Last Days in Uganda

Tomorrow it's strange to think that my Ugandan adventures will be ending already. The last 8 weeks have quite literally flown by - but that I am thankful for - I have really tried to appreciate everyday here, not wishing any away. Well maybe the 2 weekends I got food poisoning could have been better, but you just can't come to Africa and be scared all the time. Note to self: don't eat somosas from roadside stand that are no longer hot. Should have been a no-brainer, but people do eat them here all the time (including foreigners), and you don't usually get sick, but I guess there is always a chance that that one thing you eat will. At least I can say I really enjoyed my time here and did not spend my time being paralyzed by thoughts of getting food poisoning or malaria. The nurse who gave me my travel shots back in Arizona warned me not to eat any food off the street, and to avoid fruits and vegetables. Well sure, you might not get sick as often if you ate nothing, but it wouldn't be very fun, and you sure would be missing out on the best pineapple, mangoes, tomatoes, and chapati ever.

I will traveling with an American friend to Tanzania tomorrow.  We will be flying into Dar Es Salaam - the largest city in the country - and staying with some AIESEC people there for 2 nights. Dar is supposed to be a bit crazier than Kampala, and while I am definitely excited to see what another part of Africa looks like, I know it's going to bring with it a whole new set of challenges and stresses. After we see Dar, we are hopping on a two hour ferry that will take us to the Tanzanian island Zanzibar. The island is pretty touristy, but after googling the place I think you can see why. I will definitely post pictures as soon as I get home. We will sight see and hang out in Stone Town, and then eventually go sit out on the white sand beaches for a few days and do absolutely nothing. After that, we head back to the city, and I will start the long trip back: Dar es Salaam - Nairobi - Zurich - Frankfurt - Denver. 

I haven't blogged much the last two weeks just because I've been so busy. Since I last wrote, we have a new neighbor up north - South Sudan - and protests have begun again in Kampala over high fuel and food prices. The protests have mostly been peaceful, but Ugandans are really feeling the pinch of rising prices. 

I've been meaning to mention that the mini-buses that we all use for public transportation have these hilarious and random sayings written on the top of their windshields. I have been keeping a list of ones that I see on the way to and from Iganga. Here is a picture I found on the web of an example of what the back looks like of the matatu with a phrase: Photo Usually I forget to write them down though, so this is my short, yet nevertheless quite strange, list of matatu phrase. Many times the sayings are religious, which I can sort of understand, but more than half of them tend to be seemingly random words linked together to make a partial phrase.  The religious ones tend to be things like "Heaven Above" or "Praise the Lord," but the weirdest ones are ones like these: "Texas Salon" - I asked a friend about this one, and he said they meant to put up "Texas Saloon", which makes only slightly more sense? "Missed Calls" and "Man of All Seasons" just seem mysterious?  Another one was just the typo that made me laugh: "Gods Plan" - strange statement to make for a Christian. Copy editing people, please. Other really random ones include:  "Two in One," "Big is Big," and "Easy to Say." I have tried to get a straight answer from many people on where the drivers get these premade stickers and who decides what they say, but no one seems to know. 

Saying goodbye to everyone here, the city, and work has been tough. My friends at work threw me a surprise going away party on Friday afternoon, and came in singing and dancing, and even brought me a beautiful cake, chocolate, and soda! I had the opportunity to work with almost all of the employees at the office, and by the end it was so hard to say goodbye. I look forward to visiting sometime in the future, so I know that goodbye is not forever. 

Anyways, I will update again once I am back from Tanzania and in the U.S. Thanks for following so far, and I am sure there will be some interesting stories to tell. 

Murchison Falls

This weekend I finally went on safari. We headed off at 5 a.m for central Uganda where the Nile goes through a huge flat plain, which is the edge of the Great Rift Valley. This area is a national park, which encompasses a vast expanse of savannah plains and a portion of the Nile. At one end, the falls for which the park is named after - Murchison Falls - are at one end of the Nile. Before Idi Amin was in power, the park had thriving numbers of many wild animals. During his reign, however, the park fell to poachers who killed off many of the animals and completely made the rhinos extinct. The numbers are starting to rise again, but I can only imagine what they were like before. 

Our group of interns + our great driver

 After hours of driving we reached the area where we were going to go chimp tracking. I didn't exactly know what this entailed, which is how I ended up tramping through the bush 30 minutes later in sandals only sandals and capris.  This was not the ideal clothing for such an adventure. We followed a chimp path into the jungle, but suddenly the path that had been cleared disapeared and we were stuck making our own way through the swamp, mud, prickly bushes, and snake invested ground. There were eight of us, including our guide, and we got kind of split up at one point when someone got a little stuck in the mud. The guide and I stood there waiting, and all of a sudden a stinging pain was searing through my right big toe, and then the same pain was on my other foot. I thought I must have been bitten by a black mamba, but upon looking down I saw I ants crawling on both my ankles and feet. They all started biting, and let me tell you that they really hold on and do not go down without a fight or a lot of pain to the victim. I was madly trying to rid myself of these ants which had proceeded to crawl up my pants and bite, but the problem was that we kept having to stop and wait in one place for the others to catch up. As there was no way to go ahead without losing people, I hopped around in my place trying to avoid landing in deep mud, stepping on any deadly snakes, or mostly just trying to keep the ants out of my pants. Then I finally thought we were through this tropical hell as we saw the light of day through some bushes. Unfortunately, though we had followed a pre-made chimp path in, there was no such path on the way out, so this forced us to make our own. Not such a big deal except the bushes we had to move through for about 8 feet were covered in these rough very short, but painful barbs. Though the guide led the way, I was second and still bore the brunt of the pain as he was wearing rubber boots, full-length pants, and a long-sleeved safari-worthy shirt. Meanwhile, I was not able to slow down and pick my wash carefully through the thicket of pain as the pain from the ants on the ground was equally unwanted. I did not find this situation amusing then, time heals all wounds, and I now give you permission to smirk or laugh at my misfortune. We did in fact locate the chimps on the edge of the jungle near a sugar cane plantation, and it was great to watch the animals in their natural habitat. We saw five or six all together, and even one mother scooped up her baby to bring to the top of a nearby tree as we approached. It was definitely worth the stress and pain to get there, but I am extremely glad I didn't know what was coming when I agreed to go chimp tracking without the proper attire.

Camping out that night, we all were exhausted and ready to sleep before starting the actual safari part the next day bright and early. We started off our by crossing the Nile on a small ferry to reach the other side of the park where a majority of the animals actually live. The sun was just rising over the water and a mist hung in the air that gave everything a soft glow in the cool morning. It was absolutely breathtaking, and made me have one of those I'm-Really-In-Africa-Moments that I still get quite frequently, even after 7 weeks here already. We crossed the river and headed off in our safari van to go experience the Ugandan version of the Lion King.

Fortunately, we got to see just about everything the park has to offer, including giraffes, hippos, elephants, warthogs (or Pumbas as the other foreign interns kept calling them), water buffalo, antelope of various sizes, waterbucks (picture a beefed up deer without antlers that can swim across a body of water even as big as the Nile), a chameleon, and many many hippos. 

The highlight of the game drive was seeing three female lions cross just a few meters in front of our vehicle. There were so many giraffes too! By the end of the ride we were like "oh wow, another giraffe big whoop" - spoiled, I know. 

Murchison Falls at a distance

After the drive we hoped on a boat that cruised up the Nile for two hours towards the Falls itself. We hoped out a bit back from the falls, and followed a guide along a four foot wide trail in the hillside to the top of the falls. The views we got of the falls were spectacular, and particularly amazing because we could get so close. The boats can't get very close because of the strength of the current and I assume various other dangers with getting so close. It would have been pretty dang perfect if I hadn't been experiencing the awful effects of getting sick from some unclean water I had used to brush my teeth with the night before. Note: I always use tap water to brush, never to drink, but I have always been fine. Then the one weekend I am actually doing something that would be super inconvenient to get sick on, I get sick. One last word about having to go to the bathroom all of a sudden when you are out in the wilderness: even when you feel terrible, being on a narrow dirt path with a nearly vertical slope above and a similarly steep slope below followed by the tumultuous, croc-infested waters of the Nile makes the whole hilarity factor of the situation ten times better. I don't think I need to say anymore, but I had to get creative and fearless very quickly. 

The following day we packed up our camp and headed to go see rhinos at a sanctuary just a few hours outside the park. As all the rhinos went extinct, they are trying to reintroduce them, but first they must go through the slow and tedious process of breading these massive animals. We were able to get very close to a sleeping pack of rhinos that were dozing off in the shade of a massive tree. One of the newest babies is named Obama, why? Because his mom was a rhino bought and brought from Disney's Animal Kingdom in the U.S. and the father was a rhino from Kenya. 

Now I am back in Kampala, and I will write more later, but now it is time for bed! 

Also, I added some photos to the blog before this one as promised, so check them out if you are interested. 

Bead Sale in Iganga

Today the women came from all over the district of Iganga to sell their beads to BeadforLife at the bead sale. While the day itself was mostly uneventful, there were some interesting bits.

Can you tell which chicken got hit?

In a seemingly unrelated note (yet totally related), I really needed to do laundry this morning, so at 7:30 I was outside filling two large tubs with water. Unfortunately, some of the women had already started to set up their things outside where I had to do the washing, and I began to realize that I was going to have a rather large peanut gallery watching me do my laundry. It’s not that I would be intrinsically embarrassed about doing laundry in front of other people at all, except that even my coworkers make fun of Karen and I when we do laundry because they know we aren’t used to washing everything by hand. Instead of just having one or two ladies teasing us, I had about eight women just sitting their staring at me as I attempted to get the spots of mud off my white jacket. One woman even had the guts to walk up to me, and just stare as I continued to wash everything. I greeted her hoping she was just looking to say hi, but she mumbled something back and then just kept standing over me. It was stupidly nerve-wracking, and now I have slightly soapy clothes because I just tried to get all of it done as fast as possible. To make my whole laundry experience more stressful, they beheaded both the chickens from last night right across the yard during my time out there. No, I did not watch, but yes, I ate chicken at lunch. Call me heartless, but I felt I owed it to the chicken we crushed yesterday to savor its life’s work after all we had put it through.

Once the sale actually started, I worked with Phoebe to manage the health exchanges for the women. Basically, we had three products the women could exchange either beads or money for that all related to health. We offered subsidized deworming medication for as many people as lived in the family, NutriPacks (high-calorie fortified peanut paste milk for malnourished children), and mosquito nets. Part of our job was convincing the women that these were worthwhile things to spend their hard earned money on. Most of the women were pretty receptive to the products, but some of them, Phoebe basically had to guilt into buying the deworming meds and mosquito nets. It is really important for the long term health of everyone in the family to get these goods, but sometimes the long term benefits don’t seem all that exciting in the short run.

We gave out a maximum of two bright green mosquito nets per person and explained that they really needed to use them for the purpose of preventing malaria – nothing else. I’ve never seen colored nets before, and I asked why they weren’t white. Phoebe said, “So that they are more like to use them for what they are supposed to be used for,” which really didn’t make any sense. “How would the color make them less likely to use them to catch fish?” Phoebe responded that the major problem out here in Iganga with the white ones was not catching fish, but rather, women would make clothes out of them…like wedding dresses. Now the color choice made a lot more sense.

A little boy about one year old ended up sitting on Phoebe’s lap for awhile during the exchanges. Many of the beaders have little children that they bring with them. The smallest ones are just wrapped tightly around the mother’s back with a piece of fabric, while any that are old enough to walk just run around wherever.

Baby got back 

Phoebe plopped this little boy (wearing pink pants and shoes) on my lap and asked me to hold him while she went to go ask someone a question. He seemed very wary of me initially, but mainly wanted to play with the NutriPacks. As fun as that game was, I nipped that one in the bud before he managed to open any. I decided to walk around with him and we even worked on waving at different people sitting around the office. Hoping to get a break, I eventually brought him around to where the other intern was working figuring that Karen would probably like to play with him anyways. The moment I put him in Karen’s arms he began to sob big tear,s and as soon as I grabbed him again, they stopped. Karen needed help organizing something, which required me to use both hands, so I set this little boy on his feet next to me, but he just clung to my skirt and started motioning his arms upwards, ready to be picked up.

Love that look of surprise!

The other women laughed as I eventually gave in because I saw that he was about to cry again. As soon as he was back up in my arms he completely stopped whining. I was feeling so loved and important, and then all of a sudden he was leaning out of my arms with his wide open towards someone else. A beader had come up to me, and I guess I was holding her baby. I asked her what his name was – “Genius.” Strange name, but he was pretty ingenious about getting me to pay attention to him, so I got to give it to the kid.

At the end of the day I sat with the inventory team to help count bracelets. Collens, the head of inventory, scooted her chair back a bit at one point, and all of a sudden, this horrible and horribly familiar squawk came from below her seat. I jumped back in my chair as I saw another bound chicken on the ground below Collens’. Apparently, she had just spooked it and it decided to make the world know it was unhappy. Collens saw my grimace at the noise and asked me, “You don’t like chickens?” I like chickens, I just had a bad experience with one the night before. She just looked at me weirdly and continued counting.

As per usual, we walked into town to go get food for dinner after work was over, but this time we noticed two new signs we’d missed before. Iganga High School is located on the road to the market, and a lush green field meets up with the road where all the kids hang out before and after school. While we’d seen the field every time, we just noticed a sign planted in the ground near a big tree that says, “Avoid early marriages” and another one a few feet away that reads, “Don’t accept gifts.” Kind of creepy, but probably wise advise in Uganda. 

To Laugh or To Cry

All my strangest stories seem to happen when I leave Kampala. Perhaps it’s because the way of life outside the city just lends itself to more mishaps for foreigners based on a lack of light, foreign languages, and unique situations I’ve never experienced before. Whatever the case, there have been enough great moments today and yesterday, I felt the need to blog.

The other intern and I have really been getting an in-depth cultural experience the last few days because, this time, my supervisor Phoebe is staying with us in the office in Iganga. Normally, the rest of the staff go home after hours, and it is just Karen and I fending for ourselves. This time, we have Phoebe, and we tend to ask her a lot of questions, which we never have anybody to answer when we are on our own. We walked to the main road last night to get some dinner, and along the way we had her teach us numbers in Luganda. She taught us this nursery rhyme to try and help us. Now, in the evening, there are a bajillion people walking around the streets, so there are always people listening and walking near you, even in this small town. Well we started singing along with Phoebe, and proceeded to have everyone walking near us snickering at the mzungus who were learning to count. At this point though, I think I’ve just accepted that I will never be able to walk around inconspicuously and we might as well sing nursery songs to pass the time.

Then after we picked up some mangoes in the market, and headed back in the dark. There are no street lights in Uganda. This makes walking around at night fairly exciting, though not so exciting as in Kampala where there are 10 foot deep potholes. As we were walking, I kept my eyes glued to the ground intent on not falling in a pothole. The ground is darker in some areas from the rainstorm earlier, and all of a sudden Phoebe starts yelling “That’s water, that’s water, THAT’S WATER!” But rather than turning auto-pilot off, stopping, and really judging if I know where I am walking, I continue briskly forward and, amazingly, am still surprised when end up up to my ankles in a muddy puddle. Phoebe and Karen were not capable of walking for about two minutes as they laughed at me. I blame the mirage of mud and dry dirt as hiding the puddle, but apparently, I was the only one who didn’t see it coming. Oh well, I already had to shower when we got back to prevent jiggers, and at least it wasn’t a sewage puddle; that would definitely have made me cry, not laugh. 

After spending all day developing the health curriculum that we are going to teach the women, 5 of us from the office: myself, Karen, Phoebe, and Roveinah piled into Roveinah’s car and headed to the market. We buy water jugs from the grocery store in town, but they are like the water-cooler style ones, and way to heavy to carry back by walking, so that’s why we had the car. Well first we headed to the market, and Karen and I hoped out to get ourselves some pineapple. Then we drove to the supermarket just down the road and went in and got some other assorted things. While we paid at the counter, one of the store helpers loaded the jugs into the trunk (it’s a station wagon type car). We hoped into the back seat and Phoebe hit the gas to back up. Then a sound arose into the evening air unlike anything I’ve ever heard before; I thought we hit a kid and Karen thought we had hit a goat. We flipped around, and to my absolute horror, there was a live chicken laying on it’s side with it’s legs strapped to another chicken pinned under one of the water jugs that had fallen smack onto the chicken. The chicken was howling it’s brains out, and I completely lost the capability to move or make life decisions. Phoebe starts yelling, “help the chicken! HELP THE CHICKEN!” and I just sat there staring at my lap about ready to burst into tears. Then all of a sudden, I realized that though I didn’t want to look at that chicken pinned under the bottle again, I also didn’t want to endure listening to it being tortured. Roveniah and I ran around to the back and sat there howling about whether to move the water jugs or just leave them with the chickens. The chicken is still howling by the way, and all the while, the store attendants and everyone within half a block is laughing their blatantly laughing their **** off. Roveniah kept saying we should leave them both back there, and I kept yelling that they would die as soon as Phoebe touched the gas again. Roveinah finally gave in, and that’s how the chickens got to ride in the front seat for the five-minute trip back home. On the ride back Karen and Phoebe were laughing uncontrollably, while I went between crying with tears of laughter and absolute horror.

They are not going to slaughter the chickens until tomorrow, which is partly why I found the whole thing rather upsetting. I just hope that chickens really do have short-term memory, and that poor chicken wont be stressed all night. They just put them in a box (while still bound together), and the box is now sitting out in the shed. I am probably going to have such bad nightmares about chickens tonight.

For dinner, I ate the entire pineapple and I am now suffering form acute loss of taste buds due to the acidity, but it was so worth it. We also ate roasted maize and bananas (the bananas are delicious roasted), and we watched thousands of bats fly across the sky in the last light of evening.

All Day Confidence

You all shouldn’t be surprised, at least I am not, that my plans changed multiple times since my last blog. After a few days in Iganga, it became clear that there was no way we were going to be able to do the health project right then particularly because my supervisor decided not to come up at the last minute and we only had one motorbike to get around and visit the women, which was already in use. The planning is extremely lax here sometimes and there’s no point in getting too attached to anthing. Rather than spend Thursday through Sunday in Iganga with little to do, I opted to return to the city with one of the women who works in the office because she had to be back here for a meeting. Today (Monday), I am heading back out to Iganga but this time with the health coordinator, and rather than spending a month doing this project we are going to just do one training on Thursday. We are going to go up and plan for the first few days, and then actually meet with about 15 women to train them about hygiene, and then they will go out to the villages to train the other women.

 

As I am back in the Kampala office waiting to leave, I thought I would leave you with some pictures from the past week.

This car is pink, which is funny, but the great part is that it is actually a feminine pad ad. I'm not sure a man would have "all day confidence" driving this thing around...

Next up we have the beautiful fields that line the road heading out towards Iganga. To the right is sugar cane plants, and to the left I have no idea what that is. I keep meaning to ask someone, but I always forget until I look at the pictures. Hopefully, on the road up today I'll remember this time.

 Oh in a funny TIA moment, I was super excited about having a brand new fridge up in the Iganga office until we actually went to put yogurt in there. It turns out that while the office is linked to the power grid, something is wrong with the transformer in our area and there is not a lot of power going to the office. In fact, in order to print something or charge a phone, we have to turn on the generator. Why a fridge would magically stay cold with this power situation beats me. So now there is a beautiful brand-new LG fridge in a small office in Iganga, Uganda where the inside temperature is actually warmer than the outside temperature.

This photo here is of Roveinah and I. She is on the staff in Iganga, and among her jobs she cooks lunch for everyone, cleans the office, cleans up the toilet when it floods approximately every two days, and does various tasks around the office. She is super nice and really makes staying in Iganga a pleasure. On the walls of the office there are two posters dedicated to the other intern and I. They say welcome to Iganga basically, but each of the 5 staff members signed them or wrote a little note, or in Roveinah's case, wrote about 20 little messages. She signed each one, and it looks like we have a million fans, but really it's mostly just Roveinah.

Here is the last photo for today's post. It is a roster of the women in the BfL group in Iganga, and it lists their account balances and such, but the interesting part is in the last column. Since many of the women out here are illiterate, they must have some way to sign official documents, and the way to do it is with a thumbprint. BfL trains the women on signing their name, but it can take a while. Interesting to imagine not knowing how to spell your own name, yet be a perfectly competent and capable adult.

That's all for now, but I am sure I will have many stories after this week.

The Five Second Rule Does Not Apply in Africa

You think you’ve finally adjusted, and then you move and it’s a whole new cultural experience. We shipped off to Iganga this morning (two and a half hours later than planned), and after crossing the Nile and about two and a half hours of flying down the road we arrived at the BfL office. It’s a nice, but simple house, and when we arrived there were bowls of matoke, g-nut sauce, rice, mystery meat (goat, beef?), spinach, and bananas ready to be eaten by the hungry travelers. After lunch, the other intern and I unpacked, and were excitedly talking about how clean everything was, and how nice it was to have a closet, a shower, and a real toilet. After my rustic village experience, I am not so keen on bucket baths or pit latrines. One of the office workers took us around Iganga so we could go see where everything was, and it’s actually quite a busy little town. Crossing the main road is still reminiscent of Frogger, but not so intense as the Kampala edition. We got to the grocery store, which was small, but well stocked, and decided that since we will be cooking dinner for ourselves we should get a loaf of bread. The woman helped us find a nice loaf of prepackaged bread, and off we went to the market. On the way home it started to drizzle a bit. The woman asked us if we wanted to stop, but it was hardly raining so we decided to just keep walking the rest of the 15 minutes back. The other intern didn’t mind getting wet, so we just kept walking, until the point where we were soaked by the torrential downpour and being cheered on by all the Ugandans standing under the cover of their doorways. About half way back m clothes looked like they had been dunked in a tub, and we looked like drown rats. In case we didn’t already stick out here, I can’t imagine what else we could have done to make bigger fools of ourselves – it was great. Fortunately the only casualty in my bag from the rain was my last pack of travel klleenex, which are impossible to find here, but hardly something to lose sleep over.

This weekend at the conference it poured harder than I thought was actually possible. Apparently, hurricane like rain is quite common here. The hotel we stayed at had a lovely little balcony off our room, but my roommate and I found it not so lovely when there were about 2 inches of water standing on the floor by the end of the storm because the balcony was ever so slanted towards the door, and naturally the door doesn’t completely seal at the bottom.

Back to Iganga. After getting back, I was a little surprised to find out that no one is staying here with us at night. There is a night guard though who watches the gate, mom. We got the house all locked up, and it’s surrounded by what I am becoming quite used to: a tall brick wall with coils of barbed wire on top. We went to go make dinner, and the power went off. Unfortunately, I had also just noticed that the bread bag had a large whole in the end, which had apparently not been a questionable thing to the woman who actually grabbed it for us. After debating about the safety of the bread, I opted for some peanut butter, half a mango, and some digestive biscuits. Yum. I should also mention that sanitation is a lot more complex here compared to Kampala, and after not finding any dish soap, we started to get a bit worried about using the dishes. The water out of the tap is not as clean here as it was in Kampala, which wasn’t all that clean either, but we were advised to bleach everything in Iganga just a bit (from dishes to fruits and veggies – even the outside of mangoes). When some pasta Karen had made fell on the floor she grabbed it up and longingly noted that she while she might have just popped it in her mouth at home, but here, no way, and she longingly threw it into the trash

.

The lights came back on about 20 minutes later, and Karen walked into the bathroom and calmly walked back out to inform me that there was a large cockroach in there oh by the way. Later, I was in my room getting my peanut butter out when Karen shrieked. I ran over and asked if she had seen another cockroach, and she said it was far worse – a mouse! Fortunately, we are going to be good at supporting each other because mice don’t faze me, but the sole cockroach living by the toilet has made me minimize my trips to that bathroom.

Iganga is a very small town, but huge compared to the first village I was in. The kids are really excited to see us as we walk around, and we had multiple boys telling us how much they loved us and would like to be our friends while we walked back from the market. Men here are very forward, and the way dating happens is someone just walks up to a girl out of the blue and asks her out, and she says “no,” which obviously means “yes.” We asked our friend how a girl actually says “no,” and apparently you have to sit down and explain to him why not. Have a boyfriend? Pshh, as if that matters. Having multiple girlfriends or boyfriends is not totally out of the ordinary.

The main mode of transportation is by bike here in Iganga, and not motorbike. There is a little seat right above the back wheel and ladies just hop on sidesaddle. There are some mud huts out here, but otherwise many of the houses are small shacks or very small brick buildings, but there is a main street with actual stores. We go buy food at one of the small grocery stores there (picture the size of a gas station store), and I had a nice omelet with tomatoes and pepper cooked in the bottom of a weird metal bowl. The store has one brand of shampoo, eggs that are straight from the chicken (see chicken poop still on shells), and sippy yogurt (it comes in a bag and you drink it with a straw – delicious!). I was going to have the sippy yogurt for for dinner instead of eggs, but it was frozen at the store, so I figured I’ll have it tomorrow for breakfast once it defrosts in the fridge. Most places here don’t have fridges. We have one, but before you get all excited for me, there is not enough electricity here to power it. The BfL office apparently didn’t plan this one out well, but we have a beautiful fridge that sits in the kitchen at room temperature. Makes a decent place to store food though without the ants, mice, or other assorted creatures being able to enjoy it before you do.

As with all things here, my work schedule is a bit up in the air, and I guess I am not actually starting the health program until next week. I have really become ok with whatever happens here; it’s just out of my control, and there is no point worrying about how things go or when they happen because they could easily go another way at any moment. I wish I could bring this attitude back to my life at home. Then again, it does have some problematic outcomes when everyone in the country seems to have this attitude.

I am exhausted, and I think it is mostly just from going through yet another change of place, coworkers, timing, and stresses, including flakey electricity, no fridge, questionable water, hot temperatures, and masses of mosquitoes. That being said, I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else in the world than Uganda at the moment, and that’s a great thing to be able to say.

I no longer have wifi I can use at the office to upload photos, so they will be fewer and far between, but use your imagination until I can put up some.

Charging things also only happens when the power decides it feels like cooperating, which is not very often. The power may be on, but sometimes it’s not enough to charge a cell phone.

About to pass out and it’s 9:15 p.m., but that’s okay because I have to be up at 7 to unlock the office door for everyone else. 

At the Source

Not so much to say today - probably because I've actually been blogging this week quite regularly, but I wanted to mention a few things before I get off the interwebs for the next four days or so. I will be heading to an AIESEC conference here in Uganda, which will be held in the Hotel Spacious Kyengera. I don't know how it will actually be, but doesn't the venue sound exciting?

Before I could take off of work and go on my AIESEC way, I had to go to Jinja town. Earlier this week, I sat down with Phoebe and we thought about Iganga, and we asked ourselves, what do these women really need? They need latrines. That's how we got into that whole discussion on poop in the first place. Well, I was sitting there thinking to myself I have no idea how to build a latrine, nor would I know how to teach others how to build one. Then I remembered that when I googled Iganga, after I first heard I'd be moving there, one of the first things that came up was this girl's blog about working on a health project there. She had mentioned the name of an organization they had partnered with to teach trainings on latrine building amongst other things, so I mentioned this to Phoebe. Her eyes got wide and she asked me to look up the name of the organization. After a few minutes scanning through the blog, I found JIDDECO. She searched for their website, and read a little about the Jinja Diocese Development something something Organization. She picked up the phone, called the number, and after about a minute hung up the phone to say we had a meeting scheduled for 11 am two days later in Jinja. I couldn't believe how fast we went from just talking about latrines to having a meeting set up with a potential partner organization, with the minor detail that it is about two hours away from our Kampala office. And that ladies and gentlemen is how I ended up spending the entire day in the car just for one meeting.

Another intern has arrived from Boulder, and she will be joining me out in Iganga - though Karen is here until September. Though she is not working on the health project, she decided to accompany us to Jinja just for kicks. The road to Jinja is well paved and there is even a yellow line down the center! Granted, nobody notices the dividing line, nor do they follow the passing rules, but it is comforting to know that the asphalt isn't just going to cut out randomly. Phoebe wanted breakfast, so all of a sudden we pulled over by the side of the road to where some stands were selling skewers of various meets, roasted bananas, and soda. Phoebe rolled down her window about 3 inches, and Karen followed suit. Without any other cue, 10 or 15 skewer bearing men started sprinting over to the car and proceeded to jam skewers in the widow, try to stick cans of soda in Karen's lap and stuff bananas (whole and still flaming hot off the grill) in Phoebe's face. Even after saying we only wanted some bananas from one man in particular, the others continued to literally shove each other out of the way. Phoebe pulled out her wallet, and then all of a sudden they started running away - except for the one who Phoebe bought the bananas from. We had not suddenly become repulsive, we just got overshadowed by the massive bus that had just pulled up with far more passengers to please. I watched out the back window as the same men in blue smocks stood on their toes to pass skewers of chicken thighs and Orange Fanta bottles into the hands of paying customers on their way probably to Nairobi. It really brought a whole new meaning to fast food and door-to-door service - terrifying and wonderful all at the same time.

The meeting itself went pretty well, except the part where Phoebe was trying to explain our health program to the two Catholic program directors and a "Sist-ah" (yes, a nun came in about 5 minutes into the meeting) and Phoebe started the list of topics we cover with "Family planning." We both tried very hard not to crack up at her little goof, but they were actually very cool about it, and actually brought up the topic themselves. The Catholic church here has seemed to recognize that the population growth is just crippling the nation, and that encouraging huge families is not productive (pardon the pun) for anyone. While their methods may differ from ours, it was nice to have middle ground where we both saw that families that have 10 kids just don't have enough support for the kids, and it is better to have fewer and give them all that is possible.

Now the second largest city in Uganda, Jinja boasts a different attraction, which the other new intern and I were more keen to see than the office of this organization. I crossed the Nile today, and no, I didn't jet up to Egypt, but rather just crossed a bridge in Jinja. Lake Victoria (the largest inland lake in all of Africa) flows out into the headwaters of the Nile. They refer to it as "the Source of the Nile," not like you would ever forget this as EVERYTHING has "the Source of the Nile" tacked on to its name there. One of the big breweries is located there and produces a cleverly named beer "Nile."

Didn't see any crocodiles today, but I hope to see one when we go rafting down it in a few weeks...just as long as it is not too close.

On the way back from the meeting we decided to stop at the Nile park area, which is actually called "the Source of the Nile," but after realizing that the park entrance fee was 10,000 shillings, we turned around and decided to just see it up close when we go rafting. There was a man standing at the gate, and when Phoebe turned the car around he started running and shouting after us in Lugandan, "Bring back my tourists! Where are you taking my tourists?!?!" It was all fairly amusing.

Afterwards we were all starving and Phoebe said let's eat at this gas station called Igor as we drew close to the simple pump station. We walked into the inside snack area, and to mine and the other intern's surprise there was a full fledged restaurant. I had a delicious Chicken Tika Masala with chapati (they were out of nan) for about $5, and then we hit the road, and headed off into the sunset. Well actually it was just really bright and hot on the way back, and Phoebe insisted that we close the windows, which were actually letting in relatively cool air, because the wheezing and whistling AC was actually "working" for once. Karen and I sat in the back seat dying of heat, while the front had a small trickle of cool air.  

Ewww! I just went to the kitchen to get a cup of water and when I opened the fridge door a huge cockroach scurried out and I had to lift myself up on the counter to get out of the way. This really discourages me from staying hydrated, the cockroaches should know better. Plus, I would have sprayed the massive roach if I could have located the canister. Note to self:  don't go into the kitchen at night, or leave the safety of the bug net.

"Jiggers Africa"

As of 4 p.m. today I was so on board about going out to Iganga for the next month to work on health, and then I heard about jiggers. Be forewarned, this is not for all audiences, especially those who are squeamish and easily disgusted by creepy crawly things. If you’re still on board, then congratulations, but don’t get too proud of your “tough stomach” because you are sitting there reading this blog in a nice jigger-free home.

So imagine you are walking along a dusty red dirt road in Uganda watching the broad green leaves of a banana tree sway to and fro with the breeze. It’s hot and humid, but the relief of a cool house always makes this walk back from a day in the field visiting women’s houses a lot more bearable. As you sit down on your bed to take a nap, you notice a mosquito bite that really itches on the tip of your big toe. Those darn mosquitoes always manage to bite you in the most annoying places! When you reach a finger down to relieve the itch, you realize that there is a small lump under your skin. You figure it’s just a bad reaction to that particular bite, and settle in for you nap. The next week goes by and you notice more of these bumps on the bottom of your feet. You think how in the world are mosquitoes biting the bottoms of my feet? and then it hits you like a Ugandan mini-bus barreling down the highway….JIGGERS!

This tiny flea-like insect burrows into the skin while it is to small to really see it. The jiggers tend to get in when you are in dusty areas, and are also known to breed in unhygienic conditions in the home. Once they burrow under your skin, they suck your blood and breed. As they grow to adulthood they form little lumps, and lay more eggs, which in turn grow and multiply themselves. If left untreated, they can cause a person lose the ability to put weight on the bottom of their feet and walk. It is pretty straightforward to get them out - you cut them out, BUT you have to make sure they don’t burst because apparently that will allow them to spread more eggs or something equally horrible and disgusting. While I said it was straightforward, it also sounds absolutely awful. I wish they had a jigger-away pill or magic jigger-be-gone salve rather than a scalpel.

Why do I find these so terrifying when other tropical diseases like Ebola, typhoid, and malaria are present? Well Ebola is far more rare, granted also pretty disturbing. Glad I didn’t reread The Hot Zone before coming here. In related news, a girl died of Ebola in central Uganda about 3 weeks ago, and I got a lovely U.S. State Department email warning me of a possible Ebola outbreak, but it is actually rather small. Plus, in the off chance I ever got it, they do have ways to treat it if caught early. Typhoid, another unpleasant one, is caused by drinking contaminated drinking water. I don’t drink water that hasn’t been either boiled or bottled, so not so worried about typhoid. And while Malaria would suck, I am taking antimalarials every single morning, hiding out in my bug net typing this, and wearing bug spray when needed. The problem with jiggers? They are in the DUST, they are too tiny to notice initially, and they burrow under your skin and multiplyyyyy. If you take two steps outside your door in any place outside of Kampala you automatically get a tan, well a dust one anyway, so how the heck am I supposed to avoid dust? The next reason I am terrified of them? The Busoga region is the most heavily impacted one of all of Uganda, and guess where it lies? Right next to Iganga district! Yes folks, I am going to the land of the Jiggers. As if spottier electricity, hotter temperatures, and more mosquitoes wasn’t enough, now my supervisor Phoebe just had to mention this itty bitty creature.

So since we all wear open-toed shoes and capris or skirts everyday, and my entire agenda revolves around tramping around the Igangan bush, we will be wearing stockings (tights? long socks? panty hose? I have no idea) when we go out. If this is not the fashion statement of the year, I don’t know what is! Finally, I thought Phoebe had given me a little teeny weenie nugget of hope to cling to, until she drowned that light right out. The past intern that lived up in Iganga liked to go running everyday, so she wore her stockings and then told Phoebe she had one of these little mosquito bites that…you know where this story goes. Apparently, not only to you have to wear stockings, but you also have to wash everything – you, your clothes, your shoes, and the stockings upon returning from the field to make sure the little buggers (literally) die. Once again, I had a ray of hope - all I had to do was wear stockings and wash them  - and then poof, that sliver of hope and calm too was gone. The reason many people, even out in the villages, iron their clothes? Not the need for crisp creases, but the desire to kill the last of the jiggers with searing heat. So while I was planning to do my own laundry there, I am definitely going to have to go find someone with a laundry service and an iron, which actually wont be too hard to do I presume.

Maybe I am being ridiculous, maybe I am being overly concerned, but before you judge me, I am here, you are there, and I just stupidly Google Image searched “jiggers Africa.”

Random Things

So what did you talk about all morning? I’ve discussed human excrement for most of mine – not my own, but the intrinsic state of it. But first, I have some news to share before I get to the scintillating topic of poop.

Next Monday I will be packing up all my belongings, which actually isn’t saying much at all, and setting out on my next unexpected African adventure. I have volunteered to be the health coordinator on the ground for BfL in a remote district they also have been doing work in. Iganga is a town with an estimated population of 51,800 according to the brief Wikipedia article I found. It’s not big even by standards here, BUT it is a town and not a village. I will be heading out with another intern who just arrived from Boulder to also do work in Iganga. For my remaining four weeks or so in Uganda, I will be conducting house visits to many of the women and facilitating sanitation, health, and nutrition seminars with them. Though there will be a language barrier, as I experienced in the village, BfL is accustomed to using translators in this region themselves as most people there speak Lusoga rather than Luganda. Unfortunately, the few phrases and words I have picked up on here in Kampala will be useless up there as well.

Speaking of language, I thought I might explain names in Uganda. Most people are given two names at birth. First a “Christian” name is usually given, which basically just means anything western-sounding (Ruth, Alice, Harriet, Peter, Robert, etc.). However, the spelling of these western names follows the African way of anything goes sometimes. The second name is an African one, which follows a really beautiful tradition I think. The name usually is given as a translation of something that was happening around the time of the birth. For example, one of the women at the office said her name translates to “at the time of the harvest.” Best brace yourself for life however if something bad or funny happens when you’re born because you could end up toting it around with you for life! This same woman told us of some of her friends that had kind of unfortunate ones in my opion. How about Nasiche? Sounds nice, but means born at the time of the locust season. These African names are also normally hard for me to pronounce, but fortunately, they almost always go mainly by their Christian names. Along this same idea of names with significance, there are certain names someone might gain as things happen to them throughout life. One very common name is Ssalango meaning “father of twins.” Someone you are all very familiar with has been dubbed with this name too. In fact, when he was President and in the news all the time he was mostly referred to by all the media as Ssalango George Bush ( I had a good long laugh on hearing that one).

the pit latrine from the village

Now that I’m done with that tangent, back to the original topic as promised. Sanitation is a major issue in many  developing countries, and it really takes a whole lot of infrastructure to deal with something as mundane as disposing of waste. Kampala is a little different, but most other places in Uganda do not have a trash pickup service or connections to sewage lines. Unfortunately, many many families still do not even use a pit latrine (squat toilet) to dispose of their own bodily waste. Many of the women BfL serves in Iganga fall into this category, so it will be my charge to go out, identify women who need pit latrines, and work on setting them up with another organization who will hopefully be helping us with the actual construction. These pit latrines are normally about 30 feet deep, so this is no small task. They also should be at least 10 meters from the home. So now you may be asking yourself how do you get they get the waste out of there eventually? And the answer lies somewhere between disgusting and amazing. If a latrine is built about 30 feet deep in can be used by a family for 20 years or more without ever filling up. The waste decomposes some and seeps down and out slowly. They do eventually fill up though, especially with over use (where many families are sharing one), and the only thing left to do then is build a new one somewhere else. The house I stayed at in the village my first week had one of these lovely toilets. The man had lived in the house since 1981, and I am pretty positive those were the original latrines, which is really grossing me out come to think of it. There are two side by side normally, but I just took a picture of the inside of one. Didn’t want to over poo it (harharhar it’s been a long day, give me a break). Still craving more potty language? If you ever hear a Ugandan say he is going for a “short call,” don’t expect him to call his mum – he is telling you he is going to take a trip to the men’s room. 

Unfortunately, as it seems with so much stuff here, there are always complications to consider. You may also be thinking that if the waste is decomposing, it must be going somewhere. While they are supposed to build latrines far away from water sources, it is not difficult for the waste to seep into the water table, which is why people can’t drink the water here in the first place. It’s already happening in a lot of places, but it is a bit concerning that building pit latrines – if not done right – can actually lead to more of the exact problems we are trying to stop, such as diarrhea and typhoid. Diarrhea is the leading killer of children 5 and under here. I just really hope that this is the best method because all other options are really out of the women’s price range.

In other news I crossed the equator this weekend. It was kind of anticlimactic though. 

Beads --> Bead--> Bed

I am mostly writing this because I took some more pictures and a video, which I would like to share.

The women were particularly cheerful at this morning’s bead sale (where they come to sell their necklaces to BfL), which scared me a bit, after experiencing how much the last group made me dance last time, and they weren’t as excited. You see, I love being an onlooker, but not a participant per se. However, it turns out that my cover as a photographer allowed me to remain in peace for the most part, though one of my coworkers Irene saw right through my ploy, and pulled me in for a little bit. The video below is what we try to work through every Tuesday and Thursday, and end up giving up trying to ignore instead joining in on all the fun. Technically, I was supposed to be working in the Membership office at this time, but all of us ended up being drawn to the commotion and drumming like bugs to a lamp. Irene, the head of Membership, can be seen shaking her booty for example – though I will keep her identity undisclosed for fear of retaliation. Also check out the woman with the pink and black weave at about 0:09 and 0:35.

Bead Sale Video

You may be wondering who the other mzungus are scattered throughout the women. The answer? I have no idea because I had no desire to spend 15 minutes going through the obligatory hey-you’re-also-clearly-not-a-local chat with each of them, so I zoomed inside after the dancing was done.

Membership has been loving me this week, and sadly, not because of my charming personality or sharp wit. They have had so much data to enter into miscellaneous spreadsheets, and I was the unwitting volunteer to do the job. They got these big sly grins on their faces when I showed up last week ready to help out. Don’t cry yet, as I still got the last laugh. Today at approximately 3:40 pm, I stood up from the computer that I’d been busily working on all morning, and announced that I’d finished the most recent task they’d given me, in addition to about four others from earlier in the day. Irene and Agnes simultaneously dropped their jaws, and eventually proclaimed that I’d finished three days’ worth of work in just one day. They had nothing left for me to do, so I left to go find something a bit more fun. I left as they continued to howl out the door about how amazing and speedy I was. I need to toot my own horn a bit because the work I’ve done for the past four days was as tedious as can be, and was like a rite of passage (at least in my own mind), and I passed with flying colors (or speed).

They are preparing to pack and ship a cargo container of soap and necklaces to Boulder next week, so I went to help in the inventory department, which desperately needed more hands. I worked bundling necklaces in groups of 10, with each necklace in the group being a different color. They send these bundles to the people who host bead parties throughout the U.S., and we have to ensure that each box has all the various colors of necklaces.

Bundling necklaces to be shipped

This first picture here is of me (in case you have already forgotten what I looked like, or perhaps thought I might be getting darker and sporting a weave – neither of which I am) using my great eye to put necklaces together, really striving to coordinate them with each other and bring out that je ne sais quoi when they are put together. I jest, however, because I apparently do not have that eye, as the woman next to me kept telling me to take out that baby blue and replace it with a berry red because the blue was way to similar to those other two shades already in the bundle. I don’t think that it matters all that much in reality, but rather, the workers like to take pride in the fact that they do this bundling all day and have had far more experience than I. Frankly, I am not offended in the least because I just go for the good old ROYGBIV plus a few. If I get corrected, I blame the acronym for failing me by three letters.

 

The second picture is the pile of beads on the table I have to work with. They are such a tangled mess, it is a task on its own trying to just grab the color you want. It’s kind of like a big puzzle game – or maybe that’s just me going crazy after bundling for 2 hours.  

I also wanted to share with you something I found hilarious – not that it is though. The women coat each paper bead in clear sealant a number of times so that the beads become shiny and hard. Much to the dismay of BfL, some bad sealant was bought by many of the women a few batches ago, and the sealant never completely hardens. This makes the necklaces just ever so sticky. Occasionally, necklaces break in the whole process of buying them, counting, bundling etc, and they collect the loose beads to sell to jewelers in the U.S.. Well over the months they have been collecting these beads in big tubs, and they pulled them out of storage this morning, and got a big surprise.

Unconventional use of beads...

Please take a glance on what the Inventory Coordinator is sitting on, no that is not a chair, it is a bead bench – as I have dubbed it. The old sealant solidifies it turns out – it just takes a lot of time and pressure. All the beads on the floor around the bench, are from the guy who was chipping away at the benches with a cement brick a few minutes earlier. Beads went flying all over the room from this hammering, and the guy looked like he was going to cry a bit when Cheryl told him there was going to be a big meeting in that room in a matter of minutes.

Last, but certainly not least, I thought you all might like to see where I have been resting my tired self after work. Here is my foam bed in all its glory. I really like the notion of sleeping under the net. I say notion, because it’s not that I need one at home at all in Colorado for example, but I like the idea of the impenetrable force field surrounding my bed anywhere in the world. I just wish I could upgrade and get one that would keep hot air out too. 

In the white room, with [almost] black curtains [relatively] near the [old/out-of-use train] station. (Yes mom, I did just reference some of your music - and for anyone who missed the reference, you're clearly not an Eric Clapton fan)

Well the live jazz music is playing right on cue, which must mean it’s Tuesday night right around my bedtime. Ugandans party all the time, but for some reason I only hear this place on Tuesday nights, and I can hear every word distinctly, hahaha in fact, the song playing right now is a jazzed up version of “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music. It’s such a dilemma because the music is so loud, and I would just shut the windows, but the air is finally cooling down the room and I won’t be able to sleep in the stifling heat. I guess I can just lay back, and ….And then I don’t feel, sooooooooooo baddddddddddddddd. Oh Africa, you make me laugh sometimes. 

Big on Sundays! Miss It, Miss Out

My favorite form of weekend entertainment here just might be reading the Sunday paper. Ugandan newspapers take pride in their attention-grabbing headlines, emotional storytelling, and expert opinions – all which lead this American to regard it as A+ entertainment. Let me indulge you in a few excerpts from the Sunday Vision (who's catch phrase is the title of this entry).

Articles in last week’s edition included:

“Defilers Should Be Castrated,” “My Husband Was Meant to Be a Witch,” “Mother Throws Child into River,” “Twins Drown in Pond,”  “Jilted Husband Kills Wife and Son,” “It’s a Girl-Crush,” and… “The Rupture” (while the rest of the world was eagerly waiting for the Second Coming, Ugandans apparently feared an earthquake? Could be one and the same I suppose. The editing here reminds me of the Boulder Daily Camera – oh burn).

A thought provoking column “Sunday Wisdom” posts eloquent-sounding, yet moderately confusing thoughts to ponder, including these gems (note: grammar and spelling appear as written in paper):

 -- A good idea like a sweet kiss, depends on demand and suppy; in both cases equilibrium obtains in form of an action.

And

 -- Mental pregnancy of ideas is all that is required because natural phenomenon will take care of the delivery.

The main advice column “Ask Antagonise Aunt” provides the true expert advice.

A guy wrote in about how his ex-girlfriend broke-up with him, yet she continues to call “once or twice a month and asks to come over and we end up in bed together.” He feels all she wants is sex because she never wants to talk otherwise (rocket scientist in the making!), and he seeks the Aunt’s advice on how to handle the situation. Her response almost made me choke on my toast:

What kind of man complains about getting free ‘things’ from a girl…Do you know how much self-respect she has to lose to be able to pick up that phone and give you a booty call? You know how much sacrifice she has to make to be able to call you up just for sex? I mean she risks alienating herself from the entire female population.

Now if this is not selfless martyrdom on her part, I do not know what is. That and she is paying you the best compliment you will ever hear. She is saying to you, “Look here Ken, I think you are great in bed and everything, but not so much in our family album.” I suggest you draft a quick apology letter to that girl that we can help you run. Throw in a sorry line to me as well, and to three billion men who want so desperately to be in your shoes.  

I sincerely hope you all chuckled while reading these as much as I did. I will be sure to continue keeping an eye on the paper for more memorable quotes. 

Happy Memorial Day weekend!

BeadforLife

I think I am working at the best NGO with the coolest building in Kampala. Wow, does it make a difference to really like your work.

So, after realizing that the last organization I was at just didn’t have any work for me to do, I am now happily resituated here in Kampala again. This time, living with a couple from Boulder, who have moved here for two years to work at BfL.

BfL has thought out such a strong program, created a great work environment, and is really making a big impact in this community, all while managing to get to a sustainable point where they do not rely on any charity or donations to operate. This represents a spectacular feat that few NGOs ever accomplish.

So what makes this organization different? They have a product and a market. BfL finds women within an hour our two of Kampala, and based on a set of poverty criteria (how many people share a bathroom, how many kids are in school, what is the status of the house, last incidence of malaria, etc.), they find women who are in poverty, but also have the drive to get themselves out of it, and are just searching for a way to do it. Each recruitment cycle they bring in about 70 women who are selected to be in that particular group. The women will be taught the process of rolling paper to make beads and how to make them into beautiful jewelry. You wouldn’t even believe they are made out of paper! These women come from very poor areas, and often have had little formal schooling. BeadforLife recognized that the women had other needs that needed to be attended to first, so they have a series of seminars the women attend before they start beading to help prepare them for business.

I sat in on a bookkeeping class yesterday morning, where the women were going over multiplication and division problems. Can you imagine being a 35-year-old woman and not know how to figure out how much 3 pens cost at 50 shillings each? That is the reality for so many people here who are illiterate and have also never learned numeracy skills. In order for the women to know how much money they are spending on bead materials and how much they are making in profits, they need to learn simple math skills, albeit with the help of calculators, to allow them to really take control of their businesses and succeed. Once they have learned bookkeeping and how to make the jewelry, they go home and bead away in the hopes that the organization will buy the jewelry from them, so they earn an income. There is a maximum amount that a woman can get each week, and it is somewhere around $170. If they have a full sale both times a month when they come in, they can seriously change their circumstances. Most of these women have come from making about a dollar a day.

In fact, one of the saddest stories I’ve heard about some of the women who come into the program, is about the women who work in the rock quarries. They may be paid less than a dollar for a day’s work breaking rocks out in the hot sun. The work is crippling, and the pay is, to my mind, criminal. I can hardly believe that people would ever even do it – it just doesn’t even seem worth it, but for many, it is the difference between starving to death and eating a meal occasionally. We heard about an 89-year-old lady yesterday who works in one of these quarries for… guess how much? Less than $2 a month. Not only is someone who reaches the age of 89 very rare, but it is so incredibly sad to hear that she has no other options other than this quarry work.

I have to pause for a moment though, and write about the office building itself; it is just the coolest place to have an office here! Located on the edge of a massive swap full of tall green sugar cane stalks is a huge white mansion obscured from the road by an eight foot wall and lush green vegetation. A beautiful porch wraps around the entire second floor, and it has the air of a colonial style house, though it was built late in the British rule here. Each bedroom (of which there are many) holds one of the various administrative offices, or a classroom, or the kitchen – yes, we get fed here too! I sat out on the second story porch this morning looking out at Kampala in the distance. I was trying to imagine what the house was like as a residence for one of Amin’s generals or even a British family. The photo below shows the view.

The view from the second floor balcony - Kampala's off in the distance

So, twice a month the women return to the office, often with young children and babies in tow, and under a big white tent, they hold the infamous bead sale. I can’t begin to explain how different a bead sale is than I ever imagined, and I say infamous because Lorna has been telling me I just have to come see this for the last month or so; now I know why. I danced, I hollered, I laughed, I cried…well I didn’t cry, but I did see a LOT of beads and danced with all the women. Of course, this being Africa, I should have realized that business would be done differently here than at home. This morning we arrived early to the office, and I went off to start the research I’d been assigned, but Lorna said to come down when you hear the bead sale start. I had no idea what she meant, but I figured I would hear the director announce the start of the sale and know to come down. But then, I heard the drums. Yes drums. I went downstairs, and just about all the 70 women were dancing around in a circle, chanting, and singing and clapping. Two of the guys who work in the office had pulled out huge animal skin drums and were beating on them in time to the music. I was trying to inconspicuously watch and take photos from the edge, but one woman grabbed me by the arms and pulled me into the middle. Needless to say I can’t dance like they can, but I also couldn’t stop laughing or having an amazing time, so I don’t care. 

Finally, the dancing finished, and the women lined up with their bags of necklaces, bangles, and earrings to be inspected by the organization. The quality assurance part is hard because it does mean rejecting some women who have put a lot of hours, and definitely some money, into these bad beads, but they have also been trained a lot, so most of the beads are accepted. They just make sure that the beads are made nicely and that the jewelry is well put together, because then it is boxed and shipped to the U.S. where it is sold throughout. People can host a Bead Party, where they receive a shipment of jewelry, and women can invite their friends to come hear about the women they are supporting by purchasing the jewelry. BeadforLife pays every woman a certain amount for each piece of jewelry that is made well, but then the women don’t have to worry about whether it is sold in the U.S. The women continue to make and sell these beads for about 15 months, all while thinking of other business ideas for the future. The program is 18 months long, and in the last three months, the Entrepreneurial Team helps the women develop their own business plan – something totally unrelated to the beads. We want the women to be confident in managing her own business, ideas, and life, so this step is crucial. They strictly do not give the women ideas for businesses, but let each determine what would be best for her, and then help make suggestions on how to improve it, make it more efficient, etc. By the end of the three months, she should be completely done with bead making, and earning money through her own project.

Women lining up for the bead sale

At any one time, BfL may be helping up to 1,000 women. I’ve also noticed how happy everyone is in the office, and it really does seem like a great place to work. Twice a week there are bead sales (different groups attend them), and then the other days are a bit quieter, but still  busy.

In addition to the main BfL project, they also support a group of women further in the north through the selling of soap. The women collect and pres shea nuts, which turns into shea butter. They also collect lemon grass, and I think lavender to also be added to the soap. Then back at the BfL office, there is a whole back area devoted to soap making! On my first day of work, they had me do soap all day. It was so fun, and such hard work! A few days earlier they had mixed all the ingredients (think trash can sized quantities) in a big vat, and dumped the liquid out on a table to harden. After a few days, it solidifies and they peel it off and put it back into the trash cans to be carried over the machine. With this machine they dump all the soap bits (stuck in sheets about the size of your hand) on top of the machine. We then cut up the soap into smaller bits by hand, so that the pieces will actually go through the press. Then we dump in the bits to this funnel, and it comes out the other end in about a ¾” rope. The I Love Lucy chocolate factory feeling begins. As the rope is coming out, someone has to measure, cut, and weigh each piece of soap, making sure that it is exactly 4.0 ounces. Since most of the time it is just shy or just over the desired amount, you have to add a little piece and reweigh it – all while making sure you are cutting the soap still as it comes out so that it doesn’t fall on the floor once it reaches the end of the table. Let me tell you this is a high stress job because that soap goes fast! Then each 4.0 ounce tube must be compressed some between the hands, and the edges rolled smooth. After this, each bar is put between a slightly oiled piece of plastic into the machine that gives it its final shape, and imprints the BeadforLife logo and name on the bar. The machine must be hand cranked to put the pressure on and release it. 

Finally, the bars of soap get moved to the storage room where they are left to finish hardening for a few days, and then the packaging girls take this shrink plastic, and using a hairdryer, fit it snuggly around the soap. They slap a sticker on the front that labels the soap, and then it’s boxed and ready to be shipped off to somewhere in the U.S. Such a crazy process for ONE bar of soap! Obviously mechanization helps speed this stuff up for other companies, but they are able to employ more people here this way, and still keep up the necessary supply, so it all works out. It was also a great introduction to the organization, and my friends back in soap said they missed me when I was up in the office all day.

Well I am off to go try and get my ATM card to work. Half the time the machines just don’t have any money in them, but for some reason my card just hasn’t been working because of the way their systems are set up here – though somehow I withdrew just fine the first day I arrived. Well this IS Africa, so who is really surprised? Not this girl at least.

I added some photos to the older blog entries as well, so check them out again if you are interested. 

TIA

I’m settling in at my new home in Kampala, and it is just interesting to hear what different things people have to say about Africa’s future. I’m reading a book by Muhammad Yunus, hearing stories from the people I am staying with, and talking to different Ugandans, and a lot of messages are mixed. The main point I’ve fully come to see here is that charity is not the answer. At least, not pure charitable giving. The big feeling this week has been in seeing firsthand how widespread Africa’s problems really are; it is genuinely hard to always feel optimistic about it.

The corruption runs rampant here, from the president down to the traffic cops, and it causes many Ugandans to not trust each other, or businesses, or the banks – and sometimes for good reason. But how can distrust be the foundation of any stable structure? Some of the cultural norms also seem to pose some of the most enormous hurdles to future progress. People still sacrifice infants here! As the saying goes, any man who kills a baby will be rich. It doesn’t happen nearly as often as it used to, but it’s not just happening out in the rural areas still, it happens every week in Kampala. And the other sad thing, many more Ugandans believe that this myth is true, even though they would never actually act on it. There is a lot of misinformation here, and it is just so hard to make people believe research. You may often see a mother give her children sugar cane to chew on – it gives them strong teeth!…or cavities. But to them it seems different than sugar, and their traditional medicine says that it is good for their teeth. They also still put oil on burns. Trying to change cultural beliefs is surprisingly difficult. Eradicating the culture of corruption would be such a good starting place, but people just accept it, and worse, take part as soon as they are given enough power.

The infrastructure here is also terrible. The roads have huge potholes, and there are gaping holes in the sidewalks every couple feet. Some may be two, three, even ten feet deep. Imagine walking at night! There are limited or no sidewalks in many areas, and the traffic is such a complete disaster. On average five motorbike drivers die a day in Kampala alone! After watching the way they weave in and out of traffic and the way the rest of the cars drive, I believe it. It sort of feels like how I picture the world with no government or organization. Sadly, they do have a government, just not a very good one. There are also way too many people driving cars for the capacity of the roads, and there is not current hope that the roads will be widened or improved. The British actually put in a lot of the infrastructure and early buildings, and it’s hard not to notice the deterioration that has come from the British leaving. For better or worse, there were a few things the British did here that were definitely good things.

Fortunately, in all this chaos, the one book I brought with me is providing a little ray of hope.  Muhammad Yunus founded the Grameen Bank (a huge microcredit program in Bangaladesh), but this particular book Creating a World Without Poverty focuses on many of the business subsidiaries of Grameen, which really do work in all different things. His format for raising people out of poverty seems to hold water even in light of many of the problems that government, business, and non-profit attempts have faced in the past. He believes in the concept of social business, and I think he is right.

I’ve always felt compelled about the potential of business to help do go, but I thought the best efforts were probably in things like Corporate Social Responsibility and microfinance operations. However, a social business can really be in anything, so long as the bottom line is to relieve poverty or provide a social good, while remaining sustainable. The most interesting example, to my mind, that illustrates this idea was Grameen’s partnership with the world famous yogurt company Danone. Realizing that many of the poorest Bangaladeshis couldn’t feed their children nutritious and affordable food, the joint venture set out to develop a product that would cost less than other similar quality foods on the market, yet provide the same nutrition and convenience as other more expensive items. After lots of market studying, product testing, and business consulting. Grameen Danone developed a fortified yogurt for kids that appealed to the Bangladeshi palate, provided kids with important nutrients (almost half the children of this densely populated nation experienced stunted growth due to malnourishment), and helped create many thousands of jobs for the rural poor. By designing a factory that was small, and located near the source of consumption (rural villages), they could buy local milk and convert it into yogurt and have it back to the people without needing refrigeration because it would be eaten so fast. Considering a country that has little infrastructure, they worked around the impossible problems of not being able to keep the yogurt cold if it was shipped. By bringing the factory to the people, they wouldn’t need to do much other than get the product into the hands of kids. They intend to open more factories around the country after the success they’ve had with the first one, and the best part is, it is a sustainable venture. Both Group Danone and Grameen got back all the initial money invested, and the small profits made will go to continued operation of the current plant, and the startup of more yogurt factories across Bangladesh. Because it is a social business, they don’t have to aim for the highest profit, they just have to break even plus a little, and this allows the yogurt to cost only a few cents – affordable for even very poor families. They even train “Grameen Ladies” to sell the yogurt, educating them about all the benefits of the yogurt, and giving them little insulated purses to carry the yogurts in back to the village where hungry children will eat them. In this way, they’ve employed dairy farmers, these women to trasport and sell the products, and provided a social good, all without the need for donations or making the people pay high costs.

This format of social business has so many applications, and I think more people are recognizing how time, and money, consuming traditional charities and aid interventions tend to be without doing as much good as they intend. I really hope that this social business model takes off because it’s a something we could really use in everything from our American healthcare system to alleviating poverty in the third world.

Anyways, I am done with that little tangent. Life here is going well, though I am very excited to finally have real work to do starting tomorrow.

On Saturday, the couple I am staying with asked me if I wanted to walk into town. Unbeknownst to me, it ended up being about a six miles round trip. We walked clear across Kampala, and it was funny to see how confused the taxi drivers were with us. Why on earth would we rather walk than pay 50 cents to get a ride into town? The exercise was nice, and walking in a place just gives you a different perspective. I saw some other parts of Kampala that day, and it was certainly packed since it was Saturday. Today, we walked to the Bugolobi market, which is the one that is very nearby. The couple lives in a pretty nice neighborhood in Kampala, and many of the nearby apartments house embassy workers from all over. All the tenants of this particular building are Indian, except us. It’s really sad to see how well many of the various Asian groups have done here. They own many of the businesses, and definitely have a lot to show for it. I am really starting to wonder why it is that so many Ugandans don’t do well in their own country. It really does seem sometimes like there is some physiologically difference. But! before you start sending me nasty emails, I really think that is has to do with their education systems and, at times, the culture. I truly believe that Ugandans have the same capacity as any other ethnicity, but that doesn’t mean it has worked out that way in reality. Many Ugandans are hardworking, but don’t have the best business sense, and there are certainly many Ugandans who follow the kind of African laid back view of life, which might not be so conducive to business. Lorna has told me that many of the Ugandans who do the best here are ones who have been educated outside the country – and they do very well. So I don’t actually believe that there is anything physically wrong with Africans, but I do think that generally terrible schools (especially higher education) and a poor business culture have led to a lot of economic failure, while so many foreigners thrive in the same area. In the grocery store in the neighborhood, there were at least as many foreigners as there were Ugandans. In this upscale neighborhood, it is not rich Ugandans that fill the apartments, but mainly just foreign businessmen.

I was also reassured today that it is very unlikely to get malaria in Kampala. However, any doctor you go to will likely tell you that you have in fact contracted malaria. Bill Gates stopped sending malaria test kits to Uganda because even when they would come back negative, the doctors would still insist it was malaria. It also doesn’t help that their word for fever is “malaria.”

On another note, we visited the South African version of Wal-Mart – Game. It has even ricketier things, and the customer service was literally a joke. As we attempted to find a shower curtain, people kept pointing us in all different directions. We finally asked one of the employees, who was standing around and chatting with about five others, to come show us where these mythical curtains were, and she rolled her eyes and slowly ambled across the store. As Lorna always says when something ridiculous, strange, or just plain expected happens here: TIA – This is Africa…

Here is a picture from the slum where the AIESEC house is located. I love this picture :)