In The Midst

well, here i am back in uganda. my time in the USA went by so quickly and was so much fun. there is nothing quite like visiting and traveling and eating and laughing with family and friends......those memories often get me through the difficult days, the days that i must remind myself 'why i am here'. i've had a rough start....arrived here at 11pm on the 3rd of january and came down with the worse flu i have ever had on the morning of the 5th. dragged my fevered, collapsing, dizzy, coughing self to the ER where i received a 5 minute exam, a blood test for malaria, a bottle of what i think is tylenol and the world's foulest tasting cough medicine...all for 88,000 shillings...$35. plus, of course the $15 cab fare. seriously, i would have started taking cold pills and cough medicine on my own, but my housekeeper insisted she had packed them and they were at the new house. think so? nope, apparently she had gone through all my medications while i was gone and helped herself to all my over the counter meds like tylenol, nyquil, benedryl, etc! i've discovered a few other things missing, but that's a whole other story!

by noon on the 5th, i'm feeling just about as bad as a person can feel, but it's moving day! i only have 3 days to move and clean and paint the old house. when it comes to timing, mine is impeccable...haha. thankfully my great friends freddie, elver, peter, robbie, yubu and soldier loaded and unloaded the moving truck. mostly i just sat there looking pathetic as they would load whatever piece of furniture i was sitting/lying on. i told them i didn't care where they put the furniture in the new place, and to please just put my bed together so i could lie down and nap. i treated everyone to a local meal...elver and freddie ate that nasty dried smoked fish with the groundnut sauce and peter ate goat, so to me it wasn't much of a treat but they had all worked so hard and were so hungry i think they would have eaten anything.

peter and i went went to miracle center cathedral on sunday morning. i sure had missed pastor kayanje...he is an absolutely awesome man of God. peter kept falling asleep and i couldn't stop coughing. i felt sorry for the people around us, so we left a bit early. i came home and napped (again) while peter cleaned every piece of furniture and washed all the floors! i really have been blessed in the 'friend department'....in the housekeeper department, not so much..haha!

in the midst of me being totally immersed in myself and my problems, i didn't know little musifaru was lying in a clinic bed dying. i got the news on monday that he had passed away from malaria.....totally curable malaria...a 6 year old, sweet, loving child is gone....i tell everyone that 20,000 children die every day in africa from preventable and curable diseases and starvation...but this is different because this child has a name and a face i loved. this one held my hand and walked with me and ate from my plate. this one was not a statistic but a happy little boy who was another victim of extreme poverty. this one hurts.