Vanessa and I just finished eating dinner, after spending a really nice day at the market and maternity centre. Kristen left this afternoon for the start of her trip back to Canada (she’ll stay in Kampala tonight and then head to Entebbe Sunday before flying out on Monday). It took a good chunk of the evening yesterday, and a lot of folding, and at least one compression bag, but we managed to get all 100 bags from the Fashion Week order into a piece of luggage Kristen can take on her flights. Luckily she only had to carry her daypack in the matutu today, since Ali and the Shanti driver, Ben, will be heading to Kampala on Monday to buy supplies anyways, and can bring the rest of her suitcases then.
With Kristen busy packing, Vanessa and I took a boda to a roadside market to pick up produce for the snacks were were making the teen girls. We couldn’t get a hold of our regular driver, so we walked to the boda “stand” where there’s always a number of motorcycles waiting for passengers, and ended up getting a ride from Fred, a driver who knew about Shanti from when the founder was here getting the centre set up. He apparently started a different job during the week, and only drives the boda on the weekends now, but it was fun having so much to talk about on the trip. He also stuck around while we were getting things from the market, helping us bargain and making sure we were buying equally from the various vendors.
Once we got everything home, we started making the coleslaw and potato wedges to take to the workshop. We were joined part way though by Florence, a traditional birth attendant at the centre and part time cleaning woman, who had asked whether she could come over to see how we cook Western style food. We had a good time putting everything together, and then transporting all the various pots, containers, and supplies for the afternoon on bodas to site.
The workshop itself went well – the girls were very engaged and seemed to enjoy the food we brought. We were done in good time, but then had to wait out a big rainstorm before making our way back home. Lucky for us, Kato, the groundskeeper, and Moses, Florence’s son and the person hired to paint the Shanti signs for the centre, were also waiting out the rain. They were very interested in our digital cameras, asking lots of questions about how they work and laughing at the pictures they took themselves after we explained how to use them. Since I had my computer with me today, we pulled that out as well and showed them the different photos we’ve taken in Uganda, as well as my pictures from the Olympics. By the time we’d gone through all those, the rain had cleared and we walked back to Kasana, narrowly avoiding a couple of impressive wipeouts on the muddy roads along the way.
We arrived home to a house with electricity (!!) and spent a quiet evening catching up on news and reading books. We’ve got the last day of the workshop tomorrow, and then next week we move on to all the other projects on our lists!