Long Weekend

The following was the original opening paragraph to my blog:

"I wanted to write a blog about two weekends ago. Yes, I’m now just getting to a blog about events that are approaching two weeks ago, and yes I’ve been a little slow on the blogging."

At the time I wrote the blog around October 20th, two weeks after the events described. Now it's a full month until I have enough internet to post it. I find this somewhat interesting. 

            Starting on Saturday October 6^th, I went to the African Youth Leadership Forum (AYLF), a conference on youth leadership in East Africa, sponsored by Cornerstone, the organization that I am interning with. This was held in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, but included youth from all over East Africa: Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, South Sudan, and even the Democratic Republic of the Congo. You guys may remember from a previous blog that I attended a similar AYLF conference in Nairobi in June. This is similar except a little closer to home. It featured several presentations about how to be a virtuous and effective leader, including talks by Rebecca Kadaga the current Speaker of the House in Uganda’s Parliament. The most memorable was given by Betty Bigombe who was the arbiter between the LRA and Ugandan government and has been important in the peace process in that war. It was also a place to meet new people. As I said, youth – by which I mean college-age – from many countries attended, and it was a nice way to meet peers in the area. Going to Kampala and seeing so many new faces was a nice break from life at the school, where I rarely travel more than a mile and get to meet new people. I also attended Uganda’s national prayer breakfast on Monday October 8^th.

            The 9^th, the following day, in addition to being my birthday, was Uganda’s 50^th anniversary of independence. This was a big deal, especially when I was in Kampala on the days before. There was a large ceremony in Kampala, inviting leaders from all over the world, for which I could see preparations the day before. At the school, we watched the events unfolding throughout most of the day. The fact that they turned on the TV is more significant when realized that the only other time they watch the TV is for soccer games (and only important ones at that) because the electricity is bad and reception as well. They also made a special lunch as part of the festivities. This was chicken and millet bread. The latter is a type of grain that is the main food in some parts of Uganda. I don’t know how to describe it, but the bread has the feel of bread dough (no it’s not raw despite my comparison to a raw dough), in that it is very together One rips it apart with your hands. At first I didn’t like it that much – the only Ugandan food that I didn’t – but I have grown to love it. It is a very common, everyday food in many parts of Uganda (including the West and I believe the North or at least parts of the North), but is not common here in Central Uganda, making it rare. This makes it a real treat, especially for students that come from areas where they eat it daily. Anyways, this is also the first time chicken has been served here at least in quite a while in as long as I can be here (occasionally beef is served, but chicken is exceedingly rare). It’s a nice contrast between the rice, beans, and posho that we eat everyday here.

            That day was also my birthday, which meant that multiple people kept dumping water on me – commonly done on birthdays here. That night, we had a small party at my house, which involved what may have been the best cake I ever had (I’m not exaggerating). I wish I could describe it in more detail, but I have no idea what it was made out of. I have been trying to convince its cook to give me its recipe, but I think its ingredients are a secret. I could tell was that it was part-chocolate and part some sort of red fruit that I’ve never had before. It was also like ten times as rich and dense as normal cakes. Cakes normally have air holes in them, but this one seemed to be solid cake, making it extraordinarily filling.

They did in fact light candles and put them on a cake, which I am unsure how Ugandan that is – I believe my homestay asked an American how people did birthday parties in the U.S. as he hinted at that later. Two interesting differences were that we had the cake before we ate. The idea of desert being after dinner – or eating anything after dinner for that matter – is not done here, partially I think because Ugandans eat dinner very late and usually right before bed not in the evenings. They were also surprised when I intentionally blew out all the candles at once. We did it again, and this time I was supposed t blow out each candle one at a time. I found this to be surprisingly difficult. When I’d blow out one candle, I would often blow out the one next to or behind it as well by accident. It was hard to only one. We then ate dinner which included chapattis and beef – both rare delicacies here, particularly the first one as this is only the second time I’ve eaten chapattis for dinner here on the Ranch.

After this, we socialized and played cards. This was because we didn’t have any music – all Ugandan parties involve playing music as loud as possible and dancing. Here a party without music/dancing is like a party without people – it just isn’t actually a party. I played music initially from my computer and danced for a few minutes, but because there’s no power at the house, so once my computer died, which it did pretty quickly trying to blast music, we had nothing else to play music from. We then wound up playing cards instead.

Overall it was a nice, long weekend, packed with a lot of stuff. I have pictures, and I’ll put them up in a picture blog that I have already written. I just need to get enough internet connection to post it.

As a random side, I am writing this on October 18^th, and on yesterday I officially have two months left in Uganda, until I leave on December 17^th! Time has really flown.