Different View

This past week I went and visited 2 other volunteers, Tessa and Stephanie. Tessa lives the way I aspire to: simple, clean and organized. She took her two room crap hole, painted it and added furniture and African crafts so that it is really cute-again, what I have tried to do but I think Tessa has done a great job and I’m going to use it as inspiration to work on my house. I think I stopped after the first 6 months trying to make my house nicer because I knew that it’s such a temporary living situation that I don’t want to put TOO much money or time into it, especially now since I’ll only have it for one more year. Another thing I notice when visiting Tessa is how amazing she is with kids. It took me over 9 months for my neighbor’s kids to stop crying when they see me.

Then I visited Stephanie in Luweero. She lives in a convent in this super sweet house that is bigger and more luxurious than my last 2 apartments in the states. She also has a baby that she takes care of in the convent that was born in the first month we were at site. This uber-cute baby is what makes Stephanie tick; they make each other so happy. We had a really good time and I think Stephanie has a really good thing going because she has work that she really enjoys there and has her baby and nuns.

I also went to dinner at my homestay while I was in Luweero. It’s funny how different I see the house and my family, even Uganda in general. I feel like I understand them so much better, like the things I didn’t like about my homestay father is just because I didn’t like nor understand the facial expressions, body language, and overall general characteristics of most Ugandan men. At dinner I got along very well with my homestay parents and the girls barely spoke to me-opposite of how it was when I lived there. Also, when I lived in Luweero I thought it was so depressing, dirty, and just awful. I see it now much more as a normal, larger Ugandan village; even though a bit more dirty, it also has many things to buy there that aren’t available in my village.