OLUNAKU OL OLUNJI!!!

Before I even opened my eyes on Monday, I could hear the rain pounding down. For the first time, the climate was comparable to that which we're used to back in England... in the middle of the summer. All the Africans were running around in thick coats and wellies, complaining about how cold it was - apparently the country literally grinds to a halt when it rains. You can use it as an excuse for missing school, work, your first-born daughter's wedding...  I had to laugh, but I saw why this was the case when we drove into school - the  un-paved roads (which is most of them) become absolute quagmires, and it was very comic watching Ema the driver frantically twisting and turning the wheel while the car slid left and right in the thick mud. They found it funny when I told them it was just like driving on ice back home as they've never seen snow or ice in real life.

 Monday was a tough day... I went to ASCO and guess what we did all morning? Watched Ratatouille, which all the the kids loved. Then it was still raining, so we watched Space Jam, which they also loved. Not quite as much as Ratatouille though; you've got to hand it to Pixar, GASTRONOMY + RODENT = CLASSIC WINNING FORMULA. Then it was still raining, so we went home and watched Ratatouille again... we must look like such slackers!!! No, actually the reason we put the movies on for the kids was because in the other room we were on rotation completing the paint job, and we needed them all out of the way. Some of the kids like to help out, but we have to be careful because some of them sneak off and start sniffing the paint. We are slowly forming a plan of action for Asco, and a lot of the credit for this has to go to Liberty, who has been instrumental in motivating everyone to help out, and is also using her own money to fund the project until we can find sponsorship. If anyone reading this is interested in providing funding to help rehabilitate, teach and feed the homeless children of Jinja, drop me a line at miles.lemlawrence@gmail.com. We are actually quite desperate for help at the moment, as we have been notified by the owner of the property we've been using that we are no longer going to be able to run the project back. This is devastating, especially as we have just finished repainting the place, so we need to find another premises to rent as soon as possible. In addition to all this, the children have been sleeping on the street as we cannot provide a place for them to stay overnight. All of this needs to change, so any help  would be much appreciated.

 Tuesday was Sophie's birthday! Rachel had set an alarm at 12am to kick the day off, and most of the crew went and stormed Soph's room to wish her tidings and felicitations and all that. I rolled over and sent her a text. Principles. It read, "Happy Birthday! Ps. I woke up to send this message". I heard the message come through across the quad, followed by Tom's cry of "Classic Miles" across the quad. Satisfied, I rolled over and went back to sleep. Soph woke up and was thrust a card from all of us; I think we were actually more excited about her birthday than she was!!! I'll cut to the evening, when we all got kitted out in traditional African clothing and hit Gately hotel for dinner. The food was totally minted, and we were all starving, so we went all out; many even ordered dessert (myself included). It had to be the "Gately's famous 'never say die' chocolate and banana rocky mountain dream-cake". THE MOST pretentious titled dessert I have ever encountered. Almost. Next on the menu was essentially "vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce", but it was described in over 30 words... Frankly, I was quite impressed. Sarah, Laura, "WEZ" and co. all threw a house party for Soph afterwards, and we danced the night away. The next birthday has a LOT to live up to.

 Back onto ASCO, I've found a bright young boy named Paul who is very enthusiastic about going to secondary school, but his parents cannot afford to send him. Out in Uganda, primary education is free up to the age of 11 (roughly), but after that many children have to drop out of school. Paul wants to be a doctor when he grows up, and although he's quite shy, we are drawing him slowly out of his shell. He loves mathematics and is a Chelsea supporter - you've probably guessed by now that my parents and I are trying to get him a place at Lords Meade! Fingers crossed, as nothing is confirmed at the moment, but I'm hoping that he will soon be able to join his best friend Thomas at LMVC, whom Rachel's family have sponsored. It's all very exciting, and I should have more news about that soon. Thanks again for taking the time to read my blog; please don't hesitate to get in touch via email. From Miles

Ready for (writing about) the Weekend

Good morning/day/afternoon/evening/night to all you blog followers,

At some stage I'm going to run out of "witty" opening greetings. Maybe one day, just to shake things up a little, I'll open WITHOUT A GREETING. Jump right in. Get involved...

Now, the trouble with a blog is that you need to have loads of really interesting stuff to write in it, and as we all settle into our routines at school, asco, sunrise orphanage, and so on and so forth, the blog becomes a trifle mundane. I think I've left it 5 days since my last post, and I reckon I might, just might, have collected enough crazy, mental and awesome stuff to write about and keep you all entertained. I'm just joking actually, LOADS of stuff is happening, so much that I can't even remember all of it!!!!

Let me move back to Friday, and write sort of chronologically like I did last time, as it worked pretty well...

Friday - This was a big day: the birth of the Lords Meade Choir! All considered, it went very well, with about 40 students attending. They were enthusiastic and tried hard, which bodes well for the future of the choir, even at such an early stage. Sophie and my only downfall was that we showed up and realised we had literally NO IDEA what we were going to teach them! Luckily I though of an easy, but impressive-sounding song that we were able to rehearse. It was an African song. Sophie and I cannot pronounce African words properly, and alot of (good-hearted?) sniggering on the part of the students ensued... At the end of the day, we had a good laugh and everyone seemed to enjoy the rehearsal, so I'll be writing more about that in the future.

Saturday - after a hectic Friday night on the town, Saturday was, shall we say, very chilled out. I basically only moved to go and pick up a steak sandwich and chips from the local Zamo hotel. If ever there was a more perfect hangover remedy, I've yet to discover it! Not alot happened on saturday as it is most peoples' day off, so let me zoom on to the evening ---------> We went to Nile River explorers to celebrate with the rugby team and all the other local "mzungus" - We seem to celebrate more when they lose than when they win, which is quite odd. The party was good there, but inevitably there was an eventual migration to Sombreros... I undertook this pilgrimage with a few others in the back of a Land Rover, and boy were those bumps unforgettable... you've gotta love Ugandan roads!!!

Sunday - again very chilled, but this time spent at the pool at Nile Resort Hotel, which is totally minted. I've probably mentioned it before, although this time we had some unexpected mischevious visitors. Up in the passionfruit trees (probably passionfruit trees, not definitely) was a whole gang of monkeys, eating and chucking fruit around at the poolside revellers! Literally LOADS of monkeys, and then they started running around the pool, drinking poolwater... I even saw one with 2 tails, then realised it was a mother with here baby clinging on underneath. All very cute, all very rabid. Thank heavens we've all had the jab! We watched Last King of Scotland in the evening; it had so much more relevance and meaning this time round having spent a month in Uganda. Never did know that teleportation was on the cards in the film; he steps out of Kampala general hospital, straight into very recognisable footage of Jinja high street! So consistent!

I'm going to have to leave it at that today I'm afraid, but I'll be back to continue the story before you know it!

Miles

MALARIALERT!!!

Ok, some of you may have already heard... 3 weeks, and I've already had malaria! Despite the fact that I've been taking malarone religiously, the sly mosquitos obviously managed the find my Achilles heel - no, quite literally, I have an incredibly itchy bite on my heel, which probably was the culprit.

So I'm not going to dwell on it - I got diagnosed on Monday, had a 3-day course of Duo-Cotexcin, and now I'm right as rain! Everything is going swimmingly! (Enough of the aquatic figures-of-speech I think). It wasn't too bad because my malarone was actually treating the virus, meaning that I only experienced loss of energy, headaches and flu-like symptoms... In a way it was a bit of a relief when I got diagnosed positive, because it meant I could stop pansying around complaining that "I've got a sniffle". According to Joe, I've braved it out awesomely well, meaning that I've set the bar pretty damn high for the next person to fall foul of those 'lil liver-bursting parasites.

To be fair, a lot has happened since I last wrote my blog, and it's starting to get tedious detailing everything in my diary, blog, facebook, and emails to everyone, so it's going to be a bit of a whistle-stop tour I'm afraid...

Monday - diagnosed with malaria, spent the day feeling strangely proud of myself for being the first to contract the "killer-virus", and enjoying being waited on hand and foot by my contemporaries... It was weird not having Tom & Marianne for dinner, I think they must act like the tent-pegs of the group, because halfway through the meal we launched into a very intense debate about faith and religion. Don't completely know where it came from (although I think I may have been the culprit with some broadly-aimed statement about how to a certain extent I believe staunch religious belief to be a cop-out. That really set the house on fire!!!)

Tuesday - Popping the little blue cotexcin malaria pills seemed to be working a treat. I can't exactly remember what we did in the day, but we had a TOTALLY awesome pancake day dinner. A flipping contest was staged, with points for rotation, landing, footwork, and "panache"... and it was an absolute riot. I managed to perfectly flip a pancake while enacting a very "authentic" barn-dance routine. Ollie took the gold with a stylish drop of the knee, while I think Jen just threw the pancake over her shoulder into the sink, with no real plan of how to retrieve it...

Wednesday - feeling alot better, I went to Sunrise orphanage (or was that tuesday???) and looked after the "babies & tots" with Soph, Jen & Joe. More on that place another time. Soph & I went on a mission into the local market to get ingredients for our "risotto". You have to have ALOT of patience because none of the stall-holders really speak English, so any inquiry about where to find a particular item will either result in a pointed finger in a random direction to try and get rid of you, or repeated assertion of the price of their onions. When I asked for mushrooms, I was met with the melancholic response "Muslims??? No, sorry, no muslims here"
Risotto, which I though would be a total disaster (and did look it, at the point when it was a stagnant-looking soup with bloated courgettes floating around) turned out to be a MASSIVE hit, which means we STILL haven't had a bum-deal-meal yet, and the standard just keeps on going up! The cat is starting to become a real pain though at cooking time, as we literally have to barricade him out of the kitchen and put up with his indignant complaints for the duration of the cheffery.

Thursday - Painted the walls at ASCO (African Street Children Organisation) - it's definitely a work in progress, and the job is not really based on any discernible plan... again, more on that another time. It's fun and rewarding though, and as I always say, you're only having fun if you're making a mess. Believe me, a mess we certainly made! Lunch involved me eating an appetizing-looking calamari dish, which I afterwards found out was bovine intestine. Cow-gut. How disgusting does that sound?

As you can see, I've obviously recovered from the malaria and am feeling very up-beat! I'm going to go and carry on living my life now so I've got more juicy anecdotes for you all next time.

Peace!

Alot of DVDs with my bud Tabby

So, last time I wrote my blog was wednesday. Wednesday wednesday, what's happened since wednesday? Let's see...

Wednesday night was a bit of a catastrophe, and I'll not spend long outlining why - Chelsea lost 2-1 to Everton and I gave a boda driver 10,000 shillings (instead of 1,000) by accident; it was going to happen at some point, but it's still very frustrating when you only had a 10,000 and a 1,000 to begin with. Guess which I was relying on for the rest of the night... okay you see what I mean. Now I don't think I've mentioned the boda-bodas yet in my blog, but even if I already have, I'm going to do it again... Boda-boda is a term that arose many years ago when travellers needed cheap transport all the way across the country - they would wind up at one side of Uganda and shout "border-to-border?Can anyone take border-to-border?" Which inevitably got sucked into the local lingo and watered down into it's current form, "boda-boda". Needless to say, they also became far more ubiquitous and are useful for almost any journey as a cheap, quick and easy mode of transport. But, you say, what are these boda-bodas? They are motorbikes. Motorbike-taxis, with a driver and a long seat for passengers. I'd never ridden a motorbike before, and it's awesome. Not all of them are great, but if you pick carefully (and there's plenty of choice) then you get a pretty flash new bike and a friendly driver who will take you anywhere for about the equivalent of 30p. It really is quite ingenious. Before we came out to Uganda we were advised against using these bodas, but once you arrive it quickly becomes apparent that they are the only practical form of transport around, and they are really not as bad as the travel websites make out... Kampala, the capital, is another story, but Jinja is a pretty sleepy town in general and we've been recommended by all our headmasters to use bodas. So, my friends around the world, don't worry about me and my other fellow gappies.

Friday, I got ill, and I'm still not feeling great (although I'm definitely on the mend). IT'S NOT MALARIA. I've just got a bad cold. So, I pretty much haven't done alot for the last couple of days except drink tea, eat too much and watch DVD's with my pal Tabby the cat. I made a fantastic discovery that the hotel 100 yards down the lane does there entire restaurant menu as a takeaway. Cue ALOT of steak and chips over the next few months! To counterbalance my apparent laziness, I did venture out yesterday to skype my fam and buy some food to cook for myself - I can proudly say that I cooked a vegetable chicken stew, and that it was pretty good. I'm actually quite impressed with myself! I have also done a bit of sleuthing and found a local piano where I can go and get in some much-needed practice, and Soph and I can rehearse the LMVC music, especially if we want the choir to be up to scratch. The aim is to take the school choir to the national music festivals in Kampala this summer, which is very exciting (and also absurdly scary, seeing as we haven't actually been able to start rehearsals yet.) We're going to need alot of crossed fingers all around the world! Today, I'd like to wish all my readers a happy Valentines Day... I'm just reminiscing back to a time about 5 or 6 years ago when I spent this very day in a packed car with my family, driving across a very cold and snowy french landscape - we were on our way to a ski holiday at Les Deux Alpes... It all seems such a far cry from where I am right now, writing this in an African garden trying not to move too much because it's so incredibly hot... I'm rambling aren't I?

One thing I haven't mentioned is the street kids project I was working at on Thursday - this is run by a combination of Ugandan and English charity workers and is currently trying to find its feet as an NGO or CBO... it provides a shelter and friendly environment for local children who do not have a home to go to, or whose families cannot support them, leaving them to roam the streets. It's very moving, because many of them have skin conditions, malaria and are malnourished, but are still as buoyant and playful as if nothing was at all the matter with them. There are many focuses of the project, for example treating the various ailments and rehabilitating those children who have an addiction to sniffing parafin, and I will be sure to write alot more about the project over the coming weeks. If you want to email me with any further questions about how you can help, or if you have ideas that may be helpful for any of the projects I am involved with, my address is miles.lemlawrence@gmail.com and I would be happy to hear from you.

Until next time... Miles

I'm a douche

Okay, I've just realised that I entitled the last post "sunshine trekking" because that was at the front of my mind, then totally forgot to write about it.

It's not big. It's not exciting. I've definitely built it up WAY too far.

But basically, I walked to Lords Meade today for the first time - it's over 6km and took an hour, but was stunningly beautiful and much more enjoyable than driving.

And yes, that's it.

Lav ya, miles

Sunshine Trekking

Greetings to the masses! I'm impressed with myself - it's only been two days since I last wrote my blog, this is more like it!

Monday was a big day at Lords Meade, because for the first time (almost) all the students were there. The government has imposed some law which means that the Senior 1's i.e. the youngest students, do not have to start school until next week, and similarly with the Senior 5's, which is the start of A-Level. That said, the "Rendcomb African Hall" (their equivalent of big school) was packed out with young faces, and I have no idea what they'll do next week when the rest of the school has arrived. I half expected the inevitable event, which was that Sophie, Rachel and myself had to stand up in front of the school... and give a speech. Why oh why do they love their speeches so much? My job's going to seem like a doss when I'm PM... (haha if only) It was quite reassuring as my "Good evening school" was met with a unified chorus of "Good evening suh", and I spoke confidently for about half a minute, before thanking them for the warm welcome we received at the school and passing on the non-existent microphone to Soph. Juma pulled a classic line when talking about "illegal items" at the school; the students are not permitted to own phones or radios, and some of them have been found to be concealing a sim card or headphones in their pockets. But no phone or radio... mysterious... so Juma comes out with "If you are found with a sim card or headphones, we know that you are in possession of an illegal item. You do not plug headphones into your porridge."
The assembly erupted in laughter!!! Sometimes I don't get the Ugandan humour but on this occasion it was pretty funny.

Yesterday Juma had prepared a special stencil so that we could print "Uganda 2010" on the uniform blue t-shirts for the three of us gappies. So, I learned screen printing for the very first time, and went on to print a whole set of 18 t-shirts for the school, which will be worn by the students in their PE lessons! Today I taught maths again, and the class are definitely getting more responsive to the western teaching style. I got a chuckle when I changed the variables from "x and y" to "pig and posho" to illustrate the fact that they were arbitrary symbols, and even had to give them homework! I'm an actual "teacha" now. By the way, posho is a corn-flour-based bread with a squishy consistency, apparently like semolina. I don't know what semolina is, but it certainly sounds plausible. Some time, we're going to learn to prepare the local dishes and help out in the kitchen! By then I should know how to put photos on this blog, so look out for amusing/cultural snaps in the near future...Until next time...

My first lesson

Greetings and salutations!

Since I last wrote on this blog, so much has happened... last Friday I taught my first maths lesson at Lords Meade which was TERRIFYING!!! Patrick, the official teacher for the class, left immediately, leaving me to quickly decide how on earth I was going to educate and entertain 80 expectant faces for the next hour and 20 minutes! They all call me "teacha" and "suh" which is very strange, seeing as I only just finished my A-Levels last summer, and I still consider myself to be a student. I'm very glad I decided to teach the Senior 2 because I think I would've had a heart attack if I had to teach Integration to the A-Level candidates... I'm actually doing homework myself to try and brush up on all the topics I've completely forgotten! How bad is that? Or good, whichever way you look at it. I'm looking at these things in the long term, so hopefully by the time I get home I'll be pretty tight with my maths again... all in due time so that I can forget it before I go to Oxford in October!

So... after the completely petrifying experience of teaching, I was READY to hit the weekend. Friday evening we were invited to a "dinner party"... at a local primary school. It was hilarious; the Ugandans never pass up a single opportunity to make lengthy speeches, and lo and behold halfway through my posho and beans there was a ringing of a bell and... It was an interesting party, to say the least. We moved on to town afterwards, straight to the "Nile View Casino". Joe immediately lost 30,000 shillings on the roulette table, a wound which Dom rubbed salt into by doubling his winnings in just 2 deft bets. I abstained, but the poker tables were very alluring and I'm sure we'll be back before long! The rest of the night was spent in a nightclub renowned for it's cheesy 80s choices... it's reputation certainly held true, and there were some quite embarrassing moves pulled by many of us to Madonna's "Like A Prayer". What goes in uganda... well, probably has been documented and will soon turn up on facebook!

In other news... Thursday I played rugby for the first time in my life, training with a team who are actually part of the Ugandan Premier League!!! Or "Guiness Super 8" as I think they call it. I scored a try, which was an ACHIEVEMENT, but bottled it when they started playing contact because of my specs. The fact that there was a mexican guy who looked like he could eat me in one bite and have room for dessert did also bear some influence over that decision... On saturday we went and watched our team get slaughtered 33-7, apparently not too bad for the "Jinja Niles" as they call themselves. They were playing the "Kampala Kobs", which I personally found hilarious, as I believe a kob is either a male swan... or a particular type of sandwich. In celebration (???) we went and watched the England Wales match at a local restaurant, where I had the lushest dish on the menu: chicken coconut curry - highly recommended. After gorging ourselves we went out to celebrate an actual victory by our boys back home at Twickenham - somehow we landed up at a party with a live white band, with almost exclusively white guests, all drinking stereotypically white drinks. It was completely uncanny! I'm going to have to wrap this up now as Sophie and I are getting quite hungry, but we basically had a great weekend.

Tomorrow is going to be the first day of LMVC choir, and this afternoon we have to give a speech in front of the entire school! Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrgghghghghghghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!! WISH US LUCK

Yours truly,

Miles

After a week

Hi everyone and welcome back! Having survived one week, I started to feel like maybe some of you would like to hear what I've been doing out here, so enlightened you shall be!

So much has happened in just under a week, it's quite unbelievable. It's currently 3.30pm Uganda-time, which means that literally 1 week ago I was piling into the car for the journey to the airport, and now I'm actually here and (relatively) settled. The first thing that hit me when we swooped in to land is how incredibly green Uganda is... it's hard to imagine there ever being any rain here because it's so hot and dusty. I am told, however, that it won't be long before we enter the rainy season, and it will be as extremely wet as it has been hot! In fact, I saw my first African cloud today, and felt my first drop of African rain. Just the one though. It was quite uncanny! I've kept a totally clean sheet with the mosquitoes here so far, but I'm not sure how long that will hold out when we hit rainy season...

Jinja is a city that is very much alive, busy and bustling at all times of the day! This is partly due to the fact that it is actually hotter inside the house than out. I cannot emphasise how ridiculously HOT it is here, especially at night when the breeze just seems to disappear. So much for all the "polar fleeces" I was advised to bring by the shop attendants in all the outdoor adventure shops! In Jinja, we have found some great places to eat, and I was surprised to find that most cafe's have wifi. I haven't brought a laptop myself, but would thorougly recommend that any traveler should bring one out, as you'll find it very handy. This is mainly because the computers out here are very slow by our standards back home, and you may come back with a few extra grey hairs after waiting over a minute for the internet browser to even start each time!

We have been welcomed warmly by Lords Meade and the community at large. Mark Malinga has been very helpful to us so far, taking us to exchange money and buy new SIM cards on the first day and being generally very supportive ever since. Everyone at WGS should look out for him as he is planning a visit over to the UK later this month - you'll enjoy meeting him and shouldn't hesitate to ask him any questions about Uganda and LMVC. Another (pleasant) surprise is that calls out here are very cheap (in fact, everything is very cheap) so it costs as little as 3p to send a text and is only about 10p a minute to ring the UK. The ironic thing is that all there money is issued in laughably large denominations, so that you find yourself paying 1000 shillings for a Coke, and then realise that it's only costing you the equivalent of 30p!!! I feel bad because I've even had to become quite stingy, but in the market they all see you as a rich white person and try and rip you off with a "mizungu price". (Mizungu means white man). All you have to do is hit them up with a bit of their local Lugandan lingo and they realise that you're not going to be such an easy nut to crack. Then comes the amusing part when you're bartering over a mango, heatedly challenging the stall-holder and arguing over about a 10p difference in price. Sounds small, but then you have to remember that this is practically a 50% discount! They're all used to it though, and it actually adds a bit of excitement to the grocery shopping.

I realise I haven't gone into too much detail here about what we've been getting up to- it's tough because the 7 days kind of gloss over and it becomes tough to pick out particular things. I'll try and get to a computer more often so that I can tell you all about some of the specific things I and the other 11 at the guest house have been doing, but until then, it's goodbye from me.