This past week our team packed up and went back to the village. In preparations of going back to the village I had many things to do to prepare myself mentally and physically for the village. A few weeks back, my mother had sent me about 100 dresses made out of pillowcases made by some ladies at her co-workers church. These dresses were the most adorable things I had ever seen. I immediately knew that I wanted to give these dresses to the girls in the village. But I felt that I could not give the girls these cute dresses without giving the boys something as well. So Hilary and I had decided to buy the boys t-shirts !
An MST ( volunteer ) who was here early in the summer had left me with $100 to buy bibles and $100 to do anything else with. So I emailed him to ask if I could use his $100 to buy t-shirts and he agreed and said that I could totally use that money to buy t-shirts for the kids in the village. So on Monday afternoon Hilary and I were in need of some stress relief from the house …. and what better way to do that than leave the house and spend lots of money on t-shirts to clothe little boys in the village.
We headed out of the house met up with our Ugandan friend, Collin, and went down town to the Owino Market. The Owino Market is the biggest market in East Africa. I was excited to go there because I knew that the shirts would be cheap, and I have heard so much about this market and have been in Kampala twice now and have never made a trip there. Collin had been there many times so he was the perfect person to ask to take us. He advised us to not bring our purses because at this market a lot of theft happens. When we got out of our taxi, we had to walk for about ten minutes. With each step it seemed like we just kept walking further and further into the bad part of town. I honestly was in a culture shock. I no longer left like I was in Kampala Uganda. I felt as thought I was in China or India. There were truck, people, and trash everywhere. We had no sidewalk to walk on, we simple walked through the traffic in the middle of the road.
When we reached the Owino Market, I again was shocked. It was store after store after store. And when I say store, I mean small area piled with whatever they are selling. It was a small dark dirt alley, with more people than space in the alley. As you walk past each seller, they call out to you to buy what they have, the men yell out that you are beautiful, and they grab at you. I quickly realized why Collin made us leave our purses at home.
When we made it to a man who was selling t-shirts. We quickly stopped and Collin began bargaining with him. We stood there for a very long time sorting out sizes, types, and makes of the t-shirts. After about 20 minutes, we were able to walk away with 60 t-shirts !
It was an interesting and a bit scary experience. But totally worth it to be able to bless some children with t-shirts :-)
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