I’m not sure if I’ve explained the window situation here at the Kolping House. If you are in one of the front-facing rooms, you have a huge window that everyone walks past. It’s hard to keep the curtains closed. As an example, during our last trip I looked toward a window when I heard a man speaking very loudly. There stood a huge, fat, naked guy yelling at someone and hitting his hand in his fist.
Also during our last stay here, I was standing looking out my second floor window (fully clothed, I might add) when two kids from the house next door shouted “Mzungu” and waved at me. So I was glad to have a rear-facing room first floor room: facing the wrong way for prying eyes and too low for the neighbors to watch. But there is one little problem. When they built the Kolping House, they dug down about six feet before building. That means our big window is just barely above ground level. And that our bathroom window is, too. Now the problem is all the laundry is boiled in huge vats behind the building. And the laundry hangs on lines to dry. So there’s a fairly steady stream of workers behind the building. And there is NO WAY to close up that bathroom window. When you’re taking a shower (unless you do it at night with the lights off), you’re fair game!
So Friday began with Lisa telling me there was no hot water. We went down for a quick breakfast before I tried my shower, but when we came back, the water was still ice cold. And the sun was up. So I turned on the faucet rather than the shower and splashed. Then I contorted underneath the icy flow and washed my hair. And when I stood up, a lady was hanging sheets on the line about 15 feet from me!
Vincent picked us up at 8:00. I started to whine to him about having no hot water this morning, but it dawned on me that this man, in his entire life, had never had hot water from a tap. For him to have hot water, he would have to go to the village pipe or to the stream and draw water, carry it back, warm it on a fire, and pour it over himself. So I decided not to complain about one chilly morning.
Our third day of visiting kids in Uganda. With only a few exceptions, we were down to one or two students per school. So at every stop, Grace and/or Vincent go in and talk to the school officials while we wait in the car. They come back and we get out. We stand until the sponsored child is found. We talk to the child, snap a picture, and present the gift (wash basin and blanket). We get back in the van and go to the next school!
We stopped first at Kitante Primary School where we met Doreen (Leila). You might have seen her in our videos, a precocious three year old leading the baby class in reciting their colors. She’s now in fourth grade. Both of her parents are dead, so her old principal from her baby class days has taken her in and is giving her a place to live. She’s all grown up now, a confident little girl who is beautiful and shy.
A few schools later, we stopped at Bright Futures. This is a school started by the Mubirus in their (our) church building. They’ve built a small building and completely fill it with students. They are familiar with Mzungu visitors, so the shouts started as soon as they saw us coming. A class was in the school yard when we pulled up and we were simply mobbed by laughing, happy kids! They pulled on us and hugged us and tried to check our pockets to see if we had anything for them. There was simply a drove of kids! We stayed for half and hour or more. Danielle sang with them and Angie talked with them and hugged them. Jeff was bombarded, too. David slipped into the school to film the terrible conditions there. Chalk boards served as walls between classrooms. It was dark. There was hardly room to breathe. But the graduates of this elementary school are doing well as they continue their studies, a tribute to Harriet, the head mistress.
At St. Francis Primary, we saw Viola (Cindy). This is another girl we’ve visited since kindergarten. She used to be tiny and shy. Now she’s a sixth grader. She is tall, her English is quite good, and she isn’t afraid to show it off.
In all, we visited eight schools before lunch. We asked Vincent to take us to a real Ugandan place, so he selected Tastey Budz. Tastey serves pizza and hamburgers. It isn’t the least bit Ugandan but it’s one of our hosts’ favorite places. So we went into the brightly lit fast food shop and pointed to our food on the menu. Jeff had a pineapple, banana, and bacon pizza. David and the girls split a large cheese pizza. Lisa and I split a medium pepperoni pizza. Grace and Vincent tried other things from the menu. The pizzas were thickly covered with cheese, but no real tomato paste. Ours had several layers of cheese on a thin crust with a lot of greasy pepperoni slices thrown on. We were starving, so it tasted pretty good!
After lunch, we pulled into a secondary school. The head mistress invited us in and told us they were having an event. She said we were welcome to attend if we wanted to. She said she would announce the names of our children once everyone was settled in. She led us across a soccer field to a series of tents where she found us seats. There were a few students under the tent with us, all decked out in their uniforms. There officials of some kind sitting at the front of the tent with a number of trophies. Huge speakers blasted out reggae and hip hop, We sat for a while, but there was no indication whatsoever that the students were settling down. In fact, most of them (as in several hundred) were still standing across the field looking at the tents. So Vincent walked across into the mass of students and returned with Sarah Eseri (Doug and Linda). I have no idea how he found her in the confusion, but find her he did! She was very shy at first, but really opened up to Angie and Danielle. There was another student, but Vincent was less lucky finding him. Since there was no indication at all that the festivities would begin in the next year, we decided to leave. As we were leaving, we saw the journalist who reminded me about our appointment on Saturday.
Two more quick stops at high schools, then we went shopping! I wanted to go into the shops near the theater. Vincent didn’t want to go there, but he did and there were no parking places at all. So we went to the other craft shops, a series of shacks and cargo containers sitting on the side of a hill. While we shopped, David went across the street to a coffee shop that sent us home with green coffee beans a few years ago. The man gave David a few samples, but nothing more. Jeff shopped quickly. Lisa and I were the hold up. We wanted to get nativity scenes and batiks and it takes a while to sort through these things.
We saw 25 kids in 12 schools before the day was over, and we shopped for nearly an hour. I was completely beat, so I asked if we could eat at the Guesthouse. Everyone agreed. I sat down for a minute, and then I was too sick to get up.
For the first time in 9 trips to Uganda, I was REALLY sick!
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