Fellows Blog: Day 42

If we didn’t set an alarm for church this morning it wouldn’t have been a problem because they start playing gospel music at 6 am throughout Mukono and it reaches our lack of soundproofed walls. We all got dressed up and Amber and Haleigh put copious amounts of bug lotion and bug spray on so they didn’t get bitten under their dresses. Despite this, Haleigh still got a large bug bite next to her eye today :(

Everyone at church was super energetic, dancing and singing along to all the songs, which were very loud but fun. There’s also an English translator, she got cut off a lot so we didn’t entirely know what was going on but just went along with the good vibes.

After church, we all took some very nice naps. Kyrillos was feeling a bit sick so Haleigh and Amber went with George William to get fried cassava. Cassava is a root vegetable that tastes like it has Peruvian influence. When it’s fried it sort of tastes like a French fry and it was very good! We also bought a mango but it wasn’t ripe yet so hopefully it’ll ripen before we leave.

In the afternoon, we chilled, did some work, and got ready for our going away/“congratulations on finishing this portion of the project” party. Amber and Haleigh had bought jumpsuits in Kampala and changed into them for our third outfits of the day. This is our grand shopping reveal that we were talking about! (Picture below) We decided to wear them to our goodbye party because we were originally going to wear them in Murchison Falls, but the abundance of mosquitos was a fairly large deterrent. Kyrillos wore blue as an endeavor not to clash with us, but the red and green jumpsuits (WashU colors!) ended up both clashing. But that’s ok, we embraced the clashiness for the second time today, and both donned our blue sneakers instead, yes it was quite a look.

We weren’t given a time to be ready by, but figured 4:30 pm for the 5 pm start time would be safe. We really should know better by now. Our wifi hadn’t been working all afternoon, but at 5:15 we were finally able to call someone, who told us the driver would be there at 5:30. At 5:47, we called a few more people, who all reassured us the driver was pulling around the corner. Finally at 6:14, they showed up with their mom and siblings who we had to drop off, but we were still happy to finally leave.

We brought some of our American snacks for everyone to try which was a big hit, especially the sour patch kids, fruit cups and pringles! We played a game where we chose one person to compliment and they picked another person to compliment and so on, which was very nice to hear for everyone. We all gave some nice speeches about how much our time here meant to us and how we appreciate everyone welcoming us into their lives. The VTCA chairman gave each of us certificates, and an overall LFR certificate. Although Haleigh’s name was spelled “Haliegh”, we greatly appreciated the gesture and love our certificates.

We shared food, danced and laughed at the party - it was very fun and a good way to wrap up our time in Uganda! Upon seeing our outfits, everyone told us we look very very smart (their compliment whenever we dress nice here). Of course on the way home we had to buy more wifi (even though we still had some left the device wasn’t working). We all now have a lifelong vendetta against Airtel (the wifi company).

Tomorrow we hope to check more items off our bucket list and the smart thing to do would be to start packing … we’ll see how well that goes.

Sunrise in Mukono, taken at 7 this morning. We were picked up on time for church because they physically lock the doors at 7:30 am

This outfits were just slightly unfortunate … particularly when paired with hiking boots

“No paparazzi please”

More like Amber didn’t want photographic evidence of her outfit

Our fried cassava, featuring our second outfits of the day

All the papers we’ve used throughout the trainings, send us ideas for what we should do with them, we’re thinking a paper mache sculpture

Outfit #3

We clean up nice until Kyrillos wears Adidas slides

Our fancy appreciation certificates. Amber wanted Haleigh to crop her out of this picture and have it just be Kyrillos clapping with Hannington, but she should really stop going to sleep and letting Haleigh make blog decisions

Seconds before Kyrillos noticed Amber had been putting pieces of paper on his head for the last two minutes

All our friends we’ll miss very much!

Peep Haleigh’s jacket to avoid mosquito bites and the singular piece of goat Amber was willing to try for dinner