weaving

<-- my new home.

Old habits die hard. I took a "lunch break" today at Kabira - an hour and a half of pineapple juice, good-fat/bad-fat salad, and straight up equatorial sunshine. With no sun block. I've gone and done it; roasted myself to a tomato-y shade of mzungu stupidity. I may hide inside all day tomorrow so as to avoid the well-deserved snickering of passerby.

Really though, I'm thoroughly grateful to be here. Even this nasty sunburn is charming. As is the constant parade of tiny ants that march resolutely down my bathroom wall and onto my toothbrush (which now resides in the fridge). Beautiful, BEAUTIFUL Uganda. I've been in the country now for approximately 48 hours. I spent my first daylight hours in the country chasing down internet - finally landing at a compact, hot and dusty cafe in downtown Kampala. Colin and I hit up Mama Ashanti's last night for some of Kofi's awesome jollof rice, chicken stew, plantains and coleslaw, finished with spiced tea and philosophizing.

One of my first stops in Uganda is always to visit Kizito the artist, so we had tea at Makerere this morning and daydreamed about partnerships with his art school, NIAAD, and One Mango Tree. Tomorrow he will lead the world's reddest white girl on a quest to find bulk wax-print fabric for new One Mango Tree orders.

And, perhaps the best surprise thus far in my 48 hours - a trip to Kevin and Gavin's home yoga studio in Munyonyo on the shores of Lake Victoria. Their studio opens up into their backyard, with views of Lake Vic in the distance, and an almost finished thatched-roof banda that will fit about 22 students. I couldn't have asked for a better yoga experience, finished with mugs of tea in their kitchen, meeting this Kampala yoga community for the first time.

So here's gratitude again, as I think about the myriad experiences that made this reality into MY reality - and where two solid threads of my existence - Africa and yoga - have finally woven together.