I made it back to Entebbe, Uganda (with the mosquitoes, geckos, dust of doom, and other unpleasant things that are not so easy to forget) and will be staying here until August 4th. One could claim that I am quite delirious from lack of water and have also managed to gain about eight beautiful, red, and itchy mosquito bites since my extremely late arrival at the Entebbe airport. I should add that I barely made it in time to the Cairo Airport and had my lovely friend, Kareem, run through the airport yelling in Arabic trying to find my exit gate. I obviously owe him dearly.
Somehow I find myself drowning in this weird, emotional pool of confusion and can’t seem to get my head above water—and really, I’m a good swimmer! I’m ready to leave Uganda but am not ready to go back to Tennessee. I have loved this summer, especially Egypt and my short, sweet time there.
Just thinking about everything that has happened within the past couple of weeks makes me want to do something drastic, as usual. Perhaps something that entails short hair, a ridiculous hobby such as gun cleaning or sky diving, Sangria, and learning French or Arabic? I’m afraid that I’ve had a taste of something sweeter than I could have ever imagined and now I can’t forget about it.
It’s honestly going to be so hard for me to go back to Knoxville and to get my act together! I will actually be expected to FOCUS. I hate that word…F-O-C-U-S. (I am also not too fond of the words ointment, barnacle, cheese grater, amongst some other things.)
So, in honor of currently not focusing I decided to hop on a rather questionable boda-boda and made my way over to a beach hotel and restaurant in hopes to find some kind of non-Ugandan dish to devour. I was picturing something garlicky or chocolaty but settled for spaghetti instead, which proved to be a huge mistake! After waiting for an hour for my food the spaghetti arrived with the CURRY sauce in a separate bowl and with my “grilled” chicken half basted in the sauce. I forgot to mention that the grilled chicken was basically half of an entire chicken with bones sticking all over the place, which immediately made me lose my appetite.
After sitting by the water for a few hours I began to reminisce about the Mediterranean sea and other stolen Egyptian moments and decided it would be best to return to the hostel for a shower before I started laughing or burst into tears like some mzungu maniac. I managed to flag down another boda-boda and scooted back over to the hostel and found myself face to face with the most bizarre Spanish lady that I have ever met. She was sitting almost naked in the middle of the floor, at least she was sitting on a rather raggedy towel, painting her nails with a scarf wrapped around her neck that draped ever so gracefully over her sagging bosoms.
She politely introduced herself and apologized for taking up so much room in the dormitory, however she did not apologize for almost making me faint from such an unexpected spectacle. I asked if she were Spanish, I could tell from her thick accent. We then had great half-Spanish conversations about shopping and paella, works from Gaudi, how Spanish men are supposedly the best lovers, and why it’s so tempting to go skinny-dipping in foreign countries. Honestly, I was rather impressed with myself for still knowing how to carry on a conversation about skinny-dipping and knee-high boots in Spanish.
Have I mentioned how I don’t want to go back to America?
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