when life hands you lemons....

Last thursday the SPH team (including wilfred, jessica, annie, kristen, morgan, me jen (at her first net sale) and Francis, our driver went to a village called Namasugali, up in the Kamuli district for a net sale and malaria outreach session. In case i havent explained before, SPH is a malaria outreach program that believes the best way to erradicate malaria is through prevention, as opposed to treatment. So: we go to a different village every thursday to give an education session on malaria, what it is, how you get it, how you can prevent it (the female anopholes mosquitoe transmits the malaria into your bloodstream where it matures in your liver, and then is released into your system attacking health red blood cells. To avoid malaria, sleep under a mosquito net as mrs anopholes bites mostly at nitetime when you are sleeping) then at the end of the session we sell insectacide treated nets for 3000 Ug Shillings the equivilent of 2 us dollars. We purchase the nets for 11,000 shillings, so we are not making a profit, instead we make the nets afforadable for the local villages. AT namasugali, it was utter insanity. They called and asked us to bring 15000 nets, which is more than the clinic has. WE brought 330 nets to the dismay of the people. over 350 people were at the education session and they were waiting for us when we got there early (this never happens!) after the session, they mobbed us, had us completely surrounded for four hours while we sold them te nets. here is a pictre of francis (our driver) as he tried to fend people off from crowding us or stealing nets .

After that stressful trip we decided that a trip to the hairy lemon was in order for a relaxing fun weekend. the lemon is paddlers paradise. it is a beautiful island on the nile, about an hours drive from bujagali. It is a 7 minute paddle downstream from the amazing nile special wave, which is an unbelievable world class play wave. because of chogm, the water had been high, which makes the special even better. even though annie had an ear infection, she was able to paddle out to the worlds squirliest eddy (think asci water park but worse) and take some sweet pictures. Morgan and i paddled 3 sessions a day, and had an awesome time with some british guys we had met at bujagali, al good paddlers. We tore it up and even managed to throw our first official blunts :a freestyle move in a kayak that is a vertical edge transfer where you start facing forwards and end facing backwards by the back of your boat coming up off the water- it was an amazing weekend. for info on the hairy lemon, check http://www.hairylemonuganda.com/ ( i believe.. i will double check). Heres a pic of me blunting... and then of me and morgan at the end of the session where we figured it all out. check out how huge our smiles were.. we were SO EXCITED!

After the lemon it was home to bujagali and more work at the clinic. Chogm starts today and Jessie arrives today with her mother so it is going to be crazy here for a while. Another net sale this thursday, hopefully it wont be quite as nuts as before. *All the pics are off morgans camera... for more of her pictures check her website at www.flickr.com/photos/morgankoons/

im going to try and start a website for mine soon.. ill let you know when....