Friday 16th August- Amy and Megan

Half way through the trip today so we hope you are not missing us too much! It all began with the same carbohydrate ridden breakfast of toast and marmalade to our delight! My journey to the school was definitely interesting (Amy). Due to there not being enough seats, I sat in the front of the bus next to the driver on a fold out chair and spent the whole rather uncomfortable journey almost sat on our translator or having the gear stick rammed into my leg, to my disapproval!

We then began the penultimate day of Summer School with a fun filled day of education and craft. The children in our class (Megan, Amy, Clemy and Rachel) are beginning to become more talkative, this is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a great thing that the children feel comfortable around us to talk and laugh with their friends but on the flip side this also makes them harder to control! As a class we recapped all we had learned throughout the week, which included topics like animals, clothes, body parts, colours & shapes, places of the world and the alphabet. Being able to teach the children English is a really rewarding if slightly tiring task, as we know this is knowledge which will benefit them in years to come and it’s an amazing opportunity to be able to shape and hopefully improve these children’s lives through the Summer School and all the work we are doing on the project. 

This afternoon myself, Sophie, Chloe, Alex and Laura took it upon ourselves to tackle the gardening. In the previous days we created the trefoil outline and then created another flowerbed of the same shape but today was planting day. We were given two palm trees in which the roots had fused themselves to the bags they were in to my annoyance (Amy)! I therefore began to rip the bag off and after 20 minutes I had taken both of the bags off but was covered in mud even more so than usual!

Also on this afternoon’s agenda was painting the mural on the school building which had been chalked on the walls in the morning, it was good to complete a task and see it through from start to finish. The building now looks great with brightly coloured flowers, letters and educational pictures. However after an hour of intense work we were rained off by a torrential downpour that really reminded us we were here in the rainy season! The weather has been timed unfortunately for our work on the project but we have managed to persevere and are on course to finish the work that the school wants us to complete! (Megan)

When it rains it really does rain. We all took shelter in one of the classrooms but ended up with rain coming through the gaps for windows and had to put waterproofs on. After we finished we headed to a local house in the community to where we watched her make a traditional Ethiopian dish of endura and Alyx, Harriet, Emily and Rosemarie all had a go making it which was rather amusing but tasted good all the same!

It’s been another exhausting day here full of different challenges but we are persevering knowing that the opportunity we have is once in a life time (and we are home in 2 weeks back to carb free food!)