Shopping until Safari

Thursday we were scheduled to drive 8 hours to go to safari. Until then we were suppose to go back to all the schools we'd done in the past and check on the libraries and play with the kids. With Paul having to go to the hospitals and doctors it kind of put a lot of this on hold. Trudy was worried about him (as we all were!!! But Trudy is his mother-in-law and her daughter Donita back home would kill her if Paul wasn't taken care of properly). So many of our school stops were delayed for the 2nd team. Another team of volunteers is scheduled to come in 2 weeks and they could go to the schools and check them out for us. The result was that we got some extra shopping time and rest time. That in itself wasn't bad but not being as busy made my 16 year old start missing home more. She would say at the end "the trip was about 3 days too long".
We went on 3 different shopping areas - all designed for tourists and we finally saw other tourists. One place was called Jinga town and it was actually on the way home from Murchison Falls. The best part about this trip was we got to have some food that was close to home! I had a great tortilla wrap like thing. It was made with chipata which is an Indian bread that we had already been introduced to. It is like a thick tortilla. The wrap was heavenly with chicken and avocado (the avocado in Africa is soooo good and fresh!). There were also hamburgers and chicken breast sandwiches, brownies, smoothies... It was great. Food preparation in Africa is SLOW. It took probably 40 minutes for that wrap to come out. But that gave us time to go to all the nearby shops full of treasures to take back from Africa.
The shops for the tourists are full of handmade leather items, hand carved wooden objects, jewelry, beautiful items hand sewed, bead work... No items said "made in China". T-shirts with different animals screen printed on them or "My name is not Muzungu (the name they call white people) - was the only thing that might have been made outside the area. I just looked up the word MUZUNGU. We were told it means white people. Actually it means "one who wanders aimlessly" It was given to European people who came to Africa exploring long ago. I think it fits me well.
Anyway, the shopping was good - things are not expensive and Laura and I found many things to bring back from our travels. We went to another African craft market like this one morning and I spent most of our remaining money. Then we went to a mall that was more like ours!!!! Finally we saw a place that sells refrigerators, A/Cs, appliances that we hadn't see in use but new HAD to exist somewhere.
Kampala is the capital and the main city we worked in this year. We did our 3 libraries here. It is a bustling city of 2 million but like I said earlier - I only saw one traffic light - even in the center of town. From my observations Uganda is made up of mostly rural, poor people. The appliances in the mall made me realize there is a life I didn't experience while here but that exists and has people who make enough money to own "more". I'm thinking the overall number is low - especially compared to the US. So this mall was 3 stories, had an escalator, and stores like a sports store, a supermarket like HEB, and Woolworths department store. Still no airconditioning but open air so it wasn't bad. TVs were here and there and all were playing World Cup soccer matches on them.
On the way to the mall we stopped at a bank to exchange money. I was sitting there with 2 other people and it took me about 5 mins. to realize something was different! It was air conditioning!!! The first and only time on the trip we experienced it. We thought about sitting there a little longer but we did our business and then headed back to the bus to brag about it to everyone else!