Jinja/Kampala: Cause when I leave for the night, I ain't comin' back

So I thought this weekend was going to be chill time on Saturday and then church on Sunday. Yeah, well, it wasn't.

On Saturday morning, some of the other interns texted Becky and asked if we wanted to go to the Source of the Nile and hang out. When I say Source of the Nile, I actually mean that we went to the source of the Nile. It's a tourist-type place, and it costs 10,000 shillings to get in (roughly 5 American dollars). It's really beautiful though, and has cool shops and a restaurant. So we mostly chilled there for the day. I spent a lot of money on gifts for the people back home. And visited the source of the most important river in the history of human civilization. Not a bad day, all in all.

Then Ruth, one of our host sisters, told us when we got home that it was Palautira's birthday the next day, and did we want to go to Kampala for her party on Sunday? Tira is the youngest of Mama Fina's 10 children. We said yes--Becky and I had actually been planning to avoid Kampala, because it's scary and far away, and it's close to the anniversary of some terrorist attacks that killed a bunch of foreigners last year. The terrorist group said they would do something again near their anniversary, so we kind of wanted to avoid being white people in Kampala right now. But since Ruth was taking us, and she's basically a BAMF when it comes to getting around Uganda safely, we decided to go.

It took us about 2 and half hours to get there by boda and mutatu. We arrived at midday and hung out with Tira, Tyra (also Mama Fina's daughter) Ruth and Tira's friend Becky in the kitchen. We even helped cook a little, which was fun. (I was standing in the kitchen in a borrowed African dress from Tira and cooking an African dish, and I was like, "For an American I'm pretty African right now.")

Slowly people started trickling in when it got later and the drinking began. I can see how you could get really drunk, because people offer you drinks every 5 minutes. You may be holding a bottle and they'll be like, "Another bottle?"

The appointed MC/emcee of the party came up with a game, which was basically forcing two people to dance together. Basically he would pick somebody out and they would have to pick somebody of the opposite gender to dance with. Becky got to pick the guy she danced with; I got picked by a guy. It was fun(ny) though. Also, her funniest moment of the night was when the MC was switching us around the room to mix guys and girls, and he put me in between two huge Ugandan men (who were actually very nice and gentlemanly, for the record). So Becky just looked over and saw me sandwiched between two huge guys on a couch made for three people that had four people on it, and started laughing.

We danced and drank until about midnight, at which point it was too late to go back to Kakira, since it's dangerous to travel that distance late at night. We stayed at Tyra's place, with me and Becky sharing a bed. Despite me rolling on her a few times, we bonded ("We're going to be so close after this!")

We got up at 5:30 am and got on a taxi, after a bunch of African men fought over us so that we would get in their taxis (we let Ruth do the talking) and made it back to Kakira in time for work this morning. All in all, a really fun and crazy weekend. Now we have to do work...