Swimming

We're all exhausted. We took the kids to the beach at Lake George today, because the half-built hotel that has the pool that we took them to last year is closed because the owner was murdered by a prostitute.

I told the kids that I've been to many places in the world, and where they live is one of the most beautiful. Skiffs of fishers poling through the still water, rwenzori peaks shadowed behind. An elephant just hanging out in the water for the first hour we were there, then into a field, kids enthralled.

We crossed the equator on the way, all 64 of us on this trek stuffed into two minibuses (licensed to carry 14 passengers!) and the tiny suzuki jeep. I sat in the way -back with the 3 boxes of bread, peanut butter and jam, bottles of fanta. On the way back, blair had brian on his lap in the front, carissa had kiisa on her lap, yerina had some random kid who doesn't even belong to our project on her lap (another of the crazy unanswerable questions -- where did this kid come from? whose kid is this?) and Tina sat in the middle, unflappable as always. The smell of burning underneath my butt was never quite resolved.

There are no big concepts today, just the shouts and splashes of the kids as they swam in the shistosomiasis infested water that we avoided. We didn't see hippos, though they apparently come out at dusk. It cost S90,000 for admittance to the beach for all of us (about $60), and apart from another pair of muzungu -- shiny peace corps folks showing off their muconjo -- we were the only ones there. Kids from the village swam around the fence and rounded us out.

It's blair's last day, and it's hard to imagine the little boys for the next couple of days without him. We're all so enervated from the sun anyway, and still an immense amount of actual managing to do. I spent an hour with the baby sleeping on me today, and it was about as peaceful as I could imagine.