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.

Pictures

Be sure to check out our photo album! We've been updating all summer with pictures from Nkokonjeru and around. The link at the right to the Summer 2011 photos directs to our album. It's also here:

https://picasaweb.google.com/Jade.Lamb/DMLIUganda