Life

You know how I promised pictures? Well, I will keep my promise - just not today. So rather than not posting at all, I'll just ramble a bit.

I feel sometimes like people expect life in Africa to be sooooo exciting, and at times it is. Other times, it's just life. We wake up and Joel feeds the dogs (we feed them posho, or white corn flour, small dried fish and some puppy dog food all mixed together with enough water to moisten the posho - this is much cheaper than buying bags of dog food in Kampala). We have maybe 30 minutes before the kids wake up. We eat breakfast (today was cinamon toast) and then start school.

This house has two rooms attached to the back of the house. Ruth lives in one and we use the other as the classroom. It's great having the school stuff seperate from the rest of the house (except there's a strange musty smell from the cabinets that are in the room. I think we're going to move them to the garage and have some book shelves made.) School today was difficult for a variety of reasons, but it's over now so all is fine.

Around lunch time we headed over to the Hollenbeck's house to do a final clean-up. Ruth was already there and really did all of the work. From there we headed to the market to buy our vegetables, to a photo place to pick up Joel's passport pictures so we can have our own P.O. Box, to the supermarket (for ketchup, sugar, chips, and toilet paper), and then finally home.

While in the supermarket, a young lady came up to me and said "hi". I smiled back and said "hi". She then proceeded to tell me, "I don't know how to ask this, but I'd like to be your friend." She asked for my phone number and smiled knowingly when I told her I don't give it out to people I don't know. I told her which church I go to and she told me where she goes. She also mentioned that she is new in town and so I casually mentioned that there are probably many people she can get to know at her new church.

It may sound really rude of me. But, I've found that if someone wants to be your "friend", and your white, they really want money. I fully believe that if I had given her my phone number I would have received a call in the next couple of days. It would have sounded something like, "Jill, I have had a death in the family and have no money to go home for the funeral. You are the only friend I have here." That would have more polite than normal as people don't ask politely for money here. They say things like, "You need to give me money. My aunty has died." Ruth agreed when I told her my story and she laughed that a stranger would ask to be my friend. It's just a different world here.

So now we're home and two kids have come to play with Dara and Dade while their mom runs errands. I was hoping they would be able to come over and play so I am so happy. I need to go help Ruth with dinner (not because she needs it - just because I feel guilty sometimes having someone cook for us).

I will try to get some good pictures of the house and I will try to get better about blogging. Sometimes life is just so routine it doesn't seem interesting or worth writing about - it's just doesn't seem "blog worthy". But I guess a rambling post is better than no post at all. Thanks for reading!