Tessa & I split up today. I went to help Soft Power Education (www.softpowereducation.com) with painting for one of the schools they support. Tessa went on a community walk in the local vicinity.

There were 4 of us from Absolute Africa and 2 others who have been volunteering with Soft Power Education for 2-3 weeks. We were shown around their main compound where children in Year 6 (11-14 years) come along for classes in art, drama, gardening, life sciences and computers. There is a shop which sells what the children make to help raise money for the charity or for individual families as appropriate. We then got into the back of a truck and went to the school passing through rural communities and witnessing the slaughter of a cattle on the roadside. One of the focuses that Soft Power has is to ensure that the rural schools have infrastructure - including enough classrooms and access to clean water. Our role today was to paint educational things in the next class up from nursery so that the children had an attractive environment to learn in. The kids were fascinated by us and what we were doing. An inspiring experience.

Tessa here: Hillary and I headed out on a village walk with Augustustine, we started with an introduction to his wife before heading on a tour through his garden which had a range of vegetables, fruit, a remedy for malaria, and even a couple of marijurana plants. We then headed off down a path past small mud huts neatly framed with trimmed box hedges. Mr A stopped to chat with his neighbours and took some time to check out progress on the plastering of the new church latrine. Along the way he would pause to thrust his hand into the vegetation and emerge with a new variety of bean to show us. A really informative morning on the crops and plants of Uganda. Ended with lunch cooked by Mrs A of beans, sweet potato, cabbage mix and greens. Our first African meal and very tasty; particularly as all had been grown in their garden.