Day 2:  The first full day in the town of Nkokonjeru. 

We were stuck drinking semi-muddy boiled water or bottled water that some sources say you can't trust. I was reminded of that scene from Slumdog Millionaire where that poor kid was refilling empty bottles of water and then using crazy glue to reattach the cap onto the plastic ring. My colleague Albert and I were on our way to buy water purification tablets when we just stopped by our office at the town's credit union to see if our contact, Moses, had arrived from the capital. He was there. We spent the rest of the morning chatting away, mostly about what previous Duke students had accomplished in earlier years. 

We invited him out to lunch with us to this restaurant named Matthew's. Apparently Matthew was this foreigner who came and one night spent most of the Ugandan shillings he had in his wallet to buy beers for anybody who was lucky enough to stop by that restaurant that particular night. Supposedly, the town's folk had such a good time that night that the restaurant owner renamed the restaurant after him. Below is a picture of what I had for lunch. A typical local dish will be composed of a lot of starches and a small piece of meat, fish, or beans.

As if a rural town outside the capital city wasn't enough of an adventure, Albert and I set out by motorcycle deeper off the main road to go visit a nearby fishing village, hoping to get to know the kind of people we were dealing with. It was the bumpiest ride I've been on in a while. The road was wide enough only for 1 car or truck to drive along. 

The villagers in that fishing village broke out the alcohol and threw us a party when we arrived. Two people hosted us: a friendly English-speaking villager named Patrick and a friend of his who was so drunk he tried to kiss me on the lips. 

We went from house to house where we were served the local spirit, some of form of Ugandan vodka, in addition to some form of muddy-looking fermented drink that locals drank from cut-away plastic containers. Albert and I both decided to stay sober while the people around us were drinking on our behalf. Children were following us by the droves. I've never seen such a festive combination of drunk adults and children all in one room. Then again, I've never seen a non-white guy named Patrick before.

 I took as a souvenir a gruesome poster celebrating the death of Muammar Ghadafi that many locals had posted to the wall inside their huts. Imagine hating a dictator so much that people post this poster over their beds.

Welcome to Uganda 2012

Even at midnight, the road from the airport to the capital city was colorful and bustling. A poor choice of flight time led me to arrive way too late to enjoy the initial scenery that I often look forward to whenever I first land in a country I've never been to. But despite the darkness, the road just outside the airport had much excitement going on. The insides of houses were lit with either white or yellow lights, including the occasional pink. The sidewalks were filled with women wearing colorful dresses and men wearing the usual business casual attire, which they wear at all times of the day. During the few moments when I was not taking in the nighttime scenery, I was bracing myself for how close from on-coming traffic the driver of my taxi was driving and how close he had almost hit the motorcycles passing us by. We arrived at the hostel after about 50 minutes of such close zigzagging through traffic I'm surprised nobody got killed. I was greeted by a tall, skinny man with one eye at the front desk. This was the type of man who needed to be wearing an eye-patch, but wasn't. As I was staring at his bad eye for a second, he broke the silence and said to me “Welcome to Uganda.”

Monkeys and large pelican's, as opposed to sloppy-looking European backpackers, were the first ones to greet me the next day. Although I shouldn't be saying anything about my European bunk-mates. My T-shirt and cargo shorts would have allowed me to fit in with local Ugandan men as well as I had fit in with investment bankers that time I went to some investment banking info session in a sweater and jeans just for the free food. I met my colleague Albert a few minutes later; he was dressed to fit in. He spent the rest of that morning helping me get set up with a working phone and internet.  Thankfully, he had arrived three days before I did and got himself acquainted already.

Just before we packed up our belongings and took off into the countryside where were to meet our hosts for the summer, Albert and I decided to go into the city to taste some local Ugandan cuisine. The food we saw reminded me of the free vegetarian dinner that is offered every Monday at Duke's Bryan Center. Namely, they had beans, spinach, and some kind of mashed corn, mashed banana or rice. The fast food joints that Albert had seen in the city served chicken that was too greasy for his comfort. For my first meal in Kampala, we went to a Chinese restaurant.

We took a taxi into the countryside. The most noticeable marks along the road were red hills of dirt that were about the height of a person. The taxi driver told me they were created by termites.

Upon arrival in Nkokonjeru, we were greeted by...well...nobody. Our contact, Moses, whom I had tried to get in touch with many times prior to our arrival, turned out to be back in Kampala. None of the colleagues that worked in the credit union in that town knew we were coming. So we turned to our next best option: find the RASD, the hostel we were going to stay at.

Ignitious, the charming fellow who understands my English without me needing to slow down my speech, gave us a tour of the town. We spent most of the tour walking around the hospital, where we anticipate we'll be doing some of our work this summer. The medical fees were listed near the cashier's window. You can get a minor operation for 10,000 shillings ($4), major operations for 35,000 shillings (roughly $14), and a week's stay at the hospital for malaria treatment for 68,000 shillings (roughly $28). Sadly, most people here in this town have trouble affording hospital treatment, so we were told. And this cost of treatment leads to problems with retaining trained medical staff, since they consider their wages to be too low to be worth staying in this town.

You Can't Go Home Again

After a holiday in Tanzania and Kenya (which I might write about here), I returned to Nkokonjeru to do some combination of picking up my extra bags, wrapping up work, and visiting people. Things have changed already!

The first was at least a little expected. Much like a college student returning home for the holidays hoping just for a few nights in her own bed and to do some free laundry only to find that her room has been redecorated, I found that my room at the guesthouse had been reappropriated. Since I placed the things I was giving away laid out on the desk and floor of my room when I initially left, my room became the giveaway room. It's currently strewn with odds and ends like leftover sunscreen and tools, though the current guesthouse occupants also still use it as a movie room.

Second, the SACCO has hired a fourth employee! Congratulations, Martha.

Third, there is a fence smack in the middle of the path I usually use as a shortcut. :(

Even Kampala has changed! The Shell gas station I usually use as my landmark for getting of the matatu to Red Chilli is now some other brand of petrol station. I keep forgetting what the new name is, but it's something green and yellow.

Life marches on. The return to Nkokonjeru has been really good, though of course all the work-related things were behind schedule (TIA).

I added a last few photos to the album. Unfortunately, I seem to have lost my flash drive en route, so it may be a while longer before we can post all the pictures that I took off of David's computer.

Heehyun in Ugandan Dress

Weekend In and Around Nkokonjeru

Alexis came to visit this weekend, and in her honor we explored the area around Nkokonjeru a little more thoroughly this weekend. After a leisurely breakfast complete with french press/cafetiere (there are some Brits here now, so my vocabulary is expanding), we took a long walk out to Lake Victoria guided by Abraham, an American who's been in Nkokonjeru for a year now.

Though Lake Victoria's more touristy destinations aren't too easy for us to reach, the edge of the lake near Kikwayi is only about an hour's walk, more if you're as slow as we were. We headed down the dirt roads to finally arrive at a little fishing village that couldn't have had more than two dozen residents. Most people don't actually stay in the village, but go down there in the mornings to fish.

Some of the fishermen agreed to take a few of us out in a boat for a short ride. The boat couldn't fit more than 4 of us, so we drew straws for the privilege. Heehyun, David, and I all lucked out, plus Byron, one of our new British friends.

Right to left: Byron, David, Jade

The lake was a pleasure to ride on, and I could have happily been rowed around it all day. Byron and I tried to knock the boat over, much to Heehyun's dismay. At last, though, it was time to go in--probably for the best, since most of us forgot to put on sunscreen before leaving and no one was completely unburned after the day was over.

We hadn't actually done any fishing the first time out, which we had expected to do. Since lunch time was drawing near and there wasn't any other prospect of food nearby, we asked the fishermen to take us out again to actually catch some fish. This time, they could only take two, so Amy, our other new British friend, and I went.

The fisherman used a net to catch the fish, rotating the net through the water. Every once in a while the part of the net that came out would have a fish, and he would untangle it and throw it at our feet. We were just commenting on how lifeless the fish seemed when the fish started jumping around at Amy's feet, startling us both.

When we'd caught 6, we came back in. The fishermen said it would take about 45 minutes to cook the fish and rice for us, so we settled in to wait. They put us in the local church, which had just enough seats for us, and the local pastor came in to fill the wait by talking to us about Uganda's manifold problems.

Heehyun, David, and Amy

We ate the delicious food with our hands. When we were done, we got a group picture with the people who had so generously opened their village to us.

Back Row: Alexis, Abraham, Amy, Byron, David; Front: locals + Heehyun

The next day, Alexis and I hiked to the top of the cell phone tower and back. When we arrived, we came bearing pineapple only to find the rest of our friends in an epic Settlers of Catan game. We cut up the pineapple and watched for a while before Abraham arrived, suggesting we go out to Ssezibwa Falls.

We took a long, very dusty boda ride out to Ssezibwa. I'm told the dust on my face was particularly amusing, but after being made fun of for a couple of seconds I found a way to clean it off.

The falls were beautiful and peaceful, if not the most impressive landmark in Uganda.

After appreciating them from afar, we climbed to the top and watched the water tumbling down.

While waiting for some more bodas to take us back, we could smell vanilla being prepared nearby. Evidently, there was a big vanilla boom a few years ago when the vanilla crop in Madagascar was interrupted by outside events, but most of the farmers in Uganda who switched to vanilla missed the boom. Unfortunately, we couldn't find the source of the vanilla scent, though we did find some farmers who were growing it.

The bodas took us back to Nkokonjeru at last, and though I thought I had escaped the dust it turned out I still had it all over my face. A very busy weekend, though we stayed in the village (more or less).

More pictures from the weekend up here: https://picasaweb.google.com/Jade.Lamb/DMLIUganda

Survey Piloting

I’ve been piloting a survey for the agricultural loans—going out and asking people the survey questions before starting the survey properly in order to see if the way we are asking the questions is actually generating answers. There have been a few pitfalls.

First of all, going up to anybody’s house and asking the questions was only partially successful because most of those people hadn’t taken out loans or banked anywhere, so we couldn’t ask any of the loan history or financial literacy questions. It was preferable to go to SACCO members, but nearly all the contact information we have is out of date. Finding people is much more difficult than expected—right now I’m waiting for a woman who said she would meet us (me and Jackie, who is translating and guiding me around to people’s houses).

(random Nkokonjeru picture, just for fun)

Secondly, the survey can’t be piloted properly if Jackie, who translates for me, isn’t reading the questions just as she wrote them when she originally translated the questions. I’ve been pointing this out to Jackie, but this usually is met with the protestation that she’s asking the same question. While this may be true, there is a difference between asking the same question and reading the question exactly as it is written—which of course we hope that the people implementing the survey next month will be doing. She’s been a lot better lately, though. Today I definitely noticed her correcting herself from asking the question informally to reading exactly what she had written. This was after she launched into a long clarification of the question and I stopped the interview to ask her to write down her clarification so that future interviewers, who might not know as much about the issue as she does, can ask the question in the same way. Small improvements.

(Interlude: the woman finally showed up, just as the SACCO was closing, so we did the interview.)

Third, people do not like the way we ask questions. “What is an interest rate?” gets the answer “I know what it is.” “How many varieties of matoke do you grow?” gets a list of the varieties. How many times gets often, etc. Of course, that is the very point of a pilot survey.

(another just-for-fun Nkokonjeru picture)

My next strategy is to do the survey with people who come to make deposits. Unfortunately, I won’t get to do this until Monday, since there is a burial tomorrow afternoon for one of our board members and then Jackie will be in Entebbe, barring further surprises, Friday.

4th of July

Happy post-4^th of July! We celebrated the 4^th with a little village party, which only the other foreigners actually came to (the Ugandans said “yes” in the way that meant “no”). We only had three Americans in attendance, equaled by the number of Brits, plus a German and of course a Korean.

Lacking hamburger meat or hot dogs, we turned to another entrée for modern American cuisine: fajitas. We used chapattis bought in town instead of making our own tortillas, but we also had corn and tomato salad, guacamole, rice, vegetables, and fajita-style meat. We moved the feast outside so that it would feel more like a barbeque. Instead of watermelon, we had pineapple for dessert. Delicious.

We told the story of America’s fight for independence, and this also led into the story of Thanksgiving. Other than Oktoberfest, we failed to get much information about other national holidays. We couldn’t find any fireworks, though all of our lanterns were lit since we were on the third day of a power outage. Accordingly, we were also cooking by headlamp and lantern light.

We took a moment (but only one) to reflect on what it means to be an American, which is always more vivid when you’re in another country. We bored everyone else to tears talking about regional American accents and 10-year-old political battles. Though we often see other Americans, it’s nice to actively take a day to reflect on American history, for better or for worse, and feel patriotic about the aspects of it we can be proud of.

By the way, the Ugandan date of independence is October 9, so we’ll miss that and any celebration that accompanies it.