POCATELLO — Betty Wasswa has been amazed by the inordinate amount of attention and resources lavished upon dogs and the abundance of salad bars in America.
The petite Ugandan woman, here to visit Grace Lutheran School, has also discovered she possesses a $1,300 smile — quite literally. At an April 23 auction for Grace Lutheran, the organizers hosted a mini-auction to benefit the preschool in Jinja, Uganda, that Wasswa founded. Thirteen people immediately made $100 bids on the only item she had to sell, her smile.
But when Wasswa returns home on May 28, she’ll take with her something far more important than stories of happy experiences. She’ll be joined by a group of residents from the Grace Lutheran community, each packing pounds of medicine and food specially engineered for malnourished children.
After signing in, Pam and I retreated to the visitor’s waiting room to be called for processing and security clearance. With the exception of chatter of carefree children, the quiet room was filled with curiosity glances between the adults. Soon our names were called and we lined up with 8 others. We surrendered our drivers licenses, had the back of our left hand stamped with invisible ink, and given a locker key. After passing though the metal detector (which Pam failed due to a large metal decoration on her blouse) we were warned not to have any gum in our mouths, money or any other kind of paper in our pockets, and told to face the large window with our ID cards once we passed through the thick metal door.
Originally, my plan was to be at Entebbe Airport by this time. But, I am sitting at my desk … in the dark as Pam gets some desperately needed rest … banging on the keys of my laptop. British Airways is on strike. The team, I’m suppose to meet, was to arrive at the airport at 7:45 this morning. Buy, they were rerouted to Johannesburg, South Africa … complements of British Airways. I’m sorry for them as it adds an additional 12 hours to their already tiresome air travel … but, between you and me, I’m happy for me … because I have a small window of opportunity to let you know what Pam and I have been up to the past seven days. 
