Goodbye Kasokwe :( :(

It has been a hectic 2 weeks and I can hardly remember what the hell we have done and what order we did them but here goes.

Can't believe I am leaving after finally getting into the swing of things. I am really enjoying our routines. We wake up and eat breakfast to the Chris Moyles show podcast on Lucys ipod which is really bizarre listening to in the kitchen while we watch Africa on our doorstep. Although I'm SO sad to go, I am missing being 100% clean- my feet have been stained brown since I got here. On the subject of cleanliness, a doctor visited out school for Bilharzia testing so Alice and I took the test by peeing into a cup and Grandad you will be pleased to hear we apparently don't have it.

I'm especially relieved to get to Jinja for the weekend because recently our house has turned into an animal shelter. Katy lost her kitten about 3 weeks ago which is really bad news as cats out here are stoned and killed by the locals who just automatically assume they all carry rabies. But randomly Lucy and Ana came across a load of tiny TINY kittens under a pile of wood at their school so we took 2 and have given it to Katy as a goodbye present which I think is a pretty damn good present. They are the smallest cats I have ever seen and can barely walk and we spent most of the evening feeding them milk through syringes and watching a tv series on Katys laptop- LUSH. We need to come up with names for them. We also had a dog with us last week. Katy was looking after it for a friend and it somehow ended up at our house for most of the week. After promising us it was a cute puppy, Zola turned out to be a huge wolf-dog who caused havoc like breaking my mosquito net. The plus side was that if we had any school children hanging around the windows and doors not giving us any privacy- which is really starting to get irritating actually- we would let Zola on them! lol.  
Alice and I visited our favourite teacher Aidas house last friday. She cooked us Matoke which is some kind of revolting mashed up savoury banana and we brought her some banana bread we had made from our makeshift oven which went down well.. we think? She showed us her garden, her family photographs, I tried on her gomez (traditional dress for church) and I looked like a puffy hippo; it's always really nice to do this kind of thing with the teachers because eventhough they enjoy it so much more than we do, having mzungu (white) guests is literally the highlight of their week which is why we do it. Other shinnanigans we have been upto is reading bedtime stories to the P2, P3 and P4 boarders every tuesday. For some reason we have been reading them Dr Seuss which I can't imagine helps with their English understanding whatsoever but they like the pictures and having us there so that's that. I only wish I had brought Cow in the Kitchen with me Mum! I have also done a spot of hoeing in one of the teachers garden. I am bored of Ugandans thinking we are lazy and useless so I decided to grab a hoe and prove that I can dig, and she was very impressed.

What has mainly been taking up our time is our donation money for Kasokwe. I don't know if I have said what our final decision was on here so we are renovating the mainhall and P4's classroom by re-doing the floor and painting the walls cream because they are so damaged and graffiteed it is a really ugly environment to learn in and the children will be happier and prouder coming to a smarter looking school. We have also roughcasted the outsdie of the school which is basically covering the building in concrete and we have painting a blue skirting (kasokwe colours). Although we wanted to buy learning resources for the school like loads of books and sports equipment Kaoskwe has no locks, doors or windows and it would all get stolen. Also Kasokwe looks like a dump which is sad so that's what we are improving. BUT it has turned out to be hideously stressful which we sort of saw coming. It has been a nightmare trying to find builders because they all demanded too much money when they saw the colour of our skin. Also we have had a case of one builder leaving the job half done once he had recieved half of his money. Alice and I spent all week painting and painting and painting, I even got Lauren, Ana and Lucy down to help paint at the weekend whilst Alice went to Sesse Islands. Very stressful as we are leaving on Wednesday but it is Friday now and the floor is complete and the painting should be finishing right now eventhough deep down I know the painter has gone home when we left this morning. ARGH. We have found ourselves often having to walk away and just thinking T.I.A (this is africa)!



On thursday Dom and Ed held the 'AV cup' at Nambaale which was a netball and football tournament. We all organised it and I got to use the prize things and balloons I had brought from home. Alice and I booked an open top truck to take the Kasokwe teams there so we were packed in with a whole load of African teens which made the journey hilarious and when we pulled in chanting and singing we seriously arrived in style compared to all the other schools who had booked little buses. lol. Goodnews is that after being destroyed in the netball, Kasokwe won the football!! Although everyone claimed it's because we had the oldest team they are all still in Primary school and have simply been held back so it's still fair. Plus we are the poorest school by far and Kasokwe really deserved to bring back a trophy. Unfortunately the school has no where to put it.. so it just sits in a cupboard which is quite sad. After the whole tournament 14 of us celebrated at Dom and Eds house and consequently I had a horrendous nights sleep.

Thank you all for my letters, I recieved letters from both Grandparents this week which was really lovely thank you. Also special big love to all my pals who wrote me letters; Livi for your letter which still smells of 'Heat by Beyonce' and Bertie for your hilarious photoshopping of Robert Pattinson and me- I show it now to the teachers as proof that I have a husband back home.
Can't really believe we are saying goodbye to Kasokwe on wednesday. It is going to really hard leaving our new home and the wonderful teachers I know it is going to be like Ghana all over again. It makes me really sad knowing that we are the most exciting thing that has happened to the teachers and the children in a long time and when we go on to climb mountains and go on safari they will be carrying on with their boring and hard lives. I am also going to miss having a home to come back to during our free travel, living out of a rucksack is going to be either really cool or really miserable.

I am going to write all about my weekend shinnanigans tomorow which involve a rugby match and cheerleading, so there is way WAY more to come.  Sorry I haven't proof read this but I have 6 minutes on the computer left and there is an amazing Indian restaurant round the corner and I'm hungry.


One last thing before I go.. HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDMA SORRY I MISSED IT! xxxx