home away from home: Uganda

• the spazzy excitement of banana tree leaves everywhere you look; 
• lingering 2.5 hour oil lantern lit and burning mosquito coil accompanied dinners at mexican resaurants with teammates who are coworkers as well as friends and, well, family too, at the end of a long day of details and travel; 
• 5 straight hours of paved road; 
• the amazing goodness of a leg of chicken roasted on a stick eaten standing by the side of the vehicle while your teammates use the favorite toilet location along said 5 hour stretch of paved road;        
• the swamps of Dr. Seuss-esque papyrus tufts; 
• the dukas with goat ropes hanging by the door; 
• the Kalita and Link buses rumbling by as they pass you on the one lane "highway"; 
• familiar phrases used and questions asked in the market and the ensuing stumbling/stuttering over words which have since been replaced by those of other east african languages in my brain's "language bank"; 
• discussions around the Rwenzori View family style dinner table with inquisitive Icelandic journalists traversing the country; 
• the familiarity of old teammates and ease of falling back into days of life shared; 
• the conversation that ensues over the loud hum of old 4x4 vehicles whose radios/tape decks are long broken as you "zoom" along the one lane highway unable to break the 100km/hr mark in the aging vehicle, saving you from the traps of the traffic police in their bright white uniforms as they wait in the valleys and around the bends for a reason to wave you to a stop; 
• the familiar and tiring complications of decision making and bill settling when traveling as a group of 6 single women, and the pauses of thankfulness for said women making it all worth it;
• the wind whipping through your hair on the back of strange man's motorcycle you voluntarily ride back to the hotel during rush hour traffic and the gasps and "eh!"s that ensue when the trust you put in this stranger's ability to get you from point A to point B in one piece is somehow broken around every bend; 
• the appreciated airtime acct balance notifications at the end of every MTN phone call/text message; 
• the refreshing treat of a cold Krest Bitter Lemon nearly everywhere you go; 
• the luxury of hour long phone calls to parents costing less than $5, 
• candle lit "last supper"s in the magical ambiance of Mediterraneo;
• and, of course, the ever present goodbyes...