June 1

“Ugandans are very friendly” is a phrase many Ugandans say about themselves. I’ve found this statement to be true. They are also helpful, and generally give you good advice or directions, but the sociology major in me has made me question why. I do think that some people help us because they are sincerely good people and just want to help. If they are men, I think that the motives vary. They may still confidently help you no matter what you need, but deep down may want money, an address, phone number, girlfriend, or any means to a green card. Either way, many Ugandans have helped me and despite some leading us WAY out of our way or giving us a bad deal, generally they really are eager to help. Fred was one of those guys.

We decided Saturday night at midnight that we were going to attempt to register and run a half marathon Sunday morning in Jinja (a town about 40 minutes away). I spent Saturday in Kampala eating heavy Indian curry, ice cream, and watching a movie. I definitely did not carbload and I also most definitely have only ran about 3 times in the past month. Anyway, we got up at 5am and after an adventure of finding the registration point, they allowed us to register at 7:15 am. The race didn’t start until 9am so we had a few hours to kill and to try not to fall asleep. In true Ugandan fashion, the gun shot went off at 9:45 am and hundreds of us took off running. The front of the line included Olympians from Uganda and a traveling Olympic team from Kenya. They looked straight out of a nike commercial and even their warm up jog would have worn me out. Despite trash talking in my head, I didn’t see them once during the race. I’m fast,but that is an idea of how fast they are. We took off running through Jinja with many people lining the streets cheering for us. We got to the first water station, which were water filled sponges which I drank from and then when we got to the real water station I wanted to kick myself for once again drinking unsafe water, but didn’t have time to think too much about it. After the first water station the five of us help intl runners spread out into our respective comfortable paces. I was feeling good running behind Kat and felt like I was keeping up a good pace. We ran into a more rural area right by the nile and lake Victoria. It was beautiful. We could see people washing clothes in the river and there were kids running along with me after I would give them five or “bonga” (fist pound) while I ran along. The problem was that the sun came out strong and I realized that I like to drink a lot of water in those humid situations. I kept telling myself that just around the bend there would be water and was feeling exhausted. After running for literally twenty minutes feeling like I might pass out, I stopped to walk for a second and my legs almost gave out under me so I just picked up and kept running. I passed a prison where a guy in his jumpsuit was cleaning a railroad track and stopped to cheer for me. By the time I finally got to water about 30 minutes of miserable dehydration had set in so I walked to try to get re-hydrated. As I was walking a Ugandan guy came up to me and was completely encouraging. His name is Fred. We started running together and he became my favorite running partner. I found out he has a family with two little kids and as we jogged along, we were passing time just chatting among beautiful landscapes. After a little lul in conversation and I was kind of wondering if he was one of the purely nice people or if there were any ulterior motive for befriending me, he turned to me and asked “do you know Jesus Christ?” I smiled to myself as I told him yes. I realized I probably needed some missionary work done on me considering that I was missing church at that very moment. I really was hoping that this conversation would NOT evolve to something that I couldn’t physically run away from for the next 6 miles, but it worked out okay in the end after I told him that I also am “saved.” He’s great and I’m soo glad that I was able to run with him. Every water station from fred to the end, I grabbed two bottles of water to run with as a death-prevention measure.

The last hour or so of the race fred and I ran and walked and ran and walked to the finish line. It was great because at the end the tables had turned and I was encouraging him to run. This may come as a shock but he was LESS prepared than I was for the race. He didn’t eat breakfast that morning and was cramping up.

Nonetheless, after about two hours and fifteen minutes, we crossed the finish line. Me in 31st place for the women and fred in 298th place for the men J. I’m sure there were just as many women as men running and that I’m just that fast.

As we stiffly grandma-walked home, we knocked on our gate and...knocked and knocked. Shaun one of our volunteers poked his head out and yelled at us. We looked over and about 30 feet of our impenetrable fortress of a wall surrounding our compound had crumbled because of what we hypothesize as erosion. I initially thought a small bomb had exploded. They are fixing it even now as I’m typing so we will hopefully be once again less exposed in the near future. When I went out to shower in my bathing suit to the well, I turned around to see about 20 teenage boys just staring at me. I pumped water into a basin and carried it to the back of the house for relative privacy but, lets be honest, the fun never stops here in Lugazi.