Gulu Clips

There have been a bunch of random thoughts running through my head so here they are:

I rarely drink soda in the states and when I do it's diet. Yeah yeah I know diet soda is bad...here in Uganda I've started a two bottle of classic Coca-cola a day habit...which btw are glass with pop top lids, so there's not taking it to go unless you want to pay the recycle fee.

Last night I got bit twice by mosquitoes in the middle of the night...I got one on my forehead it was as big as a quarter, smack dab in the middle of my forehead. At 3am I was looking at in the mirror first thinking hmm do I want it to be a mosquito bite or a spider bite? I then thought "huh who would have thought I'd get my "third eye" in Africa and not India". I should have taken a picture of it then because it shrunk by morning.

Since we've been here, 4 people that we know of who we have been in close contact/working with have had an outbreak of malaria...guess what we don't know that many people here. Proof malaria is a very serious problem here.

Yesterday we went back to one of the camps to chat with the kids, find out about their Christmas and how they like their new beds. What did you do on Christmas? Here are some of the activities are kids did:
They went to fetch water.
They got to eat a lot of meat.
They went down to try and catch fish.
The dog ate the meat for their Christmas dinner.
They went to prayers (church).

How the kids slept on their new beds:
One girl sang to her mattress.
Another went to bed with a big smile on his face.
Another had sweet dreams.

The other night when we were coming back from Murchison Falls it was dusk and there were kids as young as 4 years old, walking barefoot, down the two lane road, alone. Where they were walking is beyond me...but how vastly different, eh?

I'm going on a walkabout with my camera in the next few days. The photos I can get on the ground of everyday life will be so much better than the photos I snap from the van when we are zooming down. I can't wait.

My type A personality has easily adapted to Acholi time. We will pick you up at 10:00am....actual arrival time about 11:30...am I worried, nah.

The Ugandans also do this thing instead of saying a verbal "yes", they kinda raise their head ever so slightly with a raise of the eyebrow...totally have found myself doing that, along with a verbal "mmm" when I'm in agreement with what someone is saying.

People have been saying I hope you're having "fun" on your trip, this is fair from a vacation...I'm having fun, but I have fun everywhere I go....this isn't vacation fun, but it's one hell of an experience.

xox