Extra fat and sugar!

It's good to be back in Mbale. Some things have changed in the five months that we were away in the U.S. -- there's a new supermarket in town, for one thing. But most things are their familiar selves, including all the signs of this particular time of year.

We don't have the same seasons as you who live in temperate climes. Here on the equator the presence or absence of rain is the only real difference-maker in how hot or cool it feels. But there are rhythms to the coming and going of rain, the flowering of trees, farmers planting and harvesting, and the migrations of birds that remind us of the march of time. Right now here in Uganda almost every day you can hear the liquid fluting calls of Eurasian bee-eaters as they pass overhead in flocks on their passage southward. And for the next several months we'll have the same basic species of barn/European swallow wintering here that you have during the summer months up north.

The other day I was checking out the new supermarket in town and pulled a loaf of bread off the shelf. It was one of those "you know you're in Africa" moments -- emblazoned on the bread bag was the advertising slogan designed to entice the discerning buyer: "Enriched with extra fat and sugar." We're not in Texas any more!

We picked up a couple of fans in anticipation of warmer weather on the way as the rains wane in November and December. It didn't take Luke and Emily long to put the boxes to good use: