I don’t want to leave

June 23rd, 2008

I woke up this morning around 6:30 AM to film the children leaving for school. They greeted me with kneels and “goodmorning lashel.” Once exiting my room, Sophie immediately grabbed my hand and put hers in it. She held tightly on a little green chameleon toy, a pokemon, I think. She was quiet as she observed me and her brothers and sisters leave. Some watched me and acknowledged the camera by giving a glad wave from the gate with their uniforms neatly ironed from Cathy’s hardwork the night previous. Abdu ignored me as he passed. He was a little testy because they wouldn’t allow him stay home from school again because of his hurt toe. For the kids here, Mondays are like everyone, extremely difficult to wake up for.

Immaculate and Mgabou stayed home sick and went to the clinic early in the morning with Cathy. They sounded  sick with labored, heavy coughs and they barely moved all day. Mgabou had his blood taken and the results came back that he was positive with Malaria.

I set up the computer at the home to access the internet and then signed Cathy and Massy up for an email account at yahoo. This took a little longer than I expected due to the computer being well, a PC and also being 18 years old… All is well though and they were extremely happy.

We decided to pass out bubbles and disposable camera for the children to share and take pictures.

We’ll develop them back in the states and exhibit them as their personal photography - with some editing.

We walked to the internet cafe and my favorite part of this walk is passing this tin wall/gate up that has in dripping, white letters: “dont nock without pamission.” I enjoy it too much.  We got called white in lugandan some more and came back to find Joweria and Abdu walking home from school. Cathy grabbed Joweria’s backpack to relieve her and I carried Abdu’s for him. We arrived to a chorus of “welcome back” from everyone playing outside. We took more pictures and passed out some flutes, which we had been delaying. Cathy had them line up and taught them how to play, which helped order the noise chaos a bit.

I found a cd that I knew William would cherish for his collection so I secretly gave it to him and he grinned and immediately ran away to work on some new creation.

Yesterday Lukman fell about 4 feet and face-planted it straight into the rocky soil. He had this deep gash in his forehead that Heather fixed up after his tears wore out. Today we checked on his bandaid and all of the children tried to get into our room to see the process. He felt so loved and cared for, just because of a simple, little bandaid.

I set up for acrylic painting  and demonstrated how to do gradients, which Isaac loved. Later on, I helped Ssebanatika draw dog paws, which turned into foreshortening. He asked me if I would show this specific drawing in America. He finished it with  bright colored pencils and titled it “the man touch the dog.”

We cut up some Cliff bars that I had bought for the trip here (I had bought a lot) and served them to the kids as a small treat. They absolutely loved them. Fighting over seconds and trying to grab handfuls of the little sticky squares.

Massy and Cathy keep reminding me at different times that they’ll never forget us. Massy says she thought she would have never expected to meet people like us in her life, and raises a piece of a chocolate brownie cliff bar.

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