Holiday in Numbers - By Bethan

Happy new year to everyone reading our 2014 blog!

We have just returned from a fabulous month-long holiday in the UK.  Gareth likes putting everything into numbers and comparing it to previous numbers ;) so here is a summary of the month:

We had 3 trips to Van Hages in Ware (a garden centre with animals and ride-on train); we took the boys to soft play (with or without their cousins) 5 times; we visited 11 different peoples’ houses and met about 65 friends and relatives!  We reunited 7 Shrubsole cousins and 4 Lee cousins, drove 1,200 miles including a complete lap of the M25 and filled up our very thirsty hire-car from ICTHUS 5 times!  Sam watched The Snowman and The Gruffalo’s Child about 7 times and told me he was scared of Santa Claus almost every day in the week before and the week after Christmas, especially at his Grandad’s house that has a chimney!  We smuggled 6 blocks of cheese and 10 packets of chocolate to take back in our 3 suitcases and spent 17 hours on 2 flights with 2 small boys, 1 of whom sat or slept the entire time while the other one ate, slept, screamed and flirted with other female passengers!  I carried 1 bag full of 16 of Noeline’s sleeping bags and 14 of her purses that she had sold. Gareth and I had SIX dates away from our boys thanks to the 4 sets of people who babysat for us!  (For the previous 14 months in Kasese we had been on 3 dates due to only having 1 babysitter!) We must have eaten 3,000 calories each day meaning that Gareth put on 7 much-needed pounds and we gorged on gourmet crisps and posh cheeses and Sam enjoyed ham sandwiches that we can’t get in Uganda.  Finally, if Sam was summarising he’d say that we went on 1 London bus, 2 DLRs, 4 underground trains and several over-ground trains, 2 aeroplanes and rode in 3 holiday cars!  Jonah would say that he hugged and tried to kiss about 28 young women, at least 20 of whom were complete strangers!

So what lies ahead for 2014?  Gareth is trying to keep his 7 pounds for when he is sick (inevitable for him!) and we have made long lists of jobs that need to be done.  We are continuing with projects begun in the previous years but this year we are trying to hand them over as much as possible to Ugandans.  Our aim is that as the year goes by we will do ourselves out of a job and be able to leave Kasese on December 31^st knowing that what we have started here will continue with people who are confident and well-trained to run the different projects.