Day nine - Wednesday 5 August 2009

It only took one day for my lack of conditioning to rear its ugly head. I woke up very sore all over, with hamstrings best described as piano strings. At breakfast I was informed that my music had been rejected in favour of Ben 'I have a better playlist' Sullivan's.

We were joined on site by a team from Norway and a jumbo jet full of Chinese from Hong Kong. Early on we were distracted by the shirtless Norwegians - for most of us, it was just a shame that they were all guys!!!

We erected the scaffolding for the second level of construction which saw Mini come into her own. Mark 'The Stud on Site' Sowerby teamed up with Mini to rebuild what could be best described as the Berlin Wall. Ben soon realised how ruthless the music critics on site were! 'The George Benson instrumental' didn't help matters at all!

Jonty and The Stud on Site broke into spontaneous song and dance as they stacked their bricks. The look on the African builders' faces could only be described as "concerned".Tony 'The Gattling Gun' Vroulis suddenly exploded with a burst of energy that saw bricks flying, the pace of which was only surpassed by his heart rate and eventual collapse.

As we rested for our first break of the day, Jessica continued to work on solo; Jonty was perplexed and proud at the same time. Suddenly our worksite came to a stand still as a scream was heard coming from the vicinity of the crew from Hong Kong. A 14 foot python was discovered and killed. We rushed over for a closer look and discovered the snake had a large lump half way down its body. Disturbingly it resembled the shape of a Nikon zoom lens. We didn't have time to hang around for the Hong Kong head count!

Six or seven bottles of water each with no toilet break gives you some idea of how hot and sticky conditions were. A phenomenal effort saw the team complete all of the outside walls and about half of the internal walls. Pleased with our results we decided to treat ourselves for a night out in Kampala.

A cultural show 'The Ndere Troupe' was the choice. The interactive nature of the show soon became apparent when, after watching a traditinonal Ugandan courting dance, to our horror Chain Snore was asked how he would court a potential partner in Australia. Needless to say, with his answer he stood no chance of winning the girl!

Moose made a premature move on the buffet and graciously left nothing but scraps for the remaining 40 patrons. Eventually the night climaxed with the entire team on the dance floor singing and dancing. Jonty gave the crowd a not-so-amazing rendition of 'Amazing Grace'. Ben then confiscated the microphone and thrashed out what could only be described as a horrible deep sound!!! A long rewarding day and an interesting and comical evening!

Johnny