Interesting conversation

Today I had an interesting conversation with a young man. He came up behind the children and I as we walked from the Stensaas’ house to the house we are renting so they could see it. He greeted me like most Ugandans do “Hello, how are you?”

“I am fine” I replied, as is expected.

He told me that he wanted to be our friend and read to our children. I told him that we didn’t need him to do that. I read to them. He told me they were unruly and needed supervision. Um, yeah. I supervise them, believe it or not. (And surely they aren’t *that* bad!) He went on and on and we went around and around. I told him that he needed to talk to James. He asked me if I feared my husband. Not really. He also told me that my husband hates Ugandans. Hmmmm. Interesting. He’s spending most of every day with Ugandans and learning as much about them as he can. I told him that. Finally, I told him that he could meet James at church tomorrow night. I told him when the service time was and, to the best of my ability I told him where the church was. He didn’t quite have the service time correctly and somehow got the idea that he had to be our religion in order to “read to our children”. I tried to explain that coming to church was the only way to meet James and that there would be other mzungus there and many other Ugandans. I wish I’d had one of the Runyunkore John and Romans with me but didn’t even think about taking one on our short walk. Next time I’ll have to be more prepared.

Anyway, it was an interesting conversation. I hope I didn’t blunder into making some sort of terrible cultural mistake.

The work on the house is progressing. They’ve been clearing the land and today brought in sand for concrete. Tomorrow they will start digging post holes for the fence and will begin installing the gate. They will also be working on finishing the unfinished side of the house (ceilings and walls), and do things like installing hot water heaters and changing out the floor toilet for a “mzungu” toilet. 😀 Though I’m pretty sure Gaelin would have liked the floor toilet better. LOL.

I also went shopping with Mrs. Stensaas today. It was really fun. Having gotten a better idea of where things are in town, tomorrow I’m going to attempt a trip to Pearl (the local grocery with the best prices) on my own. We’ll see how that goes and how lost I get. It will definitely be interesting! 😀