yelling and swearing at me.  By this point Pav had stopped bothering and was just laying down smoking, having given up to the lake.

Getting saved by the 'Hero of the Lake.'

After being on the canoe for half an hour or so we were maybe halfway to our destination, by this point a local lad who had been easily canoeing around the area came over to our boat to save us. He gave me a paddle, as by this point I was using my hands to paddle and was trying to explain to us what we were supposed to be doing. Eventually, 45 frustrating minutes of ‘WHY ARE WE SPINNING?’ later we had landed at the other side of the lake. Without the lad who helped us, I’m pretty confident that I would still be there sitting on that canoe.

At the restaurant, everyone had already been there for half an hour as they had all taken a speed boat, we had a laugh and ordered our food, although not until after a well-deserved cold beer. After the meal, we decided to try out the canoe again, Pav had resigned his role and instead Tom took his place. After we had gone 20 metres from the pier we saw Sam running down the pier and then leap into the lake having decided that he wanted to join us. Personally I was worried that he trying to climb into our boat might capsize us, so I told Dec and Tom to continue rowing, which they did.

Pav had been replaced.

After a while I felt kind of bad about Sam swimming behind the boat and decided we should probably let him get in, thankfully we didn't capsize when he did. We continued canoeing to a pier near to where we originally started the day off at and made it there in 15-20 minutes, a distinct difference to earlier.

Getting kidnapped in Uganda.

When we arrived we were taken to a patch of green with the rest of the volunteers where we watched orphans dance, which was kind of weird. Every so often one of the children would grab a volunteer and make them dance which was always funny, until it happened to me and I had to awkwardly dance for 30 seconds. One of the orphans turned out to be the hero on the lake who had helped us to canoe so we spoke to him for a bit and thanked him again. Before we left some of the orphans invited me onto their canoe, which was pretty cool despite the yells of encouragement from the volunteers to 'kidnap Adam!' and 'Throw him over board!' to the children. Afterwards we went back to the campsite, yet again by canoe but by this point we had got the hang of it and were back in no time at all.

That night we continued drinking, not quite as heavily as last night as I was still reeling before going to bed to get ready for Sunday.

On Sunday we spent the morning trying to sunbathe down on the pier and swimming in the lake. At one point I was swimming by the pier, just minding my own business when Dec decided to sprint down the pier and jump on my head, landing on my shoulder, which everyone found funny. By mid-day, we had packed up all our stuff and were heading back to the lodge to do some lesson planning and get some rest before the new school week tomorrow.

My face says it all.