June 17^th Entebbe 8:30ish

I broke into my peanut butter, I’m not proud, but I was just so freaking hungry! Hopefully this won’t happen that often. I only brought one jar.

9:30ish

Breakfast was made, coffee has been drunk. All is right with the world.

I used my map to find Ntjeru and how far it is from Entebbe. I hope you are happy John. J

June 17^th 7:30 pm Ntejeru Uganda

Today has been a long, bizarre, weird, really good, really hot day.

I got to meet Joe when Paul picked me up. He is a biochemist (2^nd one this trip!) and he is from San Diego, I think he is about 24, he’s really nice and I think we’ll work well together.

Paul took us to Kampala and showed us around briefly. We got to see the parliament building and go to the mall for food.

We stopped in Mokono for a bit and I used my first eastern style toilet. It was really weird.

After that we headed towards Ntjeru, the road there is the “Road from Hell” as Paul put it, and he was right. It’s just as bad as Costa Rica. And the drivers are the same if not worst. 

We finally made it to the village. VOLSET is about a mile ½ walk from where we are staying.

This house is nice and clean. Lydia, Festus, and Julie all live there (they all work at VOLSET). There are chickens in the front yard, a mangy kitten in the house, and two dogs in the back.

There are all sorts of neighbor kids running around and VOLSET has dormitories that houses about 24 kids.

We brought our bags in and then Festus told us that we were going to go to a funeral. It was about a 20 minute walk to the graveyard, the entire village (about 200 people) was there.

On the way there kids ran out of their houses screaming Muzungo (which means white person). When we got to the funeral there was lots of staring from everyone.

It was all conducted in Lugandan, but it was about the same as our funerals but they sang too.. and it was outside and freaking hot.

All the sudden this boy faints (I think he had a heat stroke), but we carried him out of the crowd and fanned him off and cooled him down with a wet rag until he came to (which took about 20 minutes. It was pretty intense).

After we got back I set up my room and unpacked. It feels better have a place that I can call my own.

It was a good first day.