May 28 - 31 (erin)

Sunday, May 28th
We tried to stay up Saturday night to wait for John's arrival because we were really excited to see a familiar muzungu face and also to receive our presents from home! But he was late and we needed sleep after a pretty sleepless night and so we conked out early. We met up with him the next morning and it was like Christmas opening up our bags of clothes and treats! He took us to the other fancy hotel in Masaka, the Hotel Zebra. It was a pretty good menu, at least different from the Brovad which we are pretty much sick of and only go when desperate now.

Then we met up with our friends Charles, Louise and her cousins and went to the Recreation Field for the Jose Chameleon concert. He's a local artist whose music we like. When it started to get dark we were very glad tohave our Uganda friends with us because the boys there were trying to get pretty close. Most of the music was good, lots of different local artists, some we recognized. But we found out that Chameleon was not going to show up because his arch rival OB1 was there and singing songs about their fight. So we left around 10:30. John had left earlier because it had been a very long day for him. I was worried about him going alone but he's brave. We were also very tired from standing there since 5:00.

Monday May 29

This was an office day for me so I typed up 3 reports that I had written. Got to take advantage of when there is power. We found out this day that John is afraid of rain...oh sorry, just afraid of being cold. Quite humorous. Rita who is the midwife for the Tekera project made us dried fish and g-nut sauce for dinner. Then Carli and I ventured to the internet cafe in the dark...not a good idea. Carli and Erin should not be adventurous together. We were afraid of the phantom cow that seemed to follow us across the field. It mooed really loudly but we couldn't see it with the flashlight!! Was really scary, I practically jumped into Carli's arms; have I ever mentioned my fear of cows? And we have learned that when we are scared, we just laugh hysterically, so we couldn't even run away if a ghost cow had really been chasing us. The man across the street was probably thinking we were nuts...no more evening excursions for us!

Tuesday May 30
John, Carli and I went to Kitengeesa to the school we will be spending time at. We met up with Dan, the librarian and the headmaster and teachers. Sounds promising, I'm excited about the change. We are going to help with English and teach some classes for girls to stay in school. It rained so hard while we were there that a river started to flow outside the library door. I was afraid John would set up camp there for the night. But he made it to the car without melting. Our taxi slipped and slided along the road...kinda fun...except maybe for Carli who had to sit in the front. Nasser (our driver) took us home and then we went out to Tekera with Bruce, the landowner and the school headmaster. Kinda squishy. John got to see the project and eat in the restaurant. We also got to say hello to our Josephs too. We met up with Chandra who has started teaching at the nursery school. Back in Masaka we took John to the market for the experience of shopping and I got to practice my bartering skills. Yah me.

Then we headed home and Carli and I prepared for our session at the vocational school. John came to observe. The day was very windy and the pupils were cold so we didn't keep them long but we talked about how their work experience had gone and what they learned etc. Then we played dominoes of course, for what seemed like forever. Charles and Berna (coworkers) picked us up and we went for drinks at the Tropic Inn. It was a nice evening talking with them. It was a very busy day!

On Wednesday (31), we all joined Jen for the Schizophrenia Fellowship meeting. It was interesting but at times very difficult to sit through because of language barrier and the heat. Chandra was really sick and I was worried the whole time she was going to faint or something. After about 3 hours John had had enough and indicated we needed to go. We got some pictures of us with the whole congregation and then left Jen and Chandra at the hospital to do their work. Somehow, Carli and I got to go to the beach with John and visit our donkeys. It wasn't as warm as last time but the water was so great and refreshing. We saw two fisher boys pull in their catch of the day from their boat. I'm not sure who was more fascinated by who, them in their underwear or or us white people in our swimming suits! That evening we held a special dinner for our practicum supervisors and any friends that had helped us out along the way. It was good and the food was great!!

Remind me to never become famous...I know I've mentioned it before but I can't stand being constantly stared at. I made my first trip alone to the internet cafe and now i dread the walk home. Lawrence, thank you for letting us know you are alive by responding to the blog. Seriously I thought you had forgotten about us completely!