a place to live

as of tomorrow, sean and i will have a place to live. we were hoping to find someone through on of his friends here, but had no luck with that. one of them, marky, told us about an post he saw on a billboard at Two Friends. we checked that out. two american girls, both working with the same NGO found a kick-ass house (huge, balcony, no smoking inside, in town... kick-ass, basically), for 400,000UGX. pennies. for three months for both of us, that's $375CAD. lucky, is what i'll call that.

yesterday we went to mbiko to check up on a school that sean had worked on last time he was here. he'd left them with all the tools they needed to continue recruiting volunteers, and he was curious to see if corruption (all too common) had had its way... or if (unlikely) it had been doing well. the unlikely latter was the outcome. the school has a whole lot of kids, all brilliant (and beautiful), 10acres of land that they grow matoke (a kind of banana), maize (weird corn), some beans, and potentially cabbage. we talked a lot with ernest, the headmaster, about his vision and his plans. this man is definitely the soul reason the school is still intact and doing so well. sean and i are hoping to attach his very underfunded school to a partnership with a school in ottawa. i don't know if you know what that is, but basically the students from both schools correspond and send updates, and the one in the developed nation does fundraisers and stuff for their partner school. ernest's plans for the school are very optimistic, and though they seem far too optimistic at times, it's clear that it's his vision that has kept the school looking up in harder times.

oh, by the way, we decided to -walk- to mbiko. hahaha, a one hour walk out of jinja, over the nile, and down a long highway. at high noon. sorry mum, i got a sunburn, but not a bad one. today, i'm wearing sunscreen for the first time in years. anyways, sean calls this highway the "aids highway".... it's the main artery from everywhere else into kampala (the capital of uganda), so there are a plethora of bus stops, truck stops, boda boda stops... and much like any other port or main artery where there are many travelers, there are tons of locals with aids. that, is how it spreads. think of how it got to america: via a shipping port. these communities along highways are the ultimate shipping port.
the most frightening thing about learning all of this was the sobriety with which ernest explained it all. it's just a fact of life.

alright, it's time to hit the town. we're meeting with brooke and erica (our roommates to be) at 4:30 to sign for the house. gotta run!!!