Halloween in Gulu

October 31, 2009

This morning I went to Cafe Larem early in order to Skype with my mom. After a great conversation I decided to leave but I got a text from Alli saying “Coy and Robbi are making breakfast. Want to come?” I said yes and after a quick stop at the bank was on a boda headed to their house. When I arrived I was the first one there so I greeted Sean and Robbi. Robbi welcomed me with a big hug that smelled of the pesto she would be adding to her bread that was rolled out on the counter. I love that Italian girl! I asked if I could help and we began chopping. Coy was at the market so there wasn’t much to prepare, but I helped where I could.

The breakfast ended up to be enormous. We had eggs, sausage, chapatti, french toast, banana pancakes, fruit salad, fresh salsa, coffee, hash browns and all the delicious fixings that go with. It was incredible and so much fun. There ended up being about a dozen people there, helping in the kitchen, having conversations, drinking coffee, catching up and just enjoying the community. A few time I found myself just stepping back in amazement at the beauty of it all. The love and grace for each other that we all had was so thick that one could have bathed in it, and it was the purest form. Just getting together, mutually edifying each other... Not much sweeter than that.

After we all had enough to eat and the conversations came to an end, the girls and I headed home. I stopped to pick up my dress and shorts from Florence and continued home. I worked on a few things until it was time to get ready, which was an experience. I began the fun by sitting in the chair as Jessie constructed a veritable cone contraption on top of my head using an empty water bottle, hairspray, bobby pins and hair ties. After the cone was constructed it was time to make it yellow. We went outside and began to spray on the bright yellow hairspray. This spray was easily the most expensive part of the whole costume, and about half way through coating my ahri, it ran out. Not so cool to be a half-yellow headed troll. Then Alli remembered the tempura paint that hides out under the kitchen counter. She rain into get it as I attempted to remove the bright yellow dye that was now running down my face. Alli emerged from the house carrying the bottle of bright yellow paint and then the discussion began about whether or not it was water based. Would it come out? At this point I already didn’t care. “Go ahead, Alli.” And so the application began. For about the next ten minutes Alli smeared bright yellow paint into my hair. All I could say, in the end, was wow.

We successfully got dressed, got to the party and answered all the questions of “What the heck?!” It was so fun, as about 100 people got together. We danced, talked and just hung out. There were some impressive costumes, including the Village People, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and a couple of girls who dressed up as bread and a tub of Blue Band (a margarine you buy here). Who would have thought Halloween in Gulu could be so much fun?!