Saturday 5th was spent celebrating one of the original crew, Eilish's birthday! We got her a cake and spent a night in jubilation at the new camp. All the new people are friendly and have meshed with the old group really well. On a different note I have managed to burn through a whole pen so far! I'm down a pen that was brand new when I started the trip. That's what I get for writing essays for journal entries!
Sunday 6th carries on the tradition of lazy Sundays. The newbies were quite restless all day, wanting to do something. They'll learn, in time, the ways of lazy Sunday. Bryony and I managed to be roped into showing the school children, who had just arrived, where the beach was and how to get to it. We both then did no activity for the rest of the day in true Sunday spirit!
Monday 7th was our first day working with the newbies at the school. I stuck to bricklaying in the hole (which is nearly done) and the newbies began some projects of their own. The original crew's dynamic hasn't been too badly affected by the swarm of people. We're all far too resilient for that! I have formed and maintained a dream team with two of the guys from the OG crew, Mike and Jonny, and we've got so much of the hole done ourselves now!
Tuesday 8th has been an exercise day. Along with work, I've begun running back from the school with Jonny & Mike and doing early morning exercises with a number of people around the camp. It's hard work but that's nothing new on this African voyage! Work continued with the dream team laying in more bricks. Another member, Victoria, has joined us and aced through a lot of the middle partition of the hole by herself! She's a real trooper.
Wednesday 9th rocked me up and down quite a bit! Instead of going to the two wildlife camps I am only going to one, Ndarakwai, for a four day wildlife program. Everyone has been shaken up by the news and we all had a long talk with the managers about the change and what was going to happen instead. The new camp manager, Gladiss, has been extremely helpful about it all and is organising extra community work in the village for us to make up for the reduced wildlife work. It's not the two weeks I was expecting but it's so much better than nothing at all!
Thursday 10th was a work day back to old school manual digging. The walls and central partition of the toilet hole have been completed! Congrats everyone who helped out with it this far! I was part of the team that now has the mission to clear away all the dirt and soil from around the hole so that we have plenty of space for moving on and beginning to work on the actual building.
The other teams have finished painting the inside of the classroom that I helped to re-floor. It's been a long haul for so many of our projects but I feel that we're seeing proper progress! It makes all the effort worth it when you see all that you've done.
Friday 11th has been a day of furious preparation. A number of us at the camp have organised a second safari trip as a supplement to the one that we will be doing at the end of July. It's been frantic because we only started organising it on Thursday! All of us raced from work into Tanga town to get our money, supplies and internet before getting back to camp for a briefing with the safari organiser. We're going to be doing a jeep ride one day and a boat tour the other! I can't wait to see all the animals!
Best wishes to all of you out there and I shall see you on the flip-side!
Glad to see you've worked out the software and the brick laying. Have a great time on the safari trip. We're all back from Corfu now. Had a great time and where the next bay north from where we went with you in 2012. Stay safe. Love Dad xxx
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