Catching Up II

June 24, the feast of St. John the Baptist, is also the feast day of our Archbishop. It is a custom here to celebrate feast days rather than birthdays. Doesn’t that sound familiar to those of us brought up in the traditional days of Postulate and Novitiate? We brought wine and cake to supper that night. The other community of religious women were also there and brought gifts. We all enjoyed ourselves… especially the Archbishop!
It is now July 7, and we are still experiencing difficulty with getting ourselves set up with an internet connection. Right now, we can’t even use the borrowed computer for the internet… Yesterday morning we woke up to find a blinking red light on the phone indicating that it was “in use.” Believe it or not, this lack of internet access seems to be our greatest source of frustration. It has been very time-consuming for all of us. We are so spoiled with fast connectivity at home in the U.S.A.! Sharing a computer that takes nearly five minutes to boot up, and then have no guarantee that we can actually connect to the internet, has caused endless frustration. We have tried to write out our messages on our other computers, then use a flash drive to change to the computer that might get us on the internet, but we need to remove the internet connection to have a place to insert the flash drive! Ahhhh! Life is difficult!
We are learning some new words and phrases in Acholi. We are pleased with ourselves and seem to be a never-ending source of entertainment to some of the Acholi people listening. Most are very understanding and offer some assistance with pronunciation. This morning Marion, Jo Ann, and Pat M began formal lessons to help us communicate with the people among whom we minister. Monica has been making herself useful at St. Jude’s Orphanage; Pat Haire does some counseling at Mary Immaculate School in P7. Marion is getting involved with the Parish Office in Father Santo’s absence, while Jo Ann and Pat Murphy are still contemplating their options. Jo is working towards setting up the clinic at Barogal. Pat Murphy is working up a curriculum to teach some basic business math to the child-mothers (and others) in the tailoring class in the same place.
We’ve all had our tongues hanging out for chocolate, so Pat H indulged us with another of her talents. She made fudge (without a recipe) the evening of July 5; it was so good that we devoured all of it prior to our going to bed! The next morning we were invited to supper at the convent of the Little Sisters of Mary Immaculate up the road from us. Pat made another batch of fudge so we could bring them a gift. They provided us with a wonderful meal of local foods, along with a juice beverage composed of mango, banana, pineapple, and passion fruit. Then they discovered the new plate of fudge and the wine we brought. We ended our time together with dance, drink, and fudge. It was a big hit!
Rain had been scarce during the month of June, except for the two heavy storms we had early in our stay here. But rain has been more “normal” for this area in the past few days… Roads were full of puddles when we returned from our early July trip to Kampala. It has rained two more days since then. So far, none of us has suffered greatly from the rains, but now we are more alert to mosquitoes! Hopefully, our mosquito nets will protect us enough that none of us will get sick.