Boom, Bam, Baby Slam.

Dear Bleaders (Blog-Readers),
Eden says that I am going to be so excited to smell normal BO again. Aint that the truth. In fact, there are a lot of things I am going to be very excited for, but then a lot of things I am going to miss. Last week I attempted to write everything in poem form (probably the reason there was no blog posted—not a lot of things rhyme with Mackie thanks for stealing all of our stuff..) anyways, this week I think I’ll mix it up by writing everything in letter form.

Dear Eden’s Nail Clippers,
It was so great having you visit the first few weeks we were out here. However, since you’ve been gone, I can’t breathe for the first time… Avril, get out of the blog. But really nail clippers, Eden’s big toe nail is getting longer than her actual toe. She refuses to be creative and use the pliers on her pocketknife like I did, instead she just looks around hoping to make you appear out of thin air. Since people here don’t really have toenails on their feet, no one seems to sell nail clippers—you could see our problem.

Dear Rema-Mama (or Kevin, whichever you prefer),
We love how dedicated you are to making us food, we have even gotten used to the fact that you no longer lurk in dark corners staring at us as we sit at the kitchen table, instead you have taken to sitting at the table with us. Like that’s cool and all.. But so help us, if we find another rock or worm in our food, we will be forced to disinvite you to our weddings like we promised to do. Rema-mama, Eden outwardly loves food, so when I see her spoon up maybe a tablespoon of rice, and a teaspoon of beans, I frankly become worried. She is withering away. And coupled with the newfound exercise enthusiast I have made out of her in the last 2 months, her caloric input/output ratio is looking a bit unbalanced. So, lets review shall we? The grey hard circles in our food, they are rocks. And beans should not move on their own. If they do, they most likely aren’t beans. However, we do have many compliments to administer to the deserving. Yesterday when you served us fresh tomatoes and told us we could eat them, I could have cried. But I also cried myself to sleep that night that you served us the rancid jackfruit and Eden had to sleep with the garbage can beside her bed. So you win some you lose some, right sweetheart? We love how you can carry a whole jackfruit on your head while simultaneously keeping my hand in the bear-trap of all hand holds, and how you and Winnie complain that we walk too fast when we go get fruit. I even found it humorous when you made us carry the fruit back home to slow us down. And about the whole ‘you bringing us a cow as wedding presents’ thing—I called Delta, they said as long as it fits in the overhead compartment or fits under the seat in front of you without protruding out, you’ll be fine. Good thing, because I just didn’t know if William Sonoma discontinued rabid cow on their registry this year. But Rema-mama, when you told Jane about how we dump the hot sauce into the bean dish when we are done with dinner, you really ousted us. We don’t like that hot sauce, its too hot.. But we bought 4 jars of it on accident and now we have to figure out a way to get rid of it, you were being a bit of a sell-out don’t you think? Help us out, Eden offered to pay me 50,000 shillings to drink some of it. We are desperate. Anyways, can’t wait for the chipote & tomatoes for lunch today. Bon appetitie!
Dear Jane,
Oh dear, dear Jane. Eden and I just never know what to do with you. We should probably begin by saying, we like your new wig. Its afro-tastic. I never knew that an African could pull of being a red head so well. And I cannot reiterate enough the fact that I am truly and deeply sorry that I do not have a boyfriend back home. I’m sorry. Really. Sorry. Maybe you could hook us up with the boys from town that keep calling you to tell you that they love us and want to marry us. Or maybe the date Eden is set up on for tomorrow at the internet café will go swell, and I’ll swoop in like a vulture. Internet Café Lady said her brother is really cute and really wants Eden to meet him. She even briefed her to say that she has a boyfriend back home if he asks for love, so how could that go wrong? As you can see, I’ve been quite close to capturing a boyfriend while here, the man that let us borrow the nut grinder even proposed marriage to me. And if you have been praying for me to get a boyfriend like you promised, I should be set the second I walk off the airplane in America, don’t you think? Keep putting a good word in with the man upstairs, and while you’re at it if he could be devilishly tall, dark (not quite that dark), and handsome, I wouldn’t be upset.

Love, Us.

P.s. That was not as serious of a racist joke as it appears to be. They make jokes about their skin all the time, it was bound to happen.


Dear Thieves that tried to steal us and our stuff in the market,
You are dirtbags.

This probably deserves more attention than a letter will allow. So I’ll stray and tell the story. We are just minding our own business buying 5 kilograms of ground nuts to get us through the week (considering we don’t eat much besides them lately) at the market in Soroti, when Jane goes to buy tomatoes from a nearby booth. We walk over behind her and the lady who owns the stand is speaking quickly in hushed tones to Jane. Jane sees us come behind her turns around and starts speed walking slash stomping into a far dark corner and all she will say is, “Let us go. Let us go. Let us go.” Meanwhile the tomato lady is still following behind Eden laughing and bringing up the rear of this oreo-train-line thing we’ve got going, and I’m looking back thinking man her prices must have been high. When we get to the corner Jane turns to us and says, “There are thieves after us. Do you guys have anything valuable in your backpacks?” I’m thinking, “Hm.. No, just my new camera, laptop, money, and my journal. I mean heck I’ve already got one laptop stolen, what’s another one? And since when have meticulously written journals not been replaceable?” So we strap our backpacks on the front of our bodies, and the tomato lady (who Jane asked to follow us to keep us safe) comes back with tomatoes from her stand for us and says, “They are waiting at the entrance gates to get you. Oh, and you owe me 2,000 shillings.” Great. We are trapped in this smelly dim-light market with giant spiders falling on us from the cloth roof. I’ve already got anxiety about seeing all of this dirty rotten food surrounding me, and Eden is mid-swat every time I turn back. And all I want to do is sit on the ground and never ever move again, but instead I strapped on by big girl panties and Eden and I started hauling ace back toward to entrance. We bought three bunches of bananas, two pineapple, and got the heck out of there.

It’s probably safe to say that I really will not miss that.

Dear Mackie,
You’ve been ratted out. You dirty rotten scoundrel.

Love, Us.

I have decided to include what would have been the blog last week, because my effort does no good sitting as a saved document on my laptop so, bare with me.

The Blog this week is going to be a poem
For those of you reading at ho-em.
Rhyming our African experiences will be hard
Sorry if I begin to sound like a retard

Having Jane and Mackie gone has been like Spring Break ’11
And we found out Reh-Mama’s real name isn’t Kevin
We made new friends with the housing staff
But every time we talk to them they still laugh
We know our jokes are really not that amusing
And their English is getting even more confusing

Eden and I moved into our new room
It has a nice view of the van and the a-boom (see previous blog entries).
We now each have our own separate beds
So no more rubbing feet with each other or bonking heads
Our mattresses are about as comfortable as cement
And wherever we sit we create a permanent dent

Everyday we go outback to work on our tan
And then dive into the bushes every time we hear a passing van
While sitting there feverishly watching the street
Two orphan girls came around the corner and began licking our feet
They always ask for us to cut off an arm
So they can turn white—which is cause for great alarm
So whenever we are not doing our homework or defending our limbs
We prepare for ‘Prayers’ on Sundays by memorizing hymns




This poem was created to say our weekly hey
P.s. I’ll now be home on the 4th of May


In other big news, two packages arrived of ours at the post office. We don’t know exactly whose they are, but we are excited that something finally got here. I guess my withering stare scared the post man enough to finally retrieve our packages from Soroti.

The shower is broken. Again. So its back to bucket showering. Speaking of the bathroom, there is a mysterious humming sound coming from the bathroom by the kitchen table. I am too scared to even dream about trying to see what it possibly could be due to the fact that Eden turned over all of the chairs at the table and found bee nests under everyone of them.

There are 2,475 steps one way to school. Just in case you wanted to know.

Eden and I realize how slow we have begun to talk. We like to enunciate all of our words until it seems painful. We talk so properly. We could blame this on a number of things: the fact that we teach children who I was recently informed speak ‘Ugandan’ English (more about that to come), or it could be the fact that all we do in our spare time is read our scriptures. A few nights ago I was running around our room and said, “This is blasphemy!” Eden spun right around and yelled, “NO MORE SCRIPTURE READING FOR YOU!” But then last night she and I were sitting at the table and she said, “I will not be partaking of that, thank you.” Oh, you won’t be partaking of this will you? Perhaps you should go cast your net into the sea again, Eden.

Our down time has been put to good use lately. When we are not kicking back with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we have perfected our sunbathing techniques. The only obstacle is the children that currently hang out down by our house now. We have been overwhelmed with the flock of peeping-toms that peer through our open windows at random times throughout the day. So when they spy us sitting idly in the back, they take that as an invitation to come attack our bodies. We don’t know what to do most of the time so we just sit there and take it. The other day two of the girls came over to us and grabbed my foot and licked it clean, then grabbed Eden’s and did likewise. We couldn’t even speak we were so aghast. So now we have gnarly tan lines and really clean feet to boast of.
We have taken to setting out chairs at night, strapping on our sweatshirts and socks, and going out in the front yard to enjoy the nighttime nature and stars. We have even made a new friend. The guard, whose name we believe to be Arthur, waits for us every night to come outside and sit with him for a few hours. Most times our word exchange is very limited because he sounds like he is talking with a mouth full of cookies and he never looks directly at us when he speaks, but we have remedied that by bringing out my laptop to watch movies with him. At first we didn’t think he would be interested in watching a movie so we didn’t set it up near him, but little by little we could see him inch forward and then around behind us so that he could see the screen. So we invited him over and within 2 minutes he was fast asleep on his little chair. Oh, Arthur… But then his machine gun fell to the ground and woke him up.

Now for the saddest part of the blog… We regretfully tell you that Susan (one of the Matrons here at the Orphange) passed away on Saturday night. She was HIV positive and did not keep up on her medication. They believe the cause of her death, besides malnutrition, was typhoid fever, malaria, and complaints of constant headaches (which was never resolved). She was 4 months pregnant and both the baby and she died. We attended her burial on Monday and it was quite easily one of the saddest things I have ever witnessed in my entire life. African funerals differ greatly from American funerals. The casket is open throughout the whole ceremony and at the last respects people walk past to say goodbye to her and then run into an open field and scream, pull at their hair, and throw themselves at the ground over and over again. Her son Enoch is one of the kids that turns the corner and yells “Yoga!” at us in the video. We will miss spending our afternoons with her cooking groundnuts and learning Kumam.

On a lighter note, we have successfully downloaded the conference talks onto my laptop and every night the Tabernacle Choir explodes through the entire house while that man says, “This is the 181st Annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.” We always have to giggle when one of the First Presidency welcomes ‘Those of you listening around the world’ as we sit beneath our bed nets with only the light from the candle in the middle of Africa taking notes in our journals.

Love,

Us (Eden and Kylee).

P.s. This will be my last post from Soroti. We will leave for Kampala next Saturday (where I will probably put up a few last words) and then from there I will be coming home!