Matt had always wanted a bow and arrow. In fact, he had persuaded his Dad that they should make one together. He even went walking with me in our local park to find a piece of suitable wood, unfortunately we never found one straight enough to be of use. So the prospect of having a Masai bow must have been incredibly appealing – and certainly worth his ‘English Hat’ …
Day 14 – July 29th
“Today was a struggle getting out of bed. I am sleeping so much better without Gavan smothering me all night. The downside is that I am actually comfortable when I wake up, and 2 weeks lack of sleep left Chris and I in a coma when Gav came round waking everyone up. He tried everything, threatening, begging, cajoling, “What’s that Peter? We have bacon on the table?” When that didn’t work, Craig came round and employed a more militaristic approach to the problem.
Peter has kept on asking me for my hat so he can show it off to his friends and family: “I will say, ‘Look at me, I am English with my English hat’ and they will be jealous.” My solution was to tell him I will trade my hat for a bow and arrows. Well this morning Peter finally produced a traditional Masai bow and two arrows; I tested it and I could barely pull it back but it fires a long way.
Today Matt Hyde and I were instructed to paint a high strip along the back of the school, involving balancing on top of wobbly tables stabilized slightly with multiple planks and sticks.
As I was reaching high to paint, Gavan and Sam simultaneously opened a window in the wall in front of me and painted me all over while I was balanced too precariously to move. Fifteen minutes of scrubbing with paraffin later and I was back to work. At some point Simran painted yellow facial hair on Gavan to make him look like Hulk Hogan.
One time I was getting off my table to move it to the next section and it wobbled so much that my paint can fell off. Gavan caught it in mid-air in time for paint to go everywhere.
After I had cleaned myself up for the second time today, we played the football final, which we won. Exhausted, we came back to our field and sat down together.
I managed to get a great picture of a bird of prey with Sam’s DSLR camera. I told everyone about my brother’s and sister-in-law’s brownies, and they want me to arrange for them to bring some to the airport.
I wandered over to Peter to talk about my new bow, and spent about an hour with some Masai boys about my age learning to string and unstring it. This has left me with a huge blister on my finger, but it will hopefully be worth it.
Dinner was chicken, chapattis and cabbage although somehow the only meat I got was kidney. I also found out that I am going to be leader on the first day on the mountain.
Tomorrow we finish the project and have a closing ceremony, and then the day after we go to Uganda for the real challenge.”
