African Letters

Saturday November 5, 2011

As soon as I was settled at my new home in Lugazi, Uganda with my team. I went out and bought a portable Internet stick. This looks and works much like a USB thumb drive but instead of holding information it allows you to connect to the Internet wirelessly. This was very handy for many reasons, the main reason being that the power supply was not constant there which meant the local internet cafes could not run. I had many assignments I needed to complete and email back to my professors so I decided that I needed one of these "internet sticks" as we came to call them. I also wanted one so that I would be able to email Sarah and communicate with her. I emailed her after about a week of being in the country and thus began our African letters to each other.

From the minute I arrived at my new house, I was constantly thinking of Sarah. I wanted to write her as soon as possible and see how she was doing, what she thought of her country, and what projects her and her teammates were going to work on during the summer. I emailed her and began the waiting game for her to reply. I would get on my laptop every morning to see if she had written. She didn't reply back for about another week and the more time it took the more I wanted to hear from her. I knew that she probably didn't have the internet so easily accessible as I did, but I still waited for her reply like a kid waits for Santa Clause to come Christmas night. She replied back and after that we began emailing and updating each other on what we were doing. Our emails started out as a once a week letter but as time progressed it became more frequent. We started emailing each other every two or three days, then everyday, then it got to the point that we would send multiple emails daily to each other. Sarah only spent 6 weeks in Africa, so when she arrived back home to Canada it became easier for us to keep in constant contact.

Our letters began as simple hellos and how are you's. We would just tell about our projects and various experiences. As time progressed though we casually began to ask each other more in depth questions and it quickly became a tradition to send 4-5 questions at the end of each email for the other person to answer. These questions ranged from "what's your favorite color" to "what do you enjoy doing" to more personal questions. Every time I got on to check my email and I saw that Sarah had written me, I would get the biggest smile on my face! I loved reading her letters and learning more about her. The more we emailed the more I liked her and the more the thought of "I need to hold onto her" became a more demanding and prevalent.

Towards the beginning of August, as my summer in Africa was coming to a close, I decided that I was going to call Sarah from Africa on my little African cell phone. The time I spent calling her each day became my favorite time! Since there was a 9 hour time difference from the Mountain Standard Time zone and the where I was in Africa, it just happened to work out that when I was waking up at 8 in the morning she was heading to bed. I would call her and we would talk until either I had to go or she had to get to sleep. As she woke up on her morning, she would in turn call me before I was going to bed. I looked forward to getting a call from her and we would spend hours talking on the phone. I fell more and more in love with her as we spoke each day and night. Every time we spoke I always felt a strong peaceful and familiar feeling with her. I knew that I wanted to date her when I got back to the States.