Safe and Sound!

Well we made it!  A very special thanks goes out to our family for actually managing to get us out the door (A)with everything we need and (B)without beating us in the meantime! The last hour or so before we actually left was a frenzy of activity – there were just so many little things to wrap up. Then we finally managed to make it out the door to go to Gary’s dad’s house to load up the truck, and guess what this genius of a person forgot?? Passports! Are you kidding me?! I remembered my cookie scoop and yoga mats, but not the passports.  Fortunately, Gary asked me about them before we got too far, and my Dad had not yet left the house to meet up with us. I only share this story, because I realize it’s one that will live forever in the archives of dumb-things-Erin-has-done, so you should hear it from me first J

We managed to make it through our goodbyes – by far the hardest part – and we were on our way. Uneventful flight – we slept fairly well, but we are good sleepers. We spent our 11-hour layover in London doing the Big Red Bus tour and also managed to sneak in a ride on the London Eye (as well as a fish ‘n chips lunch) – and then we were on our way to Entebbe, Uganda, which is about an hour from where we live. We got another good night’s sleep… and we arrived at 7:50am to a rather cool and breezy Uganda!  And not only did we make it, but so did all of our luggage, which has surprised everyone here.  Apparently all the luggage actually making it here is a bit of a rarity.

Robert, another eMi long-term volunteer here, met us at the airport to take us home. He says he’s only been driving four-wheeled vehicles here for two weeks, but we were pretty impressed by his ability to not run over pedestrians and navigate roads with no painted lanes. He and his wife, Heather, have been absolutely wonderful to us – giving us lots of advice, feeding us, and showing us around. We managed to make it to our “compound” and were met there by Maggie who was trying to beat us here with a bouquet of beautiful mini orange roses for our table and a “Home Sweet Home” sign for our home-sweet-home. We managed to arrive during one of the rolling blackouts. But we are fortunate to have lots of windows, so when that happens during the day, it’s no big deal.

Day 1 synopsis: Got in town – settled into the apartment, which we are still very impressed by – walked to EMI and Heritage International School, 10 minutes and 5 minutes respectively – ate a great dinner provided by Heather – and then passed out. We have a nice, clean apartment with an avocado tree made easily accessible since it is located right next to our 2^nd floor front porch J  …Which will hopefully translate to great FRESH guacamole in the very near future (apparently the tomatoes are super yummy here too).We just have to hunt down limes which will be difficult since what I thought were limes are actually lemons which don’t look much different than Uganda oranges which don’t look too different from US limes – aka small and green.

Jet-lag earned us a very good night’s sleep to get us ready for Day 2. We ate delicious zucchini bread from the Donahue’s for breakfast – got a tour of the neighborhood by Heather (btw, the neighborhood is Kansanga – next to Kabalagala – say that 10 times fast!) – ate scrumptious lunch with the EMI crew – bought some money, phones, and internet stick – ate yummy rice, beans, and guacamole (which is apparently more of a salad here than a dip) – dessert was fresh red bananas from the tree in front of Maggie’s house – lost power somewhere during dinner – got propane stove lessons and heard some cool stories about how God is working here – and Erin’s FIRST boda boda ride (motorcycle taxis) which was great fun and uneventful, which is how I would like all of my boda boda rides to be.

On a side note, in regards to EMI lunch: Janet does the cooking. She is a fabulous cook, so I told her I was going to camp out in her kitchen so she can show me how it’s done – I have several mothers at home counting on me knowing how to do Ugandan cooking when we return! Today was samosas (wontons stuffed with a meat mixture) – apparently every other Thursday USED to be samosa day, and when the EMI staff tried to change the schedule and samosas did not appear, there was a revolt. Hence the return of samosas today – I don’t blame them, they were delicious. We also had rice and beans – she put carrots in with her beans – again, she’s going to have to show me how to do that, because it was yummy. Don’t worry, mothers – I’ll definitely be bringing these two recipes back home – you will love them!

By the way, matatus are big vans that serve as mini buses/taxis – always loaded with people and always stopping on the side of the road and making it lots of fun to avoid collisions if you are on foot or in a vehicle or anywhere in the vicinity. We’ll try to remember and add all of the fun words we learn as we go.

Keep us posted on how you are doing! We’d love to hear from you!