Family

I absolutely ADORE my family.

My mom is young and energetic; she has a high singsong voice that she uses as often as possible. She’s very fashionable, even with the five-month-old bump just now showing on her belly. She is a tailor, and she’s given me a little fashion show of her clothes – the first dress she ever made is an amazing 80’s prom dress with a black velvet top complete with poofy sleeves, and a long white ballerina-material skirt. She made me try it on (it fit!) and wanted to give it to me, but I legitimately don’t have room in my suitcase.

I have a one-and-a-half year old sister named Belita, and she is the cutest thing in the world! She loves to see herself… she could sit for hours looking at pictures of herself on her dad’s laptop, saying “Ooh! Lita!” every time her face appears on the screen.

Recently she’s been sick, and I was terrified she had malaria. People here say that families plan on losing about three children before they reach their fifth birthday, to malaria or diarrhea or something. My baby sister has already had malaria once, and she’s not yet two. Thank God it’s only the flu.

My dad is a program director at the biggest radio station in town: Mega FM. He’s a doting father, and much more quiet than his wife. I don’t know him very well because every weekend he goes to school in Kampala; he’s working on a degree in Conflict Management.

I live in a little house in a compound surrounded by grass huts and pigs and goats and chickens and ducks running everywhere. Two (or three?) other families live in my compound, and all of them have kids under 6 – I love it! It’s just one big group of women and children all the time… I have no idea where all the other husbands are.

The electricity is never working, and my toilet in a hole in the tiled floor in the bathroom, right next to where I take a bucket shower in the morning. But to be honest, I’d much rather use that latrine than a public toilet in a gas station in the US! And I am seriously considering taking bucket showers in the States. We waste SO MUCH WATER with our fancy “massage” showerheads and all.

My mom always tries to convince me to be the one to kill the chicken whenever we have one for dinner (I told her the only meat I eat is chicken… I can’t bear to eat a goat or duck or cow… or one of the fly-swarmed fish I see in the market), but I refuse point-blank. From all I’ve learned about the American meat industry from all the vegetarians in our group, I’m also going to seriously reconsider how I eat meat when I get back.