Lets see, what have we been up to the past couple days?
On Saturday we were planning on going out to the baby home (from now on I’m going to call it NBH for Nsambia Baby’s Home), but we both woke up feeling sick. It makes sense that our bodies would be overwhelmed with everything new here, plus the all the babies are sick. It’s hard to avoid getting germs when their faces are right up to yours, not to mention all the noses we’ve cleaned during the past week. So we moved our mattresses into the living room, turned on a TV show on the projector (yes, there’s a projector in the living room. It’s pretty fantastic), and did nothing all day. It was needed, and seemed to help me because I woke up Sunday feeling much better. We also started in on our scrapbooks.
On Sunday we hung out too, only we were a little more active. We decided that we wanted to try actual Ugandan food, so went out on a search for it. I didn’t really know what to expect about the food here before we left, and it’s been a little bit of an adventure trying to figure it out since we’ve been here. When I was in Mexico there were good restaurants all over the place, plus I knew what everything was (for the most part). It’s a little different here. As far as I can tell Ugandan’s are mostly too poor to go out to eat, and when they do go out, they are wanting every type of food but Ugandan. On our walk we passed French, Ethiopian, Eritrean, Indian, and Thai restaurants, but no Ugandan. It wasn’t till our way back that we saw women cooking food on the side of the road in three large cauldron looking things, which were covered in corn husks. There were other people ordering food there, so we decided to brave it. I wish someone could have taken a picture of me sitting there at a broken down table, surrounded by Ugandan men, eating yams, rice, and some sort of meat soup. Jamie wasn’t that hungry, so I was left to figure out how to eat everything properly. I think I gave the other customers quite the show. It wasn’t great tasting, but my stomach did fine with it… and a huge plate was about 90 cents.Not a bad deal.
So today was our first day at the clinic. We showed up, and the women there said we could help with the infant immunizations. Every Monday they give out about 100 immunizations to newborns to toddlers. When we went out to the tent the nurse told us we could start in on the immunizations, and we both laughed. We needed to at least watch some first before we started poking needles into children! Soon enough though, the nurse had Jamie giving out shots to babies, and I must say that she did an excellent job, for a beginner lol. I was next, and tried to channel my phlebotomy skills to do the best I could. I think next Monday we’ll be able to do the whole process by ourselves. Pretty crazy.
We then met up our friend Maddy, who has been living in Tanzania for the past year and is visiting Uganda before she heads back home.
WARNING MOM AND DAD: do not read the next 2 paragraphs until Wednesday afternoon!
My parents are great… they have been 100% supportive about my whole trip to Uganda. They have not panicked about my safety or been overcautious. But when I told them I was going to raft the Nile they were NOT pleased. They said I couldn’t tell them I was going, just that I got back safely.
So
It was great to see Maddy (and her friend from UO) and while we were talking Jamie and I decided to go raft the Nile with them tomorrow!!! Our original plan was to go this Saturday (we wanna make sure to go early enough in our trip that we can go a second time if we want, because they give you a 50% discount if you go again), but we realized how much fun it would be to go with more people we know. Should be just absolutely fantastic. I’ll update everybody when I get back I’m sure.
OK PARENTS YOU’RE GOOD!
Anyways, that’s all for me. Hope everybody’s enjoying their summer! I hear there’s a heat wave rolling through Oregon, good luck with that…
