However, this weekend was seriously a blast. We found out that it was my friend Steph’s birthday on Sunday, so Amy (Ireland) and I decided to throw her a little surprise bash for her 22nd. We planned on Wednesday to leave early in the morning on Saturday to go to an amusement park in downtown Kampala. We made her some cards with poems in them to give her hints as to what we were doing, and she seriously had no idea what was going on, it was hilarious.
On Saturday, we left around 10 a.m. for the park, it was called Didi’s World, and we got into the car and gave Steph the last note before we blindfolded her on the drive to the park. We were told it was an amusement / water park, but we later found out it was mainly for kids 3-12 years of age, which was pretty funny. We drove there while she was blindfolded and kept making her do silly things like duck for the policeman, wave to men walking on the streets, pretend she was being kidnapped, blow kisses to a taxi-van full of people, etc. We finally got there, and kept her blindfold on through getting her wristband and walking through crowds of little kids all the way to the center of the park. It was so fun to take her blindfold off and have the surprise be a success.
We rode a few rides, which was hilarious with the Ugandans: Jayan, Diana, and Collin. Even though the rides were nothing for us, this is all they’ve ever known. So we went on one of those carnival rides which look like a big Viking ship and swing back and forth decently high, and one of the Ugandans was crying and couldn’t watch, while another had to run to the “loo” right afterwards because she thought she was going to be sick. It was absolutely hilarious.
Most awkward moment of the day though? Swimming, definitely. We wanted to go on the waterslide before we left the park, so we got into the pool, when I say pool though, it was about 15 x 10 meters and maybe 4.5 feet deep. This in itself caused about 80 Ugandan children to flock to the side of the pool to watch the mzungus swimming. It felt like we were a freak show. So we went down the slide once, after another frustrating experience with the guy running the slide, and then just swam in the pool a little bit. It was funny though because one of the MSTs who came with us got so frustrated at one kid who was staring at her, that she splashed her. This gave us all the grand idea of doing cannonballs and jumps to splash the kids around us to make them leave, which didn’t really work, but it was fun while it lasted. We finally started heading back at the end of a really fun day of simply acting like we were 5 years old.
Then on Sunday we went to a church called Nakawa Baptist Church, which I later found out was the church that some Ugandans who randomly came and volunteered with us for a few days went to. It was really fun because it was a children’s service, so they did a lot of stuff with the kids, which was absolutely hilarious. However, it got really hot under the tin roof and I started to feel a little dizzy from a mix of dehydration and heat, but it was still a good time. We then came back home and Steph had to do some video footage for the organization, which was nerve-wracking and exciting at the same time. She is really talented.
We ended the weekend and the birthday celebrations with some good old-fashioned ice cream, back-rubs, life talks, and sodas. In all it was a pretty fantastic weekend.
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