Let’s have a little show and tell…
This is my room. No, this is not all my stuff. Most of it is for sponsor kids. We went shopping today. We’ll get to that in a minute…
I don’t know if I included in my prayer list a very important thing that I usually don’t tell folks…I do NOT. Want to see. Any Snakes. I usually don’t share this because I don’t want people to think that there are snakes everywhere. I say this anytime I go outside and the temperature is anywhere near agreeable for snakeage. (as in snakes being out)
Wellllllll….this morning I woke up around 5 am. Still dark. And I hear a rustling noise. I ignore it. Then I keep hearing it. And my first thought is-what is outside? And I realized it wasn’t anything the guard dog was doing. It was in.my.room. Oh crap. Mouse? Some sort of bug? A snake?
See I am up on the second floor in the back. In basically a concrete house with the door shut-window open but with screen shut. What the heck is in my room? Dare I get up and look? No. I’ll ignore it. Oh but wait. I can’t. So let me get up and look. First I have to turn on the light. Oh. Lord help me.
Light on. Curtain blowing. And it is blowing the green bag Resty gave me with her gifts she made me. A bag. Thank you Jesus for “small” prayers answered.
Now…on with the day.
To market. This one downtown with David and Olive. To shop for sponsor children stuff. Becky’s child and a few things for mine now that I have sized them up. I have been downtown before on the first trip to shop for a guitar with Jason Chandler and Dave Garth. But this market thing downtown was nuts.
We parked in front of the ShopRite and David paid the security guy a little more because we would be there more than the allotted hour. We headed off. Olive was like a heat seeking missile toward a bargain. Shoes first because they would take the longest. We went into an area that reminded me of the shops in Beijing with booths everywhere and guys wanting you to buy from them. Olive took us to a guy that the projects use because he knows which shoes are good (used from the US and cleaned up to look like new-amazing work) and which ones are colored shoes they dyed black (school shoes are required to be black) and which shoes are cheap imitations made in factories. If he doesn’t have the one that you are looking for he will go find it. And he did. And while I was waiting I watched the other guys dying shoes, washing, buffing, polishing shoes. Used soccer cleats, used running shoes-a lot that looked new. Amazing that US gets rid of so much stuff…
As we walked out Olive’s phone rang-the guy was calling because she picked up a wrong shoe! We had one of 2 different styles. And left shoes! Thankfully He had Olive’s number because she shops there so much she gave it to him. Saved us a trip back later.
On to search for some dresses-more bargaining. I hear the word “muzungu” and know the lady is telling Olive I should pay more because I am white. Olive doesn’t put up with that at all. Thankfully.
Through buildings, across streets over to an Indian owned mattress place. The mattresses we needed were on a truck back behind the building waiting in traffic so we waited. David and I walked about 40 feet down to the end of the road and I walked up some stairs to take some pictures of the infamous taxi stop. I saw that some guys made a documentary or something about it but haven’t seen it. It is where the taxi’s go and sit to fill up and head to their destination. After they are full they will head to a particular part of the city-picking up and dropping off passengers along their route. You pay by the distance you travel. We crossed a road that was literally 4 taxis across and full from one end to the other, waiting to get down to the taxi stop. Olive cut between two at one point and I barely passed through-praying the whole time that the taxis didn’t move or I would have literally been cut in half by the tire holder on the back of one and the bumper on the other.
My buddy David watching out for me…
Then the mattress guy carried our three rolled up mattresses back to the shoprite. And along the way a well dressed guy bumped up all on me trying to get something out of the side pocket of my bag I was holding in front of me. Idiot-I’m not a dumb muzungu. Nothing is in my side pockets. And I have my hand wrapped through the handles so if you cut the strap it ain’t yours. Olive and David saw him and started yelling at him. I told Olive as we walked he could have stolen the trash I had in the side pocket and we could have beat him to death with the crowd…yeah. Right.
We arrived back to the ShopRite. This is what we saw.
Yep. The car got booted. Haha turns out the OTHER security guy we DIDN”T pay busted us. So we went in, shopped and showed the second grumpy guy that we went in the store and he let us loose.
We drove to Buloba and found out that the kids we needed to go to their homes were in class til 5. They weren’t the young ones that get out at lunch. So we will go see them on Sunday (Sunday is going to be BUSY! 7 kids houses to see in one afternoon!) So I hung out talking to the project staff, Pastor Isaac, and some other ladies.
Right before I left we saw that a storm was coming and I noticed Simons grandmother scooping up her coffee beans. I realized she was going to get them off the ground before it rained. (I had talked to her about the coffee upon my arrival today- she sells it) So I went over to help her. Pastor Isaac came over and said “give me your camera” So Jaja (grandmother) and I laughed at Isaac taking our picture while we scooped up all the coffee.
Then back to town. And final closing thought- I wore my sandals today because I knew we would be in the market-concrete not mud) and took my tennis shoes for Buloba for walking around in the mud and bush if we went to homes. AS soon as we got there we went in the house to eat. And not 25 seconds after I walked in I went to the window to take a picture of the kids lined up for lunch and stubbed my big toe on the big wood chair in front of the window (one I have sat in many a time).
Yep #5467 reason to wear closed toed shoes in Uganda. My general thought is “God made dirt and dirt don’t hurt” except for when you get foreign dirt in a fresh wound. So I prayed over my toe (bandaid. Yep. Don’t have one with me-preparedness….) and moved on. And I found out last night here in Uganda you can buy cell phones that have flashlights built into the top of them-LED light. Amazing. Ida (one of the amazing house elves here) busted hers out when we were eating last night and the lights went out-pitch BLACK. I love Africa.
Tomorrow going to Loving Hearts Baby Home to hold some babies in the morning and maybe spend some time with Pastor Peter who arrives back from a board meeting in the US today.
It’s been a good crazy day. I have enjoyed every minute. For those of you praying…you can still add that snake thing to your list. Haha. And for those of you praying-keep it up. Your prayers make a difference- I know it for a fact.
Gotta go. Fried grasshopper on the menu for dinner. (yes. New thing for dinner!)
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