July 4 We Made It!!

Friday, July 4, 2008 - We made it!

Okay. I guess it’s really the 3rd or maybe the 3rd part should be the 4th. Anyway, we flew all day from Brussels to Entebbe! I slept almost without a break. I kept waking up and there was food or a coke or something in front of me. It felt great!

We arrived at Entebbe at 7:30 p.m. It was already quiet dark. I was on the very last row in the airplane, Jeff was on the second row in tourist, and Lisa was in between. So it took us a few minutes to reconnect inside the airport. Jeff completed his Immigration card, and we went to the line with the fewest people, the line for East Africa residents. They took us though because we had our visas! So we were through in seconds while the folks needing visas stood in a very, very long line.

All 7 bags came out in a few minutes and we were off! EVERYONE was here to greet us: Joseph, Vincent, Michael, Dan, Grace, Lydia, and Baby Lisa. Vincent had asked for a lot of money to work on the van. It had brand new seat covers and plastic on top of the new covers. And he’d repaired springs and shocks, so it almost didn’t seem like Uganda. But once we got away from the airport and into the city, the smells of the markets and the grilling meat, the sounds of prayers from the Muslims and shoppers everywhere, the dark faces illuminated for only a second by the headlights on our van and the colors of the dresses the ladies wore as they ran across the street between shops or clubs let us know we were home!

We stopped for fuel (now well over $5 per gallon) and water (still about 50 cents for a liter) then on to Kolping House. The tall brick wall and the metal door, currently open, hadn’t changed at all but there was a huge addition on the front of the restaurant building, a conference center which opened last year. We started to sign in but they told us to wait until later. We walked up the gentle slope to our rooms. We unloaded, then went down to sign in. With the help of her calendar, I explained the complicated comings and goings of our team. When the clerk realized Lisa and I were planning to stay later, she said, “Oh, so you are a couple?” I agreed that we had been so for some time. “Then let me fix the big bed. Not tonight, but tomorrow night you will have the big bed.” I thanked her and we walked back up the slope to the two story brick dorm building. Our rooms were on the first floor on the back side of the window. Our windows opened into a concrete wall, which was much better than the first floor rooms on the front whose windows opened onto the walkway everyone used.

Our room was about 9x12 with a tiny closet. We had two cot-sized bed, two chairs, two night stands and a small desk. We had both a tv and a fan. Two mosquito nets hung over the beds. The screen on our window was in reasonable shape, so we decided to leave the windows cranked open. The bathroom was about 6x9 with a toilet and sink. A shower nozzle hung was mounted on the far wall. There was a drain under it, but the bathroom floor was flat and there was no shower curtain. A shower, then, soaked the lavatory and, if you weren’t careful, even the toilet. Everything was Africa clean and smelled fresh.

We were too tired to do anything. Everyone but me had eaten a sandwich on the plane. They weren’t hungry and I was too tired to think about it, so we went up to unpack.

How long does it take to get to Uganda? I’ve translated the times to EDT. We left at 8:30 on Thursday morning. Uganda is 8 hours ahead of us, so that would be 16:30 Thursday in Uganda time. We arrived here at 7:30 (or 1930 here). We were traveling 27 straight hours, including layover time!

No wonder we’re exhausted!!