Annabelle Village

... to the village in small groups to sit and talk to family groups about their lives and hope for the future.  Dan L, Annabelle and I were fortunate to talk to Champa a remarkable lady of 40 years who had been integral to the community mapping process ...

... spent the rest of our time there just laying under the trees on the beach and enjoying the peace.  Whilst sat there Annabelle spotted a Kookaburra sitting on the tree and went into full on stealth photography mode.  We had lunch back at the ...

... We spent the day by the pool (tops on today) and Annabelle watched as Chris perfected his front crawl technique.  Whilst Annabelle was licking her wounds Chris popped to local shops to pick up some supplies and a little present to cheer Annabelle up ...

... leisurely breakfast and slapped on the sun cream as we had decided to spend the morning back at the beautiful Radical Bay.  Annabelle had also read a place called Geoffrey Bay where it was easy to see Rock Wallabies so we thought we would start our ...

... were finally bagged up and we were ready to go.  Even though it was getting late, Chris settled down to watch Robin Hood whilst Annabelle packed up 2 boxes (yes, 2 more) to send home.         ...

... do front crawl whilst swimming up and down with a float. Now at this point it must be made clear that over the past 2 months Annabelle has achieved some rather spectacular strap marks – so had been planning on using her time at the villa to work on ...

... to eat Chris headed off to his waxing appointment and then on to the coffee shop to continue his Central America planning whilst Annabelle remained at the villa.  The day for her  was spent re-packing the boxes being sent home as the additions ...

... , and this morning  they got their first test run.  What a gink she looked!  But they made such a difference ... Annabelle really enjoyed her lengths today and is thinking of buying an all in one swimming wet suit, 'thorpedo’ style to ...

... pretty much every isle of the store in an attempt to avoid the storm outside...also this fortunate stop was used by Annabelle as a convenient excuse to explore all the amazing Halloween merchandise that was on offer!  A few wigs, capes and fancy ...

... .  Chris was cooking spaghetti bolognese, a meal we'd both been craving for a while. Whilst Chris created his culinary masterpiece, Annabelle began the tireless task of getting the blog up to date.  We were behind by 18 entries, so she settled ...

... on not spending and made an executive decision to go to one of the major attractions, this decision was met by a mixed response by Annabelle, Chris just asked her to go with it and humour him, it was The Kennedy Space Centre.  We left Tavares at ...

... he managed to get his hands one – he was like a child at Christmas.  But before he could watch it,  Annabelle dropped him at the coffee shop so he could do some Central America planning whilst she did the food shopping (shocker).  We ...

For fear of repeating ourselves, we had yet another day of sunbathing and swimming. Due to Annabelle's injuries running was not an option, but being the highly motivated fitness fanatic she didn’t want to miss out on the euphoric sensation everyone ...

Finally back in Iringa again after a 3 week 'situation analysis' in my village Nyanyembe, Mbalamaziwa ward, Mufindi District. My village is absolutely stunning, set on the road from Iringa to Njombe, it overlooks beautiful lush green hills, is really ...

... , this past week has been great. It was just Claire and I until Thurs, and then on Friday we went to a festival in Ifunda, a bigger village where Claire's SS is, but a 2 hour walk (they catch a daladala - lucky, as Claire & I were exhausted after the ...

... last of training before heading to village, and it has been insane. Last friday, we found out our National partners and village, which was all so exciting. Everybody is pretty chuffed with their partners and villages, except maybe the Njombe ...

... though the HIV and AIDS, and SRH (Sexual Reproductive Health) info is useful. Today we had to select our partners for village which has been a bit daunting as we only met the national volunteers last week, but after writing down a ...

... , which has been a great break. Today we are heading back down to Ipogoro for top-up training, and then it's back to village. Easter is insane here. No chocolate eggs, but the streets have been crowded with kids dressed up in their best church gear, a ...

... to commiserate yet another huge shipping bill. Chris spent another few hours trawling the internet for Central America excitement whilst Annabelle called Claire and Joanne for a catch up. We also went to Blockbuster (surprise surprise) and rented a new ...

... as possible.  This was when disaster struck – the television in the living room could only play dvd’s.  So Annabelle used all of her engineering experience to try and solve the problem.  When those 5 minutes were up we gave it ...