59 days!

Thoughts from Cami...

We are leaving for Uganda in 59 days!! It's so hard to believe. Everything keeps reminding me of Uganda (I've been there twice). Early one morning last week, I stopped to listen to the birds chirping away in the trees. They were actually pretty loud. It reminds me of mornings at the White Horse, with the birds trilling away at full blast long before it's time to get up (but here we don't hear any prayers from a nearby mosque at an unearthly hour of the morning).

The White Horse is the hotel where we have stayed on the past two trips and where we are going to stay on this trip. The White Horse is a fun place. Each little "cabin" is separate from the others. They all have tall, steep roofs that look to me like little steeples. The White Horse is one of the nicest places to stay in town--the walls are decorated with pictures of visiting dignitaries. But life there still has its...moments. Electricity will go out every so often, for a period of 5 or 10 minutes. And if you all head back to the showers at once, be sure to be the first one in. You might run out of hot water. The staff at the White Horse are some of the nicest people, so eager to please. When we are there, we make friends with the staff. One of my most memorable incidents of the White Horse was when we were having dinner in the large eating area. The roof, of course, is high and steep, and it looks to be thatched. We were eating when suddenly I saw a large brown object fall from the ceiling onto one of the (empty) tables, sit still for a moment, and then scurry away. A rat! I gasped somewhat loudly but then didn't say anything, because I was afraid to offend the staff. Naturally, my group wanted to know what the deal was (heart attack, choking, epilepsy, etc) so I just pointed at the little brown creature. The staff's reaction? Laughter, and something in the vein of "you haven't seen that before?". Now, don't get me wrong. Animals don't just fall out of the ceiling all of the time. But when they do...!

Another thing that reminds me of Uganda is my left arm. I got immunized yesterday. I only had one shot (others were less fortunate), a typhoid shot. I'm still a little sore, perhaps because I'm babying it? (-: At any rate, I can't do much before I feel the protest from my left shoulder. It is then that I think..."I'm doing this because I'm going to Uganda!!" And nothing short of traveling to the other side of the world would make me get a shot.