Crazy Day

Isaac and I had thought we were leaving Atanaga SS at 1 pm today, we both had plans to return to Gulu and get things accomplished. Isaac had painstakingly on bad internet connections got tailor measurements for his wife and two young daughters. He thought he had plenty of time to get to the tailiors when we arrived home at two. First on my list was to write something on this blog. I had run out of power on my laptop, almost my phone, and the iPad was limping home. Although connecting with the Internet is sketchy, usually we can piece together some news from home. But for some reason, it was not allowing us to do anything as the power bar was sliding to its own demise. This morning I woke and was wide awake at 5 am, so I plugged it the laptop, it said I had 11 minutes of power left---Liar!!! To get Internet, first I stick the wireless into my USB port and then wait for it to show a signal. I almost had it twice, finally on the last time I got a faint signal, and quickly clicked on to the Internet . I had a bookmark for MLB standings, so I clicked on that first, after a couple of minutes, it started to load so I quickly clicked the scores link. It started to load and the laptop went dead. I screamed, but I disguised myself as a turkey scream, so none of the sleeping inhabitants of my "hotel" would know it was me. Isaac's and my ride was supposed to be in a sweet air-conditioned van (unheard of in northern Uganda) at 1 pm, but instead we were informed that we would be riding back with some Invisible Children people who were coming to Atanga for a parents' meeting scheduled for 9 a.m. I though worst case the meeting starts at 10:30 and goes to 12:30 or 1:30. No big deal, most of the parents showed up at 11:15 for the 9:00 am meting and the meeting ended at 3:35 !!!! I sat in for several sessions of the meeting, but since they were talking in Lwo, it was kind of of pointless. It was a lot of blah, blah, blah, Invisible, blah blah blah Head Teacher. We were talking that maybe it was better this way because in English we would have become frustrated with the redundancy and the repeating of remarks. I am quite sure, each speaker said they were going to be brief and recognized each member of the head table before moving on to their remarks. The other frustrating part was that our vehicle for the ride home was nowhere to be seen and the phone network was not working. I joked with Isaac that the vehicle would come full of people and chickens. It finally arrived at just past 3:30 and it was full of people. We stuffed ourselves into the vehicle and even though I did not fit, we both just wanted to be moving. I realized about five minutes in this was a big mistake, and soon asked Zachaeus, if I could place my one leg over his and into a small corner of the Land Rover. All but the first two seats in front our benches facing each other. Zachaeus and I rode this way leg to leg for the next hour and a half. Of course, the rain had fouled the roads and we had to travel very slowly at times. I could see beads of sweat that seemed to be poppiang out of Isaac's head. There was a few inhalers as trucks barreled at us in the opposite direction. (Not as bad as coming close to a mutatu van on the way there. The mutates all have words on top of their windshields. The one that came closest to us had a sign that said, "God Take Me Home". Not quite what you want to see coming at you. I thought I was Woody Allen being driven home by Christopher Walken in Annie Hall). Back to our story, I also told Isaac ( I really should stop telling him things). "Watch we get home and there is No Meat, only vegetables.". So finally, we get home and started dropping off the "car pool" on the way home. The first person got out, by climbing over 3 of us, and started to walk away, when they called after her. She had forgotten her chicken. We got home five minutes later to see all the women teachers eating on the front porch. I looked down, "Is there any meat in there?". I said. "No, but it tastes great.". ------------Women you gotta love' me. At least it seems I will have a better night than the chicken.