Merry Christmas!!

To save time i'm just pasting my email up here for anyone who didn't get it...voila!

Hi everyone! Yup, it's been a long long time...i can only apologise for being so slow to even think of writing letters, i think i might resort to that for some of you now that i'm discovering the internet is a very precious and rare treasure!!

thank you so much for all your emails - i haven't actually read any for weeks since internet access has once again been impossible, but if i ever finish writing i'll read and reply then!

some news in brief (how do i begin to summarise more than 3 months?!!) we completed the lecture phase of DTS (discipleship training school) at the beginning o







f November, travelled west t







o Fort Portal where we stayed in 2 villages, each for 4-5 days. The people were lovely but spoke hardly any english, there was no power or water so we had to walk a fair way downhill to get water in jerry cans...20l of water gets pretty heavy when you're scrambling up steep hills! We were mainly visiting people in their homes every morning, explaining what we believe to them and asking if they had any questions or wanted to become Christians, and most afternoons we had "crusades" which for my part involved standing on rickety wooden stages and attempting to sing and dance to songs in languages i don't know...fun!! a few times we performed the dramas we'd rehearsed, then one of our leaders preached and we prayed for people afterwards. i wish my description of the atmosphere could do it justice - it was so crazy to have all these hundreds of kids just turn up from nowhere, pushing against the barrier wires and chasing after me and Katy just to hold our hands or touch us (us muzungus are HUGELY interesting - even our neighbours' kids spent most of each day just staring at us or shouting "muzungu! muzungu! every time we passed....5 times a day, every day without fail...)
one thing i'll never forget about Fort P was moving in between the villages - somehow we managed to fit 11 people,their luggage, a sounds system with 4 giant speakers, our cooking pots and pans plus sacks of food to last 2 weeks, all into a small pickup truck. 2 of the girls and the driver sat in the cab, the rest of us were piled in the back with the stuff - it was great!! We saw so much amazing scenery - the west of Uganda is just like NZ with beautiful hills, forests and mountains, and many cows! It's Uganda's dairy region, but also has giant tea plantations and rice fields. Oh, and one lady who invited us to her house gave us a live goat! i was so excited til i realised the impracticality of bringing it back to Jinja with us (an 8-hour journey in a packed minibus is not the best place for a goat) but i just couldn't bring myself to let the others eat it - it was a beautiful female, exactly what i want when i start my herd of milkers - so Emma the school leader took pity on me and swapped in for someone's scraggy little billy, who promptly became dinner. all in all, i think it was a good swap for the other person!

Then we spent 2 weeks in Kakira, just down the road from our base - we had power, but no water...in fact, even our one water source that was a carryable distance away dried up, so the boys had to resort to cycling to the base with 2 or 3 jerry cans tied to the back! I have new respect for them - my one attempt failed so miserably, it was not a pleasant experience! my only comfort was that henry, who rescued me, also crashed several times and definitely struggled throughout the ride - so at least i'm not yet a weedy girl!

Now we're in Arusha, Tanzania - the only major difference is that i understand the language even less than before, and the people speak less English! Otherwise the two countries are very similar, the work is the same, the kids still shout "muzungu!"...
actually, one highlight of our stay so far is i came across a lady who wanted me to pray for her cow!! i know i said i wanted to work with cows and help in some way, but i wasn't expecting it to randomly happen on one of our evangelism visits! I think i frustrated my interpreter a bit by asking a zillion questions about the exact problem - it turns out they used AI, and the cow always threw big calves and had never yet delivered a live one - they always got stuck and died, and the cow herself was the tiniest Friesian i've ever seen, so i wondered if they import semen from our giant Western holsteins rather than collecting from their own African "local" bulls. i have no idea if the woman understood what i was saying, so i'm glad we have a God who answers prayers, even for those things we should be able to figure out on our own!

the other fun thing is walking through a banana forest to get to our church here...it never gets old : )

sorry for those of you who were expecting stories of well-digging and feeding the hungry - i was a bit disappointed myself when it turned out not to be part of our program, but i've enjoyed just meeting with so many different people who live in a completely different way from us, being able to talk to them and listen to their views on life. And tomorrow i'll find out how these guys celebrate Christmas - it seems so unreal sitting here in the hot dusty city of Arusha, when usually Christmas means freezing cold weather, mucking out and milking!

Merry Christmas everyone, let's all hope this isn't my last email for another 3 months!!!

love alex : )

still alive : )

ok, just to reassure you that i did in fact survive my solo trip to town...although i have to admit it wasn't a great act of bravery, i cheated in the end - Masiu was driving Patoni, Lupe and baby Nia to the doctor's in town because Nia had a fever (she's fine now but Masiu's son Sione now has malaria...please pray!) and they passed me and offered a lift! God must have been chuckling to Himself about my scaredyness...He could have just let me get on with it and make me tougher, but i'm so thankful He provided a car to rescue me instead, that was much more fun!

i am still home at Hopeland, we still haven't gone (it's a standing joke now, it's amazing how many people here ask me if i'm still here when they see me...maybe they have hologram people in their country?) yes, we should have left on Monday but we didn't, there was no church for us to work with until someone agreed to host us yesterday, so we should be leaving tomorrow, hurrah!! it seems there were still some things God wanted us to sort out here before he moved us on, and one big thing was tidying up our area of the base - so we have been doing lots of weeding and it looks a lot better! We also managed to get some rest and take time over packing, and all that's left now is to move our stuff that's staying behind to a storeroom and clean our dorm room. And tonight for dinner is sweet potato and peanut sauce, one of my favourites - yay! also a good reason to still be here : )

i have nothing else to write, there's only so much i can say about weeding and cleaning...

hope y'all are doing well! maybe the next post will be more eventful when i can tell you what we've been up to in Fort Portal - i might not be able to contact anyone for a couple of weeks as there's probably no power where we're staying there, i'm told it's "deep deep in the village" -sounds fun, real Africa!!

keep taking care of those cows, enjoy the coldness - i miss it so much! never thought i'd get bored of summer, but it's just wrong to feel hot in november!

love alex : )

silly stresses...

this is going to sound so pathetic, but i my biggest fear today is having to go into town alone!! most of you won't know me at all when i get back, i think i've changed so much here and become a scaredy girly girl....but i just don't like being on my own when i still have no idea how things work here, and people still confuse me by the way they behave, so i never know what to expect or what to do...i'm sure i'll survive though, all i have to do is walk the 15mins down to Wairaka village, get the bus and then a boda to the national office...

oh, i'm about to be locked in the office, better go...let you know if i survive!!!

I'm back!!!

Hey everyone, I've had lots of news to post up but haven't been able to do it, so let's see if i can summarise the last few weeks...

firstly and most excitingly, i was almost useful a couple of weeks ago when our best cow, Angel, aborted - probably the most helpful contribution I made in the end was to stop Robert from panicking that she had placenta hanging out of her - never thought i'd be giving an anatomy lesson about cotyledons and telling a Ugandan that with the stress of abortion, RFM is normal! She's doing fine now - she had a course of penstrep (not sure if that did anything...) and we tried to give her pessaries but we couldn't restrain her - all we had was some rope to tie her legs to the rickety wooden rail in her stall, and while that's probably fine for milking, it really wasn't any help when she was protesting! they were TMPS or whatever it's called, and i'm still not convinced pessaries are much benefit, so i'm sure it was all for the best that we couldn't get near her...it was just fun having an excuse to be near a cow again!!

This week one of the families on the base is away so I'm helping take care of the pigs and sheep, and I am once again the bucket lady as I have to carry the kitchen scraps across the base twice a day! The dogs have also adopted me as mum as the housesitters have small kids and the dogs are not very welcome there for now - i'm not complaining, i love being pack leader, it makes me feel special to have friends who never leave my side!! what really makes me laugh is that Poppy, the older one (they are both German Shepherds) will even get up with me to move from one part of the classroom to the other - she's so paranoid at being abandoned!

I marooned myself on the base for over a month as I had no reason to go into town, but last week I had some jobs to do as we're leaving for our practical bit of the course next weekend - we will be working with churches in Fort Portal (Western Uganda), Kakira (our neighbouring village) for 2 weeks each and then 3 weeks in Arusha, Tanzania! So one of the jobs on the list was getting some US dollars for the visas to Kenya and Tanzania - we have to go via Nairobi, as there's no transport across Lake Victoria any more.
As we were sat waiting in the "taxi" (like a minibus) for it to fill up so we could go home, we not only had the usual sellers thrusting their water, peanuts and watches in our faces, but this time we also had the company of a very smartly-dressed man who opened his suitcase and gave a speech about the benefits of wormers, and passed some packages of human wormer around - it just made me giggle, you know I'm into parasites and i'm glad people are taking prevention and treatment seriously, but wormers sold in a taxi like sweets?! It's too weird!

Think that's all for now, it's pig-feeding time!

Sorry if I've missed your birthday or am about to miss it....for those of you whose mobile numbers don't work for me, i'm a bit stuck at getting messages to you...even for those that do, my memory is not exactly great!

thanks again for all those emails, they always make my day : )

love alex xx

no inspiration for an exciting heading, sorry....

Firstly, I just wanted to give you some other websites you can visit to actually see some pictures of this place, and even some of the people I've been talking about - the main site for this base is www.ywamhopeland.com (since the name of the base is Hopeland...just in case you're feeling as slow as me today!) ans also katy's web page is http://web.mac.com/saunderskaty - that should have lots of photos of our antics over the last couple months!

Also, can I say a HUGE thank you for all your emails - Lynn, Nina, Helen, Claire, Sarah, it has been great to hear from you and i'm just sorry i didn't have time to reply to everyone...also Tony, Kate and Wendy - so good to hear the farming news, Wendy - you NEVER bore me, you know I love to hear about how the maize is doing and what stage everyone's at with their harvesting, and about the cows' yields, so don't leave anything out!!!! i really miss my work now - even though we have some animals here, i don't have time to get involved with anything, and even if i could, i'd probably be no help as i have no idea how they do things here! It's strange to think that it's getting colder and calving and maize silaging is going on, while here it's exactly the same as when i arrived - some days hot and sunny, some days thunderstorms, but it's permanent summer!

Gotta go to lunch now and attempt to clear my plate - i managed to burn my oesophagus with my malaria medicine (i have now learnt NOT to ignore the instructions about not taking it before lying down...) so eating is very painful and i am beginning to appreciate my health while i have it!!!

Hope you're all well, keep emailing - i'll get time to read it eventually!!

alex : )

Yup, i did make it back!!

Hello lovely people! It's now halfway through lunch, and all is going smoothly - the office is open a bit earlier than usual and there's nobody about at all!! Unheard of...

I just got a great surprise - I have been hearing bleating sounds all morning, and just assumed that one of Joe's sheep had escaped, but as I investigated round my dorm where the noise was louder, I found a billy goat!!! I think it's part of the FCD school's new project - they did tell me they were planning on rearing a few goats and/or pigs, but the latest I'd heard was that they just wanted pigs. I'm so happy though, a goat already!! I've been thinking a lot about having goats here as we have so much extra grass, and a few others are keen on the idea (Dr Tim has even taken to calling me "goat girl"), but I'm not sure that's what God wants me to do the the second half of this year - there are so many other projects I could get involved in. I don't finish DTS til February anyway so not much point wasting any energy on the idea yet, but it's just so exciting that we have a goat! yay!
Can you tell that's made my day?!!

Ok, so where was I - I mentioned Lilian's fundraiser which was a coffee night with the Tongans dancing, Nixon and Becky, Susan, Milly and Lilian singing and Simon and Judith from Discovery doing a silly mind-game type thing, and Emma Msaki (one of our DTS staff from Tanzania - have I mentioned him? He's crazy and I love him so much!) being the MC.

Then on Friday instead of our simple half-way day party, they took us to Kingfisher which is a hotel resort with a swimming pool and beautiful gardens!! It was amazing! The boys spent hours with Katy's camera, posing for pictures....they are so unlike English boys, it's unreal!

Msaki left early on Saturday morning to go back home to Tanzania for a week - he has a wife and 2 small kids, and I don't know how he manages to survive so much time apart from them - I'm glad he's got some time with them now. We called him yesterday when we met for small group (Peace, Robert, Emma Mugaya the school leader and me) and he sounded really happy to be back - we miss him though, he's such a big character!

On the weekend I went to Kakira market with Peace and we bought a pineapple for 500 shillings - that's about 15p!!!! It was delicious, we ate our fill last night : )

This week in class we've been learning about the importance of knowing God's word and the battle of the mind, guarding our thoughts against bad desires. Philippians 4:8 says "Fix your thoughts on what is true and honourable and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned from me and heard from me and saw me doing, and the God of peace will be with you." And no, that doesn't mean that Christians are saints and never think wrong thoughts, but as our teacher says - you can't stop birds from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building a nest there!!

Another thing I learnt from her was a more plausible explanation for the war in Israel - right now I can't find the right words to describe what I've learnt, but for those of you who believe in God, please read Psalm 122 - from verse 6 it says "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. May all who love this city prosper. O Jerusalem, may there be peace within your walls and prosperity in your palaces. For the sake of my family and friends, I will say, "Peace be with you." For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek what is best for you, O Jerusalem." The war that's going on is a spiritual battle between the forces of darkness and the Kingdom of God, and we need to pray! God doesn't want this war, and He's asking us to join with Him and help fight against it by the power of prayer.

On a different note entirely, I have learnt some more Luganda and Tongan! I want you all to learn with me so you can understand when I come home and talk in my new mixed-up way...! So, "kwa gala nyo" means "I love you so much" in Luganda, and "fiefia" is "happy in Tongan. Let me do it in a list:

Luganda:
was'os'o'tiya = good morning
waanji = yes

Tongan:
po'uli a = good night
sio pogipogi = see you in the morning
mohe nonga = sleep with peace (merino also means peace!! if only the sheep were peaceful too...)
ofa atu = i love you
malo ngawe lahi = well done / thank you for what you are doing
kata = laugh
lahi = much (like kata lahi, mohe lahi = too much sleep!)

can you tell Tongan is easier than Luganda?! Hena actually taught me a few more phrases but I forgot them already...

Ok, that's it for now, gotta go for small group!

love alex : ) (mata malimali = face, smile!)

Hurrah!!!

I can't believe it's been 3 weeks since I last managed to write anything...crazy! I've been out here 7 weeks now, so that's almost half of the time I've been here...

anyway, so i have now expanded my repertoire of excuses!! i've had a couple of bouts of tummy trouble in the last 2 weeks - first it wasn't bad and only lasted a couple of days - i drank fruit juice and skipped food that i thought wouldn't be easy to digest, and it went away. but last week i ended up not eating much at all for 3 days, and ended up sleeping a lot as i was so weak - i even missed some of class and small group, which i felt was a bit pathetic of me considering i had no real reason to be ill! i wondered if it was the water - the UV light in the filter hasn't been working all the time, and someone said the storage drum might need a clean, so i have just been drinking boiled water and have been fine for over a week now : ) and apparently the drum has now been cleaned and the filter fixed, so i will brave it again tomorrow...don't watch this space too much, it may be a while before i can write again, hahaha!
This week it seems like everything has been against me using the internet - i was either busy during break times, or there was already someone here...and yesterday there was randomly a password page preventing me from using the computer! So I really am thrilled that i can gabble away to anyone who is bored enough to read...

We did have the party for Susan and Nixon, and it was also Matty's (Becky's little 5-yr-old) and Lilian's (Hena the Tongan's roommate) birthday, so it was a great night - pretty much everyone on the whole base came! Then last Weds we had a fundraising night for Lilian, as she's getting married in December and over here they have "Introductions" which is a whole day of formal speeches, processions and food that brings both sides of families and their friends together. Her introduction was on Saturday, and although I couldn't go as I had other commitments, I heard all about it and my roommates Roslyn, Milly and Susan took lots of pictures on my camera. (which you may see next year, i STILL can't put them on here!!) Lilian's fiance and his family didn't turn up til 6pm although a lot of the guests had arrived at 8am!!! And apparently it was considered a good thing that he showed up at all - it seems that it's common for the fiance not even to come!!!!!! Reason #2 not to get married out here.... (#1 is that it just costs so much in time and money!)

gotta go to class, maybe i can continue later, maybe not for another few months - who knows? that's all part of the fun!!

hope you're all well, thanks again for emails and texts, and good job to all you fellow cow people and the Stock1st lot - i know things are tough for you all right now with both FMD and Bluetongue, i was shocked to hear it has actually come now after all the fear about it for so many years...keep going, i'm thinking of you and i miss you so much!

alex : )

hope y'all are appreciating my stories...

hey again, just a quick message this time (really!) - i'm at "Fastnet" in town, which really is amazingly fast - i think i might faint from shock when i get home and use broadband though, it still takes a couple of minutes to load this page. And, excuses, excuses - but i can't even load my photos onto this computer, so you'll have to wait til i can borrow Katy's computer next week and try to post them then, or maybe email them if it takes too long to upload them.

One thing that may shock you is i'm actually jogging every morning!! i felt so unfit as we just sit around most of the day, and there's a football field and a rough field below that where nobody can see me or hear me puffing away as long as i go early enough....!

We had Susan's birthday yesterday - she's in my dorm, and also one of my trainee DTS staff, and she's lovely! Sadly, there was no time to make a cake, but it's Nixon's birthday on Weds so we'll try to recruit American Sarah who makes the BEST cakes ever...Tues is a free pm unless Sakeasi puts me on the rota to cook dinner. We're also having a "halfway-day" party in a couple of weeks (next week is week 5, the whole lecture phase is 12 weeks) So today I am laden down with a zillion party and cake-making things, the bus ride home should be interesting!! I have Pip with me though, she's staying over with us tonight, yay! And also Eeltje (pronounced "Iltsy") from Friesland who's on the Foundations of Community Development (FCD) course. It's fun having someone to talk about cows and Friesian horses to! And now all you unbelievers will have to accept that I didn't make up a country, Friesland really does exist and he is living proof!! (As if the Friesian cows, horses and sheep weren't evidence enough....what are you like?! hahaha)


ok now i have to go, or i'll be late back and might get told off!!

will keep working on the photos, i'm sorry! Hope you guys are all well, and enjoying your speedy internet and permanent electricity.....no, i'm not missing England that much really!

alex : ) xxxx

The girl of many names...

I just wanted to post up the thing that makes me laugh most in this place - everyone seems to have a problem with my name!!!! They either can't accept that Alex can also be a girl's name, or they forget what it is! So I now just answer to whatever name is given to me - Katy, Hannah, Rachel, Rose, Charles (yup, really - but I just respond by calling him Alex) Kibonzo (Swahili for "cartoon" - i like that one!) and most recently, Erin and Gemma!

Oh, and while I'm mentioning funny things, I have to tell this story of what happened the first weekend I was here...to appreciate the story, you should know that Western Ugandans pronounce the letter "L" as "R" (so my name is often "Arex"...don't even think about trying it though, i WILL beat you when i get back, jakukuba NYO!)
So, as I was on my way to the kitchen to wash my breakfast mug, I noticed the boys on my DTS were also finished with their tea so I offered to wash their mugs as well (yup, I still love washing up, even with the crazy way they do it here with plaited string scourers and blue soap bars!) and I got the response, "be breast"....I was a bit shocked until I figured the language thing out, I did NOT expect to hear something resembling "thank you, big breasts" from an African Christian!!

Prayer requests and introducing the people of Hopeland...

Miracles do happen - not only are there enough people washing up from lunch to prevent me getting stuck in the kitchen, but also the computer is free and internet is working!!!!

Firstly, I wanted to describe the various ministries that are based here in Jinja - then maybe you can pray more specifically for the work that goes on here, and for the people involved.
"Torch" is aimed at community regeneration, and consists of a medical team based in town with an occupational therapist, a short-term physio called Pip (who is also from England and just graduated from Sheffield!) and also Dr Tim who lives here on the base with his wife Jackie and thier kids (I think I may have mentioned them before, they have some sheep, a couple of pigs, chickens and 2 German Shepherds called Poppy and Rach). There is also American Sarah who lives here and travels out to work with another lady from town, making friends with the prostitutes and counselling them, and helping them learn more about Jesus and the Bible in general. There are some other people involved who I don't know, plus a couple of nurses who are both called Rachel, strangely enough, who are coming back from England soon. I still don't know very much about the project, but a lot of it is to do with HIV education and treatment, and also Pip was telling me that she's been treating a lot of children with severe brain damage caused by epilepsy, helping their muscles to build strength and memory again.

Discovery Centre is a place for groups of children from the war-torn North to have a week of respite from the overcrowded "displaced people's camps" - although the rebels of the "Lord's Resistance Army" have been disbanded and mostly arrested, there are thousands of children with horrific mental trauma as they were made to do things like cut off their own family members' lips or suffer the same fate themselves. Some were also made to "marry" the rebel generals and bear children while they were still children themselves...I can't begin to describe how horrible the whole thing was, and scarily enough there are similar situations still going on in other countries. I think you should all watch the dvd called "An Unconventional War" or google "Joseph Kony" - that will properly explain the story of what's been happening in this country over the last 10 years or so.
I was told that there's meant to be a team from the Philippines coming soon to train people as counsellors for the children to help them come to terms with their experiences, but they haven't arrived yet.
One major issue with bringing these groups of children is that the distance is quite large and the roads are terrible, and both times we've had a group here, their bus has been held up on the way back up North, - it has always turned out ok, but please pray that the travelling process would be easier as i'm sure it's a hindrance to helping more children!
Another ongoing project at the Discovery Centre is the local kids' football team - they come here every evening, 6 days a week, for training and matches. Franco, one of my fellow students, is their official coach but because he's so busy on DTS with the rest of us, an American girl called Asheley is being left to cope with most of it on her own!

The third project that I know a little bit about it the street kids ministry, which is run by the team from Tonga. There are of 8 them - the leaders are a married couple, Patoni and Lupe, who have a 4-month-old baby Lavenia, and Sakeasi who is both crazy (in a good way) and incredibly sharp - I have learnt a lot from him already as he always seems to have the right thing to say. Then there is Hena, who is beautiful inside and out - she has a massive heart and is always smiling and caring for people, and shares the responsibility of looking after baby Lavenia. her room is just across the grassy classroom "garden" from mine, and next door to American Sarah's, so I see them both a lot. And last but not least are the 3 "boys", Fine, Faone and Lopeti who are all great fun in their own way. They share a room with John (the charcoal guy). At the moment, the men are going into town and the surrounding villages just building relationships with the kids there, playing volleyball and basketball and chatting with them. Sometimes they go out at night, because the daytime "street kids" are not all homeless - some are made to go out begging by their parents. I'm not sure how often, but every now and then they bring a group of the kids to spend a week here on the base, and Lupe and Hena also play with them and I think the aim is to teach them basic farming and cooking skills and get them into schools, so they can have a future. The Tongans' English is not fantastic, and I haven't spent that much time with them so I haven't quite figured out exactly what the plans are yet, but I will let you know when I do!
They do a great series of Tongan / Polynesian dances which they perform as a fundraiser sometimes, and also in churches when they are invited...if i ever get the photo and video uploader to work, you can see for yourselves, otherwise you'll just have to wait til I get home next year!

The schools are going back next week, and there is also a preschool here so things will be busy again soon! The main prayer requests for Hopeland generally are for the children and young people that come here, for the staff that they would be listening to God's guidance both for their ministries and also in relating to each other, and for financial provision!

Please also pray for our local area, Kakira and Wairaka - I went to church in Kakira 2 days ago and we walked through a real slum-type area right beside the church building, where there were huge metal drums of liquor being distilled everywhere and a really depressing atmosphere. I'm sure there are already some plans for outreach by that church, but please pray that there would be more links between the church and their neighbours - I felt awful walking past all the poverty in my nice church clothes.

Also, in November the Commonwealth leaders are meeting here in Uganda, including our Queen! One of the base leaders was concerned about so many powerful people with opposing ideas and views meeting together, so we are praying about it - please join in! You know how useless I am about anything political, I have no idea but I'm sure you all know much more about it than me.

Gotta go to Bible Study, I'll carry on later! (maybe.....)

Alex : )

Mukama jebaziwe!

Yeeha, i am FINALLY online again for all of 5 mins - i think young fred is itching to lock up the office so i'd better not waste time, i don't want to take advantage of his niceness! i am so happy, hence my title - it means "Praise the Lord" in Luganda (probably the only good and uselful phrase i have learnt here, although actually "i'm hungry/thirsty" (enjala enumma/enyonta enumma) also counts, but otherwise the only things i seem to tell people are jakula ga! or kambala ge! which means "i'll show you!" or "i'll show them!" (as in, the threatening way of saying it!) or even jakukuba nyo, kakati!!! (i'll beat you lots, right now!) by the way, those spellings are phonetic, i'm sorry for any of you Baganda that read this, maybe you can correct me John, I know you're reading!!!!

Ok, so these past couple weeks i have learnt to make chappatis, met safari ants which basically are highly organised evil ants which march along in a long string and chase after you to bite you if you disturb them - somehow i have escaped their wrath so far but i'm sure they'll be back to get me soon! also my good friend Sarah Nigeria (as opposed to Sarah USA who is still here) left to go back home, and everyone misses her so much and is fighting back tears (i hope you're reading this crazy girl!) we had a mad packing day for her last tues as she found out that afternoon that her flight had changed to 5am weds, and i'm guessing she's back in panic mode today as she's headed off to ghana tomorrow for her next YWAM school.

Class has been going well for me, i feel like we're getting to know each other better and i have clarified in my own mind what prayer and intercession are (intercession is standing in the gap between us and God, so not only does Jesus do this for us, but we can intercede for those that don't know Jesus yet by praying for them and helping them to see his love) we had so many definitions of prayer that i can't list them all here, and we also talked a lot about feeding the spirit on a balanced diet, just like feeding out bodies correctly - so basically we need to make sure we aren't just praying or just reading / meditating on the Bible, singing praises to God or appreciating His creation, but all of those things. And in church yesterday I was reminded of what i learnt in my orientation at Holmsted, that there is a huge difference between "guilt" that we feel - there is condemnation from Satan, which tells us that we are horrible and useless and generally bad and there's nothing we can do about it but we should hate ourselves and lock oursleves away; and there is conviction from God, which is specific about one or more things that we have done wrong but can be put right with His help, and He tells us how. Hope that is helpful for some of you too, I feel like a huge weight has been lifted now i know i don't have to feel guilty about half of what i used to worry about!

outside of class, we have been playing cards a lot, watching movies and i have been playing with the dogs and talking to the cows as usual....and yesterday after church i went with another good friend, John, to check his charcoal - he is making a load this week, and when it's ready he said i could watch it be harvested (he said it was a man's job and i couldn't really help, but i'll be the judge of that, mwahaha!!!) i will go down in a bit and take pictures, and maybe one of these days i'll manage to post some up - it just takes time, and for the power and internet to be working, and those things rarely happen at the same time!!! for now you can go to katy saunders' page on www.facebook.com, she has most of them up already.

the sad thing about this place is that even here, where we have our basic needs met, there is still such a lack of money for things like school fees, phone credit to contact home, and even important things like medical bills - one of my teachers has a horrible rotten tooth that has been causing her pain for a week, and we only just got together enough money for her to go to the dentist today. So although i don't want to write begging letters too often, if you feel you can give even £1 then please either get in touch with my mum or send a cheque payable to YWAM, to YWAM Jinja, PO Box 739, Jinja, Uganda. This is also the contact address for me if you want to send me a snail-mail letter - i might even get it before an email!!! In case you have any doubts, the money will go straight to whatever you ask it to go to - in my next post i will write more about the projects going on here. There are no admin costs - money for admin gets collected separately, so it's not like other charities.

i think that's all for now, hope you're all well and thank you for reading this and for your comments and emails, i am trying to reply to as many as possible! by the way, my mobile is much more reliable - you can text or call any time, it's +256773075192. It's quite cheap to text, cheaper for you than for me anyway, and i really love hearing from you so please get in touch when you can! Big thanks to Kym for your regular updates, you're such a star and i miss you loads! : )

love to y'all,
alex xxxx : )

please let this work now...

hurrah! how ironic - in Cuckfield I couldn't write on this page, and now i'm in the middle of Africa (literally) and it's working!!!
Olio tiya - that means hi and how are you, it's about all i've learnt so far! i can also say jebale (well done) and cow is ente....this language learning pattern seems to be echoing the way i learnt hungarian!!
Hope you guys are all ok - thank you for all the emails and sorry for being so lame at replying - my attempts at checking emails have all failed! the internet is so incredibly sloooow here it's not even funny. I think my patience will grow exponentially this year...i hope so, anyway!
I am settling in well so far, and they are keeping us busy - we start the day at 6am for our individual "quiet time" just between us and God, and have breakfast at 7.30 ....in theory! Class begins at 8am sharp (also in theory - usually breakfast is so late that we only start eating at 7.55 so it's rare to have everyone seated in the classroom before 8.15! so far we have learnt the things that this organisation, YWAM, values (kind of an expanded mission statement) and have also had 2 days' teaching on discipleship. It's been very interesting and i've learnt a lot, but the style of teaching is so different that it seems to take about 3 hours to make one point,with lots of sidetracking along the way, and we only have 3 1/2 hours of class every day, so it's very different from uni and quite tiring at times.
After lunch (usually beans or cabbage with either rice, potato/kumara or posho which is made from maize flour and is like very very stodgy semolina!) we have small group or work duty, which is usually tidying our little area - so far we have "slashed" the grass in the central garden by the classroom, swept the passages and paths, cleared the weeds from the passages behind the building and swept out the classroom - in half an hour it'll be time to mop and clean the toilet block. I'm glad we get time to do some manual work as well - i'd go mad if we had to study all day!! we also do games on a thursday - football in a skirt was quite a challenge (it had nothing to do with being unfit of course!!)
we're also supposed to keep a journal of what we learnt in each class and what God is challenging us with - we've had all week to do it but i haven't had time yet! usually we'll hand it in for marking every monday and get it back on friday to do over the weekend. i'm a bit scared about having other assignments, memory verses and writing songs and dramas - when on earth will we get the time?!!!
having said that, we have enjoyed free evenings so far, and have watched a few movies on peoples' laptops so i guess that will have to end for the next 5 months :-s

i think i deserve a clap for getting this far without mentioning the cows!!! there are 3 cows and a bull plus a zillion chickens and turkeys kept on the base, and Dr Tim and Jackie's family have some dogs, sheep and pigs too. we have a resident stray dog named Simba and there is a team from Tonga who are here to work with the street children on Jinja town, who have a cute little terrier called Musky - she's just a puppy and will chew anything...arms, toes, skirt...sometimes it's hard to walk around because she's always in the way! but i love her really - she's learning manners slowly!
anyway, back to the cows - all you farming/vet folk will be pleased to hear they are all BCS 2.75 - 3!! that is partly due to the fact that the grass is very lush, they are moved to a fresh patch several times a day as they are just tethered by a rope around their necks, and the best cow Angel aka Wendy gives around 8-10litres a day!!! Funnily enough the guy that looks after the farm is on the DTS with me, so we've had lots of chats about the different ways people treat cows - his family has a herd of 30, pretty huge when you think that a family with one cow is considered very rich! I will post photos very soon, assuming it will work...

so i should probably mention the people too...my roommate Katy is from Ohio, and we already chatted via email and facebook before we left home, plus bonding last week at the base in Cuckfield. She is lovely and has the most beautiful curly dark hair : ) we also got 2 new roomates yesterday who are going to be part-time staff on our course as well as working in another area of the base - they are local girls named Millie and Susan, and are both very nice and great fun too! Then we have 3 boys who are also fairly local, Nixon, Franco and "Robert Milk" (the cow guy in case you're feeling a bit slow!) and the full-time staff, Emma Mugaya the school leader, crazy Emma Msaki from Tanzania (Emma is a boy's name here!!! short for Emmanuel...and they think i'm strange for being called Alex, most people have never met a female Alex before. hmmm) Job and lovely Becky who picked us up from the airport. She has 2 sons, 10-year old Moses and 4-year old Matty - they are so lovely, they run up to us and hug us all the time, and Moses is so good that the cheekiest thing he does is flick water at you! i say we send all those nasty English kids out here and teach them manners!!
We also made friends with some others who aren't on our course - "Sarah Nigeria" who is studying Family Ministry and is totally crazy, a bit like Yasmine! "Sarah US" from New Mexico, who works with street girls, and the Tongan lot - one of the girls, Henna, is especially nice and friendly although they are all lovely and cooked Sunday lunch for us! They are also cooking a big fish+chip dinner tomorrow night and having a traditional Tongan evening with dinner and a dance display to raise money for their staff fees.

I think that's enough for now, anyway it's time to get ready for small group time and then work duty and i need the loo...oh yes, the room facilities are quite funny, the loo is basically a hole in the ground but it actually flushes! and our beds have sticks attached at each corner for the mozzie nets, so it feels like you're sleeping in a four-poster bed like a princess...cold showers have been tough to get used to but it's ok once you're already wet - at least it's always warm here and will never be freezing like that time in Coldharbour when the boiler broke - brrrr!

anyway, i will read all your comments and emails next time, bye for now!

I can't make this thing work from here!!!! watch this space...

sleepy!

Thanks to all you guys who came to my leaving do last night - twas good! stupidly i have offered to muck out the horses this morning so have had 3 hours sleep....but amazingly still woke up before my alarm so i obviously don't need the rest!
Thought i'd post a few of my austria photos to make the page a bit more interesting, otherwise it will remain a bit dull for the next few weeks til I get some actual Africa ones...just killing time til i can wake Maryja up to come help me with the horses, i don't think she'll like me much if she has less than 4 hours sleep, she's not quite as weird as me (yet!)
then it'll be back to packing this afternoon, i'm almost ready to go!!!! starting to get scared now...

Is it Friday already? time to sleeeeeeeep!!!!!!

Come on people, please write summat!!! any old rubbish will do...this is hardly a high-quality page!!!!!
So....one step closer to Africa, still no more prepared - but at least I'm back in England, luckily I do not have cloven feet so should be ok to be exported safely :-p think i'll even leave Kym to keep up the good work with Star and baby Lexi so i can say I haven't even been on a farm.....what do you think mrs k?!!!

where does the time go....?

I have been up for 1 1/2 hours! and what have i achieved....hmmm. i am seriously itchy, having discovered Pilgrims' stable area is also a holiday spot for the local midges...thought i escaped that when i left Westways!! ah well, it's all good practice for Uganda...
if i stop dithering, i should be able to rehome all my stuff that's not joining me on the adventure - so maybe i should just shut up! let me see if i can put photos on this thing first....

it starts...

ok, so after an hour of faffing on the computer i STILL haven't done anything useful with my morning...other than set up this blog, which had better work now!!! please can some of you lovely people post me stuff so i know it's doing its job?!!
can't believe i go in 3 weeks!!!! and i get to meet my fabulous new teammate Katy in less than 2 weeks, yay! : )
better shut up and go do some sorting of junk....
talk to me, people! : )