Last Day at RG & First Night at Musana!

 On the morning of my last full day at RG (10/24), I walked to the hospital to get my stitches out. The day before, I had asked Judith if she would make me a rolex for breakfast. So, I headed over to the restaurant at the hospital where she works, and I waited for Steve and Tristan to join me. Steve (pictured below haha) was a hoot and always had some outrageous comment to make or dad joke to say. 

Tristan was funny as well, but I don't think that I have any pictures of him to show, sadly. As we were packing up back at the Patrick House, he said, "I'm afraid I'm going to leave without a parasite this time and not lose 10 pounds when I get back." 😂 

After we packed up, we went to say goodbye to everyone and deliver the crayons and markers that I brought to the primary school. We saw Francis, Denis, Sharon, Gum, Jacob, Hosman, Joseph, Patrick, Reagan, Carolyn, Olivia, and Patience. I took a selfie with Patrick, and Steve took a wonderful (but blurry) picture of Denis and me.

We brought our luggage out to the van and cleaned our rooms. As we were loading the van, Janice said that she couldn't find a certain computer that she thought she left on the porch. She kept saying that maybe Tim had packed it in his bag. Tristan and I were sitting in the car, and Tim whispered to us, "I most definitely did not pack it in my bag, but it will give her peace of mind if I check my bag and show her." 😂 It was so cute, and the computer ended up being in Janice's bag 😂. I said goodbye to Fabiano and Stoney and took one last look at the Nile.

Experito, Tim, Janice, Steve, Tristan and I all rode to Kampala together. Tim and Janice were leaving to go home to Texas, Steve and Tristan were staying in Kampala for a few days, and I was getting picked up by Gift to go Musana! 

On the long drive, Experito retold us his stories about the war, and Janice added that Experito actually played a pivotal role in the ending of the war. I wish I had a recording of him talking about it, so that I could provide all the little details, but I did write a good portion of it down. During the war, Experito went to talk to the president, and he told him that the war was not a conventional war and that it was not going to be won with weapons and soldiers. The president asked what Experito thought they should do. Experito told him that they needed to pray over all the warfare, soldiers, and suffering people from the highest places. So Experito and some other pastors flew in helicopters, prayed over the people and the land, and then landed in a high region by a lake. Experito wanted to land specifically by that lake because he was told that everything died if it touched that body of water. If a leaf touched it or bird drank from it or something fell into it, it would die. Soldiers were standing by the water, and when Experito approached them, they stopped him. They told him that if he even touched the water, he would die. Experito ran past them into the water, scooped some up, and drank it! The soldiers were all astonished, and 19 of them were baptized that day. 

We made it to Kampala, and I met up with Gift. I said goodbye to Tim and Janice and expressed my deep gratitude for them. I lifted my bag into Gift's car and then walked over to what would be the passenger's side in America. Gift said, "Ummm, this is Uganda" and then started laughing at me. It was my first instinct 😂. I walked around to the other side and got in. Driving with Gift was so awesome because I got to catch up on how his schooling was going and how his wife and daughter were doing, and he even took me past his home church. We took extremely bumpy backroads that he informed me were faster than it would have been to go straight through the city and get stuck in a "jam". If the videos below process and upload (something that has been a problem here 😂), the first is a short clip of the bumpy backroads by Gift's church. The second video is just a little view of the streets from the ride down to Kampala from RG.

Before the sun set, we stopped for some vegetable samosas, chapati, and Stoney. We drove east for about three hours, passing over the source of the Nile, driving by the Nile Beer Brewing Company factory, and even getting to see fireworks 😂? 

We made it to the Musana guest house late that night, and we were greeted by Dorcus. She brought me to my room, where it took me like 5 minutes to figure out which light switches were connected to each light. You would think that the switch right next to the bathroom would indeed be the light switch for the bathroom. False. Before Dorcus left, she told me that she had prepared dinner for me and that it was waiting in the kitchen. I was so full and did not want to eat anything, but I had a few bites of the chicken and potatoes because she cooked them just for me. I hadn't texted my parents or anyone basically all day because it was mostly spent in the car, and so I was excited to hopefully connect to wifi at the guest house. I asked Dorcus about it, and she said that they do not have wifi. Awesome lol. First world problems. I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to talk to anyone, but I was so tired that I just decided to deal with it in the morning. I killed a massive spider by my bed, pulled my mosquito net over the bedposts, and went to sleep. I had made it to Musana 😊. It was time for the next adventure!