Figs, Nuts and Bats

Sundays here are quickly becoming my new favorite part of the week as we settle in to Kampala life. This week, I went out to scour the plant and flower nurseries in the morning to search for more new items for the garden – strawberry plants, heliconia of all types and colors and some gorgeous purply-green plants that everyone tells me are weeds. No matter, I like them. Bargaining here is a new thing for me, although I consider myself quite an expert in general. It often involves about 18 people helping add things up on their mobile phones, “assisting” the stand’s owner. We come up with the same price, it just takes 20 minutes or so. In the meantime, more time for me to peruse the stocks.

Lendell was off to a working lunch and Naomi and I played in the garden, baby pool, ate Ugandan banana chips and I attempted to introduce Naomi to some nut bread. She gave it a look until I pointed out again and again that there were nuts in the bread. Nuts! “Nuts!” she finally said as she bit into the bread with glee. Stomach full, she took a nap and I booted up Mana Bree’s yoga podcast on the porch and ommed to the sounds of the birds squawking overhead.

Lendell arrived home and he and Naomi wrestled and ran through the grass. I made the compost pile happy by making a vat of veggie soup. Not my best, really, but Lendell and I both thought it tasted quite healthy and he went back for a second serving. Naomi went down for “the night” and we laid on the chaise lounges on the porch, lit faintly by the citronella candles, and listened. I don’t often do that in the U.S., I realize, or even do it in my other homes. I guess that is because the sounds of DC and even Dili weren’t altogether magical. Here, too, we have infusions of reality with the sounds of the traffic on Jinja Rd below us: horns honking and brakes screeching. But mostly, you hear the wind, see the heat lightning light up the sky around the frangipani trees, and hear the faint call to prayer. After about 30 minutes Lendell discovered that all the fruit bats were flying into the big fig tree and holding on upside down while they devoured the fruits. Our own little fig bats. Now we just have to watch out for the bat scat the next morning.