March 21-25, 2019
My time in Uganda has been full of ups and downs; building amazing friendships and feeling homesick, successfully solving construction problems and living without power/water at times, exploring new places and wanting to eat less carbs/more veggies.. but overall this has been a wonderful experience. I feel extremely fortunate for this experience but I am very excited to come home!
I spent my last few days in Nakaseke trying to soak in every last minute!
On Thursdays there is a large market in the Nakaseke 1 town center. Nakaseke consists of two smaller towns.. which we call Nakaseke 1 (where we live) and Nakaseke 2 (where the hospital is). Robin and I walked around the market looking at the brightly colored spices, dried fish and misc clothing/trinkets they have for sale. As we continued back to the guesthouse, our favorite kiddos joined us and held our hands as we walked down the street. They were especially chatty and must have been asking us for candy or something. We said we don’t have anything and they began chanting
“Omulimba!”( like o-mu-lim-ba) which we had NO idea what that meant, until we asked a nursing student.. who said it meant liar. Who knows what those kids where thinking haha.
Thursday night the medical students, Robin and I watched the some Survivor, played card games and had some drinks together.
We decided to throw a little going away party for us all (except Robin) on Saturday evening. (I’m the first to leave and the medical students are leaving 3 days after me, Robin is staying until the end of construction.) We invited several people from ACCESS, the construction team and other friends.
On Saturday morning, Soubhi and I boda’d into Wobulenzi to get some cash out and buy groceries. We walked all around and discovered a wonderful market with a ton of fresh fruits and veggies. It would have been great to know that existed earlier! We saw a girl wearing a Steelers shirt, so obviously I had to get a picture with her :). We even bought a live chicken to cook for dinner. Soubhi really lead the charge on that one, I was getting upset just witnessing the purchase of it haha. He rode home (for 25 minutes on boda) carrying a chicken!!
Saturday night was really fun! 18 people came over and we all had drinks and chatted for hours. It was wonderful to see everyone and have a chance to say goodbye. Apparently it is a Ugandan tradition for people to say something nice about the people leaving. Estherloy gathered us all around in a circle and began complimenting me, it then proceeded to go around the circle. It was completely overwhelming, but it was also wonderful to hear such nice things. That being said, I would not like to ever experience anything like that again, haha. After the showering of compliments, people started to leave and it was just us in the guesthouse. We continued to hang out, play games and dance for a few more hours.
Tuesday night, we had a soccer game – Construction Team verse Nursing Students. It was really fun to play again. I played for half the game and was the only girl. All the women nursing students and several other community members came out to watch the game. The crowd was huge! Unfortunately the Construction Team lost after a PK kick tie-breaker.
After the game, we went to Dusk Point (but learned that it is actually called Classic Pointe.. another language barrier issue.. it’ll always be Dusk Point to us.) Allan and Blessing joined us too! We had a few drinks, played pool and ordered delicious pork.
I couldn’t have asked for a better way to spend my last week in Uganda surrounded by friends and good food!
I’m currently writing this as I’m sitting in the Brussels Air Lounge, heading to New Orleans (via DC & meeting Scott!!) to see one of my best friends get married this weekend!
I’m planning on blogging a bit more; one last construction update, wedding & New Orleans, Pittsburgh home & Seattle home 🙂
Now, time to catch my flight!!
Red Rover 