Electricity, Mosquitoes & Music in Sembabule

We didn’t have power for much of Tuesday, which proved to be a blessing. I walked outside at one point to use the bathroom and look up at the sky. It took my breath away. The sky was so clear, and I could see hundreds of stars up in the sky. It was so unpolluted since there was no electricity and no big city close by. Utterly amazing. I have never seen anything like it. This is one reason why being outside a big city is such a refreshing experience. You would never see stars like those in Kampala or when the electricity is working.

Total mosquito bite count to date: 15
Total mosquito killed by my hand: 2
Times I’ve had malaria: 0

If I could put a numerical value to the itchiness of my mosquito bites, it'd be around the one billion value. My legs look more like I'm growing red tumors every day. One of those dead mosquitoes is a new stain on my wall since I managed to kill it after it had bitten me. It may have bitten me, but I still had the guilty pleasure of crushing the life out of it. There is still at least one mosquito escaping death around my room. I spent much of last night trying to hunt it down, but as of right now, it is still alive. I truly despise mosquitoes.

There is a store across from our office that blasts African music almost every single day. So while I'm working, I get a constant supply of upbeat music to jam out to. It's never bothersome, unless I'm trying to talk to someone and then it can prove to be challenging to hear what the other person is saying.

Yesterday, after work, I took a walk with one of my coworkers around the town where I live. Sembabule is the name of the district I am living in AND it is the name of the "chief town" or town council, as they call it here. The district headquarters is located about a kilometer from our office. To give you some perspective on where I live, Sembabule is a relatively new district. It was carved out of the neighboring district, Masaka District (where Masaka the main town is) in 1997. So Sembabule District is bordered by Mubende District to the north (where the regional office for my organization is), Mpigi District to the east, Masaka District to the east and the south, Lyantonde District to the southwest, and Kiruhura District to the west. My district is considered fairly rural, which receives relatively little rain and has long dry spells- accounting for the large amount of dust. It is estimated that the town Sembabule has a population of about 4000-5000. I can walk around the area where most people live completely in under an hour. The people in Sembabule are mostly either Buganda or Banyankole (though I've heard there are a few Rwandese and some other ethnic groups mixed in). Which made for some confusion on my part when I first arrived because sometimes I see Sembabule spelled as Sembabule and other times as Ssembabule. I have been taught that the Buganda would spell it with a double s, whereas the Banyankole will spell it with a single s. I decided to follow Wikipedia and spell it with one, but I'm not even sure if that's correct (it's Wikipedia, so it must be correct, right?!).

After my walk, I went to the "hangout" spot my coworker always goes to, the salon her friend owns. Her friend then spent some time playing with my mzungu hair, admiring its straightness, and complaining that I shouldn't have cut it before I came to Uganda. I was told I should grow my hair out again, come back to Uganda, cut it off, and donate it to the salon, so they can use my hair for weaves. I found that amusing.