DAY 4 | Don't you hate it when the family cow keeps trying to drink your bath water?

6:30 am- Erina’s waking me up to go to the garden. Ugh. Turns out, weeding in Africa is not any more fun than weeding at home. I lasted all of 5 minutes before I’d had it and we headed back to the compound. Awesome, I woke up at 6:30 for that?! When we got back my Toto was getting ready to take Ephraim into town for treatment. Turns out- he had malaria! Poor thing.

After she left, Erina and I went looking for firewood. She let me carry the axe, but after seeing how poor my aim was at chopping firewood the day before, that was pretty much all I got to do with it. I did carry the wood the Ugandan way though- on a bucket on my head! Once we’d gotten the firewood together Erina made us both some grub. I had realized I would be a little short on underwear for the week, and I didn’t want the chicken blood to set into my skirt so I asked Erina is she could help show me how to do my laundry. She ended up taking it upon herself to wash most of my clothes. All I washed was my underwear.

Since she already had the water and everything, she ended up doing the whole family’s laundry while I sat and rested and read in the shade. I ended up taking a nap since I’d gotten up so early, and that’s all I could do because it was so hot out! While I was resting, Erina made us lunch and I ended up doing the dishes all by myself when we finished. It was actually quite remarkable that I got to do that much, because the entire week my family insisted that I not spend more than 5 minutes in the sun because “Your skin will burn!”

I think this was probably the hottest day of my entire week and not a whole lot happened. When it was time for me to bathe it was still really hot out. The whole time one of the family’s cows kept trying to come in with me and drink my bath water! If it wasn’t so hilarious, it would’ve just been annoying because every time I’d push his head away, slap him or try to kick him (all the while trying to hide my naked body) he just kept coming back!

After my shower, I made some more passion fruit juice and the family slowly started trickling back home. I can’t remember if I mentioned it or not but my Papa was a primary school teacher, so he left before I woke up every day and came back in the evening. That’s pretty much all I remember about this day.