Day 2

Biggest win of the day: Aayush admitted Haleigh and Amber’s blog was funnier than Zach and Ashwin’s (ok I promise I’m done bragging now)

We slept in this morning (and may have ignored attempts for the front desk to contact us, but in our defense we didn’t know the brief beeping sound meant a call coming in). Haleigh was awoken to multiple phone calls from our HEI partner Chika, who proceeded to come to her door and she had to rush to get ready. She’s super sweet though and it was awesome to meet her after conversing in meetings for this past month. 

We had allegedly paid in advance for two nights of our hotel room, but have not paid them yet (they haven’t kicked us out yet tho, fingers crossed). Chika and Mayowa came to help Haleigh manage payment by exchanging cash for Nigerian Naira, but she needed to coordinate a deposit from our account to get the best exchange rate so we probably won’t pay until tomorrow. She did downgrade Aayush from the premium to the standard room and kept the premium for herself as payback for Aayush taking the aisle seat on both our flights. Just kidding she graciously offered it to him because he’s like seven inches taller than her (but, we confirmed, still shorter than Zach). And we had originally wanted standard rooms but when Mary comes, she and Haleigh will be sharing a bed and wasn’t super keen on sharing a twin. And in the 20 minutes we were outside conversing with the money exchange guy, they had sold the standard room we toured, so she didn’t want to be left without a premium room option.

The front desk called Haleigh to tell Aayush to check into his new room but Aayush was still getting his beauty rest. After 12:45 and some texts from Haleigh, Aayush woke up to the front desk calling him telling him to move rooms right away, and he was a great sport about it. Also the beds are slightly short so his legs were hanging over the edge all night. He did in fact forget his room key the moment he walked out and had to go to the front desk to ask them to open it, after they were already annoyed he was checking in late, but all was resolved.

We went to the hotel restaurant to have lunch, where Aayush started a game of “taking a shot” every time Haleigh mentions Uganda. Don’t worry it’s just a hypothetical shot which is good because she mentions it every other sentence and Aayush is definitely already sick of it but won’t admit it to her. 

Also during lunch Aayush was on a quest to find this dominos that Zach claimed was a two minute walk from the hotel. He found one 7 miles away and we were going to call Zach out for it but then we found one 1.5 miles away under a different name and finally one that’s one mile away. Unless Zach can walk a mile in two minutes we’re still only minorly calling him out. Also Zach told us we would have kitchens/microwaves in our rooms, which we do not, so minorly calling him out pt 2.

Our food took a while to come out and was nicely wrapped in Saran Wrap, which Aayush said made him feel like an astronaut. We charged the food to our room that still hasn’t been entirely paid for, oops. 

Mayowa and our new friend Vivian picked us up for a short walk to HEI headquarters. We were told to try jollof rice and the vegetable soup, and that Zach loved the rice so much when he was here that they always had to have extra for him to scarf down at trainings. 

We met everyone at HEI today, including a conversation with Paschal, the HEI director! He was very excited to see us and get started! Aayush has now received one “Namaste”. 

Haleigh has been complimented twice on her hair, even when it’s sweaty in a ponytail, which she is very much enjoying. She’s also living in her not lifting a finger era - everyone took her bags at the airport and carried them up the stairs, and then she was prohibited from carrying in the bags of first aid kits despite her efforts to help (although they were 100% too heavy for her to lift). We then counted the first aid bags that were delivered, and were very impressed with how coordinated and well-prepared the HEI team was for trainings.

After a few logistical discussions, we all packed up for the night and Aayush and Haleigh finished up preparing survey and interview questions, which we’ll describe in more detail when we conduct them! Aayush also thought he forgot his hotel key in his room again, only for Haleigh to remind him we had given it to the front desk when he left.

We have the rest of the night to relax a little (besides a brief power outage while Haleigh was in the shower) and get ready for our meetings tomorrow! 

Or what Haleigh thought was going to be a relaxing night until the squarespace app decided to update and the wifi hotspot didn’t have enough bandwidth for that. Somehow she succeeded in doing it on her laptop, but not without an hour of reloading pages and reconnecting wifi. She’s totally over it now though…

View outside our hotel room window!

Is Aayush really considered a Michigan alumni if he graduated three months ago and his friends bought him this $50 shirt as a joke? Michigan school spirit goes far tho, Paschal recognized the logo immediately. Also featured is Haleigh’s pasta with bolognese sauce (which was unexpectedly slightly spicy but very tasty), and Aayush’s noodles with an omelette. 

Haleigh can’t carry the bags so of course she resorted to taking blog pictures

Aayush has been dubbed in charge of all selfies due to his height and long arms

We got some snacks from the local market based on the team’s recommendations and found it funny they wanted us to try American style chocolate chip cookies!