Justin Bieber is on repeat...and I cannot cook goat.

Hi guys,

I'm hearing the Bieb's "Never Say Never" for the second or third time today.  I had Dave Matthews blasting a minute ago and took the earphones out cause I figured I needed to concentrate on writing this...but I can concentrate better listening to the Dave man crooning and whining than to prepubescent imitations of crooning.  SORRY, Selena Gomez, your boyfriend is *not* quite a man yet.

On the straw mat today again, but hopefully it's the last time!  The carpenter has apparently finished the worktables and chairs that we ordered, so all that remains is for Evarist to get back from lunch and pick up his colleague's truck--and then it's off we go to find Natalie some legitimate seating for her last week in Fort Portal!  Das right, people--next week is my last week of work in Fort Portal before heading off to Entebbe, and the National Archive, on June 25th.  I haven't quite been here for a month, but it feels like it's been forever!!  Other mzungus are trickling out, too; Ciaran, Jonathan, and Kate left some time ago, but Regina finished up her work last week and is honeymooning around Uganda right now with her husband.  She'll be back in FP for a night next week, so I'll be able to say goodbye.  Perhaps, then, it's good timing that I'm peacin' outta this joint in a week.  Poor Felix, though, living all by himself...he'll manage.  He's got his chickens, and is soon to have his rabbits (as soon as his hired carpenter comes out of isolation and delivers on the rabbit cage that Felix has already paid for, that is).

It's really fascinating to see the result of our mad second-hand clothing donation habits here, by the way.  I walk around and actually see the people who benefit from our actions, which is quite cool.  I feel most people here appreciate clothing for it actually being clothing, as opposed to its ability to appease the fashion bloggers of the world.

Case in point:  Saw a student here at MMU the other day wearing a McDonald's polo shirt.  A polo shirt?  Cool.  Polo shirt.  No holes.  I dig it.  Yellow "M"?  Who knows, maybe his name was Martin and it just happened to be a fortunate coincidence.  Maybe he knows what McDonald's is...maybe he doesn't.  Point is, a shirt is a shirt is a shirt.  I think it's pretty awesome.

Other interesting shirts I've seen thus far:

• Annapolis Soccer 2006
• Purple "Take Back the Night 2010" shirt (proudly worn on multiple occasions by my neighbor)
• Sorority bid night shirt  (I don't think I could find a single person who could tell you what a sorority is, let alone bid night)
• Aforementioned McDonald's polo
• Pink, puffy, puff-sleeved winter coat as worn by one of the Kagote boda boda drivers
• Damn.  I see one or three of these every day and keep meaning to write them down.  I'll think of more.

Adolf came with me the other day to the market to help me buy some meat, where I bought 1/2 kilo of goat.  Brought it home and tried, failing spectacularly, to light up the grill and barbecue.  It took me about an hour to try and get the fire going, and then it was to hot, and then not hot enough...I ended up spending about three hours preparing the goat with vegetable skewers, trying to cook those, eventually throwing everything in the oven, and nearly breaking my jaw trying to chew the goat at the end of it all.  Even the sweet potato refused to bake in the oven.  How the hell does one manage to screw up a BAKED POTATO?  Like I said, spectacular failure.  I had 3/4 banana, 1/2 sweet potato, and some banana bread for dinner, at the end of it all.

Another funny story (sorry Omid):  Adolf and Sylvester pulled up my facebook profile page at work and started flipping through my pictures.  They came across the one of Omid and I at SI prom and Sylvester, looking over Adolf's shoulder, exclaimed "JESUS' BROTHER!!!"  And thus ensued a furious debate over whether or not Omid looks like Jesus, as everyone convened around the computer and commented on the resemblance.  (They even pulled up a picture of Jesus from the internet to compare, side by side.)  Icing on the cake?  Finding out he's Iranian.  "Oh, so he must know how to make AK-47s, eh?"

Went to Boma today with Evarist, which I'll describe in my follow up post in a little bit--don't want to overwhelm y'all.