Typed on the 16th of June in the afternoon.

So, it’s been a while. And not much has been happening, therefore this post will be a jack of all trades. In the days since the last post I’ve been busy and not busy at all.

Work has been a complete bore. While I’m at work I feel like I might as well be at home because I’m not doing anything worthwhile, it’s been very frustrating. Just today the director returned and I talked with her for a while. Apparently I’ll be very busy once there are more funds for the child rights project. In July. So I’m trying to figure out my plan of action for the next two weeks. She said that next Monday one of the sub-counties has something going on and maybe I’ll go check it out. And next Wednesday ActionAid, the partner for the women’s empowerment project, is coming in to do training so I might sit in on that as well. Two days in one week!! And there’s a workshop tomorrow put on by two Brits so I may try to get into that as well.

I talked to Nadja a bit and I might fill out the week by visiting the orphanage she works at. That or I’ll try to meet with Monica’s friend who works with former LRA abductees. Either one would be a nice change of pace and get me a little more involved in the community, which is good. The other thing I was thinking was to use the downtime to plan some travel and figure out what to do.

In the meantime, I’ve now gone to four of the five restaurants in town. The passed three nights have seen me dine with a number of guests in different restaurants, so it’s nice. The first one, the night I got here and another time since then, was Hotel Aanya, an Indian restaurant that has a decent Chinese menu. Monday was Carwash, which is an Indian restaurant and its namesake. Last night was PanAfric, a more traditional spot. And I just got back from Lillian Towers, which is the fancy hotel/restaurant in town. I now have however many weeks to go to Whiskers, the last one standing.

Last week Erik left for a week’s leave to Kisoro (and Lake Bunyonyi, swoooon). Tomorrow Annett and Martin leave for a month on their honeymoon to Madagascar and the Comoros. The next day Monica heads to Kigali for a ded meeting, and she’ll be dropping Nadja in Kampala on the way. So all this disperal has reinvigerated my search for local travel, and I was thinking of maybe going to Gulu during the week next week since I have free days, but apparently Alison was thinking about heading over there this weekend and I might just follow for some company. I’d love to see Gulu sooner rather than later, but the IC office will be closed, so I’ll have to make a return. However! I could easily make this return on my way to or from the northeast, and I’m hoping to see Arua or one of the other towns in that corner of the country.

I went to the town market for the first time on Sunday! That was quite interesting. Lira isn’t big enough to say it was bustling, but it’s very much how I imagined it: tiny booths of all sorts of produce with a patchwork of cloth for a roof over an open-air market. I’m also learning Luo! Months ago Heather gave me a Luo-English dictionary and a pdf of Luo essentials, so I’ve been digesting it for a few days and bouncing words off of my colleagues at work. It’s actually a really, really simple language but I need to concentrate to remember all of the vocabulary. Other than that, just holding down the fort around these parts. Hopefully the next update will be more interesting, we’ll see.