not even African timing...

Oh my days! Im so rediculously slow and have been so so so busy so apologies once again for taking lo9ng to update the blog.. as the title says.. its not even african timing, its just pure slowness..
Anyway... so its been a long time and so much has happened.. each and every day has brought SO SO many things to do and be involved with and I havent even updated my last week in kenya... let alone what Ive been doing here in Uganda...
So... my last week of kenya.. I cant remember everything that I did now.. which sucks a bit.
the last week i was in kenya I got a bit ill.. i think from exhaustion or worrying about leaving, anyway it wasnt too too bad but i was so tired.. I stayed at home in ngong and just stayed with the girls (who im missing so much) helped them with there work, sorted potatoes, pealed potatos... did some harvesting in the shamba (farm) and sorted out my washing and stuff.. I MADE myself ok on the last tuesday i was there so i could go to the streets of mlango kubwa for the last time, I wanted to see alan before I left - especially as the only time id seen him before was the awful incedent i mentioned in my previous post.
I went on a prayer walk before going to the streets and found the kids (AND ALAN!) there, aaaaaaaah he was so happy to see me, and proceded straight away to hug me and hug me so much and said "Aunty Rachel Im so sorry I didnt talk to you last week, I was scared and embarrassed and I had no clothes on", I said to him that it didnt matter that he didnt talk to me and I just was so worried about him and wanted to check that he was ok - and that i had noticed that he didnt have any clothes on and he laughed.we had a good talk about the possibility of him going home, but that day I couldnt do anything - im hoping so much that the team will work with him in my absence - he PROMISED me he would go back home, but im worried about him because he has a strong attatchment there - he has family close to those streets and yet there is something evil always pulling him back to that place. hes ten and just shouldnt be there.
So then after that i was just at the house for a few days not feeling so good - and dreading leaving the girls - on the previous sunday before I left we took one of the guys who had been staying at the house with us to the airport to go back to wales. he had been around for 3 weeks. I found it so hard seeing the girls crying because they didnt want him to leave, and it made me so so anxious about leaving also.
On the friday I went to the office to say my bye's to everyone there - unfortunately most of them were off, but I recieved a lovely card and some even lovlier cake! I left a thankyou card with them appreciating there work and friendship and left some money to buy the boys at joseph Kangethe rehabilitation centre a lolly each.. they love lollies so much! and never get them!
Sunday was an awful awful day and i just felt so bad and emotional the whole day, i cried for so many hours altogether and held back so many more hours worth of tears, I was trying so hard to be strong so that the girls wouldnt be so upset but i was a wreck! the girls were crying so so so so much and I felt awful, I had felt so protective of them and even felt kida like a mother towards them - they were my girls! leaving them was awful and i dont want to write much more about it cos I still miss them so much.
It was good and hard my first day bvack in uganda - the flight was just 1 hour so when i got there i was still upset from leaving the girls- and that was difficult to deal with mostly because everyone here was expecting me to be same old excited Rachel, people wondered why i didnt seem as happy as expected - it wasnt that I wasnt! It was just i was so full of so many different and conflicting emotions!
So I got here and caught up with everyone- which was awesome, my friend laura from the first time I was in Uganda is back here for a year and I haven seen her since May last year shes from Canada so its awesome to have her around.

On the second day here I decided to visit a project I heard about through a friend once Id arrived. Its called hands for hope and is not far from the guesthouse, they work with the poorest families in a small nearby slum area and give the small children free education and enable small business loans and sponsers and schooling for older children, its good and is run by a man who once worked in Havant waitrose! haha!! small world! it was good there.
while i was at that project I had a call from the gate man at watoto babies home (who i didnt know!) and then laura, saying that there was a boy called kaggwa at the gate trying to find me!!
Kaggwa joseph is my friend who is an EX street kid, and it was a pure miracle that he found me, as he had spoken to laura whos the only volunteer out of over 30 volunteers at the babies home that knows me. Anyway, he had read in an email from me that id be arriving in kampala the previous sunday and left the village he had been resettled in, to come to town to find me. and 2 days later he finds me - obviously there was no other way to contact me as the only we have ever been able to contact had been internet and as you know that hasnt been very regular for me!! but anyway he found me and it was so awesome to see him again, telling me about his schooling and his village and everything he has been doing, he has come on so so much its amazing and such a transformation!! we hing out for the day and he refused to go back to the village yet, so the next day we went to the field to the street project i was helping at last time i was in uganda - the place were i had first met him, and my friend charles. wow it was good to be back there with all those lovely kids, was talking and relating to some of the boys - there were maybe only 5 there who had been there in december and january when i was last there.
When I was here before me, joseph, charles, and another boy called joseph spent a lot of time togther, to cut a long story short the OTHER joseph stole my camera... so unfortunately i no longer have a camera to take any pictures while in Uganda... the good thing is that id ACCIDENTLY taken the kenya memory card out so all of my photos from kenya were safely in my room and not in the hands of my confused friend who made the bad decision to steal the camera. anyway, i have more that 30 street kids hunting for him day and night with my crime reference number in their back pockets. theyv had him arrested twice, and yet hes escaped twice... we shall just have to see if its third time lucky and if its still in his possesion.
So the next day I went with joseph to his village were he stays with his cousin - the place was AWESOME, maybe 2-3 hours drive from town and then 20 mins on a motorbike through thick farm land and JUNGLE! im told at night they even have leopards! man!!!
The place was so good, so far from everything and anyone! hes cousin is a pastor and has a small house were he takes orphans as well as an on site school for them, it was such a nice little project. there land was so big with all home grown foods imaginable, and even there own freshwater spring... and so many animals inclusing pigs, goats, cows, chickens and ducks! was a beautiful place and i hope to go back there to visit him before I go home. (hopefully I can borrow a camera and capture the beauty!)

hmmm.... so thennnnnn............i was just helping at the street project and spending my spare time visiting the boys in the slums with charles...

Then, on sunday I had the opportunity to go to the other project thats quite far away that i told you all about, to help the irish man whose setting up his charity. its called new begginings. I travelled for around 3 hours with him and his friend to get to the site in a area called nakasongola. wow... what an amazing experience, i came back yesturday night but i didnt want to leave! i spent 3 days and two nights there! the place had no running water and ran from a generator for electricity for a few hours in the evenings, and had pit latrines (those toilets that are purely just holes!) but the children were AWESOME, in the house he has built there (2 houses 3rd building built over the next few days) there are around 10 kids. but there are always more from the community hanging about. hes taken some from the streets (one boy i connected with so so much was a boy called nicholas who he took from the streets of kampala) and some are orphans, some are just from poor families who cant take care of them. They stay in the house, and they get education from the school thats just across the field and about 2 minutes walk away. for 2 days i taught in that school... i was teaching baby class- for tiny children from the age of 3/4.
Im definately definately going back to nakasongola at least a few more times before I leave - i didnt want to leave, the kids didnt want me to leave and even the guys and working said I should stay. I loved hugging the kids and one boy Steven loved having his hair stroked - just small things to give the affection that theyv so so missed out on.
So il be going back there, and am currently making plans to go to marachi, in busia ditrict, kenya. (going back to kenya i know!) but its closer to kampala than nairobi. I really want to find Hamissi, the boy from the rehabilitation centre in kenya, I just want to make sure he really did get back home, want to connect with the mother, see how I can help them, and link them with the charity in kenya so they can maybe hopefully get long term support.

SO!! thats my update! LONG!! I know!! Hope its ok!! and I hope to hear from you all soon, thankyou so so so much for your support, even knowing uv read this means so much to me.

Love you all and thinking of you. must sleep! on a mission tomorrow to find a luganda bible for the kids in nakasongola and then will go to the other project close to hear in namwongo.

Lots of love, Rachel x x x x x x x x :-)