Mrs.O's writing room.

It's interesting how much less thought goes into planning for the holidays especially when one is away from home. Unless invited it's pretty straight forward, you do your own thing, what ever that may be. Travel to another city, do mega shopping and have a feast at home, check in at a hotel or in the case of a student without much color just chill in your apartment and try to keep warm. The challenge comes when people are getting ready to travel home to be with their families. They are all excited, you can see the sparkle in their eyes, they are cracking their heads for what presents to buy for family members and then they ask, " so what plans do you have for Christmas?", you smile and say " uh well, we haven't thought about that yet" in other words, we don't have any plans. This is a week before Christmas. All over sudden they wish they hadn't asked the question because they can't exactly say, come on over to my parents house. When Uncle Eno...

I never felt so important like I did about a month ago. This is how it all begun, I walked into the big supermarket four blocks away from home and guess what I saw??. Hawaii Maya plantains, for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, that is just another name for 'matooke'. I couldn't believe it! I was so excited I bought as much as I could, and we enjoyed some nice home cooked meals of matooke and binyebwa, mm mm mm. I run out of stock and unfortunately so did the store, I'm assuming that I was the only one who was buying it anyway. I kept checking from time to time and there was no sign that they would restock it in the near future. I decided to ask, I walked in and approached a guy who looked like he would certainly be of help. I tried to explain to him what I was looking for and for a while he wasn't getting it. Then I remembered the name 'Hawaii Maya plantain" and immediately he knew what I was talking about. He asked me to hold on ...

On this good day, some hours ago, my brother Peter took a bride. I wish I could have been there, but that was not for me to decide. I can't wait to hear all the stories about how the day went But one thing I know is it didn't rain and so the reception venue wasn't wet. It's funny, when I was much younger I thought people married their siblings and Peter had been my choice. I realised later that the whole sibling thing was not a good idea. We have always been good friends growing up, I looked up to him for guidance and approval for decisions I made. I kind of feel cheated not being their to see him take his bride but I know all is well. Congrats to you Peter, on this your special day.

So what have I been up to lately? Playing scrabble on the Internet, and uhh, playing more scrabble. It's so much fun and very addictive too, before I know it, an hour is gone. Then I have to clean the house, shower, read the news, check mail and it's time to pick Mich up from school. Mich is a whole story on his own, he has been up to lots of mischief lately, at some points I'm tempted to ask him "do I know you?". We have had a wonderful time hosting uncle Enoch, Mich loved playing with him and there was lots of laughter and tears ofcourse. It was sad to see him go but he has a family of his own and work and a life... but that will be for another post, for now I want to focus on Mich. He wakes up the night after uncle Enoch left at around 2am, (maybe two days ago). Knocks on our door saying he couldn't get to sleep and that he was hungry, he wanted to eat bread. Sam told him to pick a slice from the fridge and then go back to bed, he quickly agreed. Then for ...

October had lots of birthday parties for Mich to attend, looks like many kids we know were born in this month. One thing that amazed me about these birthdays is that Mich always came home with presents. Wait a minute, isn't it supposed to be the other way round, it's some one's birthday, so you take them a present?. My friend Andrew used to say, your birthday should be the day you buy all your friends presents, and when I asked him why he said, because we have put up with you for so long, I found that funny. Back home, birthday time?!, we get ready to busk in endless numbers of gifts and hope that many people come because that means more presents. I'm talking about the kids here, but then again half the time all the kids are thinking about is playing and eating cake and sweets. I don't think this whole giving presents thing would work for adults because, eh! it can be very tricky. Anyway, I'm thinking this is an American thing (for kids) where the celebrant'...

So, after all that crazy stuff, I'm moving around with sullen eyes, pouted mouth and all, feeling sorry for myself. I go to the library and I find just the book I needed to cheer me up, this must have been a divine appointment. " Don't make a black woman take off her earrings " by tylerperry , my my! I had some good belly laughs. Madea is something else I tell you. She is one of the main characters in many of Perry's works. She is an elderly lady, in simple terms a granny who speaks her mind and is often full of drama. I just found out that Madea is short for 'Mother dear'. She had some really good advice. She said, it's not good to be stressed out, there is always something to laugh about, for example when you turn on the TV and you see the President of US of A, that in itself is funny. Here are some excerpts from the book and advice from Madea herself. MADEA on being natural. "Have you been to a pool party where a whole bunch of black wo...

The lowest point in my stay here, happened a few weeks back. Now for this one you need to sit back and relax, I hope you do relax because I'm really going to vent my frustrations and everything just to get it out of the way. I hope you understand that I need to do this because I'm not in a hurry to get cancer from having bad toxins build up in my body, I need to let it go. Anyway so it's been about two months since we moved into our apartment and in the first few weeks everyone was trying to get used to the new environment and all. Mich in particular was excited about more space in the house and in the hall way. Once or twice he run out the door and got stuck between the two doors that lead out of the building. The good or bad thing about these doors is that once you get passed the first door going out, you can't make it back in the same direction without using the key. On these occasions we found him with someone in the apartment trying to explain where he was coming f...

Then a week after handover I had the beautiful privilege of hosting my brother Andrew, his wife Amanda, my niece Iridi and Sam's uncle Enock. Andrew and his family live in Denmark while Uncle Enock lives in South Africa. It was a wonderful reunion on many fronts, I hadn't seen them in about two years, they had never met Mich and Mich and Iridi were meeting for the first time too. We had a wonderful week together, shopping, taking walks, eating out and going on the Duck tour phillyducks . Mich and Iridi couldn't get over each other, there was constant fighting for toys and crying. The battles would start early in the morning when Mich excitedly run into her room to check if she was still there. (He didn't attend school that week because he had a bad cold) The only time they were peaceful was when they were watching a cartoon, immediately after that it was battling again for this toy or that thing, if Iridi held something Mich wanted to have it. It was all fun and laught...

Hum hum humm!!! I know what you are thinking, 'girl, whatsup?, you have more time to your self now that Mich is in school and look, you haven't posted anything for a while, whats going on???' I know, I know, well I will tell you all about it in bits and pieces. As usual the best place to start is at the beginning. It's a new school year, well not so new anymore and with that comes handing over of responsibilities. So much of the past weeks have been about meetings, nominations and handing over files. I was officer in charge of the Welcome Weekend, I couldn't have been given a better post because I had fun fun fun! I enjoyed working with the students and administration, late nights corresponding with prospective students with partners and kids and attending endless meetings but it was all good. The first year moms are here so we threw a welcome party for families just so we could put faces to some of the names and chat a little bit. Then the next week or so we had a ...

It's the end of September and the beginning of October, looks like lots of African countries got their independence around this time. So the Africans at Wharton threw a joint party today, to celebrate anniversaries gone by and those yet to come (like Uganda's which is in about 9 days time). We had lots of fun, African music, plenty of dancing, African food of course and a movie "The Last King of Scotland" (there couldn't have been a better choice).

So, Mich is having fun at preschool, he has made friends and he likes his teachers. But with school comes the baggage of viral illnesses and strange behavior. Last week he didn't go to school for two days because he was down with a cold. I have also noticed that he cries a lot more these days, even over really petty issues and I was wondering what was happening, I'm thinking it might be because he sees other children crying at school but many of them are younger than he is. Then just this weekend he said something that I know he definitely heard from somewhere else, he said "I don't like grownups", now that was a shocker and we are trying to deal with it. Even as he grows, learns and gets more independent, we continue to trim off the rough edges.

Last week Sam came to a point where he thought it was time to change careers apparently school is doing things to him. He decided life as a marine might just work better. I hope by now you have realised that I'm just pulling your leg. On a serious note, Sam and a few other Wharton students had the opportunity to experience life as a marine for a day. They went to quantico the camping and training base for the marines and this is what happened. And lastly the writing on the wall.

We all looked forward to Mich's first day at school, he was excited, so was I and Sam was busy getting ready to head back to school too. On the morning of the first day Mich wasn't too keen on taking his bath or getting dressed, we had to keep reminding him of what exciting things lay ahead, that got him going. It's preschool or should I say play school so we didn't have to get him much, just a school bag and some decent clothes. When we got to school and entered the class room Mich let go off my hand and went off to play with the toys. There were a few kids here and there crying because their parents had left them and one was throwing a serious tantrum. Mich looked at the boy with a bewildered look of "what's the matter dude, we are in school that should be exciting". Sam and I hang around to speak with the teacher and see how Mich settled in but honestly he couldn't have been bothered with us. The teacher was nice, she said we should give him time to...

Yee ! It's great to be back, no, not to Uganda but back to Philly. We took the 12:00pm flight from Dallas, took about 3 hours to get here and thankfully my dear friend Brent and his wife Diane picked us up from the airport. We spent the first night in a hotel because we couldn't get the keys to our apartment until 12:00pm of the next day (1st September) My my! west Philadelphia especially the areas surrounding the University was jammed with cars, roads were blocked off, basically that whole part of town looked like back to school day in a boarding school. Students carrying suitcases, furniture, the whole works, but that is because many students especially under grads rent housing close to the compass. Interestingly it's good to be back, feels more like home than ever (I can't believe I just said that), I guess because everything is familiar. Nothing much has changed. It's nice to meet up with friends, who were more less acquaintances last semester, there is a lot...

It feels like a pretty long time since I last posted on my blog but you know, life happens, laziness, buziness, nothing-to-write-aboutness and so on. Last Saturday was an interesting one, we decided to go to Six Flags Over Texas with the Lubwama girls, that was something else. The place gave roller coasters a whole new meaning in my view. Ok first of all the only roller coasters I had been on were the really mild ones in UG and the ones that we go through in life, (you know how we always say "our lives are like roller coasters") complete understatements I tell you. The girls had been there several times before so they knew the rides like the back of their palms, Sam, Mich and I were new at this so we only had them as a guide, absolute bad idea. I knew we were in real trouble when we got onto our first ride and the words of caution were something like this " For safety precaution please keep all parts of your body inside the vehicle " aaaaaaahhhh!!!!, what does that ...

Yesterday I was watching a program on TV and the topic was gays and lesbians, earlier in the day someone else was talking about the same thing over the radio. I thought, eh! this issue is huge, it's really crazy out here, these guys are just gone and the way they justify their cause. At the back of my mind I thought (anti that's why I think Mich should grow up in UG at least co...) Today I was checking out news in Uganda and there it was on the front page " Kampala Homosexuals speak out ", ouch !! that hurts, it hit close to home, my people! ( I became patriotic after leaving the country you know). I've known for a while that these people are there but I guess it's different now because I'm looking at it from another angle. I probably don't know these people personally but they are fellow Ugandans, my heart goes out to gays and lesbians around the world but it especially goes out to my country men and women. Just reading how passionate they are about ...

Wow wow! it's blazing hot down here in D we are at a constant of 100 degrees but it should cool down towards the end of the week. I'm constantly grateful for house AC because I don't know how else we would make it through. A radio presenter gave a friend some sound advice, in case she was lazy to cook dinner that day all she had to do was put the ingredients for the meal in a sauce pan and carry it with her to work. Then leave it in the car and by the time she was ready to head home in the evening it would be ready to serve having marinated and boiled/roasted/baked on steady heat. I found that funny. Mich likes to read, no let me rephrase that, Mich likes it when stories are read to him and then when the story is over he says "thiii end". The other day he wasn't feeling too good but he lead the prayer before he went to bed and it went something like, " Dear Jesus, thank you for today, I pray that you take away the pain in my stomach and throw it in the wa...