Second week

The walk into town

I woke this morning (Monday 22nd November) to a chap bellowing down his mobile phone and a girl singing loudly in the next room, it was 5am. It looks like there are more guests staying and they're Ugandan, which means early risers. I plugged my ears until 7am.
I made my way to town and changed up some money then purchased the necessities, a litre of water and an emulsified snickers.
Monday is Market day, so Kisoro's population doubles and the streets fill with traders and sellers of all varieties of produce, from bamboo and furniture to sugar cane and pineapples. Men and women, old and young struggled up the hill with bicycles towering with goods, swaying as they hit yet another pot hole.

We were on a mission to get ingredients for the 40 staff at Potters Village to celebrate Thanks Giving led by the American volunteers. We purchased bananas, garlic, beef, tomatoes, rock salt and many other ingredients for the feast at both the new and old markets. I brought 40 chocolate bars and a box of celebrations from England for them, which will be handed out after the meal...although I have suspicions that number is dwindling...

In the evening a few of us made our way over to Amandas house at the hospital (one of the Peace Corps volunteers) by 'boda boda'. These are local guys with track bikes who scoot around town with you on the back. We set off with our sachets of tomato soup and sweet bread.  When we arrived we were pleasantly surprised as Amanda unveiled a loaf of homemade bread, it took 3 hours to make and lasted 10 minutes.

After a rerun of Inception and a game of crazy eights we made our way home through town, it was coming up to 10pm. We'd not planned to leave it so late especially after hearing James' story from the week before.

He was walking home around 10.30pm with some Ugandan friends and they were stopped by the police who said they were checking everything was OK. The group confirmed everything was OK and the police then asked for 10,000 shillings (£3) to let them go on their way. James queried the need to pay money, then the police responded saying they were out past curfue. Again James queried the introduction of a curfue and before things continued one of the Ugandan friends paid the officers. The next morning some of the group went to the police station and after a few hours their money was returned with not much else said.

Apart from being pitch black our journey home was event free - you guessed it, another powercut. TIA