So we leave Gulu tomorrow at 10am - it's overcast today and cool, how appropriate and I am hoping that it is the same tomorrow for our 7 hour drive to Jinja. We don't raft and bungee tomorrow, rather Sunday morning and then Sunday evening we travel back to Kampala, spend the night at Backpackers Hostel (where we began this journey) and leave Monday morning. We have a 2 hour layover Monday in London and then head to JFK where I will spend the night in a hotel and head to Phoenix that morning (Tuesday) - there is not an available red-eye flight to head home the previous day so I will grab a slice in the city and take a long hot exfoliating shower! I'm still on the fence about bungee jumping (punn intended) - but what a way to go - death by jumping over the Nile (don't worry mom, I'll be fine). I'm spending some time this morning with Angeline - I think we are making chapati, rice and beans (pretty much my favorite Acholi dish next to Kotogo which is a "cooked" banana in a sauce - it sounds odd, but is so yummy, and the banana somehow does not get much, rather it maintains the texture of a potato - if you did not know it, you would think you are eating a potato. Keyo is throwing a farewell for us at 1pm today at the displaced site - I think this is going to to be hard for our Ugandan teachers, especially at Keyo we have all developed such great relationships not only with our individual teacher, but our team teachers as well - they are amazing people: Ayella Florence, Omony Alex, Ojara, and Angwech Angeline.
If you could only hear the conversations that have been had in the staff room over the past few weeks - we really cut down a lot of cultural barriers, laughed and shared amazing stories - despite the horrors of the past and the struggles for today, they continue to smile and persevere and I think because there is this aroma that tomorrow may truly never come because 20 years ago, that was the reality at the beginning of the war, tomorrow did not come - maybe that is why there is an urgency to eat so much, why the line for posho and beans at the school is crammed and violent, why there has to be 2-3 teachers on duty to monitor the food line - for all the lack of time management their is a sense of urgency for materials of survival because they may not be here tomorrow. The village may burn, the food may run out, the drought may come, the school may be destroyed or moved, the children may be stolen, the land kidnapped, the government overthrown, the illness may strike, the school fees may not be there - and so the stories harmonize in the staff room and we learn and listen from one another - I think the Acholi people have the closest touch of knowing what it is to live in the moment - they sincerely embrace Jesus' truth that "Do not worry for tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself".
More from Backpackers on Sunday...
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