From the Archives: Muzun-GU!

When I was sick, each Saturday I spent some time looking through photos and watching videos from Uganda, and this practice quickly spilled over to the blog. So in the spirit of tradition (if you remember we like those here at Housers4Uganda - we have some very important traditions coming soon) Saturdays will be filled with stories from past trips, some funny, some serious, but all completely true.

Last year while in Igamba, the village that all of the kids we sponsor are from, we met a little girl. She is friends with the girls that I sponsor and can usually be found running around with them. We never found out her name. Any time someone asked her she would mumble something that started with an M, but no one could understand. So we just called her M. She was probably about 3 years old so she didn't speak any English. But there was one word we could always understand.

Muzungu.

As a white person, we hear this word all the time in Uganda, mostly from the kids because it means white person. But when M would say this word her voice would go up at the end. She would say muzun (moo-zoon) in her normal voice and when she got to the gu (goo) her voice would go up real high and sound super excited. We could always hear her before we saw her. And she had the funniest high-pitched laugh.

And the girl does not sit still! I tried getting a picture of her but she would never be still long enough for the camera to capture her. She was either blurry.

Or she would move out of the frame just as I was snapping the picture. (Below is her with Mariam)

We soon found that she was my little Sophie's partner in crime. At one point we were spending sometime at the childcare center talking and playing with the kids. M came in carrying Sophie's dress that she must've brought from home. They walked around the corner and suddenly they both came back around and they had switched dresses. Now M was wearing the dress Sophie had been wearing and Sophie was wearing the dress M had brought.

You may also remember this story about Sophie's sour juice. Well M wanted to try it out too and we all ended up in stitches from the cuteness of her puckered up little face.

But my favorite part was when she would point to me and say, "MuzunGU!" But I turned the tables on her and started getting her to point to herself and say muzungu. So she would stand up real tall, point to her chest and with a big grin on her face say, "MuzunGU!" and then literally roll on the floor laughing.

We pray that we'll get a chance to see her again. And if we do, I hope we can hear her coming first!

- Aly