Welcome Home

We are back in Uganda! We left 12:00 pm Monday afternoon, drove to JFK 3 hrs, flew 8 hrs overnight to Brussels, sat in the airport 2 hrs struggling to stay awake (I may have fallen asleep mid walk to our gate), flew 9 hrs to Uganda and then drove 1 hour to Kampala. 26 hours later, here we are! Poor Alice had major motion sickness the entire trip and threw up 10 times, Lucy got motion sick at the end of 16 hours of flying and threw up and Charlie and I had fevers and flu the whole time! It was good Lucy became sick and lost her appetite because we forgot to tell the airline she had to be gluten free and they had no food for her. We were able to find some yogurt in Brussels and then had another 8 hrs to go with no gluten free food other than some fruit sticks and granola bars. She was a champ. It was quite the crazy trip, and at one point I escaped to the airplane bathroom to try to collect myself amongst the chills, throwing up, spills, and fighting over the two family iPads.  I could hear my mind saying, “Why did I ever think this was a good idea to travel to the other side of the world with 5 kids!” Then, the captain announced our descent. I looked over at Kirabo, and there I saw the biggest and brightest smile with twinkling eyes. Pure excitement. In that instant, I remembered the bigger picture, and it all became worth it. It wasn’t just me either, pale faced Alice leaned over to me, who had been horribly sick for at least 16 hours so far said, “Mom, this is the best trip we could ever take.” We walked out of the airport and immediately saw our dear friend Frances, jumping around frantically to get our attention. Alice and Lucy had heard so many stories about Frances and were so excited to meet him. Charlie and Kate had spent two solid weeks with him last trip and had a great time talking about eating grasshoppers with him, how he loved their goldfish snacks and asked if they were made of real fish, and how I told a group of Ugandans to "pee" instead of "smile" in Lugandan when taking their picture. We got in the car and Lucy said, “Uganda is my favorite place I’ve ever been.” We hugged and laughed and reminisced the whole way back to The Terrace, where we stayed when Kirabo first became ours. Kirabo had told us that was the first place he wanted to go. (The second place was the run down bouncy house at the mall where we spent hours a day while waiting for his paperwork to get processed.) When we pulled in, Francis turned and with his big smile said, “Welcome home.” That is how we all felt, even the ones who hadn’t been here before. What is it about this place? I think when you love someone so deeply as we all do Kirabo, you can’t help but love his home country and his people, as if it/they were your own. It is so good to be back.

Sleeping under mosquito nets