Juancho in Uganda

I did it! I ran the 10k this morning and surprisingly enough it wasn't as bas as I thought. I ran together with Marcella (staff member from Brazil) and it only took us an hour and 20 minutes. We were very afraid that the truck that was picking the late late runners will get us but we avoided it. I have been sending posts every other day, but there are plenty of stories that are on my notebooks. I keep on telling this just in case that people ask what happened the other days. For instance, yesterday I had a bad case of flu with sneezing the whole day, but after Juliet gave my some honey and I bought some Nims (lemons) at the market everything turned great. We had training with the red cross for First aid and the day went pretty fast. Ok... today. We woke up at five to get the special hired truck to take us to Jinja for the run and we were here by 6:50AM. After a little delay we started and making it was just unbelievable. The knee barely bothered, which was great and we even had time to buy bananas on the way. After this we went to Flavours cafe (a really nice place were a lot of expats seem to hang out). I don't know if this actually true, but it felt that the chocolate orange cake I ate was the best thing that has ever passed through my mouth. I topped it with a Castle Milk Stout beer to continue the running tradition. Almost all the team leaders are now next to me typing as fast as they can to minimize internet charges and inform as many people as possible of what is happening. My team arrives tomorrow and what is in store for us is 2 months of very hard work since there are a lot of things to do in the villages. For instance, I visited mine again on saturday and it was very extensive with a couple of bore holes/wells not working. I am sure we will be able to improve the conditions and developed a healthy village team that will sustain the interventions after we leave. Every time that I speak with the people from the staff they impress me more since they are willing to hear the locals and respect that they have a better knowledge of their village and needs and they also want to implement programs that can be continued by the villagers. This is a very sustainable model that probably doesn't get as many photo ops as other NGOs but I think is the right one. I won't be able to write as frequently starting next week since I will be living in the village from Monday through friday (no shower and pit latrine only), but I should be able to let you know how everything is going every once in a while. Thanks for all your messages again...