June 16th – Elijah
peaced out really early, which was kind of funny. I worked out, showered, and walked twenty
minutes to New City Church, which belongs to the Presbyterian Church of Uganda
and felt a lot like the service at my home church in New Haven. I got there early because I’d gotten the time
wrong, but I just sat there, journaling and singing as the praise team
practiced the worship songs. The instant
I walked in and heard a song I knew playing, there was a sort of immediate
release, a feeling of being home with a covenant people that I hadn’t felt
since being in New Haven. Though it was
a pretty muzungu service, about half white people and half Africans (including
the 20 school boys all sitting together), it was good to be there. I met the country head couple of Mission to
the World, which is the PCA’s international missions sending organization, and
a couple that had taught my friend Luke at Christ School Bundibugyo. Again, it was kind of crazy but cool to
intersect with friends of friends halfway around the world.
After church, I decided it was a
good idea to go to the office to have some alone time in a cool, quiet place
with Internet. Even though it was only
supposed to take 20 minutes to get there, it took 40 minutes to get there, and
it was a lot warmer in the afternoon than it had been in the morning. Little did I know, the whole building was
closed. I should’ve known, but I guess
I’d thought that Elijah’s considering going to the office on Sunday meant he
knew it was open. Oh well. That was fairly disheartening and I was
sweaty and hungry, so I got a boda to the Oasis mall. I felt safe because not many cars are on the
road on Sundays, and despite it being really unclassy, I hiked up my skirt and
let my spandex show because I refused to ride side saddle. Funnily enough, Lily and Saga were at Café
Java, and they gave me their last two bites of quesadilla and a sip of their
milkshake, which was exactly what I needed to hold me over until I finished
grocery shopping and went home.
I bought some “minced” aka ground
beef, frozen chicken breasts, yogurt, and some cereal at the store, then walked
home, sent a few emails, and took a nap.
I woke up to a call that pretty much implied that I was supposed to have
dinner ready for the hiking crew when they got back, which annoyed me on
principle and because I hadn’t really gotten to sleep. One of the things I’ve been processing is
what it really means to have a servant’s heart, and why I’m so happy to give
sometimes and do it very begrudgingly other times. Anyway, I washed the green beans, skinned the
potatoes, made the beef, and was joined by Lily and Connor, who helped unpeel
the ridiculously tiny garlic cloves (NEVER AGAIN) and snap the ends off the
green beans. Titi boiled the potatoes
and mashed them to perfection as I finished cooking the beef. It was kind of an odd dinner, but it tasted
pretty good. We then managed to get
through about ten minutes of the West Wing pilot that had been streaming for
two days and gave up to watch a movie.
June 17th – I meant to
work out in the morning, but that failed because I got up a little late and had
planned to Skype my parents for Fathers’ day, which was good. Work was pretty boring, but I enjoyed
listening to my audiobook. I also
realized that it really exhausts me to not talk to people all day—I need human interaction—so I was pretty
tired coming home, but I hung out with Lily, who’s awesome, and we went to the
gym. I made some mediocre chicken, Titi
and I had some delicious pineapple, and we went to bed around 11:30.
June 18th – I slept in
for my birthday, went to the gym, made some really good [yellow-yolked!] eggs
with tomato, bell pepper, and cheese on toast, and headed to work. I met the new girl at the office, Leah, who
grew up in Korea, goes to RISD, and is researching “poverty porn” this
summer. Elijah took me to lunch in
Kisementi for my birthday, which was really lovely. We talked about family and life aspirations
and other things while enjoying some tasty Indian chicken curry. I waited for 45 minutes for Moses to pick me
up after work, and then we spent a lot of time in a traffic jam on the way
home. I headed straight to bed for a nap
before my birthday dinner at Prunes, which I chose because it’s close, has
fresh and healthy food, and, most importantly, is reputed to have a great
bakery. Lily and I shared a chicken
curry wrap and house salad that had chicken, avocado, and mango, both of which
were really good. I finished my
obligatory Smirnoff Ice, which hilariously said not for consumption under 18
(whooo becoming “legal” in a country where you’ve already been legal for three
years!) and ordered a really yummy frappe.
Elijah and Bwana Scott, a grad student in my Swahili class who’s doing
research on radio and the LRA in northern Uganda and the DRC, joined us for
dinner, and it was great to get to see Scott while he was in Kampala. We went to karaoke night at the Centenary BBQ
Lounge, where we were disappointed to not be able to sing Beyoncé and Saga,
who’s married, got pretty heavily and awkwardly hit on by the emcee over the
microphone. Connor, Saga, and I sang “A
Whole New World,” which was hilarious because Saga totally went for it without
a care in the world whereas Connor, a bass, and I, an alto/tenor, kind of
conservatively tried to sing what we realized was a soprano/tenor song. Oh well.
We stayed out about 30 minutes too late, but overall it was a good
day. In general, I think of birthdays as
excuses to show someone how deeply loved they are, so for me, they’re a pretty
big deal, but I’ve realized that not everyone sees them that way, so I’ve
changed my expectations in the last few years.
My birthday was just what I wanted it to be: a good day spent with
friends.
June 19th – I slept in
because Elijah told me I could show up however late I wanted (I think in
anticipation of me being hungover, lol, because I had two and a half drinks
over six hours, but Connor had done 21 shots plus a few beers on his birthday a
few weeks ago…). As I walked to work,
which I envisioned being really nice but which turned out to be a little long
and a little warm, I listened to several of Paul’s epistles on my iPod. I felt kind of inadequate at work, which was
a bummer, and I came home tired. After a
nap, Lily and I went to the gym, Titi made some really good spaghetti sauce
from scratch, and we hung out in Saga and Lily’s room.
June 20th – The lowlight
of the day was Africa Cry #3, as I feel like Amara would call it, which was
sparked by some transportation issues… I worked at the office alone in the
morning and then went down to the taxi stage as usual, asking for Mulago, and
was told to get on a matatu which ended up going the complete opposite
direction. When I asked for
clarification, though I’d already paid, the conductor looked at me like I was
an idiot and told me to get off, cross the street, and get on a different
matatu. He was the one who told me the
taxi was going to Mulago, so I was pretty frustrated and felt a little
humiliated and taken advantage of because he so unapologetically had taken my
money despite taking me in the wrong direction and quadrupling my transport
time as a result. Because so many people
got off the taxi at the Wandegeya stage, we had to wait for another eight
people to trickle in (the drivers rarely leave a stage without a full car),
which took a while. I finally got off at
the Mulago stage 50 minutes after I’d left the office, when the previous day,
it had taken 13 minutes. Walking toward
the hospital, I broke into sobs and texted Connor to ask if he could step out
for a second to give me a hug, then sat on the gate outside for a few minutes
trying to regain my composure. I think
it was a combination of the inconvenience, hatred of disappointing people (in
this case, Elijah, by being late), hurt that I’d been manipulated, and shame at
having been so confused that made me so emotional. This is the kind of little day-to-day thing
that I can imagine really taking a toll on someone doing missions in Africa.
The highlight of the day, though,
was Connor’s “hometown.” I’m a Freshman
Outdoor Orientation Trips (FOOT) leader at Yale, and on FOOT, we share short
versions of our life stories, which we call “hometowns.” I proposed last week that we all do them so
that we could know each other better and enrich our time here, so Connor went
first, and I think we all enjoyed it a lot.
I’m looking forward to the rest of them and thinking about the most
relevant things to share in my own.
June 21st – Basically, I
finished A Thousand Splendid Suns and
began The Kite Runner as I worked,
Carole cooked us a fabulous family dinner, and we all watched a stupid movie.
June 22nd – We went to
explore Kampala a little bit today with a couple APP interns. First, we waited an extra twenty minutes at
the taxi stage for two of them to show up and
headed to Nakawe market. My
understanding is that we thought there would be crafts there, but it was mainly
just used clothing, and it was actually a different market that sold
traditional crafts. Jo hated that
everyone was yelling at the wazungu to come buy things from them, so she and
Macey went home. Saga and I took a quick
look around and then crossed the street to get her some food because she was
hungry. There was cilantro in the beans,
which made it really tasty (with the chapatti, too, of course). Then, a Ugandan APP intern who was supposed
to meet us much earlier showed up, took us to where the craft market used to
be, and then found out that it had moved to the mall where the Shoprite, a
large South African grocery store chain, was.
We made our way there, browsed the store, which had beautiful things
that were a decent price but expensive for Uganda, and, after much longer than
I felt like it was necessary to be there, left to get on a taxi. We also learned that they have a branch at
the mall a ten minute walk from us… As you can probably tell, I was fairly
annoyed that I’d spent the first two hours of my Saturday waiting for people I
didn’t know and going to markets I didn’t care about instead of sleeping and
working out.
We eventually got on a matatu
headed toward Nakasero market and the Gaddaffi National Mosque, which was the
main attraction for me, and my spirits lifted a bit. Titi, who had slept in, and Lily, who was
trying to get her broken MacBook Pro fixed, would both be joining us there, so
that was something to look forward to as well.
Unfortunately, DK actually got robbed on the taxi, and all eight of us
sort of confusedly got out. In hindsight,
it’s so clear that the three guys in the empty matatu had been planning a scheme. First, they moved Connor, who originally was
in front, to the back and DK to the front, and they put Saga in the middle of
the first row, when normally people fiercely protect their seats. Saga said one of them was reading a newspaper
and “accidentally” dropped the fare he was handing to the conductor over her,
at which point the two of them looked expectantly at her for a while before
deciding to pick it up. Her boss had
told her just the previous day that people pretend to be engaged in reading their
papers while planning to steal from you, and that it’s a fairly common trick to
slip their hand in your bag as you’re leaning down to pick up change they
dropped on the taxi floor. In the back,
we didn’t really know what was going on, so when there were mutterings up front
about getting out, we all did, and DK told the conductor that her camera was
missing. He apparently responded that
he’d seen her drop it at a previous stop but thought she didn’t care—yeah, right. Connor also said later that the guy had felt
all his pockets as he climbed in, but because his hands were on his phone and
camera, and his wallet was in a pocket with a button, he got moved out of that
prime front seat from which DK got robbed.
She was mainly disappointed about the many photos she hadn’t uploaded,
but again, that feeling of betrayal also really sucks.
They felt scarred by the matatu
ride so wanted to get on a boda to go the rest of the way to the mosque, and we
had a rather lengthy discussion amongst ourselves about what mode of
transportation to use in light of not being able to bargain down a special hire
rate as much as we wanted. The group
settled on bodas, but as I felt uncomfortable about it, I spoke up and told
everyone that for my parents’ sake, I wouldn’t take a boda while the streets
were busy, so I’d pay the difference in the special hire price (which was
17,000 shillings for all of us, or 7 bucks total). I knew that my father would find it
ridiculous for me to not pay up for safety, even if it were more expensive. It was nice that everyone agreed to split
evenly, too, rather than have me pay. As
Saga mentioned, offering to pay for things is a slippery slope here—I’ve
definitely paid for way more than my fair share of groceries.
The mosque was really pretty. All the girls had to get completely covered
before entering, and it was a little unclear whether the 10,000 shillings we
paid was just for the clothes while entrance was free, or whether the clothes
were free and we paid for the ticket.
The view of the city from the top of the minuret was beautiful, though,
and my day was made instantly better when Lily’s bright shining face showed up
a few minutes after we’d reached the top :)
After Jada and I accidentally used the men’s bathroom (which I think was
actually a pretty serious mistake on our part, and I felt bad about it, for
cultural respect’s sake), we looked inside the actual mosque. There was also a wedding that was ending,
which was cool to see. If was
disheartening to hear the guide’s speech about how Islam was the way to
salvation. Saddened, I prayed that
people seeking to know the divine would be met by the one true God. I looked at a translation of the Koran and
prayed for the second half of his speech, my heart breaking for him. When the tour was over, we bought some
disappointingly room-temperature chapatti and headed back home, where we hung
out and listened to Macey’s hometown.
People headed out to Cayenne, I think, but I wasn’t really feeling in
the mood, so I had some refreshing time with the Lord in my bed. Then the bat incident happened. If you haven’t already, check out my
(ridiculous) video reaction…
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