Sometimes, you can’t win for losing. The air felt wonderful last night, until a brief (as in 30 second) power failure around 11:00. The air conditioner wouldn’t come back on no matter what. We have small remote control units to work the micro air units which are located above the sliding glass balcony windows, but mine would do nothing at all. I even climbed up in a chair and tried to find a reset button, but there wasn’t one.
So I went to bed with no air, no fan, and no way to open the window. I had run the air on max until it failed, so it was really cold in the room, so I slept okay until early morning. It still wouldn’t come on.
I went down to the desk first thing this morning. I needed to get the air fixed and I needed to drop off my laundry. They told me I had to take the laundry to Housekeeping one floor up (first floor. The ground floor here is 0). And they sent a bell hop up with me to check on my air unit. When we got to the room, there was a green light flashing on the air unit. It hadn’t been there at all last night. He grabbed the remote and the air came on!
“Okay, so you are fine.”
“But why wouldn’t it come on last night?”
“Oh, the power was off and we were on generator. We do not allow the air conditioners to run when we are on generator. Too expensive.”
So I have an air conditioner, but most of the time, it won’t work! And after power comes back on, it has to be reset by hand. The bell hop promised to get me a fan.
I went to breakfast. It was even better than I remember. There was a man cooking omelets, a strange kind of fruit cake, pineapple and water melon, two kinds of juice, and a hot bar of sausage, potatoes, baked beans, and scrambled eggs. There was even cereal, but only instant coffee, and the spoon in it looked as though it had been used to serve honey!
They were due at 9:00 and showed up at 8:50. Everyone was anxious about the shoes! We drove to Joseph’s house where 525 pairs of shoes and 600 pairs of socks were stacked in boxes at the end of the kids’ six bunk beds. We took about 250 pairs out to the van and headed for church.
The crowd wasn’t nearly as large as last week, but there were still more than 125 kids there for their shoes. They waited patiently through a lesson, then I spoke about the meaning of Christmas, then the process of passing out shoes began. It was amazing! Grace called out three names at a time, and the kids came up. A group of teens helped them find the right shoes and Mebel passed out socks. It was an incredibly well organized system, although it took two hours to pass out the shoes.
I wondered if it would be any different with me here alone, and it was. The kids instantly warmed up to me. There was no hesitation anywhere, at least among the little ones. They were all grinning and vying for my attention as soon as I walked in the room. Getting shoes probably had a lot to do with it! It’s a huge deal here! Many of these kids would not get new shoes once a year were it not for us. They would rely on used shoes from one of the stalls downtown, and live in fear of being sent home if they made it to school because their shoes didn’t look smart enough.
I spent a long time talking with Jacinta, our first university student. She has finished her first year as a business major at the university. I talked with her about the classes she has taken and the ones she will take soon. She is planning to major in computers or accounting. She is doing well, though she failed one course first term when she contracted typhoid and fought it for nearly three months. She kept going to school, but she fell behind in one class and will have to make it up next year. Jacinta is a beautiful young woman. Her father is dead and her mother doesn’t work because she has a house full of kids. Jacinta lives with them and takes a taxi to school each morning, a cost of about 33 cents each way. The project helps with this when her mother can’t. Apparently, there are times when there is no food at home at all.
She is working with the younger kids in the Project on every Saturday that she can. The kids really look up to her, and she is very patient with them. As the first person from this particular area to go to university, she understands the importance of her success and she accepts this responsibility. Dan and Lisa, you would be very proud of her! She has given me her new phone number for you, and she said that she always looks for a letter from you, although she knows you may be too busy to write. She said she wished she could get pictures and letters from time to time.
I also met with Mark, the young man who has caused us so much trouble of late. He will finish school next December, so I was encouraging him to start planning now for university. It isn’t clear that his grades will allow him to continue, but we will work with him to find a technical program if that is the case.
Harriet, the Headmistress at Bright Futures Academy, came to see us today. Her school has grown to 80 students! She was far from friendly, but she was at least cordial! Florence also came by, and she was as happy and carefree as ever. She invited me to Christmas dinner at her house, but understood when I explained shy I couldn’t make it.
I also had a chance to talk with Joseph at some length about the trip to the tombs. He told me Michael and Vincent would not go into the tomb because they required us to take off our shoes. They said that would be showing respect to a false god, so they could not participate. I asked why he went in, and he said he was complying with a rule, no respecting a god. He said he wasn’t there to worship, but to learn history. We had a long talk about motives and how they are often as important if not more so in determining sin than actions! He understood that it would be wrong for Vincent and Michael to enter the tombs feeling as they do, and it would be wrong for him to criticize their beliefs. But he also understood that our going in was fine, and that it would be wrong for Vincent and Michael to criticize us.
We finally finished and cleaned up the mess in the church. We had a lot of shoes left over, which we expected. We also were off on our estimates for some of the sizes so some of the kids won’t get their shoes until next week. But the shoe store has agreed to accept exchanges through next Saturday, so we will be fine. We’ll make sure the shoes for Kassanda are okay on Tuesday, then they’ll exchange sizes to balance out all that’s needed. Then, they’ll carry the leftover shoes into the community to poor kids in the church and outside the church who need shoes.
We climbed in the van and took the remaining shoes back to Joseph’s house, then we delivered several church members to various stops. We were near a pizza place, so Vincent took us there for lunch. Mamba Point is a small place. The tables are set in a garden under a thatched roof structure modeled after old fashioned Ugandan homes. We ordered two large pizzas with ham, cheese and mushrooms. It came about 20 minutes later. The crust was very thin and the pizza was loaded with toothpick sized pieces of ham, excellent cheese, a little tomato sauce, and large pieces of basil. It was one of the best pizzas I’ve ever eaten!
It was nearly 4:00 and there were no kids in town to see, so Vincent took us out to an agricultural research farm that was only a little ways from the guesthouse. We got through the gate, but could find only one man, who said the place was closed for Christmas. We drove back to Kampala through an Islamic community where many people were buying food from very colorful food stalls. This market was much more orderly than the one downtown, and the shoppers in Arab attire gave the market a completely different look and feel.
We returned to the hotel a little after 5:00. I had found a photo of a squid on the Internet, so I showed it to all of them. Michael was rather appalled, but he had to admit it tasted great. I found a picture of a shrimp, but couldn’t convince Michael it was equally good. He also wanted to see a crab, so I found a blue crab and it scared him. He said he would never eat that, and his reaction was the same to a picture of escargot!
My laundry wasn’t in the room and the Internet was barely working. But the air came on when I pushed the remote control, so it is now freezing in here, in preparation for the failure to come soon.
I do have a balcony with a view of the parking lot. It’s a very narrow balcony, hardly wide enough for two chairs, but I enjoyed sitting out there in the late afternoon, listening to the cars coming in for both the weddings getting ready to start downstairs. Then the mosquitoes started buzzing, so I came in. I called my family. They are celebrating Christmas today due to scheduling conflicts there. I am not! I got to talk to everyone for at least a minute, then I ran out of time on my phone. Of course, they are out of phone cards downstairs!
I went downstairs and found that a bit has changed at the hotel dining room! There is a huge new menu that includes a few Chinese things as well as a bit of Indian. And prices have risen with the variety. By a lot. The buffet didn’t look great, but I decided to go that way instead. I expected it to be cheaper, but I was wrong! Still, it was only $10 with water. It started with mushroom soup and bread which a waitress served me. Then I man served me matoki, and he listened when I told him I only wanted a little. I put groundnut sauces on it, and it hardly tasted like mud at all. I ate pasta instead of chunks of fatty “meat” or chicken stew. And of course there were potatoes and rice. So it was a pure starch buffet!
They had also added deserts, and in typical African style, they weren’t being touched. I had a bit of crème caramel and mixed fruit. Not bad for under $10!!
I walked around and looked at the outdoor wedding. It is by the beautiful pool, and it was beautifully lit and very tastefully and elegantly decorated in white with small white lights. There was another of the terribly obnoxious non-stop MC’s and a lot of people enjoying themselves. The hotel has opened a new wing for parties and conferences. It is very nicely done, and heavily used. I also stopped to see my computer friend to thank him again for helping me last night after his work day ended.
I came back to the room to work on my lesson for tomorrow, but I got distracted by, of all things, “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory!” How odd: Jonnie Depp as I’m not sure what with a lot of midgets and terrible children right in the middle of Africa!
And my laundry came. The lady called and brought it up at 8:55. It was supposed to be here by 5:00 but since there were two 5’s in the time it arrived, that is probably better here!
I MUST get to work. It is late already!
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