On November 19th, Sunday, we went to the church connected with the orphan school we would be working with. It was a longer service than I'm use to but watching the children's delight in seeing a "muzungu" (white person) made it feel a lot shorter. The church members gave a big welcome to both of us, including reading our whole schedule off and having us come up to induce ourselves in front of the church. My friend, Joshua was even asked to play the keyboard for a solo song.
In the afternoon, Joshua went to go finish his songs that he started creating in the studio (a Christian youth center) while I hand washed my clothes. I must say it is not easy. The first time someone showed me how to hand wash clothes Ugandan style, I was quite impressed. You use bar soap and scrub all the clothes twice. Lots of scrubbing. It really can ruin your hands. My knuckles above my fingernails were rubbed raw by the time I was done with only half of my clothes.
Then to hang my clothes to dry I asked the hotel staff of I could hang them on their clotheslines in their courtyard. As I was hanging them up I was feeling very awkward about hanging my underclothes out in public but then I reasoned that in Africa children up to age 6 can run around naked and even adults pee in public so why should I worry. After all, it's not like I can dry them in my room. The walls are cement and I didn't think they would dry well.
Well, one of the hotel staff girls started laughing at me and told the guy staff person to tell me to move my clothes to another clothes line they had since I had "girl items". So embarrassing. And to make things worse, about 20 minutes after I re-hang all my clothes, it started raining hard and I had to go move them anyway. But I figured out how to hang them up on my room by standing on top of my bed to reach some very tall hooks random places on the wall and using a fan to dry them. All part of the experience ; )
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