28th Oct 11:30pm

This afternoon, Tom and Kristina dug the holes for the compost bin legs to slot into, and made the lid for it so no animals got in.

While they were doing that me and Megan decided to paint the blackboards; we had to wipe it down to remove all the chalk, and then sand it to allow the paint to stick. Then wipe it again to remove the sanding dust.

It took a long time but once they were completely dry, the paint was mixed and the floor was covered (slightly) we began to paint. It took ages! We left them to dry and I intend to do another coat later on this week to ensure it’s all even.

This evening we played with some of the kids, playing in the garden, spinning them around a lot; they seem to enjoy being dizzy a lot.

There is a little boy whole lives with the Massai guards and he is 5 but looks only 2. He can’t talk nor walk very well. He must eat poorly because he is so small and fragile. We spend a lot of time playing with him down by the front gate because he loves the attention.

Kristina moved out of our room tonight, back to her old room, because Chrystal and Caroline have gone. It’s silly to say but it feels empty-ish now all her stuff is gone.

28th Oct 2:00pm

This morning I managed to get up relatively early and get showered while the water was still warm. I spent all morning writing out instructions for the solar lamps I had bought, to be translated later. Going into classes was out of the picture because they had exams/tests today, so it was best just to leave them to it.

At break I took the instructions down to get them translated by the standard 4 girls. They did a good job but we ended up scrapping most of it because they needed to have some porridge and I wanted to say goodbye to Chrystal and Caroline before they left.

We started to prepare for the party by getting all the food out and dishing up the jelly and popcorn. The kids started to arrive and we handed out their masks and then split them up into standard 1 and 2 to play the games.

Me and Tom had standard 2, so we got them all in a circle and got them to sing whilst doing that, so they weren’t al chatting. We sat them down outside and played pass the parcel 6 times. They loved it, if any of them tried to move; switch places in the circle we sat them in the middle for one round and after a few had to do that they were all very well behaved.

We gave everyone some jelly and then a piece of watermelon and sent them home. Some of the orphanage kids stayed around so we played games with them for a bit.

28th Oct 4:15pm

I managed to get Margaret, whose English is amazing, to come help me properly translate my solar lamp instructions. She did a few copies and then I wrote out the rest.

It felt very odd writing in another language, but after a while I was writing pretty fast with no mistakes!

28th Oct 8:05am

So last night was a success! We got the piki-piki into Tengeru from Kimundo, which weren’t as fast as before which suited me perfectly. Me and Megan doubled up on one. It was pretty fun coasting down the hill.

One thing I dislike about piki piki’s (motorbike-ish things) is that the drivers are nearly always drunk or high. Like Kristina’s driver did a shot of Konyagi at the bar, and another on the way to his bike. Comforting!

In Tengeru we got on a dala dala into Arusha, it was dark already, so I felt threatened by such a different city to Leeds (a millions miles apart in my opinion.) The meal was lovely; £5 for chicken chunks in red wine sauce, penne pasta, sauce, cheese, bacon, mushrooms and onions!

The restaurant was so empty, even thought there was lots of music playing, It got to half past 8 and we figured it was going to be a crappy night, so we intended to leave. All of a sudden more people were appearing, filling the bar area and sitting by the roaring open fire pit. We paid the bill and went to the bar area outside abut a stage/area place.

Everyone went to buy a drink, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted, in Corfu I drank cocktails, but I wasn’t sure how expensive they were. I eventually decided on a pinocolada and the bar man ended up inviting me behind the bar to make my drink and randomly some other people were acting as if I was part of the staff. I wasn’t too good at making it since I poured half of it on the floor (oopsidaisy) but it was a lovely drink.

We all sat by the fire for a while and there were some Europeans sat nearby who Kristina wanted to befriend, she leaves last out of all the volunteers so she doesn’t want to be a loner. They ended up doing karaoke and me and Kristina were singing louder than they were on the microphones. When they had done we requested ‘livin’ on a prayer’ by Bon Jovi and belted it out like strangled cats – it was beautiful.

The arena had filled up completely with westerners and the music was all stuff we recognised; it sounded really good so we went to dance, it was like being a club it was that full and the music was that loud. Tom bought us all B52 shots which were so sooooo nice! Thanks tom; got my new favourite shot. I made another pinocolada behind the bar which Kristina shook up for me so I didn’t spill another one.

We were dancing around like crazy in the mass of people and we finally found someone in fancy dress, no idea what he was but he had lines all over his face, a painted nose and fake long black curly hair extensions which I accidentally pulled out of his hair while inspecting it.

It got to about 2 in the morning and I was so sleepy, so I went to stand and watch the mayhem from afar. I was stood peacefully against a railing and some guy came over asking me to dance, he was Tanzanian and apparently did safaris here. He wanted my ‘contact details’ so we could meet up whist I was there, erm ‘meet up’ not so innocent I don’t think. I pretended not to have a phone here and then he asked about Facebook I gave him my name spelt completely wrong! Ha!

I finally got away from him and went back to dance some more. As soon as I found everyone the dance floor was clearing and these Tanzanian guys were filing on. Turned out they were an awesome dance troop who took there shirts off to reveal very nice washboard abs! After more dancing we decided to head home and got back to Peace Matunda at about 20 to 5 in the morning.