I’ve been planning to take a weekend out of Delhi for ages and this weekend it finally happened. As always seems to be the way here my plans changed dozens of times in the week leading up to it and I went from going to Varanasi with two friends, to going on a spontaneous field trip with work, to eventually going to visit a place called Haridwar (holy city related to the title) and the nearby National Park of Rajaji. Haridwar was suggested to me by Melissa the volunteer who I live with as she went there when she was [View Full Entry]

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The date was 16th October, the day before Diwali - a big festival in India commonly known as The Festival of Lights - and as such the office was closing early for the day. I decided to make the most of this opportunity and met up with a friend to go out and explore Delhi. Incidentally the tale behind this friend is quite an interesting one.....The story starts when I was very young living with my family in the town of Macclesfield. My eldest brother was friends with a young girl of similar age named Neena and she and her family [View Full Entry]

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This quote comes from Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, commonly known around the world as Mahatma Gandhi or in India as Bapu. Gandhi was the political and spiritual leader of India during the Indian Independence movement, and since his birthday (a national holiday) falls on the 2nd October - shortly after my arrival here in India - I thought it only right to pay my respects. The following day I headed out with Melissa, a fellow volunteer, and together we travelled by auto rickshaw to Old Delhi and to the final resting place of Gandhi. Raj Ghat was our destination, the site is [View Full Entry]

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The destination for my latest venture is India, primarily Delhi, the city where anything and everything can happen in an instant. I have once again tied up the laces on my travelling boots and set off for unknown territory leaving behind the comforts of English living, clean water and safe food. The motivation behind this latest expedition is the opportunity to volunteer for three month with WWF in their wildlife TRAFFIC department. I did not know much about the trafficking of animals before I left but WWF seems to me an idol in the conservation world and so I was happy [View Full Entry]

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I am now one month into my global exchange program so I thought that I would update you on what life has been like for me since I left. We first arrived in our host community - Assiut - in the early hours of the morning therefore due to security reasons we received a police escort to our accommodation for the evening. The streets were quiet as we all looked around trying to get our bearings of our home for the next three months. Since that day everyone seems to have had their ups and downs but generally we are now [View Full Entry]

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Greetings dear friends and family!! I hardly know where to start in telling you how my life has been for the past two weeks but I don't have much time so I shall just try to sumarise the basics. Firstly I am safe and well and enjoying the experience which is the most important thing! For anyone that doesn't know I am involved in a six month volunteer project called Global Xchange where I will form part a group made up of 9 English people and 9 Egyptians, we will live and work for three months in an Egyptian community and [View Full Entry]

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It has been a very long time since I managed to find time to write a blog so I promise that I will not try to cover everything that I have been up to as that would take weeks to read, but I thought I would send round a general update and some information about my next project. My last couple of months in Uganda just seemed to fly by in a flurry of activity, there were so many things that I wanted to fit in before I left and time was tight due to the break for Christmas and the [View Full Entry]

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It has been another varied and hectic two weeks since I last wrote so this may turn out to be an epic blog again. Apologies to those who don’t have time to read but those who do...enjoy! So by the end of the last blog we were due to be heading into the forest to do some more surveys, this we eventually managed after being delayed by a massive downpour of rain and we were able to get some good information and to see wild chimps again (although briefly) which was really nice. On Sunday we decided to go to the [View Full Entry]

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Orihota? - How are you? Ndiho kurungi - I am fine Ibara ryange ndi Hannah - My name is Hannah Nkuruga Bungereza - I come from England The day after I last wrote, we (Paul and I) went to church in the village parish which is next to one of the schools that we teach in. We thought it would be nice to show our support and that we wanted to be part of the community. They seemed to really appreciate the effort and were very excited to have visitors. We were even asked to address the parish and tell everyone [View Full Entry]

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In Hoima everyone is given a ‘petty name’ which has a meaning and it is meant to be more affectionate if you address someone by their pet name - I have been given Amooti, meaning flower. The procedural greeting involving a petty name goes like this… Empako yawe? (what is your petty name?) Akiiki (petty name meaning leader) Ta Akiiki? (how are you Akiiki?) Kandi eya we? (how about your petty name?) Amooti (petty name meaning flower) Ndiho Amooti (I’m ok Amooti) Soooo….what have I been doing since my last blog? I spent the a couple of days following my [View Full Entry]

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