Muzungu!

Cars are a rarity in Mbale. Everyone walks everywhere, all the time.

Ashley (another American girl staying at the orphanage) and I walk into town almost everyday and come across hundreds of people. And all we hear for two miles is "Muzungu! How are you muzungu!?" Over and over and over and over.

Muzungu means "white person" in Swahili. So, if you are white (which we both clearly are), you cannot go ten feet without hearing it. It's mostly children that say it (more like yell it, actually), although I've heard people of all ages say it. Ashley gets so pissed off and actually bothers to correct them. "MADAM, how are you? Not muzungo," she says. Seems like an awful lot of work.

The last few times we have gone into town we have taken a boda back, which is basically a motorcycle taxi. It was slightly terrifying the first time but now they are actually fun. They are ridiculously cheap too...like, less than 50 cents.

On a completely unrelated note, the sick twins that I visited in the hospital on my first day are now back here. Apparently their mother died shortly after childbirth and their father dropped them off here. They were extremely sick so they spent a week in the hospital. According to the sisters they are well enough to be here. I'm no pediatrician, but, these babies do not look well. The smallest one doesn't even weigh 4 pounds and the "healthy" one is under 5 pounds; and they are supposedly two months old. I fed the bigger one this evening and his head is half the size of my fist. They don't even have names.

I'm definitely not cut out for this.
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