Who's your black monster?

The babies home night shift was just another classic chapter in the adventures, of Laurence and Holden. Several wake ups throughout the night but overall we battled through the poo, wee, milk, and crying but still smashed a good 6 hours sleep. Tuesday and we returned to our regular routine, a trip to our newly discovered gym called "The Black Monster Weight Lifting Club"!. If any one could argue lifting scrap metal and old tyres wasn't fun, they'd be wrong. A truely

African adventure as we made friends with the local meat heads of Jinja, and in summary, the most experimental fitness session of our lives, certainly the pearl of Africans weight lifting circuit, Arnie would have been proud. Tuesday evening and it was Sarah's last night, a trip up to "The Black Lantern", an A La Carte restaurant over looking the Nile, situated next to a back packers bar. The BBQ rips were divine, and the beer was refreshing, definately a recipe to disaster. And it was! Drinking games and Cardiff based chat enabled Laurence and Holden to take home the cup and title of funniest people in Jinja. We did however have some sad news. Annabel decided to break down, we were just praying she would pull through...

Wednesday and we smashed out another Gym session at Damwaters Health first club. We waved goodbye to Sarah and had a meal with the boys and an early night as Thursday was to be a good one. The next day we spent a productive day reading, practicing and listening to music. We also indroduced the game of Pat Ball in a perfect court that was in the garden of our guest house, Ash and Ed certainly struggled against the experience and finesse of Holden and Laurence. We had a lot of rain as well! We went to town to go shopping with Ed and Ash to get DVD's and buy all the ingrediants for our classic meat towered homemade pizza's! A great evening had buy all.

Friday was a day we were all preparing for, Holden and India had a gig that evening at a venue called "The Keep". We reahersed all day and got ready for our set. Although they did'nt serve alcohol in the venue, the boys got on it hard before and smuggled in ye olde jesus juice in the christian venue Holden played and got behind him and India as we ripped the place up with J-mraz and the classic 4- chord medley, (wish Mitch was there). We moved onto another bar and watched several people pass out in pubs on our crawl through Jinja Main Street. What a night !!!!

Banterwiess und die chode

Flushed away

Friday night and this can only mean one thing, Holden went to Nile resort while Ben did some work and sulked about his loss in the rugby, however, Ben did absolutely trash Holden and pool and darts on Wednesday evening which left Holden in a mood for about 5 hours as Holden firmly believes pub games is more important than the Football World Cup. So we called a "lads night". Holden, Ash, Ed, and Laurence, we played drinking games at a bar and laughed for bloody hours.

Saturday, and it could only mean one thing, a whole day at the pool, great tanning, and swimming, pizza watching the sunset with Mark Malinga our headmaster and others. Later we went to club, and the classic case of one thing lead to another happened as we had to retire home early for beef samosa's as Laurence landed an elbow on someone trying to rob us! Sunday was definitley a chill out day, we went for a classic African dinner at Carols house, (the school P.A) were we ate, drank and met her children (see photo).

The weather has now picked up and Killi-mangina is just over the Horizon. Now today is Monday, and Holden spent the morning at the orphange, and he met with Laurence and Sarah in town for an African lunch and market shopping and we prepare for an evening shift at the babies home. We are cooking them pork kebabs which if I'm going to be honest is the only good thing about tonight, 12 babies in one room = no sleep. We also have had countless cases of cockroaches in our room. Laurence so far to count has killed 3 medium sized ones. His killing technique has been strong and his flushing of the vermin has all round was solid. Holden got his first kill the other night, and he caught an ogerous, monstrous beast and with assistance from Ben was needed on the flushing. We sealed a tight layer around the roach effectiveley mummifiying the bastard in loo roll,3 flushes later, he was never to been seen shuffling annoymously around our hollow, vacant room.

Adios Brits, Banter and the Chode. xx

lions eat elephants?

So Tuesday after Holden's moisturiser incident, he went for lunch meeting about the babies home and went to the gym with Ben. That evening Holden and Laurence went for a date at Barazza, had pizza, and talked about deep and meaningful things, basically...how boring it must be having a girlfriend! Meanwhile Holden afterwards went out for some beers with a german guy named Paul, and on the way home got chased by wild diseased infected violent dogs, standard. Oh, and Annabel broke down again but we are very immune to this now.

Anyway, rugby training Wednesday afternoon, in preparation for the big game on Thursday when school term finishes of Alex's Team (the Elephants) Vs Ben's Team (the Lions), winner takes all. After the final assembley Ed and Ash had their girls football team play against one another followed by the rugby. The Lions roared into the lead in the first 10 minutes by scoring below the posts, unfortunatley the lions paw clawed the ball to the right of the posts and it was 5-0. In the final minute of the first half the elephants stomped through the lions defence to score by the posts and this time the mighty elephant hoofed the ball between the sticks. 7-5 to the elephants. The second half became more physical with both elephants and lions being swung, smashed and hurled into the enthusiastic crowd. A few near scores from both teams but the game finished 7-5 and the school errupted with cheers to celebrate an afternoon infused with both entertainment and skill. A re-match has been called in September when term starts again....The Lions will have their revenge!

love from B & the C xx

So a bike crash was definately on the cards. Ben hands off the handle bars, Holden steering from the back, a recipe for disaster; and it was. Moving about 5mph we pathetically fell off the side, a few bruises and scratches but we lived to fight another day. The weekend was a similar situation with epic nights out with the boys and gals from Busoga Trust on top form. Sunday and a trip to church with the born again christians, for those Borat fans, it was exactly like that. Singing, dancing, rolling around on the floor, and general all round exaggerated praise only seen before at CYNT ( a mad night in Cardiff). The football video made, (check on my facebook page) and we had an early night as we prepared for rafting the great river Nile the next day.

up at 8.30, strong coffee, boiled eggs, life vests, helmets, look like bellends. 6 in a boat...Henry our raft guide said "how do you want to take the rapids? medium or hard?" Laurence replied "hard, very hard"...it was carnage, 40km stretch of blue skies and grade 5 white water drowning us at every opportunity, we flipped on every rapid in true style as it churned raft and bodyparts in all directions like a giant blender and in many occassions Holden used his face to cushion the flying paddles. A glorious 45 minute stretch of flat open water at midday with some pineapple and biscuits as we all went dipping in the crocodile infested water and backflipped off the raft before the beasting began once again. The final rapid known as the "bad place" truely was an adrenaline junkie's wet dream a perfect scenario to commit the perfect suicide.

A long bus journey back to the rafting campsite. We had a massive beef kebab BBQ and free beer. We waited for our rafting video to be shown and 9pm on the big screen while the bar filled up, and we soaked ourselves in aftersun after a full day in the sun. Talking of aftersun, Ben and Ed decided to cover Holdens face in aftersun after he retired to the dorm about 50 metres from the bar. As he woke up the next morning, blind in one eye, he slapped Laurence round the face and drove home leaving the boys to make their own way home, revenge is sweet. Overall rafting on the Nile is one of the best experiences to date, a great day out, mental waters, loads of food and booze, free accomodation, and great pranks by mates.

we've given him some before, but can we give him more.....Banter and the Chode xxx