Day in the Life

A somewhat atypical day, since we went into town, but gives you an idea of what I am doing with myself if you are curious:

Wake up an hour before 8am alarm, set because of emphatic intentions by Mr and Mrs Lodge to meditate at 7:15 and then head into town (Fort Portal proper) by 9:30.
Breakfast of toast, avocado (very excited about this innovative idea. I am all about new uses for avocado). Round of darts between ordering and being served (really hoping I can get them to let me make my own tea at least.) Intended to work through breakfast, or at least "work," but the one guest here today chooses the same time to get to the table. She is in theory interesting--Dutch air traffic controller who speaks Indonesian and last travelled to Bhutan--but in practice kind of cranky. Take the rest of my tea downstairs to escape. Start some data entry but get interrupted by my interpreter looking for work. I don't want to do any more interviews until I do a redesign of my survey questions, so I distract her with some more Rutooro lessons. She is impressed/amused by my progress on food vocab. We go to the back staff area so I can ask questions while she has her breakfast. The rest of the staff has a good laugh at my infantile Rutooro: "They eat mashed plantains, but I like pumpkin," "I want tea with ginger and milk on the side,"etc. I am hoping that these lessons will be my in with the staff, so I can have more than two friends here. Well, that and I am hoping they will let me mess around in the kitchen if we are buddies.

One of the waitresses (the one who is pretty as a porcelain doll and who is awkwardly/inappropriately informed of this by guests all the time) is keeping me abreast of the owners' progress on breakfast. I get a few last vocab words in (my favorite is "mporampora"=slowly. Which describes most things here, come to think of it, in addition to how I am learning,) before I get word we are heading to town, only three and a half hours late. We are taking a staff member who has what he thinks is malaria but the local clinic's treatment didn't work. I follow him in just to see what a Fort Portal clinic is like, while Mr. Lodge banks and Mrs. Lodge has a juice. He gets a blood test, I learn medical vocab and see the extremely basic set up, then we meet up and go for lunch at Mountains of the Moon, fancy but amusingly poorly run hotel in town. Mr. Lodge meets debtors and creditors as we do some planning and eat. (mporampora due to long series of mixups by the waitress--hint:no matter what they say when you order, they don't have the fish. same goes for the carrot cake, which Mrs. Lodge has ordered as a test every single time she's gone for three years.)

When business and the meal are finished, Mrs. Lodge and I tour the construction site of a planned sandwich shop by some Dutch cheese makers (they are calling it the Dutchess, hardyhar.) We ooh and ahh over their cheese vat. Yes: Cheese. Vat. Amazing. They show us where thieves tried to get through its locks in Mombasa. Tea back at the cheeser's house, where we discuss at length the nitty gritty of possibly having our school/community raise goats to supply her with milk. Turns out you need a LOT of goats, and they need to be imports. Hrm. We're marinating on it.

To the Major's house on the way home for another social tea, back to the Lodge as it gets cool and dark to greet the new guests. They've already gone to bed. At 8pm. Oops. Too bad, guess we'll have to just sauna and watch Dexter over fresh tomato soup and hummus (this last is a hard dish for the kitchen to wrap it's mind around. When we learn Cook Edward has been using a teaspoon or possibly a half teaspoon as his tablespoon, things become clearer.)

I fall asleep in the middle of an episode at 11, and stumble back to my cottage with still no data entry done today. Le sigh, getting things done is hard when your life is oh so busy.