Muireann taking photos in Uganda

 

Mac Cool's Uganda Letter

Photographs and Stories by Muireann Mac Cool

 

B l o g

'Finally'

05 Jun 2015

Checklists ticked and a date is set for a return trip.

Not a day goes by when I don’t think of either Ireland or Uganda. That’s the thing about living abroad; you spend a lot of time pining for other places, people, food and ways of doing things. Many a date night with my husband FX is spent dreaming and plotting about the things we would do when we next visited Uganda. Conversations slip between good memories and proposed itineraries. Now we have a collection of five years of day dreams and finally we have set a date to travel to Uganda.

I say finally, because for some time now we have been saying ‘Oh, next year’ and then pregnancies and other distractions have suspended our plans. There’s a check-list. Do we have enough money saved? Check! Is that boy over one yet? Check. Can you get time off work? Check. Are there exams to sit? Nope. Am I pregnant? Nope. Great then let’s set a date.

Ah. Setting a date, is like trying to align certain stars with the moon, but eventually we found a gap long enough for us all to go. Probably a bit too short of a trip but between school holiday schedules and rotas we have found 11 days.

You know when you really want something so badly you can’t believe it’s happening until it is actually happening? We sat down for 3 hours comparing flights and prices. We booked and then made the excited phone call to FX’s parents with the good news. Through the crackle I could almost hear them thinking, ‘Finally’ too.