one of my last days in Gulu was spent violently throwing up from some bad guacamole. This, thankfully, did not set in until after trivia night on thursday, the brainchild of a 60-year-old mad chain-smoking bachelor brit who bafflingly opened a tiki bar in Gulu. Seeing as I am neither old nor british, my trivia score was appalling but I enjoyed the downpour on my walk home. The rainstorms in Gulu seem to get scarier and scarier, which I find a delight. Sometimes the dust whips about and blinds you, and when the power goes out everything is eerie and quite, and it feels like the set of a certain Helen Hun/Bill Paxton movie about tornadoes. In Africa.

I spent saturday wrapping things up, doing laundry, avoiding Christine, saying goodbye to our tailors and grocers and waitresses. At 3pm I met with Charles, my NAADS adviser, for our final interview in the bar of my hotel. It had seemed like a good place to meet at the time, as it was quiet and mostly vacant and the power was off. But no sooner do I reach the moment for my planned heartfelt speech of appreciation when the power comes on, the Akon music videos start blaring, and the bar fills with drunken buffoons. One of them actually started waving a stick. "What?" Charles kept saying over the sound of the 4th replay of "It Don't Matter." It felt kind of like taking someone home to be embarrassed by my crazy family.

Coming home to Kampala was nothing if not more of a continued saga of ridiculous family moments. I arrived at the gate of my homestay to find the house in utter ruins, with no roof or windows. William was nonchalantly milking the cows, and looked up only to say, "oh, you and Rebecca are in Silver's room." Apparently the family is renovating the main part of the house where I stay, and so everyone has cramped into the few rooms in the other wing of the house across the driveway. The family's precious television set has been purchased in the doorway of my homestay mother's room, and we all watched "Second Chance" sitting on stools in the driveway behind the rainwater silo. I woke up this morning to a combination of sobbing and a strange buzzing noise, and walked outside to find the entire family on the other side of my door, holding Timothy, the baby, on a stool as Silver was shaving his head.

I can tell my baby cow missed me. I had an absolutely wonderful five weeks in Gulu, but it's nice to see my family again. I go back to the US in two weeks. It will be nice to see my family there again too.