Picture Me Walkin'

Ok. Does anyone remember the story of the mysterious land crab that terrorized us one night in Lira? I think we may have cracked the case. We have a minor cockroach problem in our house. Actually, to be accurate, we have a minor cockroach problem only in the back bedrooms of our house. There are a bunch of tiny, transparent cockroach babies crawling on the walls most nights. Gross, I know. On the other hand, though, we have a major, swine-flu pandemic, the communists have landed in Philadelphia, red-alert cockroach problem in our kitchen. In fact, Luke and I had a long, serous conversation the other day about just how big the monsters really are. I said, and still believe, that they are the size of milano cookies. Luke says I'm being a melodramatic little princess, but sadly we can't find any milano to test my theory with (sad on a number of levels, you can be sure). He says they are the size of a nutter butter, which could be true for all I know, but is about as helpful as say...

This delicious drink is called Jal Jeera. The menu described it as a "cooling drink made from mango." It looked like swamp water. It tasted delicious, with hints of mango, cumin and cilantro. But the real question is, did it make me sick? UPDATE: Nope. Just delicious. 

A funny thing happened this week. We got back from Mbale, moved out into a great house with a mango tree and a big family, and generally found our place here in Lira. Seriously. We have been living it up this past week. We met with the microfinance institutions in town and sold them on our idea of training borrowers in basic business administration. We found a makeshift office (read: bar/restaurant) with decent food, a place to work and a solid pool table. We even learned a sweet Ugandan version of Uno (the card game) from a 12 year old who then spent the next few days thoroughly embarrassing us. Then we taught him to play Presidents and 'Losers,' which he picked up quickly (the other name rhymes with grass hole). So quickly, in fact, we even told him about how cheating is, if not encouraged, at least tacitly approved of in the game. Apparently, though, we didn't explain the subtle nuances of acceptable cheating, because now he cheats blatantly on every hand. We've cre...