how many people can you get in a car?

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It all started with me breaking the toilet handle - i've been told since i was young that i don't know my own strength and broke things in CDT at school but to snap the metal loo handle in half was a first!

I was heading today to my next project, a secondary school near Masaka so i went to the taxi park to find a taxi - normal hatchback car on it's last legs that takes up to 14 people (!) along the dirt tracks of Uganda. I'm told 14 is including some kids with at least 4 in the front, one even sharing the driver's seat whom he has to lean round to change gear! I found a taxi straight away and being the first to arrive i nabbed the front seat, but unlucky for me it took two hours to find another 4 people going to the same destination. I was getting quite restless and even hissed to get someone's attention (something i HATE)!

So having been offered to buy plastic jewellry and tack from at least 20 boys carrying big boards of the stuff safety pinned to it and having killed my boredom with a few chippatis we set off.... hooray i thought, at last, but oh no we headed to the garage not only for petrol but to change the spare tyre.....out came all the luggage to get to the tyre...wouldn't it have been more sensible to do that durnig the two hours we waited! Once on the road we tooted every person we passed to try and get more passengers but only totalled 7 for the whole ride - a lucky escape!

it must have been a good half hour down a dirt track - it's amazing because the faster you go the less you feel the bumps, but my lungs are full of dust, just like most of the poor soles we zoomed past on bikes, leaving a cloud of dust behind us.

I arrived at the parish, the most peaceful setting where i'll be living for the next accounting project and met up with the volunteers there at the moment. we went round the secondary school - a fully functioning school with kids - great to see. although when i say fully functioning - afternoon lessons have been cancelled for a month to practise singing and dancing for a visit of the lady from the NGO supporting the school!

took a boda boda (moto taxi) to nearby village where i've signed up to do a construction project for a fortnight and surprise surprise they weren't expecting me despite me having rung yesterday to check it was ok to arrive. the other project members, all of whom i've just found out are japanese, are now not arriving until tomorrow evening (now only a week and a half left of the project).

i'm now tucked up in my mosquito net with absolutely no phone reception , listening to cows and pigs making a racket outside and am sure the cockrels will be off at first light so had better get some sleep!

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