Girls day, boys day!

For Josiahs 15th birthday, on Saturday Pete took the boys and our guard and his family to watch the Ugandan football team play Guinea Bissau – battling it out for a place in the Africa Cup tournament. They all dressed in their Ugandan gears while us girls thought it was a perfect opportunity to have a lazy ‘Little House on the Prairie’ marathon and see how many episodes we could get through!

I told Pete to ring me every half hour he was away so I knew they were all ok, as with all that’s been going on in Uganda, large public gatherings aren’t exactly the safest places to be at the moment. Not that I could do anything other than pray if anything happened, but none the less – I requested it for peace of mind!

My first call from him was to say that even though they’d arrived nearly an hour early, the stadium looked full, the gates were locked and people were climbing over the razor wire fences to get in! They were looking for a way to get in without having to climb the fence, but also needed to find somewhere to buy 6 tickets for our guards family (as it had been a spontaneous decision to see if they wanted to go along!).

Put a little damper on our movie watching as we were quietly praying, and eagerly waiting for their next call to let us know if they got in and if they could get extra tickets.

The next call I could hardly hear Pete over the roaring of the crowd, but found they’d separated to try to find tickets and try to find a way in. They’d finally found someone that let them in, so would be able to see the game but apparently tickets had been oversold and they were having trouble finding any seats. We were excited for Pete and the boys, but still praying tickets would be found for our guards family so he wouldn’t have disappointed kids!

I think God had his hand in things cos not only did my boys finally find a way to get in the stadium, but our guard got tickets, and in a stadium of around 50 000 people finds Pete and then they all get seats in the same area. Not sitting side by side, but each of them were only separated by one or two people.

Meanwhile, us girls thought we’d try to make some popcorn the good old fashioned way. It wasn’t at all successful – just ended up with a pot of burnt unpopped kernels, so got some expert advice from you tube – ready to give it another go after watching our next episode!
Cried my way through the episode where Caroline announces to Charles she’s pregnant. One of my girls was just shocked, and kept asking “How could he not know she’s pregnant?” To which I tried to flick it off with, “Well, he does know – she just told him”. Not satisfied with my answer, “But how could he not already know?… she’s 3 months already!” Implying that the Daddy who planted the baby seed MUST know it’s starting to grow! Gotta love these conversations.

Anyway, this called for another attempt at making a snack, so with our newfound popcorn making knowledge, we did everything the way we were supposed to – and this time had half a pot of popped corn! Very exciting - until we tasted it. It tasted stale and had this other undiscribable flavour. We tried to work out why. The unpopped corn left in bag looked ok, on first inspection. Then noticed the black things, then noticed the black things in the bag were moving. Then chucked the bag with the black things into the bin and had a banana instead and got on with our sixth episode. For now, our popcorn days are over!

We kept up with the score of the game via the cheering coming from somewhere in our neighbourhood even before getting Petes text messages! Ugandans know how to celebrate, and as they won – we could hear the city erupting into celebrations. It took Pete 3 hours, one small accident and all the driving skill he could muster to drive the 30 kms home amid the wild celebrations and crazy traffic – turned out to be a godsend having our guard with him! Highlight of their trip home other than not having to pay any money for the accident, was having the Ugandan Cranes bus pass them and getting to wave to the players!! The boys arrived home full of tales of being squashed between the ample bossom of the large lady sitting between them, the excitement of the game and incredible atmosphere of the stadium, the half streaker making a dash across the field at half time only to be beaten and taken away by the military police, and informing me we’re going for my birthday as that’s when the next match is!
The clip below will give you a little taste of what it was like. Apparently the noise was this loud most of the game!