hello everyone

i've been here in africa for a couple weeks now. i'm here with HELP International doing some humanitarian work and it has been great so far. i'm not much of a blogger but i figure this is easier than sending a bunch of emails.

well i guess i'll tell all of you how cool I am now. I rafted the Nile on Saturday and it was definitely the raddest thing I’ve ever done. The last rapid we did was also the most I’ve feared for my life too. We did about 10 sets of rapids traveling 30km down river, it took like 5 or 6 hours. We did some grade 5 rapids and lower. My raft only tipped twice and the last time I thought I was going to die because I was under water getting thrown around like a rag doll for what seemed like 30 seconds but it was probably like 10. the rapids were huge! It was the funnest experience I’ve ever had. We did some rapids and on the calm parts we swam around. We ate lunch in the rafts—pineapples and cookies—they were the best tasting pineapples I’ve ever had probably cuz we were eating them on the nile. The scenery was amazing. It started raining for a while and it was so beautiful—a bit chilly but warm in the water. There were supposedly some crocs in some parts but we didn’t see any. We saw a huge lizard about 3 ft. long swimming in the water. When we were watching the others go down a rapid, a long black snake was in the water swimming towards our raft and our African guide was freaking out telling us to row hard to get away from it. He said it was a black forest cobra and that they can get into the raft. There was also one little island that had a huge tree with hundreds of bats flying around it, that was rad to see. I’m mad I couldn’t have a camera on the raft. They filmed a few of the rapids and were selling the dvd after. I kind of lost my wallet but found it again and I was so worried about getting it back I paid for a dvd but forgot to get it after. A couple other people bought it from our group so hopefully I’ll be able to copy it from them, its pretty cool.

After rafting, we camped at the dorms above the river and went to church in jinja the day after. I like going to church in the growing branches more than the wards at home. People seem a bit more excited about church and I think I’m closer to their level of knowledge too. Overall, it was an amazing weekend. I would totally raft the nile again if I get the chance again this summer. We are going to go bungee jumping over the nile in a few weeks. Rumour has it that it’s free if you go naked so I might consider that.

This weekend we are going to mabira forest for a hike through the rain forest. That should be cool.

Well, apart from all those adventures, things have been going well with the projects. I am leading a project for the secondary schools here and most of their needs are financial so there is not much we can do there but we were talking about some of the problems the kids have outside of school like drugs and pregnancy and stuff. We decided to make a lesson manual and start a class that will meet once a week and touch different subjects like sex education, drug abuse, career exploration, empowerment/self-esteem, goal setting, business basics, AIDS education, and also some fun stuff for them. If any of you have any good material for lessons or any other ideas for these subjects please email them to me because we are trying to get this up and running asap. We want the classes to be pretty liberal and be more like a discussion group in which the kids could discuss the topics with each other and have activities and stuff. We’ll be here to help for the first few classes and then leave the lesson manual for the teachers here to continue the class once we’re gone. It’s continuation once we’re gone is the most important part. So any help provided would be greatly appreciated!

goodbye