Two years ago I was in Uganda experiencing my first Thanksgiving without my family and this is what happened. I wrote it up as the week went on just because you can't do anything but laugh at stuff like this, and I figured I'd share it with everyone else one day. Hope this provides you with a laugh!
Well I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving! While all of you in the States were on Thanksgiving break, we decided to take a little break of our own. Since all of us are away from our families we went to visit the closest thing that the East's have to a family over here. We went to go visit the Segnar's down in Jinja. The East's and the Segnar's went through training at New Hope together, so their families became extremely close to one another. Anyways, we left on Tuesday to go spend a few days with them.
The plan was that we were going to leave Gulu at around 8 o'clock Tuesday morning. So we all got up, ate a little breakfast, then we were ready to go. We all piled into the car, and for some reason the car wouldn't start. It was really wierd because Matt had spent all day Monday getting the car looked at to make sure there weren't any problems with it. So we spent about 30 minutes trying to mess with it, then Matt went into town to get a mechanic. When they got back they jumped the car off and drove into town to go to the mechanic's shop. Turns out it was an alternator problem. The mechanic said that the car didn't need a new one, so he just pulled it out and rebuilt it in about 3 hours. He put it back in the car, and it ran just fine. So Matt came home at about 1 o'clock and we all loaded up into the car again and took off.
The car that we were taking was supposed to have air conditioning, but we weren't even out of Gulu before we figured out that it didn't work. So we just drove with the windows down. We had to stop in a town called Luweero to pick up 3 dogs that we were delivering to Jinja. Well when we got to the gas station we were going to meet the people that had the dogs at, we found out what was wrong with the air conditioning. So we got a mechanic to put on the belt that was needed to make it work. At about 6:00 we got on the road again. Prior to the beginning of the trip, we decided we were gonna be smart and cut a couple of hours off of our trip by taking a shortcut from Luweero as opposed to going through Kampala and over to Jinja. You usually want to avoid Kampala at all costs anyways, but it would've taken three hours to go down, then over as opposed to an hour and a half using the shortcut. When we got to the shortcut it was a dirt road. At first it was a pretty good dirt road, but as we went further, the road got worse and worse. And to add to how bad the road was, it was dark, so it was hard to see all of the holes to dodge. Eventually we got to a paved road and that road led to Jinja. We got there around 9 p.m.
After a long day, I went to sleep and didn't wake up until about 10:30 the next morning. Just a side note- the turkey that we were saving for the next day was outside, and he was gobbling at any and every noise that I made. So for those of you who know me, I had a lot of fun with that. Anyways, I was staying at a different house than everyone else, so the plan was that I would wake up then call one of the people at the Segnar's house first off to get directions, and second off to find out the plan for the day. Well little did I know that my Ugandan phone had fallen out of my pocket on the bumpy roads the night before, so it was in the car which was at the Segnar's house. So I just decided to set out for their house not knowing where I was going. Luckily I found a nice boda guy that told me directions to the "Jinja Club" which was just across the street from the Segnar's house. And I got there just in time for lunch. Score.
That afternoon Mrs. Kari decided she was going to bake a couple of pies for Thanksgiving the next day, then put them in the fridge to cool overnight. Well the oven wouldn't work. But the oven at the house I was staying at was working, so I took them with me and cooked them that night. When I was about halfway done cooking them, I had to switch them and put the one that was on the top rack on the bottom and the bottom one on top. Well I didn't have anything to grab them with, so I just used a rag that was in the kitchen. As soon as I touched the first pie, the pie plate shattered. Great. So they finished cooking and I pulled them out to cool then put them in the fridge. Not much of the pie that was in the shattered pie plate was salvagable, but a little bit was. I was told that it was pretty good.
The next morning we went to the source of the River Nile. That was freaking awesome, and I think I might do a separate post on that in a couple of days. We got back and had a small lunch because we were planning on eating around 4:00. Not long after we ate lunch, we went to "take care" of the turkey. We also had to bake another pie while we were at the house I was staying at, so we were there until about 2:00. Then they decided to call a mechanic to come fix their oven. He got done at about 3:30. So it was too late to roast the turkey, so they decided to pressure cook it. We had a lot of time to kill between the oven getting fixed and everything getting done cooking, so we did a lot of goofing off. Finally, we ate around 8:00 and it was all delicious.
We spent the next day at the Nile Resort Camp. That place is a ton of fun. We spent most of the morning in the swimming pool, but then we decided to go down to the rope swing. While everyone else went down to the rope swing, I stayed up at the pool area with the three youngest kids. That was quite the experience- me caring for a 4 month old and two 2 year olds. Virginia was easy. I put her on the couch and she went right to sleep. Well then it started raining. So I had to leave her and trust that the two year olds would sit still for at least 5 minutes while I got everyone's stuff out of the rain. Well wouldn't you know it that as soon as I returned I found Cole messing with Virginia. This is a very common thing that happens all of the time- while Virginia is either in a great mood or asleep, Cole decides that is the prime time to show her some "love". Luckily she didn't wake up.
After lunch it was my turn to go down and do the rope swing into the Nile. So I did it, and as soon as I came up from under water I look to my left and what do I see? A crocodile. So I swam as fast as I could to the shore and as soon as I got out of the water I said, "I'm not a big fan of swimming that close to a crocodile." It was just Mr. Jason, Mrs. Kari, and I down there, and they had no idea what I was talking about. Then they saw it and let me know that it was just a monitor lizard. But let me tell you, swimming that close to a 3-4 foot lizard that swims a lot like a crocodile in the Nile river isn't too much fun. We all went a few more times, then a couple of the kids decided that they wanted to come down and do it as well. Well the kids wanted either their mom or their dad in the water to help them when they landed, so Mrs. Kari began to make her way down there. And when she got to the very bottom, she slipped and landed on the rocks just below the surface scraping up her knee and hand. She got out, then Mr. Jason went into the water to help his daughter when she landed, but then she bailed last second and so we decided to head up. While Mr. Jason was getting out of the water, he slipped and his ankle got stuck between a couple of roots and began falling backwards. Luckily he caught himself because if he had fallen back any farther, his ankle would've snapped in two. After all of that we finally decided it was time to head up.
Later that afternoon we went for a sunset cruise on the Nile, and at the very end did a little fishing. Sadly, we didn't catch anything, but hey, I went fishing on the Nile. How many people can say that? When it got dark we headed back to the camp then got some dinner. After that we went home. As I was getting out of the van I asked Matt what the estimated time of departure was and he said around 9:00. I jokingly said, "Alright, well I'll see y'all at about 11." Then I went inside and packed my stuff up getting ready to leave the next morning.
I woke up at about 8:00 the next morning to do a little more packing then read a little bit. At 8:45 I got a text from Jamie saying that everything was going as planned so far, so everything was looking good... until Matt tried to start the car. Of course, more car trouble. So they decided that it might be a good idea to go buy a new battery, just to eliminate that as the cause if it was. Well they bought the battery and on the way home came to pick me up, coincidentally around 11. It took forever to get the battery in the car because the posts for the battery were on the opposite sides of the positive and negative connectors in the car, and the ground for the wiring had to be moved but eventually Matt got it put in there. And sadly, we found out that the battery wasn't the problem. So Mr. Jason called a mechanic to come out there and take a look at it. Once they got it started they took it into town to get another battery because the one that Matt had bought earlier that day turned out to be fake. But anyways, they finally got it running by about 1 that afternoon. We decided not to go through what we did on the way to Jinja, so we just stayed another night.
So once again, I woke up at 8:00 the next morning to finish up some packing and read a little bit. Luckily the car was running and they came to pick me up at about 9:30. We were headed back to Gulu. We decided to take the "shortcut" again that we had taken on the way there. It was a lot better during the day though, which is good. So, we were about 40 or so kilometers away from Luweero when suddenly the car died. On a dirt road, in the middle of nowhere. Perfect. Matt got out to see if he could figure out what was wrong, when a guy on a boda came up and started to help us out. He said that he didn't know what was wrong, but he would go into town and find a mechanic if we gave him money for gas. We did and he zoomed off. Not long after he left Matt got me to start turning the key so that he could listen to see where the noise was coming from. The engine turned over once, then I turned the key a couple of more times and the car started running. We just decided to go on and leave since the car was running. The only problem we found was that the air conditioning had stopped working again. We didn't even care this time. We were just glad to be on the road. Once we got to Luweero we had to pick up the East's dog that they were getting, then we kept going. Surprisingly, we made it all the way back to Gulu in one piece.
There are a couple of things that I learned from this trip: 1) Things don't always go as planned (especially over here) and 2) God definitely has a sense of humor. My family has always joked about us being the Griswold's just because we will pack up and go anywhere at anytime and stop anywhere that looks interesting, but this trip was a REAL Griswold vacation and I hate that my family didn't get to experience it. This Thanksgiving was quite the experience- really fun at times, and hard at others- but it will always be one that I will never forget.
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