Good Morning Ibanda!!

Our girls dorm of seven are now down to six due to a nightly flea attack. (If you are wondering; a mosquito net wont actually keep the fleas out, but rather in your bed.. ) Ida is doing fine in her new one-man suite, nicely situated wall to wall with ours. And when there are creepy noises in the African night, the old room mates are just a phone call away. Ibanda is full of dangerous lions and mountain gorillas at night, or at least some dogs having an extremely loud snort-howling get-together just outside our window, preferably in the middle of the night!

The day starts with a few more sick-leaves. This sadly includes one of our pit latrines. It´s a good thing we have been allowed to use the nuns' WC just across the street. This place is in all modesty the closest to heaven you´ll get bathroom wise in Ibanda. Runes recommendation: podcast in ear and a short trip to the monastery before breakfast for the perfect start of the day.

After digging into our boiled eggs, strawberry jam, chapatis and bananas, we head for the site. Sickos are left behind, toilet paper close at hand, nursing bottles with their own version of breakfast; orange yellowish nutritional liquid, bought specially for this type of running rump situation. (Good foresight Ragnhild and Andreas!)

Walking to the site is an experience of its own. There seems to be more children every day rushing down to the road to greet us with their “How are you?”s an “How is life?” It's school holiday, and there are kids everywhere; playing football, balancing wheels with sticks, running after mzungus, and of course, fetching water for their mums.



Being an only child myself I find it hard to imagine what it must be like to have 10 or maybe even 15 siblings! No wonder there exists a special name system. Janet (one of our super building girls) explained to me how every child is given a name according to witch number in line he or she is, weather you are a child of the second or first wife, and the child born before you was a boy or a girl. It is all a bit complicated, but I'm sure once you've learned it, it makes your family life a lot easier. Just imagine family get togethers with your 200 uncles and aunts!


The holes we dug yesterday are still there, and now its time to find out where to cast the ring foundation. Norwegians obviously love leveling so much that we could do it all day. Some of the CDTS lads are wondering when were going to stop playing about with pieces of string and actually get down to building something. When we finally start nailing formwork together it feels like at great relief from all the “thinking and planning”.





Amritha, Tuva and myself (Kikki) have by the way spent so much time together that we're starting to assimilate each other. Today we've dug into our laundry bags and found some matching pink-orange sweats. A color looking good on all skin tones from luminescent/glow in the dark (in the middle) to golden and a becoming brown (each flank).


After a hard day of work there's nothing like strolling home in the sudden dark, getting a cold jerrycan shower and sitting down to yet another goat-rice-potatoe meal. The electricity's gone, but with our headlights on we sit pealing onions to spike up our meal. By now we've drunk 200 liters of bottled water, 40 (?) liters of soda (mostly coke, not so much of the miranda burping stuff) and had one packet of biscuits out of the CK shop. The chapati-man must have quadrupled his income, and I myself have managed to empty the village for the local Sportsman cigarettes, and am now on to the more exotic safari brand. Life is good! (with the exception of some of them rumps)


The day ends with Andreas' triumph of repairing his Mac's charger with some sports tape, pocketknife and a sukkerbit. Amazingly enough it works and even more amazing; no one makes any Macgyver puns.

Kikki (making bad puns all the time)