Mzungu! Boda?

You know that feeling when you want to do something just because someone told you not to do it? I have that feeling every time I walk on the streets of Kampala. Even though you can get anywhere in the city on foot, I’ve really wanted to ride the boda bodas, the crazy motorcycle taxis that weave in and out of traffic lanes, speeding down Kampala Road as they dodge both cars and pedestrians alike. It doesn’t take long to see that for them, traffic laws (and common sense) are mere suggestion. Roads are rollings black seas of endless automotive possibilities.There’s moving traffic at the next intersection? We might get hit if we just go through? Okay, hold on. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that part of operating any vehicle in Kampala involves defensive driving against the bodas.

The word on the street is that roughly half the patients in the city’s hospitals at any given time are there because of boda boda accidents. A guy at our hostel said that there are about five boda boda related fatalities a day in Kampala. If the drivers don’t like you, they’ve been known to lean a little too far one way or the other so that the nasty nuisance in their backseat gets hit by, say, a car’s mirror or a conveniently-placed pole. There are stories about the drivers dropping off their mzungu passengers in back alleys at night so they can rob them of all their clothes and shillings and beat them senseless if they don’t have enough. And those aren’t warnings from paranoid travelers with lots of pocket change. No, those are the things I’ve heard from straight-faced Ugandans who said they walk if they can and avoid boda bodas after dark like the plague.

So when Jade, Heehyun and I were in Kampala on Saturday and split up to run some errands, I didn’t think I would ride a boda boda. The voice of reason in the back of my mind told me it wasn’t the greatest idea. Besides, I’ve ridden motorcycles before. Why were these any different? But when you have that itch to do something that you’re not supposed to do, it doesn’t take much to push you in the wrong direction. It’s like a plant. It takes just a little water to get that seedling to grow, and that seedling was definitely there. As soon as Heehyun tossed out the idea of taking a boda boda to get lunch at 1000 Cups of Coffee, well, that was the end of that.

A couple minutes later, the two of us were cruising around Kampala on our very first boda boda. Our attempts to bargain a cheaper price from the driver had failed, and Heehyun telling the guy “Safety, please” set quite an interesting tone. I was half-expecting to fall off the back when he ripped out into the street and did a quick U-turn across a couple lanes of traffic. Against all odds, our driver heeded our plea to make it to the other side of town without any scrapes or metal objects lodged in our skulls. He actually went pretty slow by comparison to some of the boda bodas I’ve seen, which was great because it made it that much easier to get on the second one later that afternoon.

So there Heehyun and I are again with this driver wearing a black leather jacket and racing sunglasses. Heehyun’s “safety, please” trick didn’t work as well the second time, but I have to say it was a lot more fun going a bit faster and we still made it there sans body mangling. I guess it’s not all that great that we had such good experiences because now we joke that it’s all just overhyped.

I’ve really become so much more comfortable here than when we first arrived. Looking back, I think I had a little air of apprehension everywhere we went. I wasn’t so much worried that we were going to find ourselves face to face with the Ugandan Godfather, but we were in a pretty unfamiliar place and there are so many taboos that just don’t translate from culture to culture; it’s easy to walk right into an otherwise avoidable sticky situation. After having been here for a bit, I’ve noticed that I’m much more at ease walking around Kampala with my big satchel of mzungu goodies at my side. I’m okay with going against the boda boda horror stories and taking a joy ride with a guy whose name I can’t pronounce. I hope by the end of the summer, I’ve done at least a few more things that two weeks ago, when I stepped off that plane, would have completely surprised me.

Maybe for now though I should stop trying my chances and take a break from the motorcycles. You know, just commit to walking around the city? We’ll find out this weekend when we go back for the Kampala Street Art Festival. Seeing all the Ugandans have crazy fun boda boda adventure time won’t make it easy.

Moths keep falling into our food!

But you don’t really get freaked out.

Here, you just go ‘Oh, that’s bad’ and ‘Get him out, so we can try this part of chicken now.’

I keep being surprised at myself on how I am actually adjusting well to the life here. Not to say that the life here is very different from whe

re I used to be either the America or in Korea, it’s just that the light and water go out for a pretty decent amount of times, and going to toilet is not too pleasant to do. The key, here, is trying not to ask why the people and the system here are being so inefficient and uncomfortable (in our standard/society), but you need to just look at how they are dealing with those times. If you look

at them, they just don’t rush, and there is nothing to hurry/worry about. Try to do things the way people do here, and I don’t need to question whys. It’s just the way it is to people living here.

Whenever I go to toilet where there is a hole on the ground and you need to aim pretty accurately, I just laugh at myself making so much efforts but still failing. Whenever I need to rely on my laptop monitor’s light or headlamp because light in my room is off, I just enjoy light outside my room and appreciate it being so bright there. Whenever I see a lizard or moth on curtain, I don’t scream/yell/go crazy, but I just wish it does not get stuck in our house and find its way to out-it does not mean that I love them climbing on my body though. I screamed earlier some day when I saw three birds flying in our hallway, though. Out of surprising fear.

It is definitely a happy thing to see some improvements and changes from me. Besides Luganda, in which I can say a bunch of food and some greetings now, I learned how to not interrupt with the way it is around me. Still, I wouldn’t mind if moth flies safely out of our house and finds another nice spot to finish its life. Weelaba! (Bye!)

***Humongous jackfruit!!! It's so sweet and sticky.

The Tensions of Technology

The pressing concern of much development work is harnessing the power of technology to accelerate development. Records can be kept more accurately if they are digitized; transactions can be done more speedily with computers; more people can be reached through mobile phone services. Like all things, however, technology does not exist in a vacuum, but instead in a web of other countervailing circumstances. Digital devices are prime targets for theft; computer literacy education can hardly keep up with ever-changing operating systems and software packages; prevalent dust is incompatible with delicate computers designed to sit in offices rather than be toted around villages on a motorcycle. But most of all, how do you harness computer technology for running a business when electricity sources are reliably unreliable?

Batteries on phones, computers, and modems can last a few hours or even a couple of conservative days. If power outages extend any further, though, things begin to collapse. Suddenly, digital records of customers’ bank balances can’t be reached, mobile phone transactions can’t be processed, and e-mail access is out of the question. When these are tertiary aspects of an organization, life goes on. When they are central, business grinds to a halt. Load shedding—planned power outages to decrease the strain of electricity demand on the grid—is prevalent and long in Nkokonjeru, an obstacle no American business would have to plan around these days.

Advocating digitization of records, as we’ve been doing with the SACCO for years now, is a worthwhile goal. It has all the advantages listed above, and the added benefit of allowing the DMLI to continue to work with and monitor progress at the SACCO from far away Durham during the long months of August through April. There’s a lot, though, to take into consideration. Should we downgrade the OS on the new computer to be the same as the other one, or would that cause more problems later on? It’s harder to go through paper records than digital ones, but how quickly would digital ledgers be abandoned after July? We can formulate plans for all kinds of new digital services, ranging from mobile banking to internet cafes, but each new ambition must include room for a generator in its budget.

It’s important to remember that the obstacles to development can’t be encapsulated by a simple word like “poverty.” The systems in which societies, individuals, and organizations operate both limit and give opportunity for innovation. People working in sustainable development, where there is emphasis on non-electric innovations like local solar power, biogas stoves, and reed filtration systems, might know this best. Whatever the sector, though, innovative solutions must be tailored to the places in which they’ll be enacted.

And yes, this post is inspired by the fact that the power is out just as we’re thinking about digitizing records.

Oli otya?

Jendi. Gwe oli otya?

'Oli otya' is 'how are you' in Luganda. And as you guessed, it follows by 'Fine, thank you. And you?' there. Our summer in Uganda has been great so far, and the first few days in Nkokonjeru tell us that the rest will be awesome, too. Everything is green and blue here-maybe with some red(dirts) added though-, and the pineapple is so much better than back home. David is now addicted to avocados. He knows the price.

We happened to attend the swear-in ceremony of Nkokonjeru's mayor and the town council. It started from 10am in Ugandan time (which is 10:30am earliest but ended to be later than 11am actually) to 5pm, not that we stayed there until the end of the ceremony. It was happy crowd who kept chanting, shouting, and clapping when there was a new member swearing. We had some hard times making our ways out of there, but it was definitely meaningful to be there with town people.

After just setting off the interaction with SACCO and attending the ceremony on Monday, we have made some progresses on focus group questions and divided individual agendas. This has been a nice start off for this summer project, no doubt!

Kampala days

On our first real day in Kampala, Heehyun and I went to get cellphones with Jade. We took a taxi to the city center, but taxis in Uganda aren’t what they are in the U.S. Instead of little yellow sedans with three, maybe four real seats, taxis here are vans – not the type soccer-moms drive, but the ones you might see outside a warehouse or a hospital back home. I can’t tell you how many seats there truly are in it, but if there’s space, they’ll try to fit another passenger in. Seats fold up and down, swinging back and forth so that the room for people to move in and out is also used. You never want those seats though because they make you get out every time someone behind you needs to get off. The back right corner is prime. One man drives in the front right, seated next to more passengers. The conductor sits in the first row behind the driver, all the way to the left. He yells out to anyone and everyone as you drive down the street, trying to get more people to hop on. The driver honks the horn constantly to let people know that there’s space. And there’s almost always space (or more precisely, “space”).

The taxi dropped us off and we paid the conductor what came out to around 50 cents. Then,we were in the heart of Kampala. We walked around a bit, ran some errands, and did some shopping at Kampala’s one true mall, Garden City. As we were looking around, we found a Luganda-English phrasebook that we thought would be useful, so we bought it. It turns out the book is a reprint from 1904. It’s really useful if you want to request that your friends join you in hunting wild hog, but not so much for the modern traveler. Some of the “important phrases to know” are ridiculous. It’s definitely something I can return to every now and then for a good laugh, and sometimes you find a phrase that is actually useful. I think weebale (“thank you”) is in there somewhere, after the section on words you need to know to be able to hire a new servant.

That night, I ventured back to Entebbe to pick up my bags with Moses, a driver who works for the hostel. It took 3 ½ hours of fighting through deadlocked traffic, horns honking the entire time, and people turning their engines on and off in anticipation of a lengthy wait to get my bags, but we did. And I was happy. We went back to Red Chilli where Jade, Heehyun and I sat down for Red Chilli Pizza Night, freshly baked in the outdoor oven, and we ate it all under a thatched canopy. Heehyun had bought a pineapple earlier and it was the best pineapple I’d ever eaten (edit: until a few days later in Nkokonjeru). I had a mediocre first experience with some "curry" on the first night, but truth be told it turns out all the food here is really good. I haven't even used the hot sauce I brought yet.

The next day, it was a lot of the same – traveling around Kampala, seeing some of the unique places it has to offer. We ate breakfast at the hostel, walked around a bit as I tried to find a new phone battery (failure) and then sat down for lunch at this place called 1000 Cups of Coffee. They make all sorts of coffee blends that you wouldn’t expect, like mint and cinnamon. They essentially take every flavor of tea you’ve ever seen and do that with coffee. It’s good. Real good. Not to make this post all about food, but the food we ordered was also great too – curry with all sorts of fresh vegetables and beef. I had mixed spice coffee, which the barista suggested to me. We’ve already decided to go back the next time we’re in Kampala, if that’s any indication of how much we all liked it.

After lunch, we went across the street to an outdoor craft market. Almost every shop had the same things as the next one, but we still went through and looked at almost all of them. It was fun and we had time to kill. Every now and then you find something new. We all bought some form of traditional clothing – Jade and Heehyun bought dresses and I bought a shirt. I’m not sure when I’ll wear it but I plan to before the end of the summer. A picture is surely to follow.

Then we met up with Jade’s friend from Duke, Alexis, and went back to Garden City to check for a phone battery there (also failure). Instead, we sat down at a little café, killed a little bit more time and then headed over to the National Theater to get tickets for that night’s performance. In between getting tickets and the actual show, we grabbed dinner quickly at a nearby Indian restaurant. Then, we went back to the theater and watched a Ugandan dance group perform a really awesome show. Unfortunately, jetlag got the best of me a couple times and I dozed off, not because I was bored but because I guess I hadn’t slept as much as I should have. The parts I saw were great. I’m sure the parts I didn’t see were good too.

Afterward, we couldn’t find a “special hire” taxi (private car, not the crazy vans) to take us back to the hostel. We walked around a bit until we found a club where some were parked outside. We got back to Red Chilli shortly after and Jade, Heehyun and I parted ways upon arrival. The next day, we were leaving for Nkokonjeru, and all of us needed sleep.

Kulika!

David, Heehyun, and I all arrived this week in Kampala to a lively city, temperate weather, and crowded matatus. Kampala's a small city and a day's wandering around, running errands, gave us a good first taste of Uganda's beauty and bustle. We'll be heading down to Nkokonjeru on Sunday, and beginning work with the SACCO next week. We'll be blogging here on our continued adventures!

"Kulika" is a Luganda word meaning "I congratulate you on a safe journey/arrival."


Our first evening together in Kampala