Basketball Skills and Garden City Giggles

I wake up early so I can catch a Matatu to Kampala and then a boda boda to Kololo where the sports day activity is being held for all the wards in the area. I try to call Joe to see if he’s going, but I can’t get a hold of him. I get to Kampala so quickly and it only costs me 3000sh. I walk around a half and hour looking for a grocery store so I can buy something to eat for breakfast. Finally I find a store and by some yogurt.

I find a corner with some motorcycles waiting for passengers. I ask a man in a helmet how much to Kololo he tells me 3000sh. I ask the other guy in a helmet how much and he says 2000sh and I try to haggle, but it’s hard because I don’t know how far away the suburb is from Kampala. I agree and get on. We zip through traffic and I pray the whole time that we won’t die. Ha.

I tell him to take me to the air strip in Kololo. This is what Kelley told me to say. We get there and I can’t see a church. The driver pulls over and asks a man walking on the sidewalk where the church might be. The guy says he can speak English so the driver has me ask him. “Oh, you mean the church with the guys who walk around in white shirts and tags?” hah “Yep!” and he points us to the church.

The building is so nice. This neighborhood is nice. It could be a neighborhood in the States. There are huge palm trees on the lawn. Right when I get off the motorcycle I see Joe and Meghan walking across the street! Perfect timing.

Slowly all the wards show up for the activity. We start with the 100-yard dash. Joe and others are skeptical that I’ll be much to reckon with. I said, “Yeah, but check out the shorts.” I’m wearing basketball shorts ha.

I get second place in my heat and at the finish line everyone cheers and grabs me and takes me to the score keeper along with Ivan, who is also from our ward who got first place. He was running in jeans and still he beat me.

I was running against real Africans. Nice.

Next we play volleyball. The guy who is refereeing is very strict. Meghan and I are sure he’s making some of his own rules. Luckily I had just played volleyball at summer camp. Our camp was challenged by another camp to a game. All the staff who wanted to play were not automatically on the team, we had to try out. It was a lot of fun. So I was ready.

The team we are playing against have matching jerseys that say USA. The Mukono Branch cheers us on and claps. Their cheers really helped us I think. Except the first time I heard “down with the USA” I said, “hey!” But then realized they were meaning the other team.

Next we play basketball. Joe asks if I won’t be tired. Meghan and I tell him that Americans play sports all day long. Basketball is great. Meghan refs during the first match and plays with us for the next round when Mukono played the USA team again. Fouls all over the place. And I wouldn’t mind, but they are called every ten seconds. I think I made most of the shots for our team. Most people in Uganda play soccer, not basketball.

I jam my finger.

After basketball we have lunch. They’ve prepared Chipatti and a boiled egg, watermelon, a banana, and some juice. So good. The food is served Ugandan style in plastic bags.

After lunch, James Bond (a guy in our ward) finds me and asks me to come play volleyball with them in a friendly match against the USA jersey guys.

I meet a boy named Frank. He’s 13 years old. Meghan tells me he wants to be a photographer when he grows up. I tell him I’m a photographer and give him my website and email. I tell him that sometime I’ll give him a photography lesson. He is so friendly and polite and I’m very impressed by him. It turns out that he’s getting baptized tomorrow!

I ask Meghan if his family is getting baptized as well and she lets me know that he’s an orphan. Technically he has a mother, but she lives in Kampala and has nothing to do with his life. He lives with his uncle who doesn’t really seem to want to support him at all.

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There are people dancing in the hallway and when they see me they ask me to teach them some American dancing. I tell them that I know how to swing dance and let them know that African Americans in Harlem invented the form of dancing in the late 1920s.

They loved it. I danced with this girl Maggie in our ward. I showed her some basic moves and I taught her the back flip.

Meghan came around and we danced some swing for a while. She is good at following my lead and she teaches me some moves I didn’t know. I give Frank my sunglasses while I dance and he wears them as he watches.

Joe is getting tired and it is getting pretty late if we want to get home at a reasonable time. I ask Meghan if she wants to go to Kampala because I’m dying for some famililar foods and I hear there is a section of Kampala that is really westernized.

Joe takes us to Garden City. Meghan and I are speechless and only manage to giggle as we walk up to this place. We could have been in America. It is like a mall. We walk inside and see escalators and feel air conditioning! We go to an ATM and get out some shillings with our American bank cards.

We find a restaurant that serves cheeseburgers. They are 6,000sh. Which seems so expensive but really it is only $3.37. That is cheaper than a meal at McDonalds. We convince Joe to get something to thank him for taking us to such a great place. We sit down and they bring us our food. Oh, I could have cried. It was just like a meal at home. And the ketchup for the fries was Heinz and they had BBQ sauce. I felt like I was cheating by eating this food.

After eating and giggling about our dinner, we go to the grocery store. It is just like a grocery store at home, but just smaller. We go up and down every isle looking at all the variety. I thought that I would buy so much, but I only buy milk boxes so I can have breakfast. I think about buying some cereal. They had familiar brands. But it was expensive, so I didn’t get any.

After we check out we go and get milk shakes. They don’t taste exactly like the ones at home, but they are definitely milk shakes and they definitely tasted good. We head on home with full stomachs and full hearts. Ha.

On the taxi ride home my family calls. It was Alec’s first time to the Temple and he tells me all about it. He says it was great and that he felt the spirit so strongly there. I talk to my family about the sports day and eating American food. It was the most American day I’ve had. It was so great. Not only the food, but I’ve been wanting to do some exercise for a while. It feels good to have my body be so tired. I am happy.

We get to Mukono and say goodbye to Meghan. We get to Kisoga and I say goodbye to Joe. Then the taxi waits in Kisoga, as usual. There are only three of us in the matatu, plus the driver and conductor and they wait for more people to ride.

Then, 19 school children load unto the Matatu. Yeah. Right. The taxi is liscened to hold 14 people. It always has more, but 24 people in a Matatu?? I am sitting against the side of the taxi and one of the students pokes my leg to tell me to scoot more. I laughed and lifted my bag to show them that I couldn’t possibly move anymore and even if I could I’m not budging.

The kids are so incredibly loud. I didn’t sign up for this! Why am I paying 2500sh to ride in a school bus? I finally ask the kids why they shouting. I should have kept my mouth shut. They screamed in delight that the Muzungu was trying to quiet them down and they laughed and laughed. It was torture.

Finally they get dropped off at Unique Standard and the taxi sits there and waits. I know the conductor from the HIV seminar we gave last week. And I’m glad he calls me by my name. After sitting there for some time I finally get off the taxi to leave, but Connie (said like Cone-y, short for Cornelius) says he’ll take me to Nsumba.

The taxi is waiting for a boda boda to drive by. Finally one does and Connie pays the driver some money to take the remaining passengers all the way to Katosi so they can drop me off and go back to Mukono for more passengers.

They drop me off at the bottom of the hill to Nsumba (the road is very hard for taxis to drive on) And I start my walk up to the house. It is so dark. It isn’t so far to the house, but still I pray that I’ll be safe and don’t end the prayer until I arrive at home. It was nice to see the dim glow of our few light bulbs as I made it up the path and into the yard. I prayed thanks that I arrived safely.