Flashback to Days 16-17: Sick in the KLA

Day 16 and 17, June 10-11th, Kampala

I guess it's my fault for saying neither of us had gotten sick yet, but we both woke up Thursday morning feeling not too awesome. We decided to try to tough it out and I felt a lot better after breakfast, but Brian both looked and felt like death so he headed back to Mama Flora's to rest for the day.

I spent the day at the Apostolate with decidedly fewer stories since I spent the whole morning washing clothes and sheets. Lots and lots of clothes. Everything is done by hand, so the clothes are rinsed, scrubbed, rinsed, and rinsed again before being wrung out and hung to dry. I somehow was doing two rinsing and the wringing steps, which was pretty exhausting. The other women working and the Brothers chatted away and joked around in Lugandan all morning, switching to English only when it became obvious they were talking about me (people were always amazed we knew what muzungu meant....which was weird to me since that's got to be the first word every white person learns). So it was a pretty isolating morning.

Around lunchtime I got tasked by the Brothers to help wash dishes, but the frail old women there decided I'd worked hard enough (they were in awe earlier that machines washed everything in America) and so refused to let me help. They were always convinced I was very tired, but I think they just weren't used to seeing someone as pale as me. So I just had to sit there and do nothing.

Frustrated by that, I eventually got up and started serving food, just to have something to do. Afterwards we were in the girls dorm and were playing Celine Dion on loop, which just seemed incredibly surreal. Both Fiona and Diana wanted to change their clothes, which I finally acquiesced to, since it's hard to reason with any child who persists in taking their clothes off, much less a mentally disabled one who doesn't speak your language. Fiona luckily picked a dress that tied in the back, so I felt pretty confident she wouldn't be able to take it off.

Diana was distracted by dancing around with me to Celine, which was great fun after the rather downer of a morning that I'd had. I looked up to see Rachel sitting cross-legged on one of the big beds just be-bopping along to the music, which was both adorable and uplifting to see since she'd been in one of her moods earlier. A few days before, I'd taught her "Pattycake" and maybe made up the words to the second verse ("roll 'em up roll 'em up" sounded good enough to me. Hey, sometimes you have to improvise). It's unclear whether the "r" sound of "roll" or the actual rolling motion was more exciting, but one of those two was incredibly entertaining to her. Like I said before, sometimes little kids are just too easy (I guess to make up for the times when they're near impossible?)

Fiona soon decided she wanted to change clothes again, which would have been annoying if it wasn't so funny. I saw her in vain trying to take her dress off (that tricky tie in the back foiled her - aha!). When she tried to get me to take it off, I attempted to convey as nicely as possible that she'd already changed her clothes this afternoon and we couldn't do it again. She got a little angry with me and started waving her new proposed outfit around which I then realized....was the exact. same. dress. There were a good amount of clothes that were duplicates...either because 20 of the same T-shirts came as a donation, or, as in this case, the seamstress used the same fabric to make the exact same dress 5-10 times. It was simultaneously frustrating and so hilarious to be asked to change into the exact same dress. It felt mean to laugh at her, but it was really hard not to. I kept refusing to change her, but about 15 minutes later she managed to get dress number one off and I decided at that point it was worth it to let her have her way and put on dress number two. When we tried that, however, I realized that dress number two was slightly smaller and was not going to get on her body given the contorted state of her arms and their limited range of motion (that and they've taught these kids to put on shirts head first and then to pull their arms through. This seems idiotic to me because it a) stretches the clothes and b) makes dressing kids with upper body issues of any kind, which a lot of the girls have, unnecessarily more difficult than it need be). So now I had a completely naked child with two dresses in hand - one of which she didn't want to wear and one of which didn't fit. Through distraction techniques and some masterful sleight of hand, I managed to fool her into putting dress number one back on. The advantage of taking care of kids is that you're smarter than them. Usually.

I danced with Rachel, which was awesome (especially since we'd moved on to a new CD). I'd pulled out my camera since it was the last day (rafting the Nile the next) and Rachel and Semaya found looking at pictures of themselves endlessly entertaining. I had to cut our photo shoot short however since I was taking the van back with the morning shift of Brothers to insure that Brian was still alive.

I found him alive but still struggling....later that evening a cousin who was a doctor came over to make sure he was okay. He got clearance to go rafting the next day and we both hoped we were well enough to be up for it.

We weren't. We made a valiant attempt to get up but Brian was still feeling not awesome and I was feeling worse, so we decided to just hang out on Friday. Since we were supposed to be on the Nile, no one was expecting us anywhere, so we had no obligations other than mentally preparing for the first game of the World Cup that night. We gathered enough courage to walk down to the Internet cafe and when we came back Br. Prem, the head brother at the Apostolate, had arrived with snacks and energy drinks for Brian. He also told us the Brothers were going to be allowed to watch at least the first World Cup match, so we were pleased on their behalf.

We got to watch the first game, South Africa - Mexico, with Hillary in the comfort of Mama Flora's home. Watching Tshabalala score the first goal of the Cup for the hosts the first time the tournament was held on African soil was pretty exciting. I don't think either of us made it through the second game, hoping some rest would cure our ills.