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Published: July 12th 2014
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Our first Saturday in Ngora. Brittany, Britta and I had decided we might go for a run the night before and got up early before breakfast to try to beat the heat. During the run, as we would pass different houses, the Ugandans would just come running out at us and laugh and yell at the Muzungas passing by. They thought it was hilarious that we were running for fun. Even the adults would just sit and stare at us as we would pass their houses. Some of the comments we got were "Good job" "Well done" "I'm impressed" It was funny how impressed they were. On the way back, we passed by a school and had a ton of kids running after us. The group split up today. Kevin, Andrew, Cara and Amy decided to work in the hospitals today while Brittany, Britta, Kristi, Bryanna, and I decided to hangout around Margaret's compound. We felt like having a lazy day. We started off reading our books and then decided some of us wanted to tan. :D Still American girls at heart, I guess. We tanned for a couple of hours with sunscreen of course. It was so nice to have
a day free, it feels like we have been going, going, going since we got here. We had planned as a group to head to Soroti, a neighboring town, in the afternoon to watch the Ugandan National Team play the local Soroti Club team. We had made a plan to all meet around
1pm and head out, however, we are still running on Ugandan Time so finally
at 3pmwe left for Soroti. Kevin had somehow worked it out that we were able to take the ambulance. Seventeen people smushed into a super small ambulance and we rode for around an hour to Soroti.
Once in Soroti we were starving so we ran around and got some street food before the game. There was security at the game because of the Southern Sudan rebel group that has infiltrated Kenya and now is starting to come across the border. We ended up being late and therefore couldn't really find a spot to see the game very well. We thought the place would be in an actual stadium but instead it was fairly flat. It was interesting to see how many people were at this small stadium. There were around 7,000
people at the game someone had mentioned. One of the Ugandans we rode down with named Steven ended up leading us around the field to find better spots. It was really crowded. Bryanna, Britta, Brittany and I ended up finding a little spot on a small hill where we could see maybe half the field. At that point I was looking for a restroom. In Uganda, public restrooms are hard if not impossible to find. Steven said there was one within the town so we left. We wandered around for awhile and finally found a public bathroom. Steven is a pretty nice guy. He works as a medical officer (doctor) at one of the clinics we are rotating at. He has big dreams of really changing certain things in the medical field in Uganda. He is also planning on visiting the US to learn some of things we do so that he can maybe bring them back to Uganda some day.
Anyways, we finally got back to the stadium. The girls had gotten tired of standing and found a spot to gathered in the shade. We had lost Kevin and Andrew at this point and I decided
to go looking for them. They aren't hard to spot in this crowd. I found them in a corner over at the edge of the field. I could see a little better from here and finished watching the game. Once the game had ended Kevin, Andrew and I decided we were going to try and get some photos with the players or some autographs. People started rushing out onto the field and we decided to run out and follow. We had maybe ran out around 150 ft when all of a sudden you could see this big cloud of dust coming at us and people were sprinting towards us. I was terrified. I was honestly scared I was going to get trampled. I grabbed onto Kevin and hid behind him because I assumed they would see the 6'5" guy. Ha. Anyways we started running back to the edge and that's when we met back up with Steven. He said they don't let people onto the field after the game. We noticed there were police running around hitting the spectators with big sticks to keep them off the field. How terrifying..... We still decided to ask someone if we could meet
the players. we ended up being the only people they let on the field because we were white. It was crazy, but super cool. Took pictures with both teams and the coach and some cops. It was awesome.
Overall a success.
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