Day 3 - Friday

    Woke up 3 times last night. Not sure if I’m waking up because of the various animals in the area or if it’s the 7-hour time difference. My guess is that it's the 6-7 dogs across the neighborhood that spend the night yelling "hey! I'm a dog! I'm a dog! hey!". I also had my first night-time mosquito encounter, though thankfully I seemed to have killed it with my blind flail-clapping.

    I spent most of the day socializing with other guests and reading “The Whole-Brain Child”. You know you’ve got a lot of free time when you can start and finish a book in two days. I was surprised to get some gluten free bread with my dinner - they are “trying to make gluten free foods and want to know if it’s good.” It was good and definitely a nice surprise. 

    Met another guest staying at the “hostel” and got an opportunity to talk to her and her friends for a while. Her friends have both been in Uganda for 4 years and she has been here for about 2 years. They gave me tips for avoiding jiggers and mango flies, as well as telling me some stories about snakes they had found in various places, like a toilet. Next plane home, please and thanks. 😖😅 They also warned me that there's a planned power outage Sunday for at least 8 hours, but usually 10-12 hours. They said that for a while they were doing that multiple times a month and also as a way to enforce curfew. I can't imagine how people in the US would react. 

    As I was settling in for the night, I heard Spanish coming down the hall. I found the couple from Barcelona eating a late dinner and got to hear about their 2-day experience with the jigger clinic. Wow. The medical side of it was disturbing (unless you're cool with parasites living in your feet) but that was nothing compared to the real problems. Almost all the 90 patients they saw were children and not a single one had a parent with them. The head of the clinic (a Ugandan with 8+ years of experience) gave some of the most common reasons such as stigma associated with jiggers, alcoholism, and blatant neglect. They also went to some remote locations to check on previous jigger infestations. In one of the mountain villages, they met several children who didn’t know their names – their parents also didn’t know their names. *Their parents didn't know their children's names.* That was one of the less traumatic details they shared, and it was heartbreaking to hear about such a deep brokenness. Maybe not the best conversation for right before bed, but I'm glad I didn't miss the opportunity to share in their experience. Tomorrow they return to Barcelona and they said they don’t know how they will answer their family, friends, and coworkers when they ask about their trip. 

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