Day 6.

Wednesday May 23^rd 10:15 pm

This morning I did not want to get out of bed. I think everything is finally starting to catch up with me and my body is craving sleep. But that doesn’t slow us down. We had breakfast at MUBS once again and I ate some toast, biscuit/cookie thing, and an egg roll. We also began talking with our groups about the group presentations we have to give at the end of the trip. The presentations will be presented to all the various people who have met with and spoke with us throughout the trip.

We left MUBS to head to a Human Rights lecture. It was actually very interesting to learn about different aspects of their day-to-day life. The one statistic that hit me the hardest was the fact that 31% of the population makes less than 1 American dollar a day. He spoke about the various challenges they face due to the fact that they work in that specific field and sometimes oppose the government, one being that a good number of his phone calls are tapped. It was a long lecture, as we are finding many Ugandans to be long winded, but in between my zoning out I feel like I learned more about Ugandan views on basic rights.

After the lecture we went back to MUBS for lunch. It was during lunch, rice, noodles, and potatoes (carbs on carbs on carbs) that it began to rain. We were supposed to go tour a prison after lunch, but they cancelled on us so instead we just waited out the rain in our little protective hut. Some of us worked in our journals, some fell asleep on the tables and others of us just sat and chatted. As boring as it can get, sometimes it is nice to have a little bit of down time and be able to catch up with each other.

Since we weren’t going to the prison anymore they decided to let us go do some shopping at a craft market type place. We are getting a little bit better at this whole bartering thing, of course with the help of our friends from MUBS, and we were able to check a few more people off of our souvenir lists. Before we knew it, it was time to head to dinner.

We made a pit stop before dinner and stopped at the grocery store. Most of us bought some American comfort food like chocolate bars, oreos, or pringles. Then we were off to our restaurant for the night. I don’t remember what it was called, but it was a mix between Korean and Chinese food. Each table ordered enough for the table and then we spun it on a lazy susan and all had a little bit of everything. I think for the first time on the trip I actually felt full when we left the restaurant.

We’ve had a couple of relatively slow days with a fair amount of down time. I think we all have enjoyed being able to get in contact with people from home and kind of regain some of our strength. Tomorrow is a busy day and before we know it we’ll be off to Jinja and Merchison falls for a weeks worth of traveling. I can’t wait to see what else this place has to offer and although we all have our moments of complaining I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything.

Good night!
~Mary