Bake and Bitch

hey guys!

theres been so much drama at the lodge this week! i dnt really want to write about specific things but lets just say there have been lots of hook ups, bitching and bed hopping!

towards the beginning of the week my new roommate, Astra was getting a lift into town on the back of a truck, but when she was climbing down she fell and hurt her arm quite badly. when she got back to the lodge we made a sling for it, and we were going to just leave it like that but when dennis saw it he made her go to hospital. she wasnt a big fan of that and when she got there moses apparently started jerking her arm around which was really painful for her, to the point of making her cry, but he still didnt stop. he declined to x-rayit, saying that he would do it the following day if she was still in pain, and sending her off with strong anti-inflammatory painkillers, valium, some other random steroid thing and menthol balm of all things! that night dennis brought dr moses to the lodge to look at her again as he was still worried, but she didnt want to be examined by him again which i think was reasonable, and moses was completely wasted anyway! the only good thing that came out fo that was that i made him tell me what all the drugs were as they werent labelled properly and astra didnt want to take them without knowing what they were.

the next day she kept saying it was ok and she didnt need to go for an x-ray mainly becuase she didnt want to be examined again, but the day after that we managed to persuade her to go back as she was still in a lot of pain. we went to the hospital around lunchtime and the place was basically deserted. we couldnt find moses and nobody wanted to help us, so we went straight to xray but there was nobody there. we eventually went back to the front desk where the lady was completely unhelpful and told us to go to town for a private x-ray. we were expecting that to be really expensive but her insurance would cover it, so off we went and got a private one, which was a much more pleasant place and only cost 20,000 shillings, which is about 5 pounds! fortunately the xray showed that it wasnt broken and its now getting better.

Alan, another of the volunteers who came with his 16 year old foster son, brought with him a solar oven that he had designed himself. he built it when he got here but unfortunately it didnt get very hot, so he took the oven part of it out, which is essentially just a big steel box, and built bricks around it with a space for a fire underneath to make a proper oven, so every day this week i have been making bread and cakes fresh for us to have for breakfast and afternoon tea, which has been going down a storm, but i wont pretend its not labour intensive. a few days ago i taught the staff how to make 'mzungu bread' and 'mzungu cake' which they were pleased with. denis says that making it with them once isnt enough though, i have to set a test! i think im just going to give them the ingredients and watch them to check they really know what to do.

on thursday a group of us went to Mbarara to buy ingredients for baking and other things that you cant get in Ntungamo, we even found heinz baked beans and maple syrup! ive made amrican pancakes for breakfast a few mornings too!

i dont have much else to tell you really, im getting so comfortable being here it doesnt feel that exceptional anymore, it just feels like normal life. i dont know how im going to cope when i go back to the UK! i cant believe ive only got a week and a half left at the lodge as well, i still feel like ive only just got here despite being the longest running volunteer by about 3 weeks now. ive been planning my time in kampala and jinja really well too, im going rafting again, doing horseriding and maybe quad biking, and doing some work in an orphanage in the city. exciting times!