Days 15, 16, 17 and 18

So its been just over half way with my trip and I'm started to miss home a lot more.

This Thursday morning I got to work on a banana plantation prunning dead branches and cutting down some of the trees that were too many crowded in a cluster to give the trees room and better nutrients. It was fun to walk around with a machette like blade cutting things. The banana trees have lots of banana juice/liquid? in them so it was a pretty messy job at times. Then we had lunch and relax a bit and then helped peel a bunch of casava roots, which they eat and when boiled taste a lot like potatoes. That afternoon/night I met up with Kaben and a group of Americans to play a game of ultimate frisbee. They play every Tuesday night, but moved it to Thursday because some people couldn't make it that Tuesday. It was a pretty intense game of 5 on 5 and there were a few Ugandans that started to watch to see what we were doing. Then we all grabbed some dinner at an Indian food restraunt afterwards.

On Friday we woke up and worked in the plantation again and finished it up around lunch time. We relaxed that afternoon and took naps as we were all tired. By the time we woke up a huge thunder and lightening storm started so our plans for the afternoon to go into town were ruined. It was some of the loudest thunder I've ever heard. So we had a lazy afternoon/night, just reading and hanging out indoors. I started to really miss home that day and had some doubts of why I am here. I was feeling like I wasn't doing much here at all, but it was good to get a message from my brother Zack putting some things into perspective.


On Saturday Richard and his friends went home in the morning and I slept in a rested some more as I was getting sick with a cold type thing, just sneezing and a headache and felt weak. I met up with Kacie that afternoon at the hotel she was staying at as she was in Gulu that weekend two teaching some classes to girls. We got to go into town that afternoon and walk around in the market and shops which was fun to see and experience. Its pretty much like a thursday night market but all the time. We grabbed dinner and then just relaxed at the hotel and I rented a room for just the night.

On Sunday we packed up and checked out of the hotel. During breakfast they had the tv on playing the second Highschool Musical, which I thought was pretty interesting. We went to church at one of the places Kacie had worked before with Sports Outreach. It was a really small church with people from the village around the farm that they had. I liked the service a lot and the worship was good even though they just had drums for music. They are very enthusiastic and energetic. I got to play around with the kids afterwards while waiting for some people we were going to connect up with to drive back to Kampala and play on the drums with them. In Gulu the word for white person is Munu (I think that's how its spelled) so it was funny to hear them call me that. That afternoon we drove back to Kampala the rest of the day. When I got back to the Conerstone guest houses the power had been out the past couple days. A group of people my age had gotten there a couple days before so it was fun to meet them and we ended up playing telephone pictionary and the game of things that night with flashlights.