Day 1 to Day 4

Day 1:
Waking up at 6 o'clock and finishing my bag and then we are off to Schiphol to start my adventure to Uganda. Arriving at 9 o'clock at Schiphol and reconciling with the group and checking in was the start of our expedition. When we were checked in and ready to go, we said goodbye to our parents and started our journey alone towards Uganda.

Our first flight was from Amsterdam to Istanbul and took about 3 and a half hours, I sat together with 5 others of our group and it was a lot of fun to exchange our expectations and hopes for our journey. Our second flight was from Istanbul to Entebbe, with a stop in Kigali (located in Roewanda). We arrived at Entebbe at around 5 in the night and we heard from the customs in Entebbe that the Netherlands became third in the World Cup.

In two small busses we travelled to our first destination: a hostel in Entebbe. There we got a bed were we could sleep for the night including a bathroom (with a toilet and ice cold shower). We got a total of 5 hours of sleep, which isn't that much, and we started our day with the cold shower. Breakfast was prepared by the local inhabitants and we started our second day to our final destination: Masaka!

Day 2:
Today we travelled further, to Masaka, our home for the next two weeks. During our trip we got to see a lot of the environment of Uganda, including greenery and living conditions. It was a lot to take in at first: the poverty, the hot weather, the traffic and the inhabitants. The landscape is bright green and very beautiful. But the living conditions we saw were very poor, people living in shacks of wood that almost fall apart.

During our travels we crossed the equator and we made a quick stop. On a grass field nearby local children were dancing on local music which was fun to see. During our stop we made a lot of pictures.

When we finally arrived at our destination for the next 4 days, the PELIDO community, we were warmly welcomed. PELIDO is a local project, that helps the local inhabitants. In my next few blogs you can read our assignments in this project. We sleep inside a church, in our tents. The restrooms and showers are very primitive, a toilet can be defined as an hole in the ground and a shower is with 2 jerrycans of ice cold water in the open air behind a few shuts. After putting up our tents and sleeping arrangements we got together at the campfire and exchanged our first experiences.

Day 3:
A new day, with an immense amount of new impressions. We begun our day with breakfast, including bread, fruit and popcorn (yes, popcorn). When we finished our breakfast we got our first assignment: mine was the waterproject. The drive to the waterproject was about 30 minutes and over a primitive road with a lot of bumbs, a so-called "African massage". When we arrived at our project we got our assignment: emptying a pont of dirty water so that cleaner water can enter the pont again. We made a chain from the pont to the bushes. The first person filled a cut-open jerrycan with water and with the chain the water ended up in the bushes and so on and so on. When it was almost empty there was also a snake, which they catched and killed. It was really difficult, that we emtied a whole pont for these people while we get to drink from a bottle of clean water. On our way back we saw an African carnival bus that included a lot of dancers and music.

When we got back to the church we were welcomed back with more than 100 African children. They were screaming "mzungu" (name for a white person) and all wanted to touch and play with you. They touched your hands, arms and hugged your waist. They all wanted to be in pictures and our attention, which were often only simple high fives, and this brought a big smile on their faces. It was pretty intense to have more than 20 children following you around and wanting your attention.

After lunch, we got a tour around the community, which is rather big, it includes more greenery than houses. We visited a chicken, pig and fruitproject (were we tasted local fruits) and after we visited the Women's and Children's Craftwork Shop. These people were really poor and the children had hunger tummies (big bellies from the lack of protein), it was rather difficult to see. Lastly, the pineapple plantation was our destination, we even received a few pineapples from the farmers.
In the evening we had a campfire and sung songs together. It was a day including a lot of experiences and beautiful people and places!

Day 4:
Today our first project was: making a trench for rain water. We had to shovel the ground and then remove the sand and move it besides the trench. It was really heavy work and working in the burning sun wasn't an advantage. We finished about 15 metres before we had to go back to our accommodation.

This is what we already have done the last few days, and this is what we will be doing this afternoon:
This afternoon we will be helping about 4 local students with reading in English and we get to play football against the local school football team. It is really fun and to be here, everybody is excited and Uganda is such a beautiful country.