Little Things

I thought I'd write about a lot of the little things I've noticed...

The food has been good but simple.  Every morning we have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  The bread is good but I think a little drier than at home.  For lunch a man name Pasquel has been coming with us and he makes rolex's  (pictured below).  They are very good but each one is pretty big, the bread is sort of a cross between a pancake and a crepe and there is an fried egg and vegetables.  The egg seems to be mostly egg white and the vegetables vary day to day.   This one had avocado.  Dinner has been either pasta, potato, or rice with some meat and sauce.  Last night was sort of a peanut gravy which interesting.   I might be losing some weight :)  I've also tried some pineapple soda which was really good.  The kids gave me a mango but I think they were playing a joke on me, it was not yet ripe and tasted really strange, like spicy and bitter. 

I've learned that when you wave at people - you need to keep your fingers open.  I tend to open and close my fingers which means "come here" and is confusing to both of us.   Ugandans have a special handshake, they change the grip back and forth a few times and tend to linger for a long time.  I like it, remind me to demonstrate when I get back.  Sometime they want to you grab their forearm instead of their hand, and a few times I've had them kneel in front of me.  I guess that's a sign of respect and a fairly common greeting.  Oh- and they have this way of saying yes which isn't a head nod, but they raise their eyebrows and say "mmm."   That's catchy too, you might find me doing it when I get back.

They call us (white people) "Mzungu"  and it feels a little like being a celebrity.  They think we are all rich, and from their point of view we are.  There are 34 million people here and 1/2 of them live on a $1 a day.  I was talking to one of our interpreters, Livingston who is 26 years old.  He wants to be a pediatric nurse but has to pay for university as he able to save money.  His monthly take-home salary is about 2.5 million shillings (only $128).  College costs about $740 a semester.