Belarus
2 summers ago, a group of us went to Belarus to do some charity work. We ended up in a summer camp about 2 hours outside Minsk. There was nice volunteer accomodation in the summer camp. With electricity and beds and running water and everything. Did we get this? Did we fuck. The posh bastard students who were also volunteering got to stay there.
Our group got something a little more downmarket. It was an abandoned school. No electricity, no candles on us, one torch between 15 people.
It was a 45 minute walk from the summer camp (where the only "toilet" [a pit you crouched over. You could see the maggots at the bottom and a fly landed on my bum halfway through one day.] was.) The nearest tap was in the camp as well, although our neighbour kindly offered to hose all the girls down if they needed.
Showers took the form of a freezing hose down in a wooden cabin.
The floorboards in the school were mostly rotted away, a fun, bouncy time had by all as we avoided the gaping holes next to our mattresses.

We all got bitten by mosquitoes until our spirits were broken. I heard the team leader pooing into the pit in the cubicle next to me. I saw a giant grasshopper, paniced, and threw it onto one of the children staying at the camp in a fit of terror, causing him to be bitten. The girl sleeping next to me had wind problems and I *know* the guy sleeping to the other side was wanking.

One of the best weeks of my life.
(reducedfatLOLcat, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 0:44, 2 replies)

You see!
'That's' what you get for doing charity work.

Have a commiserating click!
(Greencloud Wanted to go fishing on, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 14:24, closed)

...
I had a student last year who went to Belarus to do charity work on a post-Cernobyl tip. The week she returned, Alexander Livenenko was killed.

What luck. You go all that way to find radioactive Slavs, only to find when you get home that...
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 15:59, closed)