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.