The Long Silence

I have no excuses for this long of a pause in updating ya'll on my amazingly exciting life!!! Really, the only excuse is the lack of time for writing interesting stories for you to read. So the other option is just to tell you what I've been eating (intestines, yum), about the amazing taxi rides I get to take every day(the one where I sat next to the lady with the baby, the suitcase and the chicken on her lap was the highlight so far) and about my most favorite adventure, "navigating the taxi park after dark." Seriously, if you ever thirst for adventure, please come to Kampala and I will introduce you to a game that will make every thing else in life seem tame. On Thursdays I go and hang out with the Bakulye boys after work(previously introduced to you as the orphans who live in a garage but have a great brass band, play some wicked football, raise chickens, carve wooden things to raise money, and of late, make this MCC volunteer sweat with such science-related questions as you have never heard the likes)..anyway--so I tend to have to go home after dark, and thus the taxi park. So I am dropped off at the western end of the park, and the objective of the game is to make it to the far east end of the park without 1)having my bag stolen or 2)being run over by a taxi. These may seem like easy objectives. They are not. The first thing is to assume the "tuck and run" position. Head down, bag to the chest, now focus! I forgot to mention that what makes the game more difficult is that there are no real roads patterns to the way the taxis drive, they come from nowhere, very fast, sometimes from all directions at once. Screaming will not help, my friend. No, you must just be strong. The addition of being blinded by the headlights makes things especially fun. One must be diligent to ignore all of those attempting to distract from the objectives by hollering "mazugoo!" and offering many cows in return for your hand in marriage, or trying to sell you their delicious fried cassava. Do not be tempted! The reward for reaching the east end of the park is to get on the bus going home, and then sit in it for an hour while it is stuck in traffic. Ah, life in Kampala. Never dull!

Other transportation news: When I visited Hoima several weeks ago (town several hours to the west), I had the opportunity to experience "bicycle bodas." Now, remember a boda boda is a motorcycle taxi (which I ride with great trepidation and only as a last resort). So a bicycle boda is a bike (duh) with a seat on the back. Hoima, being a bucolic little town (about 30,000 people), is a great place to experiment with riding these environmentally friendly taxis. The bigger bonus is riding them after dark when there is no power. What a rush! Eric has admired the skill and prowess of these wizards of navigation for several months now, and when I visted he decided he could try and ride me around town on his bicycle. I had watched several people mount bikes as they were already going, so I decided that I could try this, as I wasn't sure eric could begin peddling with my hefty weight already on the back. So he started peddling his MCC bike as slow as its tortured frame and un-truewheels would allow him to go..and I tried to jump on. We both ended up in the dirt, much to the amusement of his family and neighbors. Second try, it worked. However, he was so winded by the end of our journey I declined a ride on the way home and chose to walk. We celebrated our semi-success by making banana bread over a charcoal fire (the most challenging part was getting the charcoal fire started!!). We mixed the dough, put it in a pot wrapped in banana leaves, and then put that pot inside a bigger pot with some water in the bottom, and covered the whole contraption with a big lid. What resulted was steamed semi-bread--you might think this sounds gross--but for us, heaven. We actually made it twice in a row, it was so delicious.
Other Hoima adventures included delivering two babies at the local hospital and building a duck house.

I'll have to leave it there, though... keep it real, my friends. I'm missing you!