Wednesday
This morning we received word from our neighbor that the one who was stranded on Lake Victoria yesterday was finally rescued and made it home safely. Praise God!
My day at work started at the children’s home. I was scheduled to do coloring with them again, but didn’t have anything else for them to color, so I just played with them. Always such a blessing on my day! There’s not much better than walking through the gate and having all the kids come running and shouting “Auntie Carolyn!”
Back in the office, we had our daily devotions and tea, then I got to work typing up a spreadsheet on the performance evaluation of our students in the apprenticeship training program, then worked on the script for the puppet show.
Lunch was matoke (green bananas, steamed and mashed) and roasted banana, topped with g-nut sauce (g-nuts are short for “groundnuts” They’re the same as peanuts, and g-nut sauce is sort of like peanut butter, but in a sauce form-- sounds weird but it’s super tasty!) I had no idea there were so many things you could do with bananas. Take them before they’re ripe, steam them and mash them up... roast them... eat 2 types of banana in a meal, and once we even had matoke, roasted banana, then a fresh banana. Banana with a side of banana and banana for dessert. Let’s just say I’ve definitely learned the phrase “menvu manji nnyo!” -- “too many bananas!”
Anyway, after lunch I headed to the children’s home to start putting the puppet show together with the kids. I was pretty worried about how it would go. Those kids can be pretty wild, and they’re not familiar with the concept of a puppet show. So I was picturing mass chaos and puppets being ripped apart after hours of hard work putting them together. But thankfully, the other women who work in the home were a huge help to me in keeping the kids in order and explaining what to do. They seemed to get the hang of it, so it was great!
After work I went to Luganda lessons with my friend Rachel, another short-term missionary here. Honestly, I’ve been struggling with keeping a positive attitude about the language lessons. I thought I was a lover of languages, but I think I’m just a lover of the romance languages or something, because Luganda frustrates me. We also do a 2-hr lesson, and by the time the teacher is half an hour late, and we sit for an hour afterwards to talk and have tea, my brain is fried and I feel like the entire evening is gone. But I think it’s important to try to learn the local language, so I’m sticking it out.
Just as I got home, the power came back on! We couldn’t believe it! Since when does it come on when you were expecting it to be off for a few more days? Go figure, Africa.
Unfortunately it wasn’t quite domestic bliss though, because we saw a mouse in the apartment. This thing is seriously tricky, because we spent an hour trying to track it down, and we were quite a sight. Imagine us charging into each room, headlamps on to see in dark corners, broom held out like a weapon, squealing and doing the tiptoe dance in case it came scurrying across the floor. It was pretty funny. Except that we didn’t find it, so eventually had to give up.
It was nice to have a hot shower for the first time in a few days, although I try not to complain about cold showers, knowing how blessed we are to have hot water in the first place. The power can be off a lot, but I'm glad to have power at all!
