!st week at Kamwenge

We have now been for one week in Kamwenge and have started to settle in. Most of this week seems to have been about meeting all the important people in the district and building up relationships. The workshops on Tuesday and Wednesday were very useful in giving us an insight into the issues faced in schools. One interesting possibility for the health part of our work is a link up between the agricultural advisory group and schools to promote the growing of fruit and veg in school grounds. This allows pupils to learn how to grow in a better way, gives the opportunity to teach about nutrition and enables surplus food to be given to the poorest children.

On Friday we went to a wedding introduction, which is a traditional African ceremony where the boy is introduced to the bride's-to-be family in a long ceremony. We got there at 2 and it was still going when we left at 7.30pm. The funniest bit is where lots of different aged children, then teenage girls then older girls are paraded in front of the boy and he has to pick out his wife-to-be. All of the rest of the girls are given a small gift.

We also ate with our hands - the local way - for the first time. Halfway through there was a massive thunderstorm, but we were in the tent for honoured guests so managed to keep quite dry.

Today we did our washing by hand. Sabrina washed and I rinsed - it was really hard work. It was not helped by putting too much washing powder in the water so we had to rinse twice as much as is usual. Value your washing machine!

The weather is generally around 25-27 degrees every day so were pleased to see that it was 16 deg in Chelmsford!