Odd Realization

Had an odd realization last night – sitting talking at dinner about pets. Pets aren’t really done here unless you’re really rich b/c the food etc is rather expensive. I then realized that Oliver (my cat) is probably better fed than the kids I was talking to that afternoon in one of the camps. Now I’m not saying stop feeding Oliver but at the same time there must be something a little wrong here if we in Canada can feed cats and dogs a well-balanced (for them) diet while here there are tons of kids who can’t get enough to eat let alone a well-balanced diet. Sometimes I just don’t know what to say.
The trip to the field yesterday was pretty interesting because after meeting the local chairman myself and a few others weren’t really needed anymore so we went for a walk through the camp. I know I’ve said it before but I really can’t describe what that is like. As usual I was what has been referred to as a children magnet. Though my Acholi vocabulary is now about 5 words, so I am able to greet people. We bought some maize and sugar cane from the camp. I think it was a little shocking to some of the kids that the mauno (white in Acholi though spelling may be a little off – yah they just call me the colour up here) was eating maize. Don’t worry it was BBQ’d so won’t make me ill. Ended up under this tree to wait for the car and everyone else who was meeting the people they needed to meet. This tree was on the road from the school and school just got out. After a few minutes there were like 15 kids gathered around. It appears as though they were a little scared of me/shy so even though I waved and greeted them in Acholi a bunch would run away. Douglas and Richard thought it would be funny to tell them that we were there to steal a kid for me to eat. That resulted in more running away. Pretty funny experience….
By the time we left there were probably about 20 or 25 kids gathered around, my coworkers had finally managed to convince them that I wasn’t scary and then I was able to greet (in Acholi) a bunch of them. On the ride home I learned how to ride in the back of a pick up truck – a necessary skill here and I figured it was better to learn with Alfred driving than with some random – because there were too many of us. It’s not that bad – I actually quite enjoyed the ride. Though it started to rain so we all had to fit into the truck cab…. Yeah there were nine of us in a five seat (including the driver) land rover/truck thing. Pretty funny and very uncomfortable. Thankfully the rain stopped quickly though we had to wait for a safe stretch of road to stop to rearrange. Things are going pretty well up here and I’ve had my two week anniversary. I’ll be heading back down in a couple of days and I know there’s a huge pile of work down there for me so it’s back behind a desk soon for a while. Though you guys might be happy to hear that – less scary than field work.