This past weekend seemed pretty tame, at first, when compared to the rest of our trip. Thursday night Mandy and I grabbed dinner at a hotel restaurant near by, partly to avoid the typical fish dinner on thursdays. Since I don’t have class on Fridays we decided to trek over to another hotel across town which has a pool that you can pay to use. After a 20 minute trek in what seemed like 90 degrees hoping all the while it would end with the pool and maybe a cold beer... the pool looked like Green Lake and wasn’t open, so we settled for the beer. Then we came back home to start of a pirated version of season one of How I Met Your Mother, only to find it was pretty scratched up and couldn’t even finish the first episode. Talk about a rough day.
Saturday started off by visiting Gulu High for an event which they have about once in every two years, Opening Day (the doesn’t seem right because the school year has been going on since January...hmmm). We were promised guest speakers, traditional dancing, tours with parents and food... what did we get you ask? Well I’ll tell you, THREE AND A HALF HOURS OF NOTHING. Typical Gulu High School. We ended up having to leave right when the opening procession began. We had to race home for lunch and a little “fun day” party that everyone was throwing for their teachers and their kids, but since mine were at school I wasn’t rushing to get back. It was fun playing with kids for the afternoon with everything from bean bag tossing, three legged racing and bottle cap snapping. Plenty of food both traditional (sugar cane, samosas) and American (Mac ‘n Cheese) were laid out for the taking and then followed by movie night at the Ethiopian restaurant next door.
Sunday we went back to the hotel in hopes that maybe the pool would be cleaned but this time it was half empty with two guys attempting to clean it. We hung around awhile and then went to grab dinner but first decided to call some people and see if we wanted to all meet up somewhere but were met with grim news in the process. The second group of teachers had gone to visit St. Jude’s Orphanage the same time that we had been at the hotel. All we were told on the phone was that one of the children had died while they were visiting. Later on we would get these details. Group two had not been there but for a few moments, around 2:06, when a woman working there came to them yelling “a child has fallen!” No one knew the urgency because it simply sounded as if a child had fallen on the ground, not something to go running for. When they followed the woman they sound realized a child had fallen in what seemed like a small well. After attempts by a worker to stick a latter down the hole, one of our own stuck his hand down the well in an attempt to grab the child. The well was once used as a latrine, meaning that it wasn’t water John was stick his hand into. He reached in grabbing what he thought felt like was a loaf of bread but was instead two year old Samuel. After attempts at CPR panic fell on the children surrounding the scene and finally the driver spoke up and asked if they could take the child to the hospital. Racing over potholes and through crowded streets they reached the hospital hoping there would be a rush of medical staff, but nothing. The hospital was overcrowded, two to three children per bed. It was here that Samuel was pronounced dead at 3:06.
The three of us that were at the pool sat in a gloomy silence trying to process what group two must have been going through in this difficult time. Dinner was quick so that we could go home and give our support. The funeral was the very next day and many of the workers at the orphanage decided to travel the long distance however that would leave the staff short handed. The next day I volunteered for a portion of the day and saw the well Samuel had fallen into. The young children seemed the same, no real change to their lives but it still did not seem like the same orphanage I blogged about a few short weeks ago.
On a much lighter note, the house has had several unwanted visitors in the past few weeks...mice. It started with what we think was just one that plagued the girls’ room, breaking into food and racing around the room. It then built to many mice prancing about every corner of the house, even chewing up one of Mandy’s scarfs. Rat traps were not enough, poison didn’t even seem to work that well and finally we resorted to trying to catch them. Mandy screamed “mouse!” from our pantry area and I leaped into action (picture me with a cape if you must). Now after grabbing two cups and trapping the mouse in the corner I raced out to show everyone what we had caught. John interrupted me and said “Here’s the funny thing, Jennifer heard you close the door and came back and said to us ‘I think Mandy and Andy are doing something in the buffet room’ and then colleen responds with ‘good for them.’” After laughing awhile John tells me “And my first reaction was ‘wait buffet room? Which one is that?’” Just catching mice, all in a days work.
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