Day in the life 3

It is a school day, so I set an alarm just in case, but wake up comfortably before it. I scope out the breakfast table, and decide to join rather than hide in the bar area (my normal wont) as the guests seated are ones I met and liked over dinner last night, an expat couple one of whom works for a French relief org in Kampala and an older couple doing church funded (but interesting!) development projects in a northern district and their visiting daughter and son in law. Or son and daughter in law? Never quite got that straight. Lord of the lodge joins as well and we all chat as I hurriedly down black tea with ginger and eat my plate of fruit (and my seconds on fruit) while dodging curiosity about my rice, avocado, fresh chili, and a condiment that shall not be named here that has been my breakfast solution. I know, I know, odd, but as it is the only meal of the day I get to choose anything about, I try to make it as healthy as possible while making it as easy on the kitchen as possible, and this is the simplest cooking-free/mostly cheap ingredients solution.
Defensiveness about food choices done for today, I dash to print a sheet from Livestrong.com on vitamins in amaranth greens (called dodo here, grows like a weed; and no, I don't feel bad about using a commercial dieting/fitness website as my scientific source for African children who don't know any better...). The solar starts screeching at me that it is almost out of power before I even turn on the printer, so I race against the clock to get my information out.
Keeping my fingers crossed all the while that no guests will ask for a tour of the vanilla farm next door so Stephen will be free of guiding duties can come show us how to transplant the dodo in our school garden (and absolve me thereby of coming up with something else to do.) Stephen is our sage guide and gardener, who always seems to surprise you with a new field od expertise-birds, trees, lecturing at a local university, starting a school, preaching at a church, you name it.
I come back up to find not only has the otherwise nice couple taken Stephen(but at least they arer distracting the dogs from following us), bur the mother has even taken my translator who is also the lodge's spa trainee to give her a facial, so I hike towards school with my skeleton team of local secondary students who have been helpers while school is on holiday.
Stickers go to the four kids who are on time and we play with an inflatable globe I found in town while we wait half an hour for the other 35.

As the kids trickle in and I struggle to take attendance, BB John, the lodge's mad but amazingly dedicated and energetic tree guru appears out of nowhere. Hurrah! We sing what we've learned of "The Garden Song" (just a perfect song for this club's purposes, and totally adorable) and head up to the garden. BB lectures (at some length) in the local language about saving seeds, eating fruits and veg, self reliance,starting a business, his history of making his own living by raising and selling seedlings as taught, avoiding chips and muchomo (french fries and fried meat kebabs, neither of which these kids have probably had) blood pressure, (he is impossible to stop once he gets going, but makes a good bootstrapping/conservationist rolemodel) and demonstrates planting passionfruit, a local bean whose english name we cannot figure out, and cape gooseberries-yum! My favorite. (You can buy them dried as incaberries at wholefoods.)

Kids look a bit hot and bored after an hour so I gently steer us back down to the shady clearing for final instructions and we part till Thursday.
BB and I hike back, my helpers opt for motorbike taxis back laden with cassava they have been allowed to gather from the garden. (Not my planting; cassava is pretty nutritionally void, not to mention incredibly dry and equally tasteless, but for some reason it is a treat.)
BB likes to recount his (crazy) 100k walks and daily runs, but I am able to best him in number of the 185 steps (Mr Lodge counted) up to the lodge run (me:100; BB:96).
Return shinyeyed and energetic after a successful class and rattle on to the lady of the lodge about possible projects before we head to fish and chips lunch. I try to fill up on guac appetizer and dodo side dish.
As lunch concludes it is nearly three when I am meant to be out of my cottage as the lodge is full tonight, so I jump to pack up my things for lugging to the spare room in the owner's house. I've gotten the process down to a little over half an hour, enhanced by motivational music through my spiffy new mini speaker.
After packing, consult and chat with Stephen for a while, take a bath, play some pretend backgammon (neither of us remembers the rules) with Lala, the very sweet daughter of the lodge manager, who was born near here and has been with the lodge for its whole existence, which means she must have started as a kid.
Get a bit chilled and need to distract myself from hunger waiting for the lord and lady to finish meditating and then rubbing elbows with guests before their dinner so I pop down for a quick sauna.
Do a few emails and chat projects over dinner then we retire to the house to finish pirated Season 5 of Weeds over a glass of wine and a pot of lemongrass ginger tea. I don't care what anyone says, it has definitely not gone downhill after the first two seasons.
Just have to roll towards the guestroom, fortunately, as I am fully dozy by the last episode, dose myself with benadryl against the feather pillows and fall happily if a tad wheezily to sleep.
*Note: Sorry to dig at churches, all in good fun. They do plenty of good work here of various kinds