On the topic of rain...

The weekend before the PLE, our P7 candidates had gotten uniforms to wear at the school where they were going to sit for their exam. The uniforms we were given were old, torn, dirty, and missing buttons. My wonderful students wanted to look very smart when they sat the PLE, so they planned to wash these strange garments on Saturday morning. They wanted to mend them, too, as they told me on Friday evening, but they lacked the needles and thread. Since I had both in abundance (though no buttons), I promised to bring them on Saturday afternoon.
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On Saturday, I put threads, needles, and safety pins in my bag and set out for school. I was only going to visit for a few minutes, as lunch was almost ready at home and I had some other programme that evening. As I left my house, the sun was shining very brightly. I took the path toward Kakunyu which bypasses the trading centre to avoid having to explain where I was going quite so many times.
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By the time I reached Bukoto Primary School, the sky was dark with clouds*, but it wasn't yet raining, so I thought I could make it. Well. By the time I got back to Bukoto-Kyanjale Road, it was pouring (hurricane strength, by American standards). I just kept going, though I rolled up my jeans and took off my flip flops so I could run faster. Within minutes, I was soaked completely through. When I reached the bottom of the parish hill, three of the girls ran down to grab my bag and shoes and run up with me. We all arrived in the dorm dripping and laughing.
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Roy wasn't around, so the girls took care of me, giving me a sweater and lesu (cotton fabric wrap) so I could change out of my soaked clothes. As we waited for the rain to cease, they fed me bread and jolly jus (like kool-aid) from their personal chests. We laughed about my barefoot dash through the rain (which left me with bruised heels for the next few days), and they styled my hair for me, tying it back with another lesu.
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"Do you like my hair this way?" I innocently asked them.
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"Oh yes," dear Bazilla replied, "it's very smart. You should do it like this every day."
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"Is it not smart the way I normally wear it?"
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"No, Auntie. This way is smart."
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"This way" meant having my hair combed down over my forehead, to where it almost reached my eyes. Unfortunately, they didn't have any gel to keep it this way, but I promised not to run my fingers through it for the rest of the day.
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What better way to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon, than with the boarding girls of St. Jude.
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*In my journal where this was first written, I spelled "clouds" as "crowds." After all, both words are pronounced the same in this part of the country. Good golly, even my written language is beginning to assimilate.