Lets get planning.....

Today we split the volunteers into focus teams, Youth / Livelihoods / Environment / Agriculture and Health and they started to plan their work and activities for the coming weeks. It was so good to see them all really thinking hard about what they are hoping to achieve and the buzz in the air was really noticeable. It's difficult to keep the vols motivated as we have such little information and resources for them but they kept the vibe up and came up with some fantastic ideas for activities and events. 

In the afternoon we all walked (in the pouring rain) from our office at KAVIPE to our host homes for lunch. I'm definitely going to burn a fare few calories the amount of walking I'm doing! Then we met up again at Kamachumu Inn around 4pm and the volunteers started mapping their ideas and devising their own work plans. (There are some pics of this in the previous post). It's hard work managing the groups as we've (me and Aive) very little to follow and most of what we are doing is from our own initiative (or me driving Aive mad constantly planning and implementing things! I'm sure she'll get used to my ways in time?)

Tomorrow we're having a day off, FINALLY and I can't wait to wash my clothes and clean my lounge, bedroom and washroom and maybe do some more unpacking and nesting! I'm desperate to move my bed, weird OCD tendencies that I like at least two sides of my bed to touch the walls and currently none are touching! The bed is huge though and I'm not entirely sure I'll be able to move it alone, but you know what they say, where there's a will there's a way!

We've had no power today.... Apparently it's has something to do with maintenance work taking place in Uganda. The deal is that we have electricity from mon - fri then Saturday and Sunday the power is off 6am-6pm, however it's now 8.45pm and still no sign of light! I'm grateful for what we do get though as I'd imagined much less power than we have.

It rained heavily today but was a good thing as meant I could put my wash basin outside to collect the rain and hopefully now I'll have enough water to wash myself, my clothes and my 'house' kesho (tomorrow). The locals here scatter  when it rains and the place turns into a ghost town... I can kind of understand why people here become scared of the weather though as on yesterday's news there was a report of a child who was hit by lightening and killed in their classroom. The lightening came straight though the tin roof of the classroom! Was rather unsettling today as we were all sat under a tin roof whilst the thunder and lightening was going on outside.

I've finally been exposed to the Tanzanian way of eating insects as snacks (although I am yet to try any of these delights!) Fried grasshoppers and fried grubs have been on the menu the past few nights! When the power is back, or during the day tomorrow I'll try n get some pics to upload. My host Mum is trying to get me to help her prepare some grasshoppers tomorrow, this would involve me pulling off their legs and wings etc whilst they are still alive, I've have strongly declined this and made a compromise and offered to make Mandaze with her instead (Mandaze is a bit like doughnuts).

BTW Mum, a local member of parliament visited our house yesterday and guess where he studied his Masters Degree? Salford! Crazy ey?