Working in the heat of Africa

The beautiful weather has finally arrived at Kamuzinda and for the last 2 days we have been working in the heat of the African sun. A great opportunity to improve our suntans and the lives of the amazing school children we have been spending our time with. The group have been working on a number of projects around the vast grounds of the school, these included: Building a set of steps to the Primary School, digging and creating the foundations of the new assembly hall, creating murals, and completing the Lionel dormitory with a lush colour of hot pink on the outside. Everything here at Kamuzinda is full of colour, which has vibrant and positive vibe. 

Primary Steps

In the morning we all split into our working groups and set about building the foundations for the steps. Currently the Primary School have to climb a meter-high step to access their classrooms. (Birthday Girl) Olivia, Becky, Jenny, Hannah C, Emily, and Madi W set about creating the foundation. Levelling the foundations without a spirit level and ruler was challenging and mixing the ‘hard-core’ by hand in the African heat made us all very sweaty. In the afternoon and following morning Georgie, Tink, Amelie, Uscie, Tom, Matty and Pip set about forming the steps. I think you will agree the end result was very impressive!

Assembly Hall

Construction of the new assembly hall has been taking place over the last 2 days. This has been back breaking work, digging foundation trenches and levelling the land with only hand tools and perseverance. The students were certainly seeing the gains and enjoying the completive nature of the task with the Uganda builders!

Lionel Dormitory

Over these 2 days Lisa led a ferocious team of painters in a quest to repaint Lionel (one of the girls’ dormitories). Lionel now looks amazing both inside and out! Especially in its shade of hot pink – a special request from the Ugandan students. Also a challenging shade to find in Uganda as we found out earlier in the week!

Murals

Classrooms are now all complete with a fresh coat of paint and a range of educational murals on the inside. I wish we could paint the walls back at Richard Lander!

Fire pit

At the end of day 16 we all took advantage of Gold Groups hard work and their amazing 40+ seater fire pit. This was a great opportunity to learn some more traditional Ugandan songs as well as sharing some of our own.

Planets

At the start of the week we were all split into communities (planets): Earth, Venus, Neptune and Jupiter; and have been rehearsing all week for their Lander’s Got Talent-type of event. This morning the prestigious prize of a cow arrived, and since has been mooing at us all during our morning of work. When the clock struck noon, however, the pressure was on to perform and dance to the best of our abilities in order to help our team come out on top. The eventual winners and new owners of the cow were: Earth. I hope Austin the cow, named by Beth, enjoyed the event as much as Mr Mulcahy who, as of 7pm, is still asleep in his judging chair.