Finally Here!

July 13, 2019

Yesterday we spent the day recuperating and sleeping after a long flight to Entebbe. This morning, we went to the Airtel stand to work on our SIM cards and try to get our phones to work… unsuccessfully. For lunch, we went to a local café near the petrol station and Airtel stand, and had some samosas and a giant egg roll (literally a hard-boiled egg inside fried dough). After that, around 5:15pm, we Ubered to the office and immediately saw Gilbert walking out as we were walking in. We signed in with security and walked into the office space. We saw Karis and Erin first thing at a desk in the intern room, working on a caption for a photo that one of the other interns was submitting to a photography contest. They are the most outgoing, nice people and we found it both funny and kind of mind-blowing how close they already are with everyone in the office. They were cracking jokes and yelling out different people’s names on sight, seeming to share inside jokes and saying they missed the people who had been in Karamonga for the week. We met a LOT of people in the office, they were all so welcoming and kind, but there were so many names to remember, so we’ll see how that goes. We remember Genius, who was killing it on the dance floor; Helen, who was explaining Mariam’s and Aayush’s trip; Brendar, who was teaching us how to dance; Derrick, who was a “human meme” as described by Karis and Erin; Paul and Paolo, we’ll figure out who’s who later; Victor; Ibraheim; and Frank, one of the RAHU drivers. After getting acquainted with most people there, we had some delicious food that included rice, plantain, potatoes, potato salad, matooke, a banging peanut sauce, seasoned beef, goat kabob, chicken wings, veggie burgers that Karis and Erin brought, a salad, and avocados and tomatoes. After we finished eating, we watched a tv show trailer for a show called Kyaddala (Cha-dal-ah), which means “it’s real”, which Emmanuel and Humphrey produced it together. It is an 8-part tv series about a group of high school students, one specifically who transferred from Nigeria from Uganda, and it touches on real-world issues like teen pregnancy, issues with parents, etc. Following the trailer, Emmanuel asked for constructive criticism from the audience and didn’t seem to take the criticisms very well. A few of the RAHU women mentioned that they didn’t really understand the storyline of the trailer or the characters, and we mentioned that the music was much too loud to hear the dialogue of the characters. Once we were done talking to him, they turned the music on high and got to dancing. Literally every single person there can move their hips so well and for awhile, we were all in a huge circle whining and stepping like they were, although not as well. Brendar and Genius are SUCH good dancers and Brendar was nice enough to teach Rashmi and Lily some simple moves to the slower songs. One of the women was dancing up a storm in the middle of the circle and had all of us dying with laughter. During the dance circle, Karis and Erin taught Derrick how to do a hand hug and Derrick was so delighted that he kept hand hugging all of us. We had the best time dancing with everyone, it was such a laidback and fun environment for us to meet everyone without any pressure. Oh! And Derrick thought we were from the south, specifically “where Taylor Swift is from”, and Genius thought we were from Las Vegas, “the city of sinners”.