And Becca is our comic relief.

Sometime last week (the days now all blur together), Susan and I cooked together again.
Susan is so great, teaching me how to drum on my face and my rib cage (they really like drums here. All forms). She also tried teaching me how to whistle through my hands. Couldn't do it.
But I taught her how to whistle through your thumbs and a piece of grass. Of course she did it. First try.
In silence, I sliced the cabbage for awhile, while she poked the fire and matoke. For the sake of conversation, I asked her how many children she wanted to one day have. I'm glad I asked. We talked for an hour about Susan's future husband and children, and once again, culture slapped me in the face. She was telling me about the importance of taking a long time to get to know someone, just to make sure he's not putting on an act, and he really is a good egg. Sure, I could understand this. Until she said: "You see, if you marry quickly and don't take time, you might find he is one who, what? Who practices witchcraft, or one who does what? One who eats the firstborn."
I can't say that I've ever worried about that. It was intense.

A major stream of mail came in last week. Which means, Aunt Marilynne and Uncle Ernie's pictures came in. (My family loves looking at the pictures, especially those of my Great Grandma). Anyway, Marilynne and Ernie have this tiny Yorkie, I think. Either way, it's wearing a sweater in the picture.
When Rebecca got to this picture, she just stared for a few minutes. Blinking, with a dirty smirk on her face. I couldn't stop laughing, just to watch her silent first impression. She finally said, "This is what?"
I told her it was my aunt and uncle's dog.
"This is real? It isn't a teddy bear?"
No. It's a dog.
"You mean, God made this one?"
Yes. Yes, He did.
"So...this one is putting on clothes?"
It was wonderful.

Again, sometime last week, I had a great conversation with Vicky and Clare. (Clare is one of Vicky and Susan and Franca's dormmates, who always asks me when I'm going to give her the fire extinguisher I promised her). Anyway, Vicky was telling Clare that I was going to come back one day, and with my family. Clare said, "Vicky, you just want to steal her brother."
Vicky laughed and said he was too young. "Sure, he looks, what? Like a 25-year-old, but he is only 15. I don't want to be a sugar mummy."
(Have I mentioned the STOP CROSS-GENERATIONAL SEX billboards yet? The sugar daddy and mummy commercials? I guess it's one of the biggest ways AIDS is spread. So they combat it with massive billboards with a picture of a man, for instance, and the caption: "Do you want this man sleeping with your teenage daughter?.....Then why are you sleeping with his?"

On my walk home from school the other night, I passed a little girl kicking a busted soccer ball around the ground. I joined her and kicked back. For the next half hour the two of us played volleyball in the middle of the road. I never even took my bookbag off (maybe I'm paranoid. Yeah, yeah I am). Four or five others joined us, just to watch and laugh. Before I left, I asked their names and said, "Nze Danielle. Not Mzungu. Danielle." I tried not to make it obvious that I walked away quickly, quick enough to get in the house, pull out my notebook, and write down their names before I forgot.
I passed Victo, the first girl I met, on my way to school the next day. She yelled, "Hi Mzungu!" and I greeted her with her name. As soon as I said Victo, the woman standing next to her started squealing and laughing. She turned behind her and yelled to another lady some Luganda sentence that had "Mzungu" and "Victo" in it. The same thing happened in the evening that night. And even though I keep reminding Victo of my name, Mzungu is still all I get. Whatever.
(The other ones are Olivia, Nanchent, Chalifa, Okabago, and Malcom Nansa. But pronunciation-decoding is all I had going for me).
The first night, after our volleyball game, they yelled after me, "Mzungu, get for us a ball!" I said okay, picturing the yellow and purple Nerfball just sitting in my suitcase. But I'm going to wait it out. I don't want them to see quick turn-around time and think "genie." No thanks.

Bwindi this weekend was incredible. Incredible if you close your eyes and try, really hard, to forget about the drive. Twelve-fourteen hours, each way, on the bumpiest, dustiest roads in the world, in a hot van with 15 others, when you can't move your bent knees even an inch. I've never felt more unsaved in my life. Thinking heathen thoughts--or at least joking about setting the van on fire--and surely complaining with biting sarcasm every chance I got. In other words, I really don't feel like myself in Africa. I seem to be growing more bitter by the day.

Other than the van-ride, I maybe take back what I said about Kapchorwa being the most beautiful place ever. Now it's quite the toss-up.
We slept, for 3 nights, beside a mountain that houses gorillas. Yeah, gorillas.
Gorillas we didn't see, sure--but gorillas that were there somewhere, and ready to see upon shelfing out 500 big ones. (On the opposite side of this mountain is Rwanda, and the precise place where "Gorillas in the Mist" was filmed. So I'm told).

Bwindi is where V-Money was born. And so I am not surprised by its beauty. (If I learned anything this weekend, one of the main things is that I will miss Vincent, our driver, as much as I'll miss my host family). He calls me the linguist. And I tell him he's one of my favorite Ugandans. [On our ride home on Monday, we stopped at his parents' home for lunch. Also awesome].

Our purpose in Bwindi was to meet with a certain Dr. Kellermann--"Dr. Scott"--from California. Some years back, he and his wife moved to Uganda and began their own mobile clinic, from a trailer or something. This weekend, seven or so years later, we are given a tour of an incredible hospital--with a newly built pediatrics ward and women & maternity ward, and an HIV ward, etc. etc. This guy is incredible--he surely made this missions-travel-trip the best of the 3, I think. Saturday morning he took us to Botwa? (or Batwa?), so we could meet and help the pygmies he works with. [I wouldn't have known they were pygmies if someone didn't remind me; they are simply shorter...not ridiculously short, which is the impression I used to get]. Anyway, it doesn't matter what they look like.
What matters is that we finally were able to DO something for once. For a few hours we finished building a mud house. Which, as Becca put it, is every five-year-old's dream. Yeah, it was awesome. Messy and awesome. Afterwards, we danced with them. By "we" I mean, I was still washing all the mud off of myself even by the time they finished. But we brought drums and guitars to the work-site, because they won't take you seriously unless you jam with them. Amazing.

I pulled Hope, one of the Bwindi women who works with Dr. Scott, aside to ask her about the house the particular pygmie family was living in before this new home we were building. (Wow--bad verb tense all throughout that, but I will not fix it). She showed it to me, right behind the one in the making. For a family of seven, there was this tiny tiny tent, big enough for maybe 3 people to sit comfortably, made of banana leaves. That was their home. Hope told me that it only costs $450 for the supplies and stuff (but soon it will be 600) to build one of the bamboo & mud homes--complete with tin roof--that we were building. She pointed this way and that, over the mountains and banana trees, to indicate the other countless pygmie families that Dr. Scott wants to help, but is just waiting for funds, donations, etc.
She took me into one of the other homes, where an infant was sleeping in a blanket, one 1/2 feet away from the fire pit--aka their kitchen. "They are suffering," she said. "Especially because the leaves don't make a proper roof. When it rains, it is useless--the floor is made of dirt."
Anyway, I don't know what to say about that, other than just to say it.

By the by, I like Hope so much. She was the best part of dinner that night (she sat right next to me; I got to hear about her husband and their all-J's family of seven [this is getting common; all of V-Money's children are D's]). Her husband teaches Literature at a faraway school on an island by some lake (a lake I think we visit after Rwanda). Anyway, she only sees him once a month. She was a good listener as I vented about needing to see everyone at home, and missing home like crazy.

Let's see. Sunday. Sunday was wonderful. We Americans have collectively agreed that this Sunday we met the best dancer in Uganda. A middle-aged man named Erik. I can't explain his dance skills, other than: if I had a jump-rope team, he would be on it; first pick. Like the languages, the dances vary from tribe to tribe. This one is the best thus far. Not only Erik, but the little girls. You should see them bust it out (I video-taped it, surely). He danced basically throughout the entire service, except for when I was preaching (even though, halfway through the sermon, they interrupted me with a hymn. Very random, very hilarious. I just clapped with them until they were done, and then continued). My translator, Richard, leaned over and said they were singing the hymn that coincided with the passage we read. Sweet.

After church, we went to dancing Erik's home for lunch. Many people gave speeches (speeches come with every event here, impromptu or not), and they fed us well. As we were leaving, Erik's son, maybe 6 or 7--wearing a dress suit far too big for him, the belt hanging all the way to his feet--walked in the sitting room carrying a live chicken. He handed it to Brooke, our leader, and said, "We love you and we thank you. This is a gift for you." Yeah, our chicken--Jerry Seinfeld II--rode on top of the van, his feet tied to a spare tire, all 14 hours.
(Monday morning, as we were leaving, somehow his feet got untied. He escaped the box. The attempt to catch him lasted far too long, and consisted of Todd chasing him down a main road, carrying a branch). Gifts that run away. Another sweet part of Africa [this reminds me of Clare's comment to me last week. Sitting in Vicky's room, Clare told me she wished I had more free weekends. Because her mom really really wanted Clare to bring a white person home to their village. "She wanted to give you a goat," she said.
I gotta say--I have no idea how I would've responded. How I would've held it on the matatu. Crazy.

Anyway, not too long after Erik's son gave Brooke the chicken, we all went in their front yard to dance some more. It was a whole lot of fun. Dusty, all of us imitating a jump-rope sort of dance, with a whole lot of stomping, but fun. Once we thought we were done, half of us made it to the van, but Richard came over to me and Betsy and said, "Do you still like the dancing?"
"Yes," Betsy said.
"Sure?" Richard said. "You do?"
"Yes," Betsy said.
As he walked away, excited, I couldn't stop laughing. Because the communication barrier was apparent; what Richard meant was, "Do you still want to dance?" So, surely, Richard yelled something in the Rikiga language that meant, "One more song," and we danced some more.

Erin and Becca and I spent most of our time pretending to be Steve Erwin tracking gorillas. We tackled each other from behind bushes in the forest trails. What I learned, and what Becca learned more than any of us, is that it's really really hard to climb a tree in a skirt. The blasted dress code.

Sunday night, after singing Luganda songs around the dinner table with V-Money, Erin, Sharon, Becca and I sat under the stars. "Munyenye nyinji nnyo," ("the stars are very many"), we told Vincent. He laughed and said we must email him when we are home.

Under the stars, I taught the girls my favorite Luganda song I told you about a long long time ago. "Tunakuwaki ffe," I am guessing it is called. They learned it well, and we danced around for awhile, singing it. Becca eventually went to bed, and the three of us sat out there watching. The stars were not only SO CLEAR that we could see the star dust...like the wispy extra specs that I don't think I've ever seen, but we caught two shooting ones. It was beautiful, so so beautiful. Especially knowing there were silverbacks only blocks away from us.

What I also learned this weekend: my professor, Dr. Button--his wife, Rosie, has a speaking part, as a hostage, in the movie "Last King of Scotland." And the little girl she is holding in the scene? The little girl who didn't understand/didn't even like my batman joke. (The doctor in Mukono who is supposed to take care of us Americans if/when we get sick, he is the newspaper reporter in this same movie). I should watch it or something.

Speaking of sick, we've all been, basically, this past weekend. Each night, on the dot, everybody. Everybody but Melody, really, but Melody had the meds. Thank you, Melody.
I have sort of been sick since last Thursday, though. Last Thursday as in, maybe two weeks ago. I've just been hoping it will go away. I think it will.

The last thing I learned this weekend: how very much I did not plan on building friendships with Americans this semester (I forgot, I guess, that I wouldn't be alone here); and how very much I love them all; and how very much I am going to miss them.
The worst seat on the bus, I think, is the seat I sat in for the last 14 hours. Only because, it is generally agreed that the 2nd row has the worst feet space. And the middle seat is the worst of that row because you have no window to lean on, and/or stick your head out of when you think you're going to hurl.
Thus, Becca and I grew a lot closer this trip. Not only did her IPOD make the way a whole lot more bearable, but the girl didn't protest when I lay/laid/lied? on every bit of her. Her shoulder, her lap. At the end of the trip, I apologized and thanked her for being my body pillow. My back on her lap, I looked up at her and said, "I just wanted to be comfortable, you know?"
"No, I wouldn't know. I haven't been comfortable this whole trip."
I think she was sort of serious. But very Christ-like. She surely took one for the team. And we're better friends because of it.

Before I go, one last thing. Becca and I walked to Mukono High School today to meet with her dad. Her dad is the headmaster of the school (and the president of the rotary club--the rotary club that my family friend, John, wanted me to visit a few weeks back). He showed us around. What I mean by that is, yes, he took us to every classroom, one by one, and introduced us as his daughters. And we had to address them. Impromptu, of course. (When in doubt, speak in Luganda. They love it).
John is trying to see if the rotary club at home would be willing to help sponsor a project alongside the Rotary Club in Mukono. Hence the purpose of today's trip. Becca's dad (he calls her Baker, even when he writes her name) showed us around to help give me an idea of their needs and what they do. They need a clean water source; so far, they daily lorry it in.
Anyway, it was incredible. Becca's dad, Julius, is the sweetest man in town.

Also: all my classes are basically done. Finals are this week and next.
It's crazy, how fast it's going.
But I'm really really okay with that.