Resting up in Kampala..

Hello! David and Clairen are here this time, writing about our fun and relaxing weekend in Kampala before heading to Tanzania! We spent our last few days in Uganda tucked away in our now very familiar Backpackers Hostel. It was definitely very nice to have down time to sleep, read, and mentally prepare ourselves for the next leg of our amazing journey. Our days were mostly filled with downtown excursions and long reading sessions on the balcony of the hostel. But evenings..well that is another story. Somehow, Zik and Curry pulled some magic on us and presented us with tickets to an very big Jazz Festival! We all packed into a taxi and headed out at about 7 pm. The event took place at a very nice resort on the other side of the city, so the drive was not exactly short...but eventually we arrived with huge smiles on our faces, ready to rock out to some absolutely africatastic music. The whole evening we sat in a grass field and enjoyed numerous bands. The music wasn't what what we would call "jazz". But it was definitely filled with soul and passion. Between the traditional instruments and rich voice and the star covered sky, the night was most enjoyable. It wasn't until about 1:30 am that we got back to the hostel. The whole ordeal was so much fun and we are so lucky that Zik and Curry have contacts in Kampala who were willing to hook us up with tickets to a great event! Then for the energetic party animals AKA David, Aura, Matt, Jessie, and Camille went to a club downtown and danced till 4:00 am. Everyone had a blast especially David who break danced like Usher. Then we woke up at 10:00 am for more relaxation then headed to another Zik and Curry hookup event A soccer game between Uganda and Benin. The crowd was amazing and Uganda won 2-1. It was a great experience for all of us. Well that it for now. Camille and Aura will update you on Tanzania and the amazing Safari! Goodbye Y'all until next time.

Soft Power Education....

Hey all. Rachel and Jessie here to tell you all about our SECOND week in Jinja. We worked for a NGO based in Britain called (we told you earlier!) Soft Power Education which concentrates in "beautifying" educational facilities and providing extra curricular activites not often available in the Ugandan public education system. As the debriefer/coordinator, Shaz, that led us through it called it...they're brilliant. We were based in a small Muslim school called Siidiq and we got to do loads and loads of painting. Because the roads were bad during this particularly rainy rainy season...we were set up in one of the classrooms at the school. All of us (nearly) were sleeping shoulder to shoulder on small but respectably comfortable foam mats and had mosquito nets given to us to string across the room in a rather creative fashion. (Kudos Camille). So the living situation was probably the most "basic" we've seen yet but it was pretty cozy and we all got closer...literally. The most challenging part of these new "roughing it" accomodations was the utter and complete total lack of showers. Nothing. Nada. It was good that we were all in it together though...lack of showers and suffering and eventually mastering the pit latrines. Go us! (And by us we mean the girls....it's much more impressive for us). On the flip side...sparse environment aside...we did have the total and lovely luxury of having a personal cook asigned to us to provide three meals a day for our entire group, so that we could concentrate on painting instead of cooking. Which is a good thing...because even if we did try to cook for ourselves it wouldn't come close to coming to the savory culinary masterpieces and Peter (god bless him) unfailingly delivered three times a day. He was an awesome guy all around and we all enjoyed his company (as Peter himself would say...FACT). So our days were usually pretty busy... we had breakfast at 8am and would work til lunch around 1-ish and then we would break up into two groups and learn some basic Swahili. It was really awesome. Roy aka Mwacigwa was an excellent teacher. Knowledgable, good humoured and excited. After the day was done around 6 we would have a couple of hours of downtime in the evening. All in all we managed to get a lot done, considering that the paint required multiple coats and we were all proud to look back upon our work before we left. Good stint. Peace! Jessie and Rachel

First week in Jinja!

Hello everyone Kate and Lihi here... The past week has been full of adventure, hard work, and mzungus. Early sunday morning we left Kampala and traveled to Jinja by bus. We arrived at Adrift Hostel surprised to see so many mzungus (white people). We were split into two different groups for rafting on the White Nile River. Kate was with Curry, Kevin, Matt, Aura, Jessie, Clairen and a South African guide named Greg. Lihi was with Zik, Andrea, Rachel, David, Camille and a Irish guide Graham. We were all very excited, but also a little nervous. We all went down class 3, 4, 5 rapids, the biggest and craziest one being ''Big Brother'' where most of us got tossed out as the rapid flipped the rafts over. Most of us were pretty frightened with the thrill of almost drowning, but we all made it out happy and safe.
Since then we've been staying at the Adrift Hostel which is literally on the Nile. Every night we get to watch the beautiful sunsets and star gaze.
We've have also been working through Adrift on an Environmental Conservation Project on land that they own but will later sell to the Jinja Community. We've also been seperated into 2 groups; One being Zik, Kate, Andrea, Matt, Jessie and Rachel and the other being Curry, Lihi, Kevin, David, Aura, Clairen and Camille. We switch everyday between two different projects and locations. One has been planting Mysopsis trees, which are quick growing trees that attract many local birds. Although it may not seem like it there is a huge deforestation problem here because many local village people tend to cut down the trees for many different reasons like houses, shops, firewood etc. The other project is building a walkway on an island to a future chimpanzee sanctuary.
We will be changing locations to work with Soft Power education where we will be painting a school and taking Swahili classes. We will be staying on site.

We're all safe and having fun, so parents don't worry.

Miss you and love you all.