Archive for category: Friday Funny

We pass a Mosque on Masaka Road on the way to Kampala. It’s a fairly new building, built since we arrived in Uganda. But they skimped a little on construction.

The result is that 5 times a day, a man has to climb the ladder seen in this picture to deliver the Muslim prayer call. Two of those times are in the dark.

I’m pretty sure this is either a great act of (misplaced) faith or another reason that women live longer than men. You can decide which it is.

(Sorry for the wonky picture. I took it while we were driving and a hundredth of a second before a truck came by the other way and blocked my shot. It isn’t well centered and you get too much road and car portions and the bill of James’ ball cap. If you look at the very top of the picture, you can see the platform onto which the man climbs when he delivers the prayer call.)

We followed this lorry full of chairs from a party and noticed there was a man perched on top of it all. He talked away on his cell phone, never noticing that at times his head barely cleared the power lines over the road.

Do you think he was trying for a better signal?

“Can you hear me now?”

A few years ago my best friend, Rachel Miller, and a friend of hers named Laura came to visit us here in Uganda. They got to see where we live and our churches. We loved having them here!

The Sunday they attended services with us, I wanted to introduce them to our church people. I knew I could say “This is my friend, Rachel.” Except I wasn’t 100% sure of the word for “friend” in Runyankore.

You see, “friend” is omwani and “husband” is omwami. One letter difference. And I couldn’t remember which was which.

Was she my omwami? Or my omwani?

Omwami?

Omwani?

I thought for a long time and finally, unable remember, I copped out and introduced her in English and let the translator say it.

Good thing, too! I’d almost introduced her as “my husband, Rachel.”

Let’s just say that one has been easier to remember since then. 😀

We had workmen in our yard repairing our dog pen which left us with a quandary: How would we restrain the very guard dog whose pen they were repairing? Teal’c was a great guard dog. Any stranger in the yard was fair game. You could not claim his bark was worse than his bite. He did not bark.

The only solution we had was to chain him to the tree by his collar. He had shade. He had water. The kids went out and played with him now and then.

I think he thought he could pull over the tree and get loose. He really wanted to get loose.

He started out standing up and pulling against the tree, but eventually got tired and sat down. He sat this way for the better part of the afternoon, dare I say, doggedly trying to pull the tree over. We tried distraction. We tried redirection. Nothing worked. 

(I hesitated to post this picture for fear of accusations of animal cruelty. That was not the case whatsoever. He really was that stubborn and tenacious. He’s the dog that figured out how to open the gate and let himself out of the dog pen – thus the need to make repairs on the pen. He then figured out how to open that gate. We finally installed a full-sized door with a latch he couldn’t reach and stopped our escape artist in his tracks.)