I wonder what Courtney is up to… (8-18-08)

I have this thing when I travel where I often find myself thinking, “if my friends/family happen to be wondering what I am doing at this exact moment, would they be able to picture this?” Generally the answer is no. Mostly because I usually think about this when I’m doing something truly outrageous or just out of the ordinary. But wouldn’t it be interesting to be able to think about someone and conjure up a little snapshot of what they are doing at that exact moment? In this vein, I’ve decided to give you, fair readers, just that—a moment in time of the life of Courtney in Uganda. My first one came tonight at 8:14 pm (1:14pm EST for those of you keeping track). I am in Kiboga (pronounced Chee-boga)—a rural town about two and a half hours north of Kampala. I am hot and covered in fine red dust after spending the entire day riding around on the back of a motorcycle with a UML loan officer (see yesterday’s post). I am eating fish and chips at a tiny little rural Ugandan restaurant/bar but the electricity is out so I’m having trouble eating and getting stuff all over me. A generator is humming annoyingly in my ear, but instead of lighting the place, it is being used to project the television, where some sort of Olympic sport loosely related to gymnastics is on which involves tiny Eastern European teenagers jumping on a trampoline and doing massive amounts of flips. All the Ugandans in the place are oddly enthralled by this “sport” and are cheering excessively. I’m convinced that Ugandan TV gets the stupid sports that no one else wants to watch and skips over the stuff people actually enjoy. Amy Grant’s early-nineties (late-eighties—how old am I?) hit “Baby, Baby” is playing on the loudspeaker and people are dancing. Apparently rural Uganda is where bad music goes to die. What a scene! Anyway, I know that this is a totally random post but I found the whole scene hilarious and felt the need to share. Probably just the dust getting to my head…