My Last Week...

Last week in Uganda :(.  I can’t believe that I have been here for the whole summer.  It feels like the time has gone by so fast!!

I have tried to post a few times this week, but it doesn’t look like it has gone through.  To recap….I LEARNED TO MAKE CHAPATI.  Chapati is the most amazing flat bread that I have ever tasted in my life.  One of the teachers taught me to make it at school.  I made it for the whole staff to have during our tea break.  It has water, flour (specifically wheat flour, not to be confused with the MANY other kinds around here), salt, onion, carrot, and oil.  It is all mixed and kneaded with your hands, until it makes a big dough ball.  It is then split into smaller balls and rolled out flat. Heating up a pan over the charcoal fire, add a little oil. Taking the first uncooked chapati, set it in the pan for about 10 seconds, then flip and do the other side.  This “dries it out”.  Take it out of the pan and do that to a second.  When the second has been dried, add more oil.  Place both dried chapatis in a stack and set in the pan.  Keep rotating it in a circle for about 30 seconds until chapati A side one is fried, then flip so that chapati B side one is getting fried.  While that one is frying you must flip just the top one so that chapati A side 2 is now on the outside, so when it gets flipped it also fries.  This turning happens until both sides on both chapatis have had their turn facing the pan in the oil.  They are then taken out and put in a cavara (plastic bag) and the next set of two are dried and fried.  This keeps going until all have been cooked.  Then you fold, eat, and enjoy!

I went with the teacher to pick up the ingredients for the chapati.  She was looking for the onion and the carrot on the roadside stands and couldn’t find any.  I showed her a small alley to walk through that opened to a bigger alley to find more produce.  She did not know that it was there, and she said she has walked by that area many times.  That market is the market for Bunga.  She is from another area.  Later this week I was riding with a group of people from Omaha, and I pointed out to them the tiny opening you walk through to get to the market area.  Father Michael was in the car, and he was surprised to know there was a market in there.  He said he never knew.  Now being at the seminary and having people cook for you takes away the need to go looking for food, but it also shows just how hidden it was.  I only knew where it was because I had gone with a teacher on the mission to find passion fruit.

The kids at school are doing term papers all this past week and up coming week.  Once term papers are done, then A LOT of grading is done.  Most classes has 100 or more students, so 5 subjects, that is a lot of papers…  I have been helping with the English section.  There is no marking guide.  So I am trying to be as consistent as possible, but English is not always consistent…

On Friday at school I planted an avocado tree.  It is named “The Kelcey Tree”. I am excited to know there is a tree for me waiting.  Will have to come visit in 20 years and eat some of its fruit!

The group from Omaha leaves today, so we went to an “Authentic Mexican Restaurant” called The Little Donkey.  It was soooooooooo good.  It was very spicy, even though Father and I had been warned.  I have a great picture of him with an empty glass and an empty pitcher of margaritas.  I emailed it to him and he said “nice picture, even though I look like a drunked priest!”  On the way home from the restaurant we decided to yell “MAZUNGU” at all the white people we could find.  Father kept saying he hoped one would yell back “MAZUNGU TOO!”  Fun fact from the evening, mazungu is one white person, bazungu is more than one.

Today, in a couple of hours, I will be learning to milk a cow.  It is basically a dream come true.  Hope customs is NOT reading this!

Also... a big thanks to Mom, Dad, Q, and Ryan.  Thanks to them, I have an apartment, and my stuff is moved in! Who wants to come unpack with me when I get home?!?