We arrived at Entebbe airport at 3.30am on Sunday morning, after only just making our connecting flight from Cairo! The clock was wrong on the plane, so we thought we would be landing at 10.15pm, therefore missing our 9.45 connection. By the time we even disembarked the plane it was 9.25, so we ran through the airport. As we were all crowding round the one man checking passports (I say checking, but it was more like checking we HAD a passport, since there was such a rush!), I heard a male voice say my name. Since I was travelling with Jo, Sami and Kate, I thought they must mean another Helen, but turned round anyway to see Jamie (symph. conductor), and learned that the group from Leeds on the Uganda Project were also on our flight!
We spent the first night in Entebbe only a few minutes from the airport, in a lovely guesthouse just down the road from the president's house, which is absolutely beautiful, but we can't take pictures of government buildings. Our room had a four poster bed, en suite (behind a curtain), and even a TV, which we didn't watch. I think that cost about 80,00 shillings per room per night: about twenty quid. (The place we're staying tonight is about 5,000 a night, and still alright, although not quite what you'd get from a 'Holiday Inn' in England.)
The following morning we drove for 3 hours to Lwannunda, the village we are staying in (near the town of Masaka, where we're staying tonight), and stopped off at the equator, just to be touristy. It's basically just a sign that says 'Ugandan Equator'. But I got the cuistomary picture of Belly (Sam's and my travelling devil, for those of you who are thinking 'what the hell?' - no pun intended)!
During the week we are staying in classrooms at the primary school in Lwannunda, St. Joseph's I think. It's quite basic; we have a mattress and a mosquito net on the floor, which is quite sandy; Carla and Tom (who run the charity) sleep in our 'store room'. There are 2 toilets for 'teachers and visitors', and these are just dark cubicles with a hole, but not like the clean, white European kind! One has no door, and the one with a door doesn't stay shut, so you have to get someone to lock itfrom the outside, hold on to it, or just hope no one comes past. If you go in the doorless one at night it's okay 'cause people can see your head torch (I take mine even in the day because it's so dark!), or you just shout when you hear someone coming! I'm not gonna lie, we were all pretty scared of our first poo in a hole! Especially on our very first trip and someone had clearly missed...
The 'showers' are next to the toilets, in dark cubicles, basically like the loos but without a hole, so you just take a bowl of water and a head torch in with you. We're getting used to it now though, but were so excited to find a 'real' toilet and shower (between the whole guest house) at the place we are staying tonight! We have no electricity in Lwannunda, so sit out at night with Matthias' speakers (or Ken's fuzzy radio) and kerosene lanterns.
Food: carbs, carbs, carbs. Eg. potato and beans, rice and beans, pasta and beans... but last night Sami and I went into Kissengeesa (the village we're building in) with Mathhias, Alex, Tom, en and Alex... for beer and PORK! =D It was quite strange putting your hand into a kilogram bag of meat, but it was sooooo nice! We just swarmed on it!
Right, the playground! It's actually going to be an amazing playground, with 3 swing sets, a slide, and a ZIP WIRE! :) I think there are going to be like nets to go up to the zip wire. We've got the swing sets in, and it's amazing to see how much progress we've made in just 4 days. We worked so hard on Monday on our 3ft holes, and were all aching but it felt so good to finish them by Wednesday! We had a lot of help from the kids though, especially yesterday as the teachers were on strike. The kids love digging, and they're so good at it they just put us to shame! They did all laugh when we took our first swings with pick axes on Monday though.
I stayed in bed on Wednesday afternoon, not feeling great, but after a rehydration sachet and aspirin on Thursday morning, I was introduced to concrete mixing, which is hard work because you can't really stop, but it's great how much we've got done! Sami, Kate, Harri and I tought the kids the macarena, hand jive, Saturday Night etc. yesterday, and they sang us a Ugandan song. The boys tried to organise the largest crowd into 2 football teams as we drew a hopscotch in the sand. They were beaten by 7 year olds at football on the first night!
I've probably missed out so much, but I'm having an amazing time, the group is lovely, Tom and Carla are just amazing, and I'm not even going to try to spell the name of the lake we're going to tomorrow! So glad there is still so much time left here in this lovely place with such friendly people (the kids' response to everything if they don't speak English is "I'm fine"). Thought we had a tan but then attempted a wash and saw that we still had vaguely white legs. My feet are filthy though. Not much we can do about that though! Oh, and we constantly hear "Yayyyy Mazungas!!" (Yay white people.)
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