Secrets and Lies

The last few days have been a bit mental, and necessarily in a good way.

On Monday night everybody got back from safari which was nice, I hate it when the lodge is empty. There is a new guy who came on Monday too, called stuart. He’s about 35 and really down to earth, which is good, we need someone to diffuse all the bitching!

we had chips for dinner on monday,  so ive had the rare treat of nice food 3 days in a row.

for the past week or so, one of the younger male staff at the lodge had been making it apparent that he was interested in me. its not like i dont like him at all or anything, but i really didnt come here to get a ugandan boyfriend. he had wanted to dance with me a lot at Sals last friday, and i didnt really think anything of it, we were all dancing with everyone, and being staff from the lodge, they are supposed to understand the limits and also i would hope understand that we would much rather dance with them at Sals than dance alone, because that you makes you more vulnerable to unwanted advances to random african men. so anyway, the long and short of it is, i danced with Oz but i also danced with alex, Teacher MK and Amon. as far as i was concerned it didnt mean anything. 

on monday night Oz said he wanted to talk to me alone. i was a bit nervy about that because i didnt really want to have to turn him down and upset him. it turned out that declaring his undying love for me was only a very small part of his adgenda. we walked over and sat at school in the evening to have this talk, and he basically told me hat all of the other volunteers at the lodge hate me, that they are constantly bitching about me, and telling him he's crazy for liking me. he named a few specific people but also said that there was nobody who didnt feel that way about me. that was a bit of a blow really. i wasnt feeling welcome as it was but could just about persuade myself it was me being paranoid, not EVERYBODY hates me, etc, but there he was, claiming that he had been told all of this stuff.

the next thing he spoke about really shocked and upset me, and i still dont know how to deal with it. Amon is the volunteer co-ordinator, and although he's not really old enough to be any of our grandfathers, he is basically viewed as the grandfather figure of he lodge. he's really nice, knows a lot and looks after us. i obviously know him from last year and i am freinds with him on facebook. throughout the past year, whenever i am online he would come on chat and talk to me. i always just thought he was being nice. after i mentioned that i was coming back, he was always messaging me saying things like 'hello dear, have you fixed your flights yet?' again, just thought he was being nice. the only thing that i ever thought was slightly odd about Amon and his behaviour towards me was that when we were at Sals (which i don really think is his idea of fun) he was quite insistent about dancing with me, and was trying to grind with me. I'm not against griding with someone for a laugh, but when they are older than your mum thats just wierd. anyway, Oz tells me that before i arrived, Amon has been telling everyone that he has this girlfriend called Lucy Fordham who is coming to visit him for 2 months. a lot of the staff believed him as well, because i quite often sit next to amon in the evenings around the fire and talk to him. the only reason i did that was because he is a nice man and a familliar face, and interesting to talk to. 

after dropping that bombshell, Oz did then tell me that he was in love with me and asked if i loved him back. i told him that he couldnt possibly love me having known me for only 2 weeks, and tried my best to let him down gently. he seemed to accept that and thanked me for being honest, and then he swore me to secrecy about the whole conversation. i had no idea what to do and was really upset, so naturally i rang home in tears. my parents advice was to talk to Dennis, who runs the lodge and school. i havent spoken to him yet, and i dont know if im going to, i just thnk that all of this is out of his control, its not like he can UNsay what amon said, and he cant force the other volunteers to be nice to me. 

i basically just went to bed miserable, and ried to decide what to do. yesterday morning i got up and felt a bit better, and got really stuck into ome super boring paperwork. it took forever but did feel like i was being generally useful. i tried not to say anything to anyone, i dont want them to get annoyed with me any more than they are already. yesterday evening i spoke to Dannii, who i feel i can trust, and Brittany, and they both think i should speak to denis too. today all i ahve really done is come into town to get phone credit, money and to use the internet. im definitely going to go to school later and walk some kids home this evening.