Fellows Blog: Day 41

Sorry for the delayed post - Kyrillos turned off the wifi device before Haleigh could post the blog!

This morning we woke up to banging on our door. No worries, it was just Devir looking for us to go to his synagogue, but we had tried calling last night to tell him we wanted to sleep in. Amber graciously got up to get the door and Kyrillos told him we were very tired and if he didn’t mind, he could show us the synagogue later. We then tried to go back to sleep and had a chill morning before going out with Freya and George William in the afternoon.

We are going to church tomorrow, and Amber and Haleigh only have Western business attire as their fanciest clothes, none of which are  appropriate for church. Freya loves to shop, so we let her take us around to stores looking for outfits, which turned out to be a much longer process than we anticipated. Poor Kyrillos got dragged into all this, but he was a good sport until it hit the 3 hour mark. Haleigh got an emerald dress from one store, but Amber walked out of this one empty handed. Kyrillos proceeded to look through every dress in the store telling Amber his favorites, which didn’t work, but it’s okay! We ended up finding one at the next store.

We had a fun conversation with Freya about how Amber and Haleigh don’t know how to cook and Kyrillos is a much better cook than us. She was shocked that we wanted our future husbands to cook, as in her eyes it was our “duty” to cook for them and our children. It’s always very interesting to see how culture differs here from our beliefs!

We then went to a restaurant for a 4 pm lunch, and our colleagues started a game of truth or dare. The best one was probably when Haleigh struggling to come up with a truth for Amber, so she posed the question to everyone else. Devir immediately said he had many questions and we told him to pick the most pressing one. He proceeded to ask when was the last time Amber slept in bed with shoes. We all thought this was very funny. An honorable mention was George William daring Haleigh to guess how many toothpicks were in the container just by shaking it, and if she estimated the number within 5 toothpicks of the actual number of them she would get a round of applause. She guessed 42. They then made her count it, and upon realizing there were many more than 42, she started counting groups at a time to come up with 43. George William didn’t notice and she got that round of applause.

After this, we tried to watch top gun: maverick at the theater, but it took half an hour for the guy in charge to admit he didn’t actually have the movie. Instead, we went to a lounge and danced; we requested some of our favorite Ugandan songs and also some Jason Derulo, since everyone here seems to like him a lot.

Some other random fun facts: everyone here pronounces Amber as “Amba,” which Kyrillos and then Haleigh have started saying, much to their delight and much to Amber’s annoyance. Also, everyone we talk to wants us to stay in Uganda and get citizenship here and our “red passports,” which are apparently super easy to get. Also the bug spray desensitization is magnifying: Amber has gotten her first mosquito bite and Haleigh got two bites today on both her ankles in the exact same spots… while wearing very thick sock and long pants…with both the socks and pants sprayed with bug spray…

Amber’s insect spray came in handy for a second time when we found a thousand ants crawling around in our sink … it seems the bugs and insects have began to overtake our living space

All of the meat on the streets of Mukono is sold in large pieces hanging out like this

There’s a popular radio station here named Simba (like the Lion King!)

An impromptu picture while walking around the mall

Today was a very exciting day! Amber tried Ribena for the first time after asking about it for the past five weeks. It’s a blackcurrent based drink and she really liked it!

Also yes, we were again at airtel buying more wifi today… don’t ask.

There’s so many fruits and vegetables everywhere here!

Amber posing in front of a rack of dresses while simultaneously trying to think of new ways to say she wasn’t the biggest fan of the patterns they were showing her

One of said dresses that she did not end up purchasing but was coerced into trying on

Kyrillos put aside his annoyance with our shopping for ten seconds to take a nice picture

Kyrillos taking control of Amber’s shopping endeavors for her. Spoiler alert, he didn’t succeed either…

Kyrillos dared Devir to squat for 2 minutes, set a timer for 3 minutes without showing Devir, but then let him stop after only 30 seconds… kyrillos what?

Haleigh in the process of committing toothpick fraud (shhhhh)

Haleigh trying on a traditional African dress!