Day 25

I made bow tie pasta and tomato sauce for my family today. Oh my goodness it was so nice to smell garlic and onion and the tomatoes were so yummy!! Everything was fresh except for the mushrooms and tomato paste from the can.

FYI I can now open cans with cheap flimsy knives. Yes it is possible.

Now back to our regular broadcasting.

I was in heaven. Olive oil. My God how I've missed you.

My family seemed to like it although they put the sauce on the matooke and not on their noodles, but the grandma stopped by and had some and was so surprised. I'm not sure if she was surprised because it tasted good or surprised period to be eating food I made.

It made me happy that everyone tried the food. Everyone asked for seconds of the macaroni. I made too much of that though. Oh well. I have a package and a half left, plus my olive oil which I'm going to take with me.

I didn't go to church today. Instead I stayed up last night and watched the Five Year Engagement and Hotel Transylvania. I took my mefloquine yesterday after lunch as I forgot to take it Friday and I had my first side effect. Or at least that's what I'm going to blame it on.

While watching the Five Year Engagement, I had a mental breakdown. I thought for a moment that I was home in America and when I realized that I was in home stay in my borrowed room this wave of sadness just came crashing over me and I had a full on I can't breathe little kid crying anxiety attack. I couldn't even calm myself down even though I thought my behavior was so irrational.

I didn't sleep but for a few hours that night, was up at six something and just felt so drained. Headache and hurting eyes were my friends that morning. I was just out of it.

Did laundry today. Asked the mom a few things about gender roles. It's so funny. The dad last night says the wife has to do everything because its her job, but also because she is stronger than him. I'm not sure if I'm taking it the way he meant it, but I found his reasoning interesting.

It's interesting to see a lot of things and how ingrained ideas are to a people, but then I imagine that is me too, that there are some things that people will read that I talk about that we just don't understand why they are the way they are.

I can't imagine not marrying for love, but for children. Nor could I imagine thinking that the more children I had the better chance of more of them living than not. Infant mortality rates are high here, but children make up a huge chunk of the country's population.

There is a saying here in Uganda that if you are the mother of one, you are the mother of nothing.

How am I supposed to compete with ideas like that especially when they are based in truth? My heart goes out to these mothers who have as many children as they can because one society says so, but also because they've accepted that they will have children die and they want to hold on to as many as they can.

Today was a sad day.