A day. It’s not spectacular, but rather average. It’s yesterday.

6:00am: The goats are going insane, and it sounds like they’re just outside our window. They’re trying to mate. Well, at least the male is trying to mate, but as Alfred says, “He’s not serious”. And he’s too young to make things “work”. Jen, Declan (bad dreams / thunderstorms / weird animal noises) and I try to sleep through it.

7:00am: We give up and get up.

7:15am: Declan alerts us that the (supposed to be outside) dog snuck onto the front (covered, furnished, for humans) porch. I unlock the door, and the dog is so excited to see me, she runs to me and starts peeing as she’s running. I clap my hands to tell her to stop. This scares her, and she runs away behind the couch and (still peeing) runs laps around the porch, knocking things over (peeing on them just out of sheer terror at this point) and runs to the screen door, where she lays down and shows me her belly (which she thinks I’ll rub). That would be cute if not for the golden fountain that by now was defying the laws of physics. A dog this size can not possibly hold this much urine.

7:20am:  Frustration wins out over love. I wake Jenny up. It’s “her” dog and her mess.

7:30am: While the family starts making breakfast, I sit on the couch with my laptop. I catch up on emails. I draft a plea for video training content. I work on paperwork for our tax exemption on imports. (A letter from Whitewolf for their donations, a letter to the Secretary of the Treasury requesting exempt status, a letter from AOET describing what’s needed, what it will be used for and how much stuff is coming).

10:00am: I realize I hadn’t eaten breakfast. I go in search of eggs and cheese for an omelet. The cheese is Paramount brand, and it’s the only cheese we’ve found that tastes remotely like real cheese. The problem is that all the expats seem to know about it and they horde it, making it nearly impossible to find. Just thinking about it makes me happy in that weird way that only good cheese can. I open the fridge. No cheese. I find eggs though, and it looks like Kate made whole wheat bagels. SCORE. I cut the bagel then realize we don’t have a toaster. The kushy life in Njeru was rented. Rented furniture, rented appliances. This house is great, and while I have no real complaints (we’re paying $150 less a month now!) I feel like we’re starting all over. We’re almost back to the early married days of living small. No problem. I strike a match and light the broiler in the oven, managing not to blow myself up. I toss in the bagel, and light the stove for the eggs. I crack the eggs and they don’t. They’re hard boiled. We’re out of unboiled eggs. FAIL. I open the fridge to see what my options are. There’s mayonnaise. It’s not ours, but it smells OK. I make egg salad and for a moment I almost miss the days of a simple bowl of cereal for breakfast. Then I realize how far we’ve come in six months and I’m happy to be eating something other than beans for breakfast.

10:30am: Ronnie calls. He’s our “cargo agent” at Entebbe. Well, he’s not really an agent. He’s just a guy that works at the airport who told us he was our agent. But we’ve pulled three shipments through him already, so I guess that makes him an actual cargo agent now. He tells us a shipment has arrived for us. It contains keyboards and mice donated by Sun for Peter’s Primary, power supplies from Dean for the Compaq N610c’s he sent, and a big package from Whitewolf with lots of books and other goodies. He tells us to come and get it. There’s no way. A hike to Entebbe is a weekend gig, and we have to travel in broad daylight to cut down the risk from all sorts of.. risky things. He tells us he’ll clear the shipment himself.

10:40am: I get back to work on emails and letters and pleas for help.

10:50am: Ronnie calls again. He says there are taxes of 450,000/= ($225) on the shipment. I tell him that’s crap. Not on keyboards and power supplies.

10:55am: I get back to work on emails and letters and pleas for help.

10:57am: Ronnie calls again. He says there’s a really big nice knife in the box. “like ones for a soldier”. Tim sent an SOG knife. I wondered why that was a big deal. I told him it was for our guard. Ronnie seems satisfied.

10:59am: I get back to work on emails and letters and pleas for help.

11:00am: Ronnie again. He tells me he can give the customs agent 150,000/= ($75) and the taxes will go away. I ask if I can get a receipt with my bribe. He doesn’t understand. I tell him no. I insist that my letters will be finished and submitted and we’ll have a tax waiver.

11:02am: I can the emails and the pleas for help and focus on the now-extremely necessary tax-exemption letters.

11:05am: Ronnie. Again. He says we need to pick up the shipment or we’re going to have to pay storage. Crap. He says he can pull the shipment if I wire him the money for handling and clearing. I ask about the taxes and he tells me, “The taxes are gone”. I don’t ask. I tell him I will wire him the $200 or so for handling and clearing. I’m sure someone somewhere is getting a kickback, and I’m pretty sure Ronnie’s getting his piece of the action, which is fine. Our stuff gets through when Ronnie’s handling it.

11:10am: Back to the letters.

12:30pm: Lunch time. Kate made a very nice lunch. No scrounging in the fridge. SCORE.

1:00pm: Fred’s cleaning the HFC truck (there’s no other HFC work to do, and he insists the truck “looks bad” so he takes the initiative). We’ve borrowed a vacuum, but the cord’s too short. I make an extension cord from some scraps from the St. John’s install.

1:15pm: Ronnie calls and asks how the transfer’s going. I tell him it will be tomorrow. He says tomorrow is too late, and that the transfer takes time and we’ll be charged storage, and..I tell him I’ll wire it today.

1:30pm: Since we’ve moved from Njeru, Fred and Dennis need a place to stay. We elect that it’s time for Dennis to be on his own. As much as we love having him around, we’ve put him through plumbing school, and his dream is to have a plumbing business. We’ve set up his business, and now’s the time to start him on his own. We pay him three months salary (for no work) and help him set up his small office in town. Today we’ll go and look at a place for him to stay. It’s the first step towards freedom and self-sustainability for him. I shower and get ready for the day.

2:30pm: We pick up Dennis in town and he shows us his office. He’s painted the inside with paint left over from painting our house, and the table and chairs we provided make the place look like a real office. He’s so proud and we are too. I head to the bank to wire Ronnie his money.

3:00pm: Fred, Dennis and I head to Njeru. I stop at the bike place to check on my bike repairs. The bike looks good to me but they insist I try it out. I do. It feels good until the front wheel does something “weird” and I go over the handlebars. Actually, “over” isn’t the word because I wasn’t going fast enough. The wheel turned ninety degrees, I came up off the seat, pitched forward, and came chest-down onto the handlebars. The bike crumbled and I did too. There were about fifteen workers around and they all reacted in the typical way, peppering me with “Oh, sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry”. The more embarrassing (or spectacular) the injury, the longer the string of sorrys. I maxed out at like ten sorrys per person, for a grand total of like 150 sorrys. A personal record.  Outcome: scraped knuckles, a wicked hickey on my chest, and lion scratches on my leg (which sounds better than a bike accident in a parking lot) and a bruised ego. The bike is checked out, and appears to be fine. (Operator error?). I pay the bill but leave the bike for pickup tomorrow. I can’t get out of there fast enough.

3:15pm: Ronnie calls, and say he doesn’t see the money. I try to explain bank routing. No good. I tell him to check tomorrow.

3:30pm: We show up at the rental place. The power is out but it “will be on later”. They “lost” the electric bill proving the power was paid for. We move on.

4:00pm: We head up the hill to the Njeru place to pick up some stuff we left behind. On the way up the hill, we see Meshack, the owner of our favorite shop in Njeru. We give him a ride and he invites us into his home. His home is beautiful, and alive as he and his wife wait for his son and grandchildren to arrive from New York. He offers us tea, and we talk for a while. Dennis mentions that we’re driving around looking for a place for him to stay. Turns out Meshack’s sister-in-law Edith has a nice room across the road. Meshack’s grandson escorts us down to the bottom of the hill to find Edith.

5:00pm: We eventually find Edith, and as we’re preparing to leave, Meshack’s relatives arrive, and the market starts bustling with greetings and well-wishers. The greetings take a while (just the way it is) but eventually we roll out.

5:30pm: We arrive at Edith’s place and find the room. As we’re passing through the midget-sized door in the gate, something happens and I stand up into the door frame as a pass through it. There are five or six witnesses and I get about five sorrys from each, which means the injury is much less serious or much less spectacular than the bike injury. I’m convinced of this until I feel my scalp crawling and know it’s bleeding. But the place is perfect. There is (working) power and water, a locking door and a secure compound and she’s asking 30,000/= ($15) a month. It’s a bargain. Dennis pays and we head back down the hill to drop off Edith and Meshack’s grandson.

6:00pm: Josh, the young guy that found us the property on Lubas is helping out with a youth conference at Nile Baptist Church in Jinja. He mentioned wanting to play movies, but he had no projector. I offered mine. Dennis and Fred offer to come along and we head to the church. I figure an hour and a half is a small price to pay for everything Josh has done. We set up the projector and Fred’s netbook with an external DVD drive. Then I realize I forgot the RCA audio cable to connect to their sound system. I drive back home and get it.

6:30pm: I arrive with the cable. Setup complete.

7:00pm: They put in “Indescribable” with Louie Giglio (good choice) and play it. No one’s really paying attention. Louie talks way too fast, and most of the meaning is lost on them. It’s a real waste of time.

8:00pm: The pastor asks if we can play another movie. After checking with the guys, we agree. Then the pastor tells us the movie will start after a preacher goes for 45 minutes or so and they all eat. I offer to drive Dennis and Fred back to Njeru, breaking all the rules about driving at night.

8:15pm: I stop at the all night outdoor food joint on Nalufenya, near main street and we load up on bachelor food: chapati, “egg rolls”, casava chips and pies. Completely unhealthy but somehow justified.

8:30pm: We stop at Igar for sodas. The guys deserve it. It takes long. Fred tells me that it’s no good to be out at night. He says that around the holidays people get kinda crazy and will try to steal your stuff, get rides in your car so they can rob you, kill you whatever. I’m encouraged by this.

8:50pm: We arrive at Njeru. I thank the guys profusely and head back to the church.

9:00pm: Joseph (our guard) texts me and asks me to pick up batteries for his flash light.

9:15pm: I stop on Main Street to get batteries. I meet Ali, our language teacher and have a nice chat. He leaves and I get my batteries. On the way back to the car, this really cracked out guy approaches me. Here we go. He sees the cross on my neck and tells me he’s Muslim but wants to switch. He asks if I can drive him to the hospital because all of his kids are in the hospital and his wife is back home. I ask him why he’s on Main Street at night if his kids are all in the hospital. He says he’s not Uganda, he’s Ethiopian. That makes no sense. His eyes are everywhere. It’s creepy. He’s up to something, or he’s just weird, or he’s the worst criminal ever, or maybe possibly he’s telling the truth. He tells me it will just take a minute to drive him to the hospital. Then his tall friend comes up behind him, looking extra creepy, with the same crazy eyes. The hospital is just around the corner, he tells me, “that way”. He points in the complete wrong direction from the hospital. I ask him why his wife is in the hospital. He tells me it’s because she’s sick. Whoops. He can’t even keep his own story straight. His wife’s supposed to be back home. I give him my apologies and get into the car. He walks away. As I start the car, he comes back and knocks on the passenger side window. “The hospital is too close,” he tells me. “It’s a very short walk,” he yells as I pull away. I wonder later if I missed an opportunity to make a difference in a life. I probably did. Call me a wimp.

9:30pm: I arrive at the church in time to start “Second Chance” with Michael W. Smith. It’s all about urban tensions in the US. A decent enough drama contrasting white mega churches and black urban churches. It’s decent if you keep up with it, but no one is. Everyone’s talking and eating, and the sound is terrible.

10:15pm: I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. I ask Josh to keep an eye on the equipment. I tell him it can’t be replaced. I explain that the projector goes in a protective bag and then in the protective box. I explain again how the projector can not be replaced. He seems to get it. (But the next day when the gear is returned I find the projector is tossed in the suitcase uprotected, lens cap open. Guh).

10:30pm: I am still trying to leave, but I’m being greeted and thanked by pastors and others.

11:15pm: I finally make it home. Jen’s waited up and I collapse into bed. I really want to stay up and chat. But…. I… just… can’t seem…to…