The protective mama lion in me is also having Jonah wash his hands every time we walk in the door, before meals and snacks, before naps and bedtime, and so on. If it’s not malaria, it’s cholera, typhoid, you name it. And then trying to keep Jonah from getting a drop of the tap water in his mouth is another altogether ginormous task, especially when we’re talking about our little fish who loves to drink his bath water. So no baths, only showers (really, sitting in the bath tub with the hand held shower head to get him wet). And wiping his face after meals with bottled water on the wash cloth since he so often sticks his tongue out to lick the wash cloth. Aside from wanting to enjoy myself here, my main mission is to protect my precious Jonah. Jeremy says I need to accept now that he’ll get sick with a bug of some sort, that I should expect diarrhea at some point, but I’m trying to push off the “inevitable” for as long as possible. So life here feels a bit Little House on the Prairie, but at the same time it feels a little Dynasty. But more on that in a few minutes…
After a somewhat torturous flight home from Rome, we landed on familiar soil. We flew to LAX via Phili. The Rome-Phili portion was 10 hours of trying to entertain Jonah, including dozens and dozens of laps around the airplane. He didn’t sleep the entire flight, so by the time we got on the flight to LAX he was a wreck. All things considered, he did amazingly well on both flights. It was just tough to pass 10 hours with an active little guy. He crashed on the Phili-LAX leg but managed to chat away with my mom in the backseat on the drive to her house. Aside from the few hours we sort of slept on the flight to L.A., Jeremy and I had been up for over 24 hours by the time our heads hit our pillows. (FYI – not a fan of flying U.S. Airways internationally. No individual television monitors and a movie and television show that were wholly inappropriate for the plane, to name just a couple of gripes. I’m no prude, but showing a hot and heavy sex scene on an airplane seems totally bizarre and really offensive, particularly for those parents who haven’t yet had “the talk” or who choose to handle that subject with their kids in whatever way it is that they see fit. Thankfully, I didn’t have a five year old on my hands asking, “Happin? Happin?”)
It took Jonah about three nights to adjust to the time change. It seems like a harder adjustment going west than east. He woke up the first three nights and stayed up for hours! I did my best to just talk to and comfort him, but some tears were shed. By him too. Once adjusted, he slept fabulously. We spent a week at my mom’s, visiting family and a couple of friends. I think when Jonah walked into the home of our friends Liat and Michael, Jonah must have thought he’d hit the jackpot in terms of toys. He lost himself in Ethan’s toys for hours! Jeremy started to feel like we’d been depriving Jonah of these things. It’s amazing how little you really need though. This we’ve learned well enough over the past seven months. While with my family, Jonah loved being led around by his cousins and doing plenty of leading them around as well. He loved spending time with Safta and Tanta, asking every morning, “Where Safta go? Where Tanta go?” The weather was fabulous. We hit a couple of playgrounds (outdoor and indoor), including a fabulous new one a few minutes from my mom’s house.
Then it was onward up north, where we had a lovely lunch with Grandma Donna before heading to the Bay Area for a reunion with Nana and Papa. We spent almost two weeks up north, where it rained, rained, rained. There were great indoor options though for Jonah, including a couple of play spaces packed with other little ones trying to stay dry. Like we did down south, we spent the time up north visiting family and some friends. As always, there was far too little time to see everyone. Jonah loved being with Nana and Papa (sometimes referred to by Jonah as “Nanapapa” or “Napapa”), including his outings with them to parks, play spaces, and a museum, and to visit folks in Rhona’s department at UC Berkeley. Jeremy and I spent a night by ourselves in San Francisco, which was wonderful. It was so nice to eat meals at our leisure and to take in three movies. Jeremy made a quick trip to D.C. for some meetings, and he came back sick, sick, sick. We drove back down south the day after he returned, stopping in Paso Robles to have a nice lunch with my brother Field (who taught Jonah how to roll down a grassy hill, which Jonah LOVED).
We got to my mom’s exhausted, Jeremy totally sick and me with a horrible sinus headache. But we were happily greeted by my brother Sam who came down from Oregon to see us while we were in the states. We hadn’t seen him since May at my nephew Tyler’s wedding, and it was just so great to have him with us. Jeremy was sick until the day we left, five days later; he spent the entire time resting at my mom’s while Jonah, my mom, and I went down to my brother Jeff and sister-in-law Bette’s house to hang with them, my brother Steve and sister-in-law Gina, and all of their kids, Sam, Tyler who came down from Paso with Aiden (he and Jonah competed for Natalie’s attention, but when she wasn’t there played quite nicely together), etc., etc., to hang out both weekend days. We also got to see Mollie’s and Natalie’s softball games, which was very cool. We basically ran between my mom’s house and Westlake Village (where Jeff and Bette live) every day before taking off for London on Wednesday.The trip home took care of our immediate need to soak in some lovin’ from our families and friends (filling our cups, as Bette would say) and also gave us much-needed rest from being the sole caregivers to Jonah. Jonah was thrilled to be surrounded by tons of people who love him too. Being home reminded us how wonderful our family and friends are and how much we enjoy spending time with people we love and who love us.
On Wednesday, March 11, my mom dropped us off at the airport to catch a flight to Philadelphia and then on to London. I woke up that morning with a horrible sore throat and felt crappy throughout the entire journey. Jonah did amazingly well on both flights, almost as if he knew that he had one parent starting her descent into a cold and another trying to make his way out of one. On the first flight, Jonah watched a bit of the Winnie the Pooh Movie (we purchased a portable DVD player while we were in the states to help Jonah pass some airplane time), although he was far less interested in watching than we had hoped. But 45 minutes is still 45 minutes. He played with his cars. We read books to him. The first flight flew by quickly.
The second flight left quite late, around 11 pm or so. We were all exhausted, and they didn’t turn off the cabin lights until after 12:30 am once they’d served dinner and passed through with the duty-free cart. We all slept for the few hours we could, although the woman in front of Jonah kept pushing her seat so far back that his little feet were getting scrunched, which kept waking him up. That totally annoyed me (especially since I’d already quite nicely asked her to pull it up just a little and she had agreed to do so), so I admit that I didn’t feel bad when I knocked her seat multiple times in trying to help get Jonah comfortable again.
We landed in London on Thursday morning, hopped in a taxi (I just love the London taxis), and made our way to a little apartment we rented in Bayswater a half block north of Hyde Park. It was an oddly-arranged, single-bedroom apartment on multiple levels, but it was quite nice and in an ideal location by the park. Unfortunately, the nearby Princess Diana Memorial Playground, which we had visited when living in London in September, was closed for renovation. Dang. Instead we spent time kicking Jonah’s ball around the park (did I mention that he is the next Pelé or Beckham?) and also at a playground in the park in the direction of the Marble Arch Tube stop. The weather in London was phenomenal. Who ever says that about London? Well, I think we brought the southern California weather with us because it was just gorgeous. Blue skies in London. Wow.Our first day in London is a blur to me. We had a quick lunch out (somewhat of a disaster with no high chair, Jonah being a zombie, me feeling like hell) and then all took about a three hour nap. That felt great, but on Friday I was still feeling really awful. Jeremy took Jonah to meet cousin Putzi (from Nana’s side of the family) and her partner Frank for brunch. I was sorry to miss them, but staying home was definitely the right thing to do.
By Saturday, I started to feel a bit better. We decided to head to the children’s zoo in Battersea Park. We got there before it opened so walked around the Peace Pagoda, where Jonah loved kicking the rocks (not exactly a peaceful activity) and watching various dogs go by. Once in the zoo, Jonah didn’t care very much about the animals at all. He went straight to a coin-operated car, hoping we’d put in some money. We didn’t (so as not to be stuck there all day) but another little girl’s parents did, so Jonah and the little girl sat in the car for about 10 minutes with coin after coin making it bop around. From the car, Jonah ran straight over to the playground. We tried to lure Jonah over to the adorable donkeys, fat pigs, and fluffy bunnies, but he walked right past them all. We finally got Jonah in the stroller as we were going to head out and took a quick spin around the zoo so that Jeremy and I could check out the animals. It’s a great zoo for little ones. Too bad Jonah wasn’t in to it.
As an early birthday present, Jeremy surprised me with a dinner out accompanied by our friend Jason Olson and his boyfriend Jamie and a show (recommended by Jason) that was super cheesy. I can’t even remember the name of it. All I remember is that it has the “I could have been a contender” line in it. It’s based on that movie. At intermission, the first thing Jason leaned over and said to me was, “Sorry.” No worries though. Dinner was fabulous as was the company. Lilibeth, who had watched Jonah once when we lived in London before, took care of him that night. Jonah called her “Lil’beth”. Quite cute. Jonah did great with her. He had trouble sleeping the first few nights in London, and while we were out, he woke up crying out for me. Other than that, he did fine. We tried to translate Jonah’s words a bit before we left the house so that Lil’beth could have a sense of what Jonah was saying. Who knows if it worked. I also explained before we left the house that we didn’t spank Jonah to discipline him. It was totally bizarro to be describing how we discipline him because it seems so natural to me what it is that we do, but she obviously wouldn’t know our preferences on that front.
On Sunday, we walked through Hyde Park and then took Jonah to the Natural History Museum to see the big model dinosaurs and other exhibits. What he was most interested in were the model dinosaurs that moved, the big escalator from the ground floor to the top floor, and the cars that were part of the volcano and earthquake exhibits (the first covered in ash, the other crushed under a brick wall). He also liked the air vents in the floor.
That afternoon, we met up with two of Jeremy’s colleagues who work on Africa and were headed to South Africa the next day after a night stopover in London. We went to the totally mobbed playground in Hyde Park that was closest to our apartment. Jonah loved the play structure, mostly pretending that the two semi-enclosed areas underneath it were elevators. We had a yummy dinner in our neighborhood, where I quickly discovered that Jonah was coming down with a cold. Ugh. He got a minor version of what I had and was only a little sniffly by the time we left on Wednesday. I was nervous about his ears on the plane, but he didn’t seem to have a problem.On Monday, Jeremy had meetings at DFID (UK Department for International Development) with a colleague of his (former student too) from Princeton. So I met up with one of my college roommates from my Junior year at UCSB, Jodi Anderson, who is now living in London with her fiancé. She met Jonah and me at the nearest playground, and we hung out there, at the nearby fountains, and then grabbed a bite to eat. It was great to see her.
I spent part of Jonah’s nap trying to find a health clinic that would see me the next day. I’d started Mefloquine (antimalarial drug) on Thursday night, and I was having terrible insomnia and anxiety. So I wanted to switch over to Malarone, annoyingly a daily pill rather than a weekly one. I’m normally a great sleeper (aside from being a light sleeper and often needing earplugs, but next to never do those not do the job). Especially with a cold, it was super annoying to want to be asleep but not able to get there.
So, the next day, St. Patrick’s Day, my birthday, brother Steve’s birthday, Laura’s birthday (she would have been 37), I spent the morning at a health clinic. It didn’t exactly look like a health clinic. The office was in an old house converted into offices, and the doctor’s office (I assume he was one, although he looked quite young) had the appearance of a lawyer’s office. There was no examination table. There were lots of books. The doctor sat at a desk. He had his closet full of drugs and gave me five boxes of Malarone to tide me over for sixty days. I met Jeremy and Jonah at the playground in Hyde Park, after a leisurely walk with a stop at Starbuck’s for a hot chocolate. I’ve been off coffee for almost a week now. I certainly didn’t need anything else to keep me awake while the Mefloquine was in my system, and I haven’t found a good coffee source here yet…if I decide to find one. Maybe I’ll go back to being a casual coffee drinker.
Our friend David met us at the playground, and we all headed back to our neighborhood for a bite to eat. Jason met us at the restaurant as well so that we could have a bit more time with him before we left London. We got Jonah home for a short nap before we headed to the airport. Jonah did great on the flight to Nairobi. We flew Virgin Atlantic and had the bulkhead row to ourselves. What a nice experience that was. We each had our own television monitor. Jonah actually liked a short cartoon with animals that flew around. He was particularly interested in the toucan over the smaller birds, and he kept asking for it to come back after its appearance in the show was done. I tried to explain how television works, but he kept asking for “more dat guy”. We all slept the four and a half hours or so that the lights were dimmed in the cabin. Jonah does this very cute thing where he moves his head to one side or the other, sometimes back and forth a few times, to find the comfortable spot and simply closes his eyes. I guess we all do that, but it looks particularly adorable on him. But what doesn’t?The Nairobi airport is no treat, so we were happy to fly in and out of there quickly. I had to gulp down a 28-ounce bottle of water because I wasn’t allowed to bring it through the security at the gate and felt nauseous for much of the flight to Entebbe as a result. Once in Entebbe, we discovered that Jonah’s car seat had been left in Nairobi so collected the rest of our bags and met the woman from the Kabira Country Club. Jonah sat in a seat with a seatbelt, which made it impossible for him to really fall asleep (no car seat to rest his head against), though by the time we neared Kampala his head was bobbing around like it does when you start to fall asleep in class or a meeting and you’re struggling to stay awake. On the ride to Kampala, it rained so hard I thought our car might be swept off the road from the flood waters.
We arrived at the club, as I suppose I’ll now refer to it, checked in and were escorted to our cottage. On the far side of the club complex, the cottages—all named for flowers—are situated off a partially-enclosed hall/walkway. We are in the Lavender Cottage, which is fitting since purple is Jeremy and my favorite color (one of those weird things we discovered early on – I found it quite endearing that Jeremy liked purple so much; that, and he sang “Genie in a Bottle” by Christina Aguilera on his way to school every day). Our cottage is quite nice, although it’s a notch down the scale than that pictured online. I now know this is because it hasn’t been recently remodeled as most (all?) of the others have been. But I really like the layout of the place. Picture a square. On one side of the square is our kitchen/dining room in one corner, the family room in the other corner with big openings so they flow together. On the other side of the square in each corner are our two bedrooms with the bathroom in between the two rooms.
The space makes it easy for us to keep track of Jonah, especially as he goes in and out of our little closet that he pretends is his house. He even invited our friend Phoebe in his “house” the other day, and she willingly got in. I should have taken a picture because it was a hilarious sight to see her in her nice blouse and skirt scrunched in this closet with Jonah standing beside her. Apparently, he had instructed Phoebe to “get in”. The shelf in the closet is just high enough so Jonah clears it with about four inches or so to spare. He shuts himself in there by closing the two bottom doors, which leaves enough of an opening at the top of the lower doors so that he can see out. He prefers to have the top two doors closed as well, but we’ve managed to convince him that having them open is preferable. Lord knows the off-gassing of chemicals that is taking place with that thing. I can see that it’s made of particleboard… My last report at Environment California showed that furniture made of particleboard off-gasses formaldehyde (among other VOCs) at levels shown to cause asthma and allergies in developing children. Ugh. Thankfully, our cottage is pretty well ventilated with small windows at the top of every set of large windows in the house that remain open at all times (with screens, of course).
In any case, the place basically has everything we need, including an old television with a few South African stations (and CNN International), a LAN internet connection, toaster (which our London apartment didn’t have), and removable shower head so that we can give Jonah a shower in the bath tub to keep him from drinking the bath water. Avoiding the water is, of course, one of the most important things we need to do in terms of living here. We had to do so in Turkey as well, but I think the consequences of not doing so here are probably graver—graver in the sense that we’d probably get a much nastier illness from the water. I’m even wiping Jonah’s mouth with bottled water, since he has the tendency to stick his tongue out when I do so. That may be overly cautious, but I’d rather not take chances I can avoid.Unfortunately, the AC isn’t working in Jonah’s room. And though we’re paying a fortune to stay here, and the management keeps telling us they’ve called the person to come fix it (“You mean he hasn’t come yet?” is the line I’ve now heard about one hundred times), their latest solution was to move us to another cottage that is very nicely remodeled (as nice as the pictures online) with working AC in both rooms. The problem is that the layout is too spread out, there’s no detachable shower head or equivalent closet for Jonah to play in, it’s right next to the basketball court where people are playing at all times of the day and night, and it has no natural light. I don’t think Jonah would like the place as much as this one, and especially since we move him around enough as it is, we’re feeling quite happy and settled in our place and would rather not move again. We’ve been told the AC will be fixed by Monday now. So we’ll see…
Of course, I feel absolutely ridiculous beyond words complaining about anything considering the one-room, corrugated-tin-roofed dwellings and stores a stone’s throw from the “gated community” in which we now live. It’s very hard to reconcile that I want the best for Jonah and yet feel heartless, that I lack compassion, am morally vapid, or something worse, for doing so. Jeremy does good work here (his current project ultimately helping to make government officials more accountable to their constituents), and I ride on those moral coattails, so to speak, but need to remember that I do my own good work elsewhere. Had we more time here, I’d try to do something meaningful as well, but our stay is relatively brief.There are many, many people who work at the club. It seems that we have someone new coming to our door quite regularly for one reason or another. Until our housekeeper Amy became somewhat of a fixture in our place, it seemed that a different person was responsible for each small task. This person to remove the soiled towels, that person to bring new toilet paper, this person to make the bed each day, that person to wash the floors, this person to tend to our garden, that person to clean the kitchen. Now Amy, who Jonah adores, comes daily and cleans the place from top to bottom. Seems quite unnecessary, but we certainly won’t complain about it and throw a wrench in their system or, worse, put someone out of work. There are staff people to fill every role, including a woman who works at the play center and can watch your child if you pay the club. There are many guards, some who walk around with huge shot guns (or some such thing) and others who stand at the gate.
As residents here, we enjoy all of the benefits of the club. This includes the use of three pools (an infant pool, kids’ pool, and large lap pool), a couple of play areas (including one that is associated with an international school for kids), an indoor play center, a restaurant and café (which we have to pay to eat at, of course), a business center with computers and printing capability, the best gym in Kampala with great exercise equipment and classes, tennis, squash, and basketball courts, and plenty of open grassy areas to kick around a ball. There are also random weekend children’s activities, like a bouncy house apparatus this weekend. As you can imagine, families descend on this place on the weekend, spending the entire day at the pool and play areas. Many non-residents have business meetings at the restaurant, enjoying the plentiful outdoor seating and good food. The restaurant and café are only partially enclosed, opening up onto a long patio that stretches alongside the largest pool.After moving our stuff into our cottage on our first day here, we had a quick lunch at the restaurant and came back to put Jonah down for a nap. While he slept, Jeremy went out to the supermarket and I briefly napped and unpacked our bags. That afternoon we went to the play area, where I discovered a ton of mosquitoes near the play kitchen in the play center. Oy vey. Jonah was most interested in playing with the largely-broken toys inside rather than the cool play structure, swings, seesaw, and sandbox. Since then, he’s branched out and enjoyed the outdoor play area. Today he was giddy over dumping sand all over himself in the sandbox. Jeremy and I have to bite our tongues when he does that, since neither of us are really that in to being dirty.
On Thursday and Friday, Jeremy was busy with meetings all day. Jonah and I had morning outings both days—to the nearby “strip mall” with its supermarket and Target-type store called Game (to buy Jonah a little riding car/tractor) the first day and to the shopping mall the next day. It’s called a shopping mall because it has many stores, a supermarket, bowling alley, and movie theater, but it’s nothing like you imagine when you think of a shopping mall. Jonah threw a fit at Game because he wanted to ride all of the cars in the store. I let him ride most of them, but he was creating total chaos of their orderly placement of the little vehicles. So I had to get him back in the shopping basket, which he protested and then grumbled about the rest of our time in the store. At the shopping mall the next day, I had an equally difficult time getting him out of the little cars attached to the shopping carts at the supermarket. Jonah is singularly focused for sure, and it’s all about cars. I think I could have just left him in both places for hours, and he would have been happy.After Jonah’s nap on Thursday and Friday, we went to the toddler pool. It happened to be around the time some of the elementary-school-aged kids were having swimming lessons. Jonah was thrilled to be surrounded by other little ones (well, bigger than him but smaller than me). He loves being in the water, mostly to splash around and walk back and forth on the steps. I got him a blowup crocodile, which he likes to push around but not get in. Every day he asks to go to the pool. It seems he prefers it even to the play area.
This weekend was busy with various visitors. Yesterday morning our friend Phoebe (Jeremy’s former research assistant from his dissertation days) came to our house for brunch. We hung out in the play center for a while before heading home for eggs, potatoes, and toast. It was great to see her. She hadn’t seen Jonah since he was three months old; she was amazed by how much he’d changed. Today two of Jeremy’s former students met us at the club’s restaurant for brunch, and then we hung out by the large pool while Jonah played in the water. He decided not to nap today, so we spent the afternoon playing in the bouncy structure, kicking Jonah’s ball around the club, and riding a play motorcycle on the grass (which another boy let Jonah borrow). Looks like we’ll be heading back to Game to get Jonah the motorcycle. I’d seen the same one when we were there and was going to buy it (they only had a pink one, which was irrelevant), but Jonah didn’t seem that interested in it at the time. He was more focused on the go-carts.I haven’t decided yet what we’ll do this week. I think we’ll spend the first couple of days just hanging out here at the play area and pool (unless I’m motivated to go back to Game tomorrow to get the motorcycle). Then I’ll figure out what outings Jonah and I are going to make while we’re in Kampala.
Our outings require us to take taxis to and from our destination. And we indeed need a destination. It’d be difficult to see how we’d just go out and stroll around here. Jonah can’t walk that far on his own given the distances we’d have to go to reach anything, and I couldn’t possibly manage with a stroller given the lack of sidewalks and totally and completely insane drivers here. There are no painted lines on the roads, and though it appears that the roads are only two-lane roads, often there are up to three and four cars either passing each other or riding alongside each other…it’s like a free for all. From the club it’s easy to get a taxi because drivers are here with their cars, and I can just go up to a driver and tell him or her (yes, we had a female driver on one of our trips) what I’m willing to pay to get to my destination. At the strip mall and shopping center, there are metered taxis. Jonah rides in the back with a seatbelt on, which, of course, stresses me out since he’s not in his own car seat, but all of the drivers have gone slow, thankfully.
Life inside the club doesn’t feel all that different from life in other places we’ve been in some ways. The amenities give it the comfort of some earlier destinations. But, when we leave this compound, there’s no doubt we’re in a different world. People whipping by on boda bodas (motorcycle taxis), women sitting sideways on them because they’re always in skirts. No one wears helmets. I’m pretty sure traffic accidents are the main cause of injuries and death here. The main roads are paved but are severely pock-marked with holes so large in some places that cars have to virtually stop to pass through (or not, as the case may be with some of the more insane drivers). A thin layer of rust-colored dirt covers most roads, blowing over from the sides where the dirt originates. Most areas aren’t cemented over, the rusted dirt serving as the ground covering for much of the landscape, including in many people’s homes, in roadside stands, and so on. The roads are lined with people walking. In fact, people walk everywhere and often do so balancing on their heads packages or jugs bigger than you can even imagine.There are lots of random roadside stands just down the hill from the club. Having just driven by them and not able to really see inside, I can’t quite tell what they’re selling. One of the closest stores to us sells bed frames and other furniture, most of which is strewn about a grassy hill just outside the makeshift storefront.
Some aspects of life inside the club also suggest that we are not living in a cottage in “Any Ole City,” USA. We sleep under mosquito nets; even Jonah’s crib is covered with one. We weren’t sure how he’d react or adapt to it, but he likes it. “In tent peez,” he says to me after we’ve read a couple of stories and he’s had his milk before bed. The smell that reminds me I’m in Uganda is burning trash. Walking outside, it’s the first thing that strikes me. The circa 1990 Israeli-type toilet paper (i.e., sandpaper) reminds me that we’re somewhere other than home as well. (My comparison is to Israel because it was my first exposure - so to speak - to such a product.) Bowel movements also take on a life of their own here. I’ll leave my comments about the toilet at that. And it’s hot. The temperature is only in the mid-80s, but it feels hotter at times. Maybe it feels that way because I’m usually juggling Jonah, my backpack, water, some toy (or blow up crocodile), and who knows what else. Jonah often starts out walking but at some point turns and says, “Uppy, mommy,” turning a stroll over to the main part of the club into an exhausting endeavor at times. We have the fans constantly going and sleep with the AC unit on in our room. Hopefully, Jonah soon will sleep with an operational one in his room as well. We send our clothes off to be laundered (washed and dried in machines, I think, and everything ironed, including our underwear), which means I end up doing several items by hand because they’ll shrink if put in the dryer. The water has only turned off on me once, although it was unfortunate timing in the middle of Jonah’s bath with shampoo in his hair while Jeremy was at a meeting. The water didn’t come back on for 45 minutes or so. Our internet connection is spotty at best and incredibly slow. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to post this entry… [Since writing this entry, it has taken me DAYS to post it because it takes 30 minutes to upload each picture, and I can only do it at night when there are fewer people online clogging the connection!]So far my interaction with foreign critters has been minimal. I don’t mind spiders too much, but I prefer the ones I’m used to seeing rather than having to acquaint myself with new types. The size of the ants that make their way across our floor every once in a while appear longer than my little pinky toe. The daily mopping of our floors by club staff probably makes this occurrence far rarer than it otherwise would be. The few nights I’ve had to head over to the business center to check email because our LAN connection was down I’ve found myself confronted with shadowy figures scurrying on the ground in our garden. Each time my heart leapt out of my body, and each time it was just a cat making its way across our patio. Of course, before I realized what it was that I was seeing, I was stricken, thinking baboon, monkey, raccoon, something vicious.
Overall, it seems that Jonah really loves being here. He’s got a ton of things to keep him happily entertained. He misses his family and friends back home for sure. Whenever Jeremy and I mention someone’s name in conversation, Jonah sadly repeats the person’s name and asks, “Where [fill in the name] go?” It’s heartbreaking, but I try to remind myself that there’s plenty here that does make him happy too.I haven’t captured as many of Jonah’s lines as I have in previous postings, but here are some from just before we left Rome through now.
“Something else.” This started in Rome every time he was looking for something else to play with, usually while at the kitchen table. Now the long version is “I want something else to play with,” a line we heard over and over again on multiple plane flights.
“Spilled on the pants,” after spilling some milk on his pants.
“That’s okay,” he said to me in response to something I did or said (unfortunately, I can’t remember what!).
“Out airplane peez,” a comment he made frequently on our international flight home and at very random times with a deadpan face.
“Going home,” he said while we were on the plane back to the states.
While at the Philadelphia airport, Jonah had a cute interaction with a little girl at the play area. Jonah was sitting on a play truck. Jeremy got on next. Jonah looked at the little girl, who was maybe five years old, standing by the truck, and said, “On it,” either telling her to do so or letting us know that he wanted her to get on. Jeremy got off the truck, the girl got on, and Jonah was a happy little dude. He definitely has a particular interest in older girls.“I see Safta!” as Jonah looked at Safta through a glass door. This was Jonah’s first use of “I”. He also used “me” in a sentence for the first time at Nana and Papa’s house, but I can’t remember the exact sentence.
After looking at my watch and asking for Jeremy’s watch, I told Jonah that it was in another room (because I thought it was). Jonah looked over at the bedside table and said, “I see daddy’s watch over there!”
“What’s that on the milk?” he asked about something he saw on his sippy cup. In that same episode, he made a funny noise with his sippy cup, looked down, and said, “There monkey in here.”
“Wipe it,” a comment he makes frequently when he spills something on himself or Jeremy or I spill something on ourselves.
“Obama. Uppy Obama,” he randomly said at some point, likely because of his new Mama Voted for Obama book (which he loves!). Also while reading this book, Jonah dramatically pointed to the picture of Senator McCain and said, “Don’t go there.” I think he said this because McCain is carrying a “No we can’t” sign.
“That type of birdie,” in reference to a red-winged lark and arctic loon, two birds in his Obama book.
“The ABC is on,” as Jonah adorably refers to the AC unit in our cottage.
“Not dark outside. It's daytime. Go outside peez.” This we hear almost every morning.
“Oh my gosh,” when he was playing around with his sippy cup and it popped open.
Jonah heard a loud bird squawking and asked, “What’s this guy talking?” Other times hearing birds, he often imitates them with “Aw-aw-aw-aw!”
“Daddy, make oatmeal peez,” knowing that daddy is the cook in our house.
“Don’t like it,” a new line Jonah uses often to describe things, as you guessed, that he doesn’t like.
“Imam singing,” a line we’ve heard him say before in Turkey but this time I heard in Kampala at 5:30 am one morning when he woke up and had a hard time falling back to sleep. He was in his crib, and I was quietly talking to him about going back to sleep. Then I heard an imam from the nearby mosque sounding the call to pray and thought to myself, “Hmmm…it’s 5:30 am, and you’d think we were back in Istanbul.” Then Jonah, in this very wide-awake voice, yelled out, “Imam singing!”
A common exchange we have is as follows. Jonah: “What’s this?” as he’s pointing to something in a book. Me: “What does it look like?” Jonah: “Looks like [fill in the blank…he usually knows what it is].”
After months of singing the “A-B-C” song to Jonah, he started reciting some of the alphabet on his own while playing with his cars. A few of the lines we heard were “Q-R-S” and “W-X-Y and B”.
Jonah continues to refer to himself as “Jonah” and “you”, but now he also refers to himself as “my”. So, “My get on it,” is a line we hear when he wants to get on a little car to ride it, for example.
The best exchange though came as we were heading back to our cottage from the pool. Right before we passed a security guard for the international school and a few other people, Jonah heard me fart. As we got to the group of people, he said, “Mommy has poops.” Thankfully, Jonah's speech isn't understandable to most people here it seems, so I said, “Yes, mommy just came from the pool.” Ahhh, kids.
Picture descriptions: Jonah happily watching the airplanes at the airport in Rome; Jonah hangs with his cousins, Mollie, Trevor, and Natalie; Jonah and his cousins, Sadie and Simon, entertain us with their hands in the air; my brother, Uncle Sam, makes Jonah laugh hysterically; Jonah at the children's zoo in Battersea Park, London; Jonah enjoys the playground while the three political scientists talk shop in the background; playing in Hyde Park, London; Jonah plays in his "house" in our cottage in Uganda; playing with his toys in our cottage; storefront along the road on which the Kabira Country Club is located; Jonah loves the sandbox at the club's play center; he also loves the toddler pool; and the toys in the play center (here, pictured with daddy and Phoebe); another store along the Kabira Country Club road with its goods displayed outside; the road to the club; Jonah likes playing on our bed with our "tent" put up above; Jonah enjoys another boy's motorcycle near the big pool at the club; Jonah enjoys the truck at the Philadelphia airport playground.
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