A little fun

Grace had to go to Kampala to pick up a passport yesterday, so of course, I tagged along!  We didn't spent much time in town, but we did stop for a little tea break along the way.

Seriously, life in Africa is tough.  I didn't have any Christmas Stollen over the holidays, so I had to have a slice of almond strudel at this fancy schmancy cafe in Kampala (next to the US Embassy, of course!). 

Grace, being a good American, had to have a cherry pie:

I think it's probably a good thing I don't live in a "real" city like this.  I would probably spend too much money!  Much better to keep me tucked away in a tukel somewhere and just let me out on occasion!

We also stopped at a butcher and bought some pork!  Sausages and pork chops! 

One thing that I've been noticing lately, though, is that the closer something seems to my own culture, the harder it is to deal with when things are quite what you expect.  For example, I've been noticing that everywhere I go, things move really, really S S S S L L L L L O O O O O W.  I don't think they move any slower than they do in other parts of Africa.  But in other parts, like back in Jb, everything is SO different, that you just expect things to be slow, or you expect that if you go into a restaurant, they won't have what's on the menu, or that things just won't be predictable.  But if everything, on the surface, looks like "home", then I find myself automatically switching into "home" mode, and having certain expectations of things being a certain way.

And then when reality doesn't live up to those expectations, I get disappointed.  So in fact, I think I may have been harsh and somewhat judgemental sometimes when I hear people who live in these wonderfully developed big cities.  I hear them complain constantly about how terrible things are... like the fact that their coffee took 15 minutes to arrive at their table, or they went to the butcher and they were out of bacon.  My village mind says, "Stop complaining!  At least you have a butcher!". 

But I'm starting to understand how you can actually feel more "culture stress" when you expect things to be like home.  I think I don't suffer much culture stress, generally speaking, because I just always expect things to be different in Jb.  I mean, in Jb, everything right on the surface is different.  So I don't expect it to be predictable or for things to work as they do in other parts of the world!  I think that's probably a good thing.

And those are my thoughts for the day.  Thanks for listening.