From the Archives

Saturday's are a special day for me as of late. I do a little something I call "Uganda Saturdays." It's a time that I spend looking at pictures, watching videos, and reading my trip journals. It's been so helpful in getting me through this illness. I look forward to the time I spend replaying the stories in my memory.

Today I want to share a story from this last trip. Anyone who has heard us speak recently may have heard my mom's version of this story, but I'd like to give you mine. So ladies and gentlemen, I give you:

Wow your hair smells good!

We were in Bugongi. Oh, Bugongi. With it's rolling green hills and plentiful banana plantations. We had been there for about 5 days and were taking a much needed break after working with AMG kids at the Saturday morning program. We had a little bit of time after we ate to just relax, so I decided it would be a good time to bathe. When the team had woke up that morning there was no water (the country was experiencing a drought and often the water and electricity would be shut off without notice).

Our "shower" was a spigot about 2 feet off the ground. So washing my hair involved being fully clothed, kneeling down and holding my head, face down, under the spigot.

Which doesn't really sound so hard, but when you add in there that we must avoid getting water in our eyes, nose, and mouth, it complicates things.

So I turned on the water, wet my hair, then turned the water off again while I lathered it up with shampoo...

With my soapy head under the fawcet, I reached my left hand up to turn the nob. I turned it. Nothing. So I turned it more. And then a little more, and a little more. Still nothing.

"Are you kidding me?!"

And since the walls in the office building we were staying in didn't go all the way up to the ceiling my teammates heard this, and asked what was wrong.

"There's no water, and there's shampoo in my hair, so..."

But our team...we're like the boyscouts, and we were prepared for such a problem. Someone had kindly filled a blue bucket with water. And luckily I have the sweetest roommate (a girl I met on the trip in 2007 and who has become a great friend), who came in and dumped the blue bucket of water on my head.

Problem solved!

Or was it?

A few days later I found out that two of our teammates who had just recently joined us had awakened very late the night before my hairwashing incident with the need to...use the facilities.
Now before I go on I have to explain that the office building we were staying in is where our bathing facilities were, but the toilet was in the medical building which was a bit of a walk and not always easy to make in the dark when you're still half asleep.

So wanting to avoid the trek to the toilet, they looked around and thought, "There's a bucket. That'll do."

Anyone want to venture a guess at what color that bucket was?

Now just for the record, that was water in the bucket when my roommate poured it on my head.
But the best part of this story is that after washing my hair with that bucket, I went to sit with some of my team and one of them walks over to me, sniffs my wet hair and says,

"Wow, your hair smells good!"


- Aly