Day 33: Welcomed into the family

---

We spent the day with Norah‘s house with her family. As guests, we sat in the living area while the family prepared the meal. The good thing for us was Norah had invited her auntie’s kids (Jethro and Joseb) and their cousin Lena to spend the day at their house. While waiting, we taught the kids to play go fish and concentration. Jethro was very impressed with our bridge shuffle and spent time practicing that as well. When it was time to eat, the amount of food that came out was insane and Norah’s mother kept piling it onto our plates. It was delicious but so much and the explanation of which they prepared on coal stoves verses actual fires out back overwhelmed me. The entire family had spent all day preparing the meal. Norah’s mom and dad spent some time with us and with Norah’s help as an interpreter we had a nice conversation. Norah’s mom demanded that next time we come we eat ore food and bring my mom back to Uganda. The remainder of the day was spent playing with kids, learning a new card called matatu, laughing and taking family photos with Norah in her graduation gown. It was so nice to spend a day with a family and have young kids to play with. Around 7:30 PM, Norah brought in tea and said her mom wanted to apologize for the delay in dinner. Shelby and I were taken aback. There was NO room to fit more food. I turned desperately to Norah, Jane and Joseph to ask if they were going to eat. They all said absolutely not their were still to full from lunch. We asked if there was a polite way to turn down dinner because we were still so full. Norah went and talked with her mom and came back and said mom is disappointed but whatever the guest want is okay (she had been preparing dinner since our conversation ended around 3:30). It was probably one of the harder cultural moments of the trip trying to decide if it would be more offensive to turn down the meal or to eat very little. In the end, her mom and dad accepted our apologizes and fullness. We left the cards with Jethro because he didn’t have any back home and was getting close on the shuffle and Lena and Joseb loved go fish.

---