Weekend #3

Pia and Medde are the two Danish volunteers who are also working at Meeting Point. They are also 25 and have been friends since grade school. I like them a lot, but was a bit intimidated because they were always together. However, On Friday I invited them to join me at a corporate function that my cousin’s husband has been invited to through work and didn’t have time/want to attend. They said they’d love to go, and invited me to join them for lunch and some by and see their house. We went and got rolexes, and some waters and then I went back to the home they are staying in that is just 5 minutes walk from school. They are living with a single mom who is 24 and her 7 year old daughter (the father apparently left them and lives in the UK), and three cousins age 16, 19, and 21. The apartment has a small living room where all four of the “adults” sleep. Pia and Medde share the bedroom in the back with the little girl. There is a dank bathroom that never has hot water, if it has water at all which it usually does not. There is also a tiny kitchen with a sink and fridge that has cockroaches scurrying around. The stove is a small charcoal cooker that is kept out in the cement courtyard where clothes are strung. I was so awed at their courage to live there in those conditions. I’m not sure I would. But they have come to really know and like the family and so they have dealt with the circumstances as best they can, while longing I’m sure for the one bedroom apartments they each have in Copenhagen.

So they were certainly looking forward to the event Friday evening, and it didn’t disappoint. There was an open bar (although the fresh mango and watermelon juice was the most exciting part!), passed hor d’oueves, and Blu 3, a top female pop group in Uganda, and a sax player which was all to promote a new luxury housing development in Kampala. It was strange to go from the school to this housing promotion selling top homes to wealthy Ugandans and expats, but we lived it up all the same. We gorged ourselves, took in the music, and enjoyed a bit of luxury until the big white, lit tent. Then Medde went off to meet a friend, and Pia and I took off to meet Amy at Just Kicking, a sports bar in Kisimenti. And….I took my first boda with a driver named Pasco!! Boy, what a thrill. But it was also scary at times. It just fluctuated back and forth from “oh boy!” to “eeek!” but we told them to go slow and we arrived safely.
After a couple drinks there, we headed to another nearby bar, Bubbles O’Leary, a bit of a strange name for a wellknown Irish bar that is popular mainly with the expat crowd—in fact, I didn’t feel like I was in Kampala anymore. Pia crashed at my house, so she could get a hot shower the next morning. Today, I’m cooking with Kim for cookclub, tonight—the theme is Ocktoberfest—so we made pretzels and sausages from scratch!