A big catch up post

Hello! Wow it’s been a long time since I wrote. Well the bats came back… lots of them, but we eventually got it sorted, we taped up the hole they were getting through, this meant they had no way of getting out so they all died. I felt a bit sorry for them because all night you’d hear them dropping dead.. It was horrible, even now we hear the odd one drop dead. I just dread to think how it’s going to smell in a few weeks to come. Luckily we’ll be gone by then! We have only 2 weeks left to volunteer before James’ mum comes to visit. We are getting excited actually as the volunteering has been pretty intense and were looking forward to the break. We have 5 weeks off before volunteering again in India.

James and I have both had the flu since I last wrote, it was horrible! It was like at home but twice as bad as were not used to the Ugandan bugs. We are fighting fit again now though (just about!).

We have been teaching quite a lot over the last few weeks and it’s been loads of fun. The kids are awesome. We had another volunteer who was a professional dancer so I got her to come along to the school and teach the kids, they loved it! We have also been continuing with the HIV awareness outreach program in schools. It’s going a lot better than I anticipated. The kids/ young adults are really getting into it. They ask so many interesting questions, questions that I haven’t even thought of. I am learning loads from them, it’s definitely getting me ready for my social work course!

We are now wrapping everything up and making sure all our work is getting passed on to new volunteers and locals who want to keep it running when we leave. The thought of leaving is sad but at the same time I feel there is not a great deal more we can do for the organization as we have no more time left… Oh but we are organizing a sports day for our last day in school. I’m looking forward to that as the kids don’t really do any exercise. They spend the majority of their time repeating what the teachers say to them. Today we were doing ‘Art’ with the really young kids (we don’t normally teach them but they asked us last week if we could do one lesson with them as apparently they keep asking the teachers) James was telling them to write their name on their own drawing. He did an example on the board and wrote his own name. When we took all the pictures in they all had James’ name written on them! Bless them; however it shows they just copy and don’t actually understand what you’re saying!

Last Saturday we went white water rafting on the Nile.. It was ace! I only did to grade 3 as I was on the ‘mild’ boat. James did to level 5 which was the ‘wild’ boat. I thought.. sod that there’s no way your getting me on that. We managed not to flip on a rapid and I was soo pleased as I had almost drowned on the practice flip! There were 11 of us from GVN doing and I was sat on a boat with some of the women from the Guesthouse.. We had just had lunch and were about to go down a grade 3 and another volunteer turned to me and was like, Amy.. Do I have anything in my teeth? I was like WHAT? Were just about to hold on for dear life are you really that concerned! ..It was so funny and such a good day, I would recommend it to anyone passing by Uganda!

Right there is so much more I could go on about but I haven’t had a good working computer with internet in a while so I’m going to leave it here. I hope everyone is well, thanks for the messages you’ve been leaving too. Its nice to get them! Amy xx