DMLI in Uganda
Friday, May 11, 2012
Welcome to Uganda 2012
Thursday, August 18, 2011
You Can't Go Home Again
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
Weekend In and Around Nkokonjeru
Friday, July 8, 2011
Survey Piloting
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 It was preferable to go to SACCO members, but nearly all the contact information we have is out of date.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.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
4th of July
Happy post-4th of July! We celebrated the 4th 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.