Sitting in our living room, watching Hayley Kuehner fill up pages in her journal with her ubiquitous green pen, (I just asked her what ubiquitous means and now both of us may not know), and I am jealous. How does she find the words to write about our journey today and I am still at a loss. So let's start with details and see where the Mutatu ( large Van) takes us. Hayley, Ronald, and I had a breakfast at Cafe Larem. I gave Ronald a gift I had brought from America. It was a duffel bag that fit into a water bottle. When fully opened their was a pocket for the water bottle in the duffle bag. he was amused, and although it took some work, I was able to get the bag back into the duffle bag.
Soon, we hopped into the van for our journey north to Lacekocot, the village of Atanga SS. Sunday, arrived via motorbike and introduced us to our driver for the day, Opiyo Samuel. Soon, we were heade past Sir Samuel Baker to Atanga and Lacekocot. The road was not paved, which is kind of strange now as the road from Kampala all the way to Gulu is paved and many of the roads are now paved. The roads in Gulu, now also have covered trenches for the rainwater. So many improvements in northern Uganda, many of my fellow teachers would not believe it.
So we left at 9:30 and arrived at 10:46 a.m. Not bad, but kind of slowed up by many speed bumps and unfinished roads. I had promised Sunday when I contracted for this trip that we would need to be in town for 2 hours, he kind of implied that 3 would be okay. So as soon as we met Ocwa Alfred in town (Alfred had taught at Nerinx January 2010). I informed him that we would have short time and would need to be on the road by 1:46. Surely, (those that have been to Uganda, know this) we could be less than 3 hours for a meal and to say hi.
We started out at Alfred's house, he now has 4 kids: Mercy, Samuel, Joshua, and Faith. We were soon greeted by tea mad by his wife and also got chipati and great pineapple also. Ronald's uncle showed up and it looked like we were well on our way to being done in less than two hours. I do not want to sound impatient here, but I thought this was our contract with the driver and we wanted Hayley to see the Athletics competition (Track & Field) at Pece Stadium. We had a great breakfast and took a few picture, but then Alfred asked if we could take more pictures on our way out of town, so his wife could "organise the children".
We left Alfred's to go see Ronald's family in the village. It would not be a problem as it was only 1 kilometer away. We passed through the town center, it looks so different, as the road bisecting the center was now vastly improved. Many were working hard to finish it as we left, heavy machinery (almost non-existent 10 years ago on my first visit) was now littering the town center. We stopped at the roadside market to buy some fruit and literally 10 women were inside the windows of our vehicle trying to show, why their mangos were the best. We then turned onto a small dirt road, think driveway. I was about to suggest that we should just park the vehicle and walk. The road had gone from 5 feet wide to 3 feet wide, and soon there were just two tracks with foot high grass in between, surely the road had run out. But we traveled down this road for another 10 or 12 minutes, the foot high grass between the tracks was now taller than the van and we continued to move forward. At least 4 times Hayley and I looked at each other like we had reached our destination only to move past the new group of round huts.
We had reached the huts of Ronald and his family. We were escorted into a hut where there were 3 green plastic chairs. Hayley, the driver, and I were escorted into the plastic chairs. A wood chair that sits 14 inches off the ground was found for Alfred. A small thatch chair was brought into the room and I told Hayley to sit in it to show how it was much stronger than it looked. She stayed there and Ronald's uncle took the green chair. A mat was brought in and Ronald's grandmother and mother sat on the mat as Ronald settled into the room. Now it was time for speeches.
We would have 7 speeches altogether, as more family members crowded in the door. Ronald talked about how he first met me, and how I was truly a gift of God. As Ronald spoke, Ocwa Alfred translated his words into English. Sometimes his translations were twice as long as the original Lwo words. Ronald, his grandmother, his mother, his uncle, and his brother all took turns thanking me for providing money for Ronald's college education.
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