Day 13 – 25th June 2007
Next Morning, I literally jumped out of bed, refreshed and ready to work. I noticed everyone else seemed really tired and grumpy. And my ethusiasm for work weren’t going down well. Over breakfast, I whispered to Phil why everyone was grumpy and with a bemused grin, he told me that everyone has been up ALL night as everyone discovered there was another bat Colony hiding in the roof of our hut! Apparantly, the bats decided to play overnight and kept landing on the mosquito nets and tearing them apart and everyone was awake batting them off and chasing them outside. All throughout this time, I was fast asleep and oblivious to the commotion that was going on. Phil said that he had to bat the bats off my mosquito net and tried to wake me but I carried on sleeping! I had my hearing aids out throughout so I didn’t hear a thing from people shouting and screaming. Oops!
I think my punishment was duly dealt with when I was told that I would be working on the bloody concrete veranda floor. So armed with a mallet, I spent all day cracking the concrete and throughout I hummed to myself my favourite songs….sometimes to the annoyance of others. I was certainly feeling my muscles, blisters weren’t bothering me anymore and I coped well in the stifling heat but a cool breeze every now and again helped.
Also, I decided to cheer up some people by asking their advice on my flirting and cheesy chat up lines. Katie and Phil especially found this funny including the offensive chat up lines! Glad to cheer people up but the word ‘bat’ still caused frowns within the group. Oh dear, has the fate of the Paraa bats been decided? I didn’t have to wait long.
Now, in no way I advocated this and I was especially annoyed what happened. The bat colonies in both the hut and the school were dealt with extremely badly asd they were poisoned. Someone was employed by the school to spray the roof outside and inside and blocked some entrances up. Pretty soon, there were many bats clambering out in broad daylight and dropping onto the concrete floors below and twitching until they died. I was especially angrty that these bats, who no fault of their own resided in a place they thought ok, were cruelly killed off. They could have been dealt with in a more conserved and humane way. Perhaps to my original suggestion of blocking of one side of the school and smoking the bats out until all of them have gone and block off the other side. The bats would have then be forced to find another place. Later on, I helped with clearing up the dead bats and piling them onto the bonfire.
Because chemical poisoning was also happening in our hut, we had to move our stuff and pitch up tents to sleep overnight in. I pitched up a tent with Phil and we found that there were plenty of room inside to sleep – RESULT!
In the late afternoon, we did the Sexual Health Play again for the teenagers and sat in the Q&A session. I was not impressed that the teenagers didn’t seem to be bothered and were more interested in the football happening outside; or talking between themselves. The teachers didn’t even attempt to discipline them not even when some teenagers left the session completely. Also, I wasn’t impressed that the teachers kept asking questions and stating wrong facts to the kids. We had to correct them all the time. The group looked at each other and we were bewildered that the teenagers weren’t interested. At the end, I think a few kids got the whole thing and it’s better than nothing. Helen K shouted at one of the teachers when he said to the kids that in order for HIV testing, the wives should be tested as they were the ones bringing the disease to the population. He was duly corrected!
Played tennis with Nelson mandela again and he’s really good! He had the attitude of today’s Andy Murray!
The rest of the evening was spent talking with Helen K about the brain, twins, nightmares and surgical operations. Odd Combo!
Then bed time exhausted and I had one the best night’s sleep since arriving in Uganda not knowing that the next night…I would get the worst night’s sleep….
