The following is not based on actual events. The following actually occurred during month one and includes things that happened to either one or all of us at one time or another. Enjoy!
-Sometimes you make babies cry because they are not used to seeing white skin and it scares them.
-Sometimes you receive marriage proposals from completely random strangers, and sometimes you receive two of them within about five minutes.
-Sometimes it takes a total of six hours standing in line at the ATM to withdraw money.
-Sometimes the door falls almost completely off the van as you’re traveling down a dirt road on a safari.
-Sometimes while eating honeycomb you look down and spot a very large larva crawling out of the honeycomb still on the plate. You just continue to eat the honeycomb in your mouth as if nothing has occurred.
-Sometimes you peel off the window tint from all of the windows in your friend’s vehicle so that you and your team are able to clearly see the animals during a safari.
-Sometimes it is completely and totally necessary to relieve yourself in or near a stranger’s matoke (plantain) plantation.
-Sometimes (or most of the time really) you try not to think about the conditions in which your food is being prepared.
-Sometimes two headlamps held outside the driver and passenger windows work better at night than the actual headlights on the vehicle.
-Sometimes only Africans can open and close car doors or adjust seats in their vehicles.
-Sometimes it is necessary to drive through Kampala with the windows down, blasting Taylor Swift, and singing every word to every song on “1989.”
-Sometimes you learn to cook in the family room next to the couch.
-Sometimes cooking a simple meal of rice and cabbage takes four hours and ensues in tears of frustration that turn into laughter at how ridiculous it is to cry over such a thing.
-Sometimes, as a team, you pray over your room and spritz your team leader’s bed with “Holy Water” to ward off possible bed bugs.
-Sometimes one teammate wakes up the team at 0200, freaking out about the bad smell, and sometimes that smell is the smell of a fan’s fried electrical components.
-Sometimes a baby gecko remains in one place on the ceiling over your teammate’s head during movie night and you hope and pray it falls for your own personal entertainment.
-Sometimes you are kind of a big deal so you get a police escort from the airport to ministry eight hours away.
-Sometimes your driver is going 40 mph at night and does not see the speed bump, sending everyone’s rear ends out of the seats and heads to the ceiling.
-Sometimes your teammate puts on Tiger Balm in a restaurant and you think they have made a mistake with the African Tea you just ordered due to the overpowering smell of spice.
-Sometimes you take a laxative in the morning, not realizing it takes about twelve hours to start its effects, and then you have to stay up all night dealing with the consequences.
-Sometimes while walking around town with one of your Ugandan friends the locals continue to yell something. When asked what they are saying you are told “they are saying they want one” referring to a white person.
-Sometimes a cockroach is discovered in a bucket in the kitchen and the unanimous decision is to leave it to die.
-Sometimes said cockroach is discovered in the bathroom sink and attempts at washing it down the drain are futile. Unfortunately it is too large and gets stuck over night. Consequently, it is decided to place a wad of toilet paper into the drain, cramming the creature down further and preventing it from escaping.
-Sometimes you spend the evening searching for a mouse you saw run across the floor to no avail. However, the next day you discover him running across your roommate’s mosquito net over her bed. Your Ugandan friend wants to kill it but you guilt him into participating in the first ever “Catch and Release” program for mice in Rukungiri.
-Sometimes in the middle of your testimony your translator stops you and asks if you prayed at the time you were struggling with a decision.
-Sometimes you flirt with your host’s single brother-in-law during a funeral.
-Sometimes your ministry host/roommate drives faster and more aggressively than Ugandans.
-Sometimes you are praying for a man’s wife and accidentally refer to her as ‘Panini’ because her name so closely resembles the word for an Italian sandwich.
-Sometimes you order soup at a restaurant and it comes out on a plate.
-Sometimes baboons come and steal your leftover Rollex out of your car and then your host/roommate tries to get it back by communicating with them.
-Sometimes you pull out of a restaurant and almost back into a grazing hippo.
Sometimes Uganda happens and the best thing you can do is type it out in a blog at the end of the month so other people can share in the humor of all that is involved in traveling the world.
