We have arrived safe and sound at RG! Always long but the smoothest trip ever…praise God! Not a single bag or person was lost. (Side note: My team includes a family, the Straders, me, and two others random women like myself). After piling all 8 of us (driver included) and 14 + bags in your average van, we stayed in a guest house by the airport – basically a Hyatt with AC (a.k.a. a fan) and hot water (for the first 10 seconds of the shower)! Laying fully horizontally had never felt so good.

My apologies for taking so long after we landed to get this blog to you, but I think it took a whole week for the Internets to travel across the Atlantic and find their way out here into the bush. Just kidding! But really there were some minor “technical difficulties” as the IT man informed us.

The next morning we hopped in the same van and took our SHORT journey to RG. On our way out of Kampala, we met up with a young man to deliver some donated tennis shoes. (Stay with me, this is a cool story with connections upon connections.) Matthew Strader goes to school with some Africans in America and they have a friend here in Uganda who is almost seven feet tall. Rare for a Ugandan, so it’s very hard for him to find shoes that fit his boats. Matthew’s friends got a pair of Roy Hibbert’s customized Nike’s and gave them to Matthew to bring. They were size 17! When we met the boy, I checked out his feet and I’m pretty sure he had stuffed his feet into size 10 shoes. OUCH. He was elated 🙂

8 hours later, but probably only like 100 miles away (ha, just kidding), we made it to RG just in time for dinner. Love us some rice, beans and cassava. Toured a little bit of the 700 acres of the campus. Greeted about 200 of our new closest friends. Unpacked our bags. Hopped in and out of our cold showers, literally – soap and shampoo can wait. Snuggled up under the beds that actually had mosquito nets. Turned out our one solar powered light and snored all night ’til the kids and the sun woke up (not sure which happened first…)

The next day we took to relax, get to know the area, and helped organize the donations we brought along for RG. Matthew and I borrowed Dr. Tim’s manual, right-sided steering van to make deliveries. We survived and the van survived – and that’s all that matters 🙂 Mama Janice, who started RG along with her husband, Dr. Tim, asked me to teach her Primary 3 reading class for the afternoon. When I got to the classroom, the kids were seated and waiting on their teacher to arrive, just like all good American kids would do in an unsupervised situation…ha! The teacher in me took over, what little there is, and I read them stories for an hour. Then when I had no more material, I taught them the fine game of Hangman. They ate it up but always chose the same words over and over again 🙂

What’s a good Ugandan day without a little soccer? Alyssa, Muriel and I played with the girls after they got out of school. I scored my first and  hopefully last professional goal. Let’s just say that soccer is not my best skill or first love, but the kids love when the Mzungus play, so it’s all for the kids.

Wonderful lunches and dinners are prepared by the orphanage house mamas each day. In the mornings, we prepare our own breakfast with leftovers or whatever we can find. Who knew there are so many ways to prepare rice and beans? 

It’s so wonderful to be back in this beautiful country with these lovely people. I am feeling very blessed by these experiences, yet again. So glad to have stained red feet and that potent earthy aroma permanently in my nostrils. 

Thanks for reading. Lots more to come soon. Keep it real, y’all and eat some pizza for me!

– Kelsey/Auntie Banana

(like any good writer, I’ll leave you with the enticing cliff hanger of how I got my new Ugandan name)