I Would Like To Be Your Friend

I wake up at dawn and go back to sleep. Crazy dreams about my backyard and new additions to our house. I wake up and eat bread and honey with warm (powdered) milk and sugar. The Irish are Irish. We’re going to Mukono to buy traditional shirts for the Introduction we’re going to on Sunday. This is where the groom officially announces his attentions and his family meets hers – it’s suppose to be crazy.)

Lydia is doing my laundry – hand washing. I am very thankful. I’m wearing clothes I haven’t worn yet and it makes me feel happy.

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The Irish are going to Jinja and will pass Mukono on the way so Festus, Kelley, Joyce, Molly, and I tag along for a ride to Mukono. I wish I had these entries typed so I can use the internet while there. We go to a grocery store and I make friends with two of the woman who work there. I buy milk boxes and a bag of yogurt, which you eat with a straw, and also a small bar of Cadbury’s chocolate.

I meet Festus in the internet café across the street. I only email my Uncle Keith and then get off to save money. While Festus is using the internet I wait outside and watch Mukono as it starts to rain. A young man comes up to me and shakes my hand and introduces himself – Joseph. He is waiting for a computer in the café. Then he says, “ I would like to be your friend.” I say OK and then after a moment he gets out his phone and asks for my number and calls so I can save his.

He is in secondary school and has one year before University. But his mom can’t afford to help him, so he’ll probably just end up working in Mukono. I tell him how I had three jobs and took at loans. I tell him an education is worth everything in life and he should do whatever it takes to get to University. He wants to be a journalist. I tell him I used to work for a small paper in my hometown.

Festus comes out and we go upstairs to eat. I have chicken and chips (French fries.) The ketchup is watery and tastes nothing like the ketchup at home.

We go to pick up some things at stores along the street. In one of the stores, while Festus is shopping, a young woman who was working there says hello and then, “I like to have while friends.” And I say, “Oh good, I like to have black friends.” ha… She gets my phone number. Her name is Fiona.

Next we buy the traditional shirt so I can wear it to the Introduction. Festus is letting me borrow a suit coat. The shirt is 15,000 shillings. (only $8.43) Not so bad, but I don’t have a lot of money to spare.. This will make a good souvenir though.

We run into a girl who came here to volunteer and never left. Then we find Kelley and she walks with us to the taxi park, where we get a matatu to Nsumba. (After paying 100 shillings to pee in a bathroom that was really a room with a drain directly to the outside..) The roads are wet and I think for sure we are going to get stuck. Somehow we make it. Kellie and I talk about my brother and his mission and the church – good conversation.

The rest of the day is pretty normal. I am too tired to think of more. Jeff, Kellie, and I just talk after dinner and laugh and share stories.

Goodnight.