Jinja/Kakira: "I mean, I can carry it, I'll just fall over 5 times on the way"

Why are my weekends always so ridiculous?

So I went with the other interns to Backpackers in Jinja on Friday night and we just hung out that night and got free Internet. Then on Saturday we had an exchange program with students from Busoga University which was mostly about microfinance. It was long, boring, and irrelevant to all but four of us. No offense to FSD (who set it up).

Afterwards, we went to the Agriculture Show, which is basically the biggest fair in Uganda. Even President Museveni went to it. Mostly we just shopped in the African Village and bought mzungu-touristy things. I bought a painting for my apartment next year, which I'm pretty happy about. But yeah, just good shopping times.

On Sunday, Becky and I headed back to Kakira. We hung out for most of the day, and Mama Fina's daughter Tyra came over with her young son, Jaden. Some of Tyra's friends from Kampala came too. Jaden is the cutest kid ever, and I don't even like kids that much. He's really taken to Becky, and keeps trying to come into our room and get on her bed. (He's 2, so not in a creepy way.) Anyway, Tyra's friends had brought a truck and were going to go fetch lots of water since we really needed water. They asked us to go, and we said yes. We sat in the back of the truck with about 20 jerry cans and headed off to the Madhvani compound, since that's the only place to find water.

We drove through the factory part at sunset, which was cool. Steam was coming out of a big grid of pipes behind the building and continued to drive back into the forest part where most of the houses are. We went to the tap, and it was just a trickle--there was no way we were getting much water there. Ruth made a call (she came too) and we backed out and headed down one of the back roads. There was a woman who had a water tank and we started putting water in the jerry cans. It was going to take a while, so we headed over to the Madhvani guest house and got some tea/alcohol and snacks. When we got back, all of the jerry cans were full, so we loaded them up and headed back. It took us four hours, in total.

I never thought I was going to spend four hours fetching water in Africa. One of the guys from Kampala said, "The water problem is bad here, yeah? I've never seen anything like it." So fetching water, crazy market, and...boring class all day Saturday. I never know what to expect...