The senses.

Smells:  The acrid smoke from burning rubbish

Cow dung

Rich woody scent of mango trees not yet in bloom

Sharp smell of body odor and sweat

Diesel exhaust from roaring lorries

Fish on the beach, minus the briny ocean breeze that I'm used to

Banana bread baking

Chemical smell of pesticide in enclosed spaces

Sounds: Roosters crowing

Muslim calls to prayer

"Sawa, sawa, sawa ye"

Ugandan dance beats

Children giggling + "Muzungu!! How are you!!"

The bleating and spitting of goats

"Eyyyyy, mami!  Your food is ready!"

Birds whose calls must emanate from some supernatural source because the noise is so impossibly bigger than the bodies they come from

Sights:  The bright orange of a rubbish fire pouring black smoke into the sky against a green green landscape

Bejeweled roosters struttin' their stuff

Women in Buganda dress, with poofy shoulders

The green.  Oh, the green.

Heavy jackfruit swaying, hanging ponderously

Red dust coating everything

Fort Portal after a fresh rain when everything is new and the wide banana tree leaves drip onto the reddish brown dirt

Quick flashes of brilliance when green bee-eaters fly by the kitchen window at the Lodge

Waxing nostalgic with Winston Churchill:

"My Journey is at an end, the tale has been told. The reader who has followed so faithfully and so far has a right to ask what message I bring back. It can be stated in three words: concentrate upon Uganda! 

Uganda is alive by itself. It is vital, and in my view, in spite of its insects and diseases, it ought, in the course of time, to become the most prosperous of all our East African possessions and perhaps the 'financial driving wheel' of this part of the world. 

Uganda is from end to end a 'beautiful garden' where 'staple food' of the people grows almost without labour. Does it not sound like a paradise on earth? It is the pearl of Africa."

Churchill, "My African Journey"

More later.  I just got back from Fort Portal and am simmering in nostalgia.  Such a sap.

You go your way an I go mine

Jack rocks and gave me 2 GB of Bob Dylan the other day, to supplement my already-large Dylan collection, so now I pretty much have the entire Dylan discography.  U jelly?  You should be.  (By the way, Bob's playing a concert in Michigan this weekend ON MY BIRTHDAY...I think this love affair was meant to be)  Anyway, song of the day:  'Most Likely You Go Your Way".

So, I guess I realized that for those of you who haven't been regularly gchatting with me, I probably confused all y'all with references to "Jack" and "Anneeth" and all those people...After leaving Fort Portal nearly--gasp--two months ago, I came to Entebbe and met up with four other UM students, all PhD candidates in the African History program there.  The guy that sort of spearheaded my whole project here, Derek Peterson, is one of their professors and members of (some of) their dissertation committees, so he lured them here with grant money to help out at the Uganda National Archives.  So, we've been here since June 25th working away at the mammoth task of cataloguing the country's entire archive.  Or most of it.

So, we've been here since July 25th (Ashley and I have, at least; the rest have trickled in) and chipping away at the collections.  It's taken a LOT of work to get where we are, but I'm glad to say that we've done a pretty solid job at organizing, cataloguing, cleaning (sort of...more on that later), re-housing, etc. a decent chunk of the collections.  We even, at one point, instituted a "stay till 6 p.m. three days/week, and then come in on saturdays from 9-1" policy...if that tells you how much we've been working...

...and if that tells you why I haven't updated this sucker in so long!

Random:  So Entebbe is on the coast of Lake Victoria, and about five minutes down the road are various beach restaurants.  They get pretty loud on the weekends, and particularly on game days (I think Manchester United is playing today), so right now there is a mix of crowd noise, Ugandan pop/dance music, and vuvuzelas in the background...can be kind of annoying at times, but I also think it's nice in that there is just LIFE going on!  All the time!

Anyway, I (once again) need to cut this short...today is my birthday and we're leaving in an hour and a half to go get dinner.  And, I've got a lot of writing work to do before we leave, sooo...I'll catch y'all on the flip side.

Love love love.
N

Wow. It's been a month...sorry, kids...

This'll be short, but I promise I'll write a solid blog tomorrow.  We took Eve and Roscoe out for fish tonight on Anderita Beach, but a lovely night turned into the biggest debacle EVER...and yes, I used that word to describe it when I was "having words" with the hotel manager.

Went to Anderita Beach Hotel, where you can order a nice big fried (whole) tilapia for approximately nine dollars (Omid informed me that such a fish--local, freshly caught--in Laguna Beach would be between $40-60...1 point for Uganda!).  Food took about an hour and a half to arrive, which is pretty typical of most restaurants in Uganda, and the waitress had me pay right before we got the food.  Now, it's fairly common here for waiters and waitresses, or store clerks, or whatever, to simply show you the amount that you owe on a piece of paper, and that's what our waitress did tonight...so I paid it.

She brought our food, and then an extra grilled fish to the table, at which point we told her we didn't order it--and thus ensued the chaos.  A co-worker came back to the table with her and asked if we would pay for it, as she would be the one to pay for it if we didn't (this is also a very Ugandan thing; waiter messes up an order, they're the ones paying for the food).  Now, we had JUST been having a discussion about how often myself (and other American friends) tend to get jacked over in food joints, where we are either brought the incorrect thing or the server brings out an additional food item claiming that we ordered it, when we really didn't...our friend Stella, a researcher at Makerere University and native Ugandan, said that never happens to her...she was actually rather surprised and angry about it.  (Case in point--went to Central Inn last night for dinner and Jen ordered a chicken curry...about an hour went by, we got our food, and she was served a hawaiian pizza.  What??!!)

SO:  Stella got mad and laid into the servers in Luganda, which was kind of an awesome spectacle to see, and very kind Ashley said she'd pay for the fish.  She went to go get the receipt itemized, and...surprise!!...the waitress had overcharged us by Ugx40,000.  So, we paid for a fish we didn't order, Ashley didn't get a salad she ordered, and I paid an extra fifteen bucks, approximately.  You'd think that the matter would get settled in a reasonable period of time, but no dice...the thing turned into an hour and a half long debacle (see?) in which Anneeth and I got incredibly heated, and I ended up saying "Listen, it's nine thirty, I hurt my back, and all I want to do is go home.  Can I please just have my 40,000?"  (I also said "Listen, we're not tourists, we actually live here in Uganda, work for the government, and need to be at work tomorrow at nine."  Really, Natalie??  You pulled that card?!)

Long story short, after an hour and a half of wrangling with eight different hotel employees and about five different episodes of writing down exactly what we got and showing them the math...the supervisor came up with my money.  :LKSDJF: LKJS:DLFKJ SLDKFJ:LKSDJF:LKJS:DFLKJSDLKFJ:SLKDFJLKSJDF

RAGE.

We boda boda-ed it home, admired the weird-looking moon, and arrived at the flat to the smell of delicious apple/dried cherry/banana fritters that Jen was frying in the kitchen.  And then watched an episode of Trailor Park Boys.  And Ashley gave me a bruise-inducing back massage, because I'm an old lady and hurt my back (slipped on the stairs carrying a box down to the archives yesterday and landed smack on my tailbone).

Alrighty, more tomorrow...I'll likely flood this thing in the next few days with posts to update all y'all on the happenings at UNA.  Work has been INSANELY busy the past few weeks, thus my absence on here.

Love to all of you!

N