Day 76 - Closing Time

I can’t even believe it, my last full day in Lugazi. It’s been 76 days since I left the US and 72 days that I’ve spent in Lugazi, Uganda. It has seemed like an entire lifetime and at the same time only the blink of an eye. The only time in my life I’ve experienced time fly so fast is in the mission field and that was a 2 year thing, not just 2 months.

I feel amazing today compared to the last 5 days. I’ve now been off the medication for 3 days and I can tell a major difference, I’m not quite 100% but dang close and I’m sure that tomorrow will be the first time feeling 100%. I was even able to eat the food tonight that Irene and Grandma fixed, most of it anyway. They really went overboard tonight and fixed so many things. We had chapati, peas, potatoes, cabbage, squash, pineapple, and passion juice. The chapati and squash were especially good tonight and I’m so glad, after-all, it is my last dinner in Lugazi.

I had a great today, a really great day. I’m super happy that I was able to be productive, something I haven’t been able to be for the many days. We did some cleaning up this morning as it rained outside and kept us from going to Barbara’s school to begin building the foundation. We finally left around 9:45 am. Amber and I started working on the foundation and David our guard showed up!! We were so happy to see him, me especially because I wasn’t sure I was going to see him again before I left. We haven’t had a guard for the last couple of nights because Town Counsel hadn’t paid David. To my surprise, he is here tonight as our guard, so happy about that! Anyway, David was a great help to us at the stove and it really went fast. We build it 5 bricks high, 2 walls, in 2 hours. We really kicked butt and it looked really nice. When we got done Amber said, “That was our last stove together. We rock.” And then we proceeded to give the rock or “bonga”. We snapped some pictures with David and Amber and called it good. I’m really happy about my last Adobe Stove and I’m glad I was well enough mentally and physically.

After the stove we all headed to town and Amber and I bought David a Rolex and a water, he was super happy and appreciative about that. I had one myself and it was pretty good, minus the occasional grain of sand. We ate our Rolexes while we sat at the Internet Cafe setting up a Gmail account for David. He was really exited about the fact that we would be able to communicate later on. I told him I would send him pictures periodically as well as the pictures I had taken with him. David is such a good man, he’s just a diamond in the rough. He lost his father when he was young, all of his siblings have passed away, and now he has a wife that lives in Mbale that he only speaks to twice a month and who knows how often he see her. I told Amber that I want to leave my phone with him so that he has a phone number to be reached at. I’m also leaving a bunch of Polos with him that I had purchased before coming here, I’m sure he will appreciate those.

My time has been well spent and I'm so grateful for the experience. I'm surprised that life took me this way, I never expected it. I'm sure glad it did, I've grown and learned so much, it's incredible.