the island

man crazy couple weeks and oh how time flys!! its not long til ill be back home doing my normal things!! thats crazy! only 3 more nights in Uganda and Africa!! the month has gone soooo fast! ive had an amazing time :) doing touristy things like water water rafting and bungee jumping to roughing it up on an island doing hiv testing. both were amazing! :D white water rafting was great...i love rafting anyway and so doing it down the NILE river with ppl from all over the world was pretty cool :) bungee jumping was possibly the scariest thing ive done but also it was sooo great. oh gosh even thinking about how i felt makes my heart pump :P i still cant believe i jumped and then loved it so much that i had to do it again :P the island was interesting. mary and i went with john, an older ugandan volset worker and edward, our lovely ugandan translator. we caught a matatu from ntenjeru about 1/2 up to Katosi and from there caught a long boat to the island. i cant pronounce or spell the name of the island so ill keep calling it 'the island' :P. we had to wait like 3-4 hours for the boat to be ready (africa time) and then oh so horrifying we had to be CARRIED onto the boat...no jetties lol....but i was like 'ahh nooo i dont mind getting bit wet at all i can walk' but i wasnt allowed so i had to get piggybacked a billion miles from the shore to the boat...gosh i was more scared then i was when i jumped!!! awkard!!! neway after about an hour and a half on lake victoria :) we got to the island. they had a little guesthouse which was nice bcuz we were kinda thinking we might of had to sleep on the floor. however the owners told us a price wayyyy more than what they had previously said so after lots of discussion we finally got a room. bit yukky...sooooo many spiders and we saw a snake and ick. mary and i had to share a single bed which also kinda sucked as its soo hot anyway, and with blaring loud ugandan radio playing until early hours of the morning meant that we really did not sleep. so me being a person who likes my sleep, woke up rather grumpy the next morning :P. mary and i were like 'we wont toooo goo back hoome to the white house'. neway after brekkie and a bit of prayer time we definitley felt more energised and pumped for the day. the day was busy. we did a talk about hiv/aids and stis. mary talked to the women about nutrition while i became friends with all the kids :D. they were super scared of us first of all but with bubbles and stickers they soon warmed up...alot...i got rather mobbed :P 'Nangi, Nangi' (aunty) and 'muzungu' got yelled at me continually!! neway after this we did the testing. we had to fingerprick with blood lances...OWW! poor people they really hurt and then squeeze ALOT of blood out onto the test strips. finally by the end of the day we had the skill downpack but unfortunately we had to retest a couple of people.thankfully we had gloves and metho so it was rather clean. It costs about $1 per test and we tested 83 people. 9 tested positive to HIV. statistics say that 1 in 10 ugandans have HIV so it was pretty much spot on...a little higher tho. after we finished testing edward and john did counselling for all the people..telling them their results etc. because of the language barrier we really couldnt help with that so mary and i went back to the guest house and laid on the lovely grass and talked to some kids and i held this cute baby whose name was asher till he feel asleep....sooooo cute :D its crazy here i think the kids are amazing they are about 6-7 years old and they are responsible for their baby sibling for the whole day, they carry them on their backs all day! they are pretty good kids and really look out for each other which i love! :D Dinner on the island was interesting we had a local ah restuarant, if you can call it that, where we went for every meal. interesting. we had rats run past the top of our table....lurvely :S. as its an island main food is fish....yukkkk!!!! haha so i had plain rice first night and thankfully got chicken and rice the next. not too bad...luckily we didnt have to have poshoe...maize and water :S. Neway after another sleepless night we went back to katosi and ntenjeru (again took ages) and collapsed at home very exhausted...it was soooo nice to see everyone and have a WASH!! i was sooo sick of being dirty!! hmmm im definitley looking forward to going home and having nice clean clothes to put on...*sigh* it would be good :D Neway sooo much else has happened but i will sign off here and will hopefully write another blog a bit later.... Weraba!!! byeeee