“Do you know what our president Thomas Jefferson said?” Dingo Pingo asks Justinian.
“Your president is not named Thomas Jefferson! Your president is Barack Obama!” scolds Justinian.
“His father is from Kenya!” Justinian adds proudly.
“Obama! Kenya!” shouts Isabella. She claps her hands and smiles big.
“Yes, President Obama is our president now, of course. But I am talking about Thomas Jefferson. He was the third president of the United States. He was president two hundred years ago.”
“Two hundred years! Wow. That’s a long time. Uganda does not yet have two hundred years,” marvels Justinian.
“It will. But I am trying to tell you what President Jefferson said two hundred years ago,” reminds Dingo Pingo.
“What did he say?”
“President Jefferson loved to walk. He said that his mind did not work unless his legs were moving. I feel the same way. I need to walk in order to think. I need to walk to talk.”
“Is this why we are walking now, Dingo?”
“Yes, this is why we are walking and talking now.”
“So, we are walking. What are we talking about?”
“We should talk about what we did wrong,” says Dingo Pingo. “What can we learn from that amazing pineapple?”
“Pineapple!” shouts Isabella, raising her blanket in the air.
“We learned so much! We saw many parts of Africa! We went to other times in history. We learned a lot.”
“Yes,” replies Dingo Pingo, “but what else did we learn?”
“What do you mean?”
“What have we learned about ourselves?”
“Ourselves? What do you mean, Dingo?”
“I mean, we must think about what we did wrong.”
“Wrong,” pronounces Isabella.
“What did we do wrong?”
“We did not respect the pineapple. We received a great gift. That pineapple was an amazing gift. We used it and we abused it.”
“We did not abuse it, Dingo! Why do you say that?”
“We did not use it carefully. We did not care for it.”
“We cared for it, Dingo!”
“Justi, how can you say that? We left it out on the floor for a dog to pick. Do you consider that caring for it?”
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