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