Installment #12--Disco Fever

Monday was a pretty normal school day. Charles and I teach the first and the last period of the day, so we had a lot of down time in the center of the day to plan (though it is a little hard to get him to plan sometimes), and I did spend time journaling. At the end of the day, people headed out of school pretty quickly. The first Monday of every month is something called Auction (Market) day in Pabo. People come from all around to Pabo to set up shop alongside the road and sell fabrics, shoes, pots and pans, and any other item you can imagine. When we rode our bikes back into the camp, the roads were jammed with a slew of people. There may have been several thousand people all moving through a stretch of street maybe 300 meters long. People were strolling, trying on clothes, weaving on their bikes, and dodging the occasional large freight truck from Sudan on the way to Kampala. We put our bikes away and took a walk through the mass of people. After our walk, it was time for dinner. After dinner, I sat out front again for a little while, met a few people (including the treasurer of the Pabo S.S. PTA), strolled back into the courtyard, talked with Danielle and Trisha for a while, and laid down to bed. Just as I laid my head on the bed to knock off for the evening, the disco started up. One of the exciting parts of market day is that everyone likes to party well into the night. The even better part is that the party happens right behind our hotel. Right behind. And the best part yet, is that the party goes until 6:30 in the morning-right when my alarm reminds me that I am supposed to be getting up even though I haven’t really gone to sleep yet.