Polly Kavuli

To all members of the link both past and present,

 

We feel we must comment on the sad news from Tanzania about Polly Kavuli.

 

Despite on-going health problems in recent years, his sudden death has come as a shock to many, many members of the Link.

 

Polly Kavuli was a crucial member of RCCL for many years . He was involved in the running of the Link from its early formation back in the late eighties, and has lead numerous visits to the UK, most recently in 2011. He will be remembered by many in the UK who met him during these visits and also by the many Cumbrian students and leaders who took part in the visits to Tanzania.

Sunday's Evaluation

On our final day of the selection weekend, we were woken up by the breakfast team as they went to prepare the toast, eggs, cereal and juice. We lay in bed for a little while longer discussing Lucy’s sleep talking in which she’d started attacking Kelsey, and then went down to eat. After breakfast we each split into pairs, divided all the rooms between us and began the joyful task of cleaning the place up to how it was when we got there (Lucy and Chloe got the short straw and ended up with our room!) When the whole place was finally clean, we gathered back downstairs and chatted for a bit, before each taking an evaluation form and spacing out so we were on our own to fill them in. It consisted of questions such as what we thought we could do to prepare ourselves further for the visit to Tanzania next year. When we’d finished filling them out we just chatted again, and discussed various parts of the weekend while waiting for lifts home. Walter also came to say goodbye to us, and explained a bit more about Gillerthwaite and the kind of events they hosted there. Finally we all left to go home, and wait in anticipation for our phone calls later that day which would tell us if we’d been successful in applying to go to Tanzania or not.

Dani

Talent Show

On Saturday night at Gillethwaite we entertained ourselves by having a talent show which Becca gave us an hour to get into groups and come up with a performance for. ‘The Mysterious Magicians’, ‘The Tina’s’ and ‘Sully’ performed and were then judged by the leaders out of 10.

Our performances were judged using (very badly drawn) happy, sad and slant-y faces. The Tina’s gave a fantastic rendition of Etta James at last with elements of Cher Lloyd and Tina Turner’s Proud Mary. The Mysterious Magicians wowed us with their crazy card tricks and deadly disappearing acts while ‘Sully’ re-enacted a dramatic crime scene involving Claire being attacked by Tia!! It was a close call but the Tina’s stole the show with their amazing singing voices. Nevertheless a great time was had by all J

Kiras Saturday walk blog.

On Saturday morning we were all delighted to find out we would be going on a
lovely walk for 2 and a half hours! our group went on the second walk, we set
off with some apple juice, malteasers and the dog Liza. The walk was a well
chosen walk, barley any uphill and near the water which was nice. We spent most
of the walk round discussing how we hoped to be selected for Tanzania next year
which luckily now we all are!
Half way around the walk we all got a tad too excited when we saw how clear the
river water was, so as you do we decided to swim in the middle of september!
Lucy braved the water and the rest of us decided we wouldn't go in fully until
Dianne did, so in jumps Dianne, so in jumped the rest of us!
It's fair to say I've never heard so much screaming, the water was freezing, but
we all enjoyed the brief swim! Although it probably wasn't the best idea as the
rest of the walk back we were waddling in wet clothes with squelching shoes. But
sadly we had a loss on the walk, Tia's malteasers never made it back to
Gillerthwaite, they went downstream with some latex gloves :/
Surprisingly I enjoyed the walk, minus the numb toes!

Blog for the work

On Saturday morning after a nice breakfast, we split into two groups. Group 1 went for a long walk, whilst my group, group 2 did some work for Walter. First off we started cleaning out his garage which at first you couldn't even step in the door because it was so full. We cleared out things from a washing machine, to climbing equipment, to rotting vegetables, but the worst was definitely the dirty nappy. We managed to clear it out quite quickly, so after a short break, moved onto the chicken coup. We had to dig up the grass leaving just the soil for the chickens. Thankfully we managed to do this without being attacked by them. Whilst we were working we were being took individually for our selection interview. Once we'd finished this and the other group were back from their walk, we rested and ate our dinner. Then we swapped and my group went for a walk, and the other group carried on with some more work. So a busy day but we still managed to have fun! 

Chloe Addison.

Blog for Friday 13th September.

       We all arrived at the Low Gillerthwaite Field Centre at 5pm. At this point we all settled in with Kelsey and James cutting wood for the fire and Becca’s cook team (me, Kelsey and Danika) prepared dinner which was pasta bolognaise that we all really enjoyed.

After dinner we were split into two groups, the Durdians and the engineers. The engineers had to teach the Durdians how to build a bridge (using paper, scissors, glue and pencils) however we (the Durdians) couldn’t speak to the engineers unless we were somehow touching or connected to them. If we weren’t then we had to scream which Tia seemed to really enjoy. To make things worse, the engineers had to find out all our little annoyances – such as having to kiss each other on the shoulder when greeting, not being able to say no and hand shaking not being allowed under any circumstances - on their own, which wasn’t very easy. However we all really enjoyed the exercise, just and so managing to complete the task in the time allowed.

Throughout the evening we’d all thought of questions to ask about our visit to Tanzania and placed them into a bowl. After we had finished our tasks for the evening we all sat down in the lounge and picked out questions one by one to ask from the bowl. It took quite a while to get through them all but we eventually managed to finish asking all the questions that we had to the leaders (and Barney).

To end the night everyone sang happy birthday to me and we all ate lots of lovely chocolate cake. J

Lucy.

2013 Trip Blog

Well, our visitors arrive on Sunday so make sure you keep an eye out for updates on the 2013 Trip Blog!

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