Fellows Blog: Day 35
We were blessed with the crow of the roosters at the break of dawn here in Uganda. The morning started a bit early for Kyrillos: 5:30 am wake up for church service at 7 am. At church, all visitors were asked to raised their hand. In other words, everyone turned their heads to find Kyrillos waving to the masses. With a congregation of about 250 people, Kyrillos was graciously welcomed by many and had a great experience.
Haleigh and Amber had a chill morning, despite our dwindling supply of breakfast food. We did some work in the morning and then headed to Hotel Alvers, the place we had the amazing chicken and potato wedges a few days ago. We anticipated the hour wait for our meal this time, so we finished up our data entry from the last couple of days. The meal was just as good as the first time, we only wish we would have discovered it earlier.
We then set off for our afternoon program - a movie premiere in Kampala. We may have exceeded the van’s capacity while driving again, since everyone wanted to tag along. We began with a tour of the National Theater, the largest theater in Uganda, complete with its own dance studio. They had a red carpet rolled out with people dressed fancy, although nobody had told us to dress up and our colleagues were in similar clothes to us. One reporter requested to interview one of us about the show on Uganda’s national television channel, but we politely declined.
After walking the red carpet, we got some popcorn and ice cream and settled in for the show, which began with a bunch of singing performances. The music was in Luganda so we didn’t really know what was going on, but nice to listen. This was followed by a skit on the stage from local actors. This was also in Luganda, except for one actor who spoke English for 70% of his lines, but we got the main gist of it being about two high schools having a dance off. This was accompanied by some fun dances, such as the “Circle of Life” from The Lion King and some Ugandan music we recognized, which was fun. One interesting thing was during the performances, people from the audience would go up on stage and give money to some of the dancers, we assumed the ones that they liked the most. There was also a comedy skit that mentioned Arabic, so Kyrillos tried to understand some of it as he’s fluent in the language. The movie started over 2.5 hours after the premiere time, but was fascinating to watch. The actors spoke in English, but was translated to Luganda in a delayed voice-over. Poor Devir tried to translate most of the movie for us, which was about a woman with cancer and her love interests after the diagnosis.
About 70% through the movie, there were technical difficulties with the technology so the actors and directors came out to introduce themselves. They also began to auction off cd’s of the movie; they were particularly interested when Kyrillos waved hi back and came over to ask how much he would bid.
The movie ended around 10 pm, which would have been fine except we hadn’t eaten a meal since around 12:30 pm. However, the hour and a half back drive back to Mukono discouraged us from going to find somewhere to eat. We also ended up having a half an hour discussion in the parking lot about our plans for tomorrow. We were supposed to go to a National Park tomorrow, but our colleagues hadn’t coordinated times, who was coming with us, who was driving us, a hotel or any activities to do. Most things here work by having contacts, so it’s very difficult to book a driver or a hotel by ourselves, since there aren’t really websites available. We made the smart decision to postpone our trip and give ourselves a day to work things out, which was also much appreciated because we got back at midnight and would have had to pack to leave like seven hours later. Instead we had a chill night of mac and cheese, ramen, and conversations reflecting on our time here. And we get to sleep in tomorrow :)
Good morning baby ducklings!
Our top tier meal (guess which one of the three of us ate the vegetables)
Our work at lunch, featuring over 100 pieces of paper with data we brought along
Uganda National Theater!
Unfortunately Haleigh and Kyrillos could not find their names on this plaque at the National Theater. We would also like to know how we can become part of the Amber Players and if having the name Amber would automatically get you accepted
Kyrillos while being asked how much he would pay for a cd of the movie (the answer was 100,000 shillings, knowing full well he does not have a CD player at home and wouldn’t be able to view the movie again)
Not our best selfie, featuring Amber with water still in her mouth (she went to bed before Haleigh wrote this caption, shhhhh)
A scene from one of the best dances we saw!