Hi all, Sorry it has taken me a long time to write, I have been busy – this season is not only rainy season but it seem wedding season too! I have been busy attending ‘Send Off’s’ – like a hen party but with the whole family present. It is a public goodbye to the daughter who is getting married. These are swiftly followed by the wedding itself. Both are similar in content – lots and lots of long speeches by many people, followed by ‘cheers’ (you queue up with your drink to toast the relevant people) then Gift giving – again another queue, more speeches and finally food if you’re lucky. The one different thing about weddings is the church service and a procession through town. The procession consists of any cars or motorbikes available driving in circles around the town beeping their horns. It makes an absolute racket! Last weekend I went on one which was purely motorbikes – it was great fun and the whole town was watching and laughing, here is my friend Megan on one of the bikes! How many can you see in the background? Our artisans here at WomenCraft have been busily creating our Christmas products, which we’ve shipped to America, England and Italy. I have designed a new range of gift bags – all in brightly coloured festive kanga and Kitenge. I am hoping they sell well at our Christmas fairs. I can’t believe that I have been here for two months already – the time is whizzing past and I have so many more things I would like to complete and be involved in. One of the new things I have started doing since being here is painting Murals at the children’s ward. Every Thursday I take the afternoon off work and go paint for 2-3 hours. It is a challenge because there are so many walls to paint – but I have made some good friends here who expressed an interest in helping out – so I recruited them as my design assistants! We have great fun, laughing a joking with the student nurses and it feels wonderful to leave behind colourful flowers and rainbows each week. Do you have any suggestions of other things I could paint for them? Perhaps you could e-mail me some images that you would like to see on the walls?

I hope this reaches you all well, Ellie