Am I A City Girl After All?? (Part II)

The focus of our trip was eating and shopping and we were highly successful in both endeavors. We enjoyed authentic New York style pizza, juicy fresh hamburgers from a local butcher, almost-as-good-as-my-momma’s lasagna, and the darkest, richest chocolate ice cream! Not once did we eat rice and beans – And not once did we miss it!

Thanks to a little research ahead of time, we had discovered a hidden away boutique hotel with a reasonably priced spa. Once there we were speechless. This place was incredible! It turns out rooms went for $300/night…but they had real American mattresses and big comfy chairs and deep soaking bathtubs and air-conditioning!! We considered splurging for a night – but settled for lunch instead. They actually served salad! (Lettuce is hard to come by in Uganda.) We relaxed and leisurely ate our lunch as we looked out over the beautiful lush gardens and for a brief moment forgot that we were thousands of miles from home.

The next day was devoted to shopping. There are basically two places to shop in Kampala: Garden City (the mall…and I use that term loosely) and the ShopRite/Game Center. ShopRite is the closest thing they have to a grocery store while Game is more like Wal-mart. You can’t imagine our level of excitement with being able to go to these places. Here we can buy things that we can’t find in Mbale. Things like: pillows, pickles, marshmallows, bacon, deli-meat, colgate toothpaste, cherrios, shower curtains, postcards, rugs, cake mix, food coloring, books, broccoli, cream cheese, scented candles and I could go on and on. I went down each aisle giddy as a kindergartener on the first day of school – “Oh – they have marshmallows…Come look, I found cherrios!” It was the simple joy of shopping for the simple things. Crystal was close to hysterics when she discovered wooden clothespins! And there were tears when Jennifer found pickles.

We left Kampala with full stomachs and full shopping bags. I was not looking forward to going back to our simple small town of Mbale. This shocked me – was this southern country bumpkin a city girl after all?