We Look Smart

Man with machete chops down the tree in our backyard. We wake up & look out our window to see a man doing a little yard work on a massive tree. It only takes about 45 minutes, but he just lets the whole tree fall in front of our eyes. In our moment of awe Eden says, “Wow, what good aim he has. I’d let him chop handcuffs off of me any day…” I just look over and say, “ You been watching Titanic lately Ede?”

The bugs have multiplied today. Eden has been on a rampage. Every time I look over she has her foot up in the air mid kill. My new favorite activity is to tell her when they crawl into her luggage. It’s like watching a helpless child see candy stolen away from them. She is paralyzed in fear like 75% of the time that I glance in her direction. Not to mention her luggage is strewn everywhere. She is also winning in the race to malaria. We detected her first mosquito bite on her wrist today. I thought she would freak out a lot more than she actually did. We trucked it into our room and she poured hand sanitizer on it and screamed, “IT BURNS!!!!!!!!”. But then the skies opened and the funny man upstairs made sure I had more ample entertainment. I am in the bathroom washing my hands and all I can think about is having some of the monster cookies Eden has stashed away in her bag. So I come out of the bathroom all coy and on a mission when Eden turns the corner and thrusts the bag full of cookie crumbs in my face & says have one. So I stick my paw (sorry Missy) in the bag only to see an ant crawling around in it. Naturally I scream, “BUG!” and leap across a 5 foot clearing into the corner and Eden (once again paralyzed with fear) throws the bag, begins to cry, and simultaneously gags herself in the garbage can on her hands and knees. Then we survey the damage only to find that like any good ant he was not alone, but had probably a good 10 accomplices crawling around in the bag with him. Eden sat on her bed with her head in her hands and professed the have a severe stomach ache until Mackie came into the room asking for the cookies, saw the bag on the ground, took a bite full, and walked out… Suddenly Eden was cured. We both sat up, wide eyed with one hand on our mouth while the other was outstretched. Complete horror. Poor Mackie, we probably laughed for 20 minutes..

Jane came to hang out today while we waited for our ride to come take us to the market. So Ede and I sat her on my bed and decided to have what we fondly now call the “Joke Time with Jane” segment of our day. Lets just summarize and say my joke has what is considered a delay laugh moment of confusion, but its gonna be big. Then Eden and I went outside on the porch to enjoy the weather when we started playing another fun game that would probably appeal to the 5 year old demographic and us. We probably belong on the sprout good night show, a show actually meant to make kids fall asleep during it. Eden would sing her Africa song, pick out one of the countries and have me make up a joke about its name. So of course we went through my Uganda joke, which goes a little something like this…

You are me and I am you. Since you’re going to Africa you say, “Will you call me?” and I’ll say, “A-fric-an can’t, U-gone-duh…” and then you’d say, “Well then you can’t, Ken-ya!”… Okay its super funny (but probably when you’re only at camp girchwood and your leg is the pole, that’s the only time that’s funny..).. Anyways so Eden tries to throw some curve balls at me with Mali, and then Egypt, but I’d like to say I handle them well. Then she says how about Tunisia. So of course I say, “Ede you have two-knees-ya?” So she laughs and then says, “How about Niger”. Needless to say we are minorities in an African country, although colorful thoughts flew through my head, I kept my composure. So I stifle a laugh and all Eden can say is “DO IT.” This ain’t no Nike commercial Eden. The man sitting on the other side of this balcony is a native.

When Tony arrived to take us to run our errands, everyone’s energy when definitely clashing. Like if each of our energies could have been one of those atrocious sumo wrestling costumes, we would have all been running at each other full force, falling backwards, cursing, and then jumping up again and going at the next person. Needless to say with all that Asian havoc ensuing, Eden and I look at each other and laugh it off while Mackie grabs the bottle of brandy that the kind Englishmen who left this morning gave to her as a parting gift last night and retreats to the bathroom. After what we concluded was a sufficient swig, she marches out into the living room and pours some into Jane’s glass. And then like magic our troubles were solved. Actually, I think Mackie may begin to loose hair if people don’t pick up the pace and become prompt. Everyone works on African time here, and the best way I can describe it is like “Kylee and Alexis” time. We are chronically late ladies. But multiply that by two and you have what we call “Africa” time. Schedules are about as meaningful as tooth you lost when you were 4 and kept as a memento, like you’d like to keep it but at some point you must disregard it because you realize how useless and gross it actually is. Okay, so maybe not exactly like that but you get my point. We were supposed to leave for Kaberamaido yesterday, but instead we are leaving tomorrow because the mechanic has to weld something onto the front of the car. The bumper perhaps? To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if they ditched the bumper in hopes that maybe this 1940, blue van with leopard printed seats could go 3 miles per hour faster. This van is like ford’s version of the VW love machine van of the 60s… Only it’s stick shift… 10 hour car ride here we come..

I think we will begin a shout out section to talk about funny things that have happened and said that obviously would make at least one of you laugh. Shout out to Spencer, “If you don’t like Utah, you would hate Africa”. Apparently my man Spencer has a problem with crowded places. Spencer, I would have to say I agree… Its like I’m sure Disneyland would be a fun place if there wasn’t like over 30 people touching you at one time. Like hands off people, I’m trying to enjoy the Happiest Place on Earth. But no, they insist on wearing those obnoxious Mickey ears, which makes their head take up twice the amount of space it actually needs to. Like we have room to spare… And then there is the obvious language barrier, which causes problems and noise. I will say that I am probably the biggest culprit of this next pet peeve although I’m working on it. But, since when is talking louder and slower going to help someone who doesn’t speak your language suddenly see the light? Anyways, I believe this came up because of our adventures at the market today. Tony and Jane were a bit hesitant to let us come with because this market in one word was: sketchy. It was down one of the narrowest alleyways in all of downtown Uganda and it was just a series of shops on top of shops on top of shops. You couldn’t breathe. And once you went into one shop selling fabrics, then 10 other people would come into the already cramped shop telling you that they had what you wanted in their shop down the way. I’m sure you do, but if you touch me one more time, I’m using the hand-to-hand combat skills I learned on 007. So a solid shout out to Nintendo 64. Tony dropped us off to go into the market, but before he did he made all of us show us our hands and take off anything that looked remotely expensive. I seriously hopped out of the van wide eyed and holding onto the back of Eden’s skirt. We went and bought fabric for dresses that the kids are making in the orphanage, and then we wandered across the way to buy yarn for scarves. I thought it would be cute and would help them sell better if we fastened the scarf (they are going to be circular—Denae kind of like the white one you let me borrow for NY) with a button. So while Eden and I are elbow deep in some of the coolest (but grossest) buttons we are told to hurry because apparently they are going to lock us in the store for the night if we don’t get moving. Yeaaaaah, you don’t need to tell me to hurry twice. Needless to say, we are going to have some great dresses and scarves made by the end of this. So we left the market when it was almost pitch black and walk out to where Tony was supposed to pick us up. No Tony. Where is Tony? When will he back? Where is he going to meet us? Why is he not here? Where to babies come from? And all Jane did was just start hauling butt up a street to get us as far away from the market as was humanly possible. I’m no dummy. I know when to hustle. But hustling didn’t turn out to be the problem. I’m young, I’m spry, I’m also a moving target for the Ugandan drivers to hit apparently. Eden and I would be crossing a seemingly deserted street and out of no where 5 mini buses and 10 piki piki would round the corner going 60 coming straight for us. They don’t slow down. Or swerve. Its almost like we are small rainbow diamonds on Mario-Kart and everyone is trying to plow through us in hopes that they get that blasted yellow star power thing. We are convinced that if we die in Africa, it won’t be because of some devastating violent mishap, it will be because a vehicle simply smashes us. While we were tearing through a small street somewhere I looked over to see THE most disturbing thing I have ever seen in my short life: a dead man on the sidewalk. I’m not joking. He was dead. He was on the sidewalk. He was a dead man on the sidewalk. I wouldn’t have noticed him if Jane wouldn’t have had to double take what she just saw as well. I grabbed Eden and had a silent faint moment. I can’t imagine if Eden had seen it. It would have been like the Monster Cookie fiasco of ’11, only 10 times worse.

We had our first chance to get out and wander around the streets today. The people are so nice. Tony told me I was okay to take my camera out so Ede and I went on an adventure around the parking lot of the Shell gas station. Whooo girls, don’t get too crazy. So, we went and bought ourselves water inside. On the way in, everyone stared. Like we were the bad dream you have about walking into school with nothing but your tidy-whities on. Everyone was staring like I imagine Michele from the Bachelorette probably gets stared at now. But it wasn’t just that. The men kept saying, “You look smart”… We look smart? Well we did drop out of college to come here… What do you say back to that? We both settled on “Hi”. Hi? You look smart… Hi? In what country does that make any sense? Whatever. We got in the car to ask Tony what we should have said, and while Eden has a solid grasp on Kumam (the language we will be fluent in), I do not. Tony told us to just say thanks, which is “Apoyo”, but me being the confused soul I am thought I should say “Mumot”, which means, “You’re welcome”. “You’re welcome”? Doesn’t that seem a bit loose? Like I’m doing them a favor…

So Eden just woke up. Well technically I think that I woke her up with my rustling around in the room in pursuit of my glasses. Don’t you hate that, you want your glasses because you can’t see, but you need them in order to find them. Anyways, she looks over at me trying to find the goods and then like a bat out of hell bolts from under her bed net into the middle of the room and whisper screams, “THERE ARE AT LEAST FIVE BUGS IN MY NET”. So I offer a spot on my bed for her to come cuddle into and she crawls and says, “Well, looks like I’m getting Dugee Fever…” I think you mean Dengue Fever Ede… Go back to sleep darling.

So as far as we know this is the last time we will have Internet. Oh car alarm at 8:00 a.m., its just in time, the rooster must have been strangled---Op, kidding, he is up too. Anyways, we think this is our last time that we will have access to the Internet for another week or two. So we will keep recording what happens everyday on the laptop and then once a week we will download what will probably be a novel of stories onto the blog. Blog on friends, blog on.