A Place to Call My Own

A few more firsts: Took a big kid on a boda; not all that exciting, but super cute how Jason held onto the boda driver. I had to hold his shoulders because he kept trying to peer around. But that was nothing compared to my first driving experience. I’ve driven twice now; once to church and once all the way into town. After three months of observing, the strangest parts of driving here seemed surprisingly natural…driving on the left side of the road, honking and passing anything going at all slower then me (love that), being cut off by anything bigger than me. Feedback? Bridget couldn’t get over how calm I was and Emily said I did a great job. I’m hoping it’s only a matter of time before they trust me to run errands on my own.

One more thing…I got MAIL! A couple pictures and a note; Thanks Oma, love you! And to answer your question, yes, that video was taken while I was sitting on the boda.

Now for the real purpose of this post: 

Sorry for the weird fading...trying to fix...

This is the only space in this entire house that it is entirely mine: A top bunk and a four tiered shelf. I thought about pulling up the quilt and making it look neat and tidy, but let’s be honest, does that even happen? No.

First, the quilt: hand made by local Ugandan women and gorgeous; especially nice lately as the nights have been quite chilly. Cost? About $40.

The painting: I had this painting done by a local artist named Dickson. He’s the brother of Angela, the lady I know who lost her baby a couple months back. His studio is behind the shop where Angela worked (she’s across the street now as they’re all owned by the same person and the ladies who “man” them move around a lot) and from the moment I saw his work on the walls, I loved them. This painting is based on another one of his pieces; I just had him adjust some of the colours. Cost? About $48...and it’s HUGE.

See the little pouch tied to my headboard? Made that from some local fabric to hold things like my book, internet stick, headphones, earplugs...it's extremely handy.

The necklaces: I am obsessed with African bead necklaces and already accumulated quite a few. They’re beautiful and it’s easy to justify getting one in every color. Total spent on all of them? About $15…lucky if I can get one decent piece of jewellery for that much back home. Bought a couple purses too…$5 each.

Finally, this isn’t that important, but I bought my own power bar (you can see it at the end of my bed) so my computer cable isn’t stretching up from the floor right in front of George’s bed and to be honest, one power bar gets filled up pretty quick when we have power and there are 6 girls with computers, phones and iPods, so it’s pretty nice to have my own.

Speaking of power, a BIG issue in Uganda right now. There have already been some riots in Kampala and Entebbe, but things have been peaceful here so far. Today has been the first day in weeks that we have had power all day. For the last couple weeks especially we’ve been lucky to have a few hours of power in the afternoon. They call it “load shedding”. A nice way of saying, the dam in Bujagali is a failure and we don’t have enough power for everyone so you have to take turns. We’re not sure how this will turn out, but Umeme (the power company) has given us a schedule for December: alternating 3 days of power with 3 days of none. Days with no power: December 6-8, 12-14, 18-20, 24-26 (yes, all of Christmas…), 30-31 (…and New Years). We should have had power the last three days but Emily thinks they were screwing up and had us on both alternating schedules because we’re right on the cusp of two districts. She thinks they realized last night that they were totally gypping us because the power came back on at about 10pm last night (a really odd time) and has been on ever since. We’ll see…funny how something I used to take for granted seems like such a luxury. Hot showers, a functioning laundry machine, a fridge that stays cold…count your blessings all you North Americans. J I say that but to be honest, the only thing I really don’t like about it is the fridge; not being able to buy yogurt, feeling stressed every time I have to open it to get something out and let the precious remaining cold air out. Everything else is pretty easy to work around and live with.

That’s the summary. Things have been really good, busy with all the administrative stuff I’ve taken on, having a blast with the girls. I’ll be going to the bank tomorrow to start working on getting Ekisa a Ugandan bank account and will probably get the girls their own personal accounts as well. I love having a job, a niche, I suppose; a sense of purpose besides just loving the kids and filling a need that really needed to be filled. It’s good…especially being here for so long. I am happy, I am content…besides, it’s Christmas time.