Guess what, I drove to make this post!

Wednesday was typical. Go to Chamba, (Wednesday’s site) feed kids, collect their poop. Whup-tee-do. Not much to say about the site itself. Then we drove to Namandanje. Seemed normal so far, long drive. Etc. etc. Only difference was that because some more people were going to the mission, we had to leave half at a motel.

Now I will tell you this, simply because I have, probably inadvisedly, taken my entire readership into my confidence. Oh, and by the way, I’m not trying to make this blog particularly “deep” or anything; I’m just too ‘lazy’ to omit anything. Now here’s the bit. If you have been reading recently, you will have read two posts ago my super long reply to a one paragraph question. Now one of the things I mentioned was that I thought that when you die, probably, everything you are just disappears. Now, that has never been a particularly scary concept for me, after all, what do you have to fear about nothing? But here’s the thing, anyone with a reasonable amount of experience will know that there is a huge gap between thinking and understanding. And also, many of you know that there are some understandings that no matter how hard you ponder you will reach. Some can only be obtained by accidentally stumbling onto them. And this is what happened while my brain was meandering on the car ride. I accidentally fell upon what my view on death actually means. And let me tell you it was terrifying. I can’t even explain how the realization felt, but my chest clenched up and my heart rate went crazy. But the most surprising thing was that I was able to suppress the feeling in about ten seconds. I’m not sure how, whether by rationalization or what, but I forced it away. I spent the rest of the day thinking about it, not really sure whether I was trying to find that understanding again, or make sure I never stumbled onto it ever again.

So anyway that’s always in the background on Wednesday. Later, when we reached Namandanje, I tried to get some alone time watching the football game, but 15-20 kids flocked to me. I couldn’t lose them for an hour. After that hour, when it was getting dark, I went back to the church and lay on the steps for another hour. After that I got a phone call from Joy (Male) asking where I was because they were about ready to get a search party ready for me. I had been trying to hide, so I wouldn’t get crowded again, but I guess I hid too well.

Here comes the fun part. The ‘people’ coming to the mission were a couple from Italy (where the father comes from) and were going to have a traditional African wedding. Naturally Namandanje turned out to welcome them. There were four drummers, a truck with speakers in it, and about a hundred or so dancing Africans. We heard when the groom arrived (They were arriving separately) because there was this explosion of noise as all of the Africans roared and increased their partying. So naturally we went to go look. It was HILLARIOUS. There were so many people dancing, singing, many of them plastered, many of them (women included) shirtless. (Actually I would have never noticed that last part had Joy not pointed it out to me; I’ve seen more women breastfeeding than anyone should ever be subjected to, and I don’t really notice anymore.) In fact they actually went into the car and dragged out the family, or everyone they could, the grandpa was DECIDEDLY not coming out. Haha. The groom was just talking to the father, but the others actually started dancing. The best part was when this really, really, really, plastered guy who had uprooted a banana tree earlier to wave it around slammed it onto the back of their truck, on that little thing you hitch trailers to. And it STUCK. It was great.

Not much else to say, except we got a room at the outside of the compound this time, and actually had airflow. It was amazing; the first time I haven’t woken up drenched in sweat.

Thursday oh Thursday. I don’t feel like describing it. Except this. We left at six thirty, and we got back home at eight. URGH. Oh and apparently I have this ability to attract kids, because I couldn’t help but get a crowd every place we went to, whether I wanted one or not. Actually its kinda troublesome, because I can’t speak the language, and unlike Joy, I quickly run out of things to do. So I usually end up chasing them. Kinda tiring though. Oh and when we got home I accidentally killed a cockroach with my bare feet. I mention that because once I realized what I did, I just shrugged and walked on. I’m getting way too used to Africa.

Friday. Uhm, normal sized site. Three new kids. I still have magic hands, as I got 6 kids to poop in ten minutes, except this one brat who refused to poop for four hours. There were lots of cute babies actually, the bright eyed kind that doesn’t start crying just from looking at me. (And yes there are a lot of those.) Not much to say.

Here’s one thing though. I have been talking about entering cards for a while. Here’s a little piece, so you understand. We graduate about 15 kids every day, from every site. Two sites a day, thirty kids. I can enter 22 cards an hour. I haven’t had a chance to enter cards in the last three days. I counted. We got 100 cards in the last three days. So that’s five hours of work. Sounds terrible right? Five hours of work on the weekend when I should be relaxing? But it gets better. We didn’t enter cards for a while, so we have 500ish cards that need to be entered on top of that. So, to make progress, I need to enter 200 or so over the weekend. And if we don’t get them all entered, now, we never will, because hunger season is fast approaching. And guess what, kids are more likely to starve in hunger season! So even MORE cards every day. I think if I practically kill myself over the next two weeks I might be able to enter them all. Maybe. OR maybe I’ll go insane and jump off the roof. We will see wont we?

TTYL

---He who is tired of orange pieces of paper