Day 8!

Friday May 25^th 9:35 pm

Best morning of the trip by far. We got to sleep in until 7:15 (who would have thought that I would consider any time with a 7 in the front to be sleeping in) and we had breakfast at Red Chili. This also meant that we finally got some variety in our food choice and I got to have pancakes and bacon.

After breakfast we had to make our way over to MUBS to attend graduation. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to being treated like a celebrity. Everyone was sitting down waiting for the ceremony to start when we walked in and they announced our arrival. The audience then proceeded to clap and take our picture as we proceeded to our seats. Talk about awkward and then once the ceremony started the once again put us on TV as they talked about us.

The ceremony itself was long and somewhat boring, a lot of us used the time to catch up on our journaling. A couple things I noticed was the fact that the speeches were much more political based than focused on the success of the graduate. They talked a lot about money, donations, and trying to become an independent school. It wasn’t until the last five or ten minutes that they actually talked about the graduates themselves. The other thing was they did not individually announce each graduate and there was also more cultural dancing and music than at a graduation in the United States. After the ceremony we got to dance with some of the dancers as they played Waka Waka and Celebrate.

By this point it was already time for lunch, but none of us were very hungry so we just kind of poked around at rice and potatoes. Then we had some down time before meeting with some members of the media. We meant with three journalists who shared some of their experiences and views on the media in Uganda. Parts of it were interesting, but let me tell you – afternoon lectures are extremely difficult, even our professors tend to dose off a little during them.

After our lecture we boarded the bus to head to dinner. We ate at Faze 2 where I had Fish and Chips. We also had nan, which was a kind of bread. We had both cheese and garlic and you know we were hungry because it was gone as soon as she set the plate on the table. For desert we shared some cake, which was definitely a little dry because of the different kinds of sugar and flour they use. As we were waiting to leave, one of the other tables decided to tell the waitress it was Prof. Root’s birthday. One of the funniest things that has happened thus far. The whole restaurant sang to him and he was really caught off guard.

Then we went so that people who needed to good exchange more money. Since I didn’t need to, some of us waited on the bus. While waiting, we witnessed a car hit a boda boda. It was so scary and sounded as if someone could have been seriously injured. Fortunately he got up and seemed to be okay, but there was a lot of yelling and blame being placed on each other. Good thing there are police with huge guns standing on every corner so they could straighten out the issue.

Now we are back at Red Chili getting ready to go to bed since we have a 6:00 wake up in the morning. And what do we find but a huge cockroach in our room. I can easily say I prefer the lizards over the cockroaches so if I see you again, I most likely will kill you. Sorry! Tomorrow is a Rural Village day and I can’t wait to meet all the kids and donate some of the stuff I brought. Everyday I begin to enjoy myself more and more and I really am blessed to have such an awesome experience!

~Mary