Saturday, December 5

Last Visit Home

I woke Friday morning to take Suzan to Kampala so that she could get her final injection in her leg. We showed up before 1, but nonetheless the employees were on their way out for lunch hour. So we bought some western sweets and ice cream. We also got two maps for my family from a street vendor (sorry mom, we looked all over the place for the biggest kind but they weren't selling them anywhere in the city at the time). After we returned to get a few signatures necessary for the final injection, we walked to a higher elevation of town. While I waited in the waiting room for Suzan, I was reading a book on Watoto, which is an organization committed to helping orphans out of poverty and whatnot. It was funny reading after being here, because they had pictures of homes in which the captions read things like "Conditions Unimaginable" - I'm reading these things and looking at the pictures and thinking, "What are you talking about? That's not a bad house. I would live there willingly." Just because a picture features mud walls and matoke trees doesn't mean it's unimaginable conditions. Also, the book noted that Uganda has been home to the highest per capita percent of orphans in the world. This may have been true at some point, but I guess I just find it hard to believe. Maybe that's because local organizations have done an incredible job taking in these kids. Africans are good at solving their own problems, believe it or not.

Then we took transport to Suzan's family's home in Muyenga, Kampala. I like going there. Her little brothers can play all day, and my time there is spent in fending off Emma (short for Emmanuel in Uganda) from biting me. Suzan's step-mom Sarah makes delicious food. She even turned down the opportunity to return home to their village through free transport on Friday because she wanted to stay to wait for me. That was such a nice gesture. Anyway, I think the family likes me. We took a lot of pictures together and that was cool.

The ride out of Muyenga was bumpy and my headache that had been minor throughout the day was increasing. When we reached the giant taxi park, I was hot and uncomfortable because the legs of my boxers kept getting twisted and creeping up my leg. How annoying.

We walked out of the taxi park up the crowded streets to get a matatu to Mukono, but the line was easily over 100 people long, double file. So we went back to the taxi park and I was getting overwhelmed by all of the stress factors and the fact that it was not the first time I would reach home late. On top of that, everyone was trying to sell me things (gotta love white skin) and the taxi was now charging 2000 Shs instead of 1500 because everyone was trying to leave at once. So yeah, we finally got through the traffic jams and made it to Mukono. Turns out I wasn't significantly late in reaching home.

Sarah went to Jinja to get more college papers and then Dad had to go to Soroti, which is very far away, to get signatures for her to submit papers to Uganda's universities. I think Sarah will go for either Fine Arts or Geography at a public school on the way to Kampala.

1 comments:

hellouganda said...

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Julius Noble Ssekazinga
Kampala Uganda

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