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.

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

Baby goats!

Yesterday, two baby goats came out to world! They are already walking and chilling in a shade. Prossy named the boy (brown one) Motel and the girl (white one) Jean. The other goat is also expected to give birth-actually, she is granny of these babies-, so RASD will have lots of kids!

The hardest part of being here

Is not the toilets, lack of running water, strange food, sporadic electricity, language barriers, dust, parasites, bugs, or even the slow pace of work.

It is the drunk man who yells at Heehyun and I on the way to work in the mornings that Chinese people have small brains and starts following us until, hearing me yelling at the drunk, a passing boda driver intervenes while onlookers cackle in laughter. There’s nothing funny in this situation, and nonetheless it will happen again tomorrow.

My dear straight white men who complain about the children chanting "Mzungu": I feel no pity.

Picture Fix

Sooo...my blogger skills are not all I thought they were. It seems I've somehow been uploading pictures without them actually posting, which is not great in general but particularly confusing in posts that were intended to be pictures only. It's all fixed now, the updated entries can be found here:

http://dmli-uganda.blogspot.com/2011/06/in-our-ugandan-finery.html

http://dmli-uganda.blogspot.com/2011/06/by-mzungu.html

http://dmli-uganda.blogspot.com/2011/06/loans-for-fertilizer.html

The most productive ever

It is quite funny to post about being busy and productive right after the post about how it has been so hard to get things done, but I am just a type of person who crams for post uploading.. A little bit of understanding, please!

Anyway here we go.

After long weekend in Kampala and Entebbe, today has been the most productive, feel-good day throughout the summer. Actually, there were many other days that we had most of our stuffs done in the office, but visiting other places continuously, making arrangements for next meeting, and having a set of plans on my memo just make me feel more like real business, or working, person. After two weeks of us asking Moses if he had contacted the town council for our non-member focus group or the follow-ups on financial literacy class, we finally made some progress by visiting the town council and getting some useful contacts for our future focus groups. Also, we are waiting to meet Jackie, who is going to help us out with translating Jade's survey form and my evaluation question forms. I hope she can also help us visiting houses in terms of translation and finding a way.

We have three focus groups planned this weekend: two on Wednesday and one on Thursday. Hopefully, we can finish them this week and have two more next week; by then, we are already almost done. With our focus groups with non-members, agricultural loan risk assessment surveys, financial literacy tests and evaluation, and probably digitalizing the SACCO data, we will be busier-definitely good busy. So, wish us luck! Weeraba!

Football

It’s started to be an annual tradition: the Bazungu v. the local league. Highly anticipated in the day between its announcement over the town loudspeakers and the 5 pm game time, the Bazungu v. Baganda soccer/football game attracted a huge crowd last Thursday. Next time we want to hold financial literacy classes, we should lure people to the pitch (field) with promises of funny Bazungu running around flailing at footballs.

You know it’s a crowded village when you can front an entire 11-person team made up of aid workers. We should have had 3 SACCO interns, 2 Engineers Without Borders kids (also Duke affiliates), a returning SACCO intern/visitor, a Peace Corps Volunteer, a Red Cross Volunteer, an International Institute of Tropical Agriculture employee, and a physical therapist. Sadly, a few people were out of town, and that only would have added up to 10 anyway. We filled in with a few honorary Bazungu, including the SACCO manager and a few volunteers from the opposing team. By halftime, our team was definitely more local than foreign.

I was one of the people who got kicked out at halftime (this could be a reflection of my poor soccer skills, Ugandan disbelief that women would want to play soccer, or the fact that I wasn’t very secretive about the fact that I don’t know how to play soccer). Until then, I had played position #7. I don’t know what that translates to in American soccer terminology, but it wasn’t defense, the position I played in day camp when I was 10. #1 is goalie, and as the numbers get higher, so does the amount you’re supposed to be running around.

Though our original average soccer skill level was pretty low, between the friendly nature of the game, a large halftime infusion of skill, some luck, and the fact that we legitimately had a few pretty decent players, we tied, 3-3. I didn’t really watch the game very closely after exile because something far more exciting was happening offstage: adorable children were mobbing me!

I joked that I was going to kidnap one, but after the game he led me to his house and I began to joke (mainly to myself, because he couldn’t understand me) that I was the one being kidnapped. We had 3 words in common: Mzungu, yes, and ball.

The game was great fun and a success. Even if we can’t manage to hold another this summer so that those who missed the first one entirely can join in the fun, Nkokonjeru can look forward to another next year!

Made in China

The Economist has written a lot of articles recently about China’s investments in Africa, including articles about the prevalence of Chinese entrepreneurs in Africa. I got it in an overly-intellectual way that had to do with flow of money and tolerance for corruption. Then, I arrived in Uganda and started seeing the physical manifestations of it everywhere.

You can pick up any piece of plastic in America and read “Made in China” stamped on the bottom, but here it’s more overt. Chinese characters are everywhere; walking through the taxi park in Kampala last week, we saw toilet tissue being sold in stacks, all labeled in Chinese rather than English. Half the matatus (minibus taxis) have Chinese on their sides, showing their origins. English lettering is expected: it’s the language of government thanks to the British, and the alphabet of Luganda thanks to the missionaries. The occasional “halal” sign in Arabic is old hat and targeted at the relatively small immigrant population. Somehow, seeing Chinese everywhere is more startling. It’s a reminder that globalization is a dynamic force, constantly rearranging the relationships of not just political bodies but also cultures and peoples.

It’s hard, though, to imagine what significance this has for people’s everyday lives. The development projects in Nkokonjeru are funded by international NGOs and governance bodies, American universities, and African governments. The fashion is a hybrid of African and Western styles; the radio plays Bugandan and American music; the televisions show Nigerian, Argentinian (dubbed into English), and American shows; the theaters play American movies; the bookshops sell books only in English; and no one has any idea what the characters on the sides of the matatus mean.

“China” is an abstract—though “America” is too, rich and peopled with blondes and rap stars. All Asia is China (Heehyun could not convince one bored teenager she was Korean) and all Asian-looking people are Chinese (my well-practiced spiel about how America is a nation of immigrants is only about 50% effective, though that beats its 0% efficacy in America). Not too many people could point to either country on a map, they just know that both are somehow very important to the world.

What is our role here?

Is it just an internship? Like the ones you can see in any kind of job, who help the company and learn the work, preparing for a future career? Or is it a volunteer like PCV who serve the communities with some organizations. Or researcher? I have seen some grad students (PhD or MD) coming here to get data for their research and project. They act quite independently from the organization.

I have been asking this question to myself recently quite a lot. If internship, I can do whatever the organization thinks helpful to itself and requires me to do. If volunteer, I am inclined more to the benefit of community and people in the village, for their sake. If researcher, I focus on getting the information helpful to myself. Well, I don't have to pick only one from them, but I guess I'm more like mixture of internship and volunteer. The reason why I'm asking this question is that I'm not sure about how much ownership I need to have here with projects and improvements here at SACCO.

Only three people have been working in SACCO, and since George stopped showing up for his surgery, the understaffed issue has been worse. When there were three staffs, one cashier, one loan officer, and one manager, it was not bad although George, our poor cashier, had to stay in the front desk for a whole time from 9 (or sometimes 8:30) to 4. I think he doesn't have time for lunch because people keep coming depositing or withdrawing money during the whole time, so he has to wait until there are no people in the front and eat food that he brought from home. Helen sometimes helps George with his work, but she has her own job to keep track of loans (incoming and outgoing ones), visiting loan applicants and check their requirements. Moses, our manager, is doing all the rest of works I guess. He meets with people (not all the customers but mostly important(?) people) and runs the business. Anyway, the point is that there is not much space for these people to work on extra projects with us-actually only Moses is working with us and Helen is focusing on SACCO work: both loan and cashier. They know we are bringing some mzungu power to this bank in addition to some new ideas to improve here, but we still need their opinion and help to develop those ideas into actual projects. We spent one whole semester, brainstorming different kinds of projects that we can pursue during this summer. And we knew that two months is not enough time to bring a change, but I thought it would be enough time to at least discuss and start on some grounds, of course on the assumption that it's easy to put into action with Moses. But it turned out it's not that simple and easy. Here are my conclusion about why it is so difficult and slow to do things here.

First of all, as I said above, Moses is too busy. He has to look after whole SACCO business with help of Helen, which means running this company in addition to sitting at the cashier at the times when Helen is absent for lunch or on-site loan examination. As a result, even though there are some projects that will help SACCO to expand and reach out to more business partners, most of the works have been on us. Of course, doing research online and contacting different fields of people was expected to be our job here because we are more familiar with surfing internet and stuffs, but I guess I expected Moses to be more active and engaged with our projects. But I understand him being already very busy with SACCO works, so I'm not blaming him.

Second, there are definitely different priorities between him and us. His focus is on increasing membership. Our focus is not only on helping SACCO but also on helping the community. Giving them more access to money. This is also goes with the point that I realized a gap between how we think and how he thinks microfinance (or SACCO) should function. Microfinance has been known for a perfect cure for poverty. An unparalleled method to drive away poverty. It has been recognized for its novel idea to give loans for the poor who could not be credited for loans. But here, SACCO is more like a local bank to Moses or other people in the village. By this reason, some projects are pushed to be the last priorities to him.

For example, financial literacy class. Financial illiteracy was one of the problems that the first interns pointed out the need in the town, so the second interns (last year) started the financial literacy class. It was successful and apparently Moses was a good teacher by what people have said. After the first class last summer, there have been two more classes held by Moses himself and decent number of people have participated them. To see how the classes were going, we decided to do some follow-ups on the participants of last classes, but to reach out those people, we definitely need some help from Moses in terms of getting the address (the recorded address of members are mostly just the name of town but no more specific details) and translation. Also, we are planning to have one more class while we are here to make sure we can implement some improvements that were made after follow-up evaluations. Arranging this needs Moses because after all he will be teaching the class and communicating with the people after we are gone. I've been in charge of following-up the participants and holding another class, but I'm still waiting for Moses to get the actual address by calling their phones. We all agreed that it seems like his last priority among the agenda lists because the class means after-work hours and no one welcomes that. Also, the class does not bring much money to compensate for that, so there is weaker business motivation. But the class has been one of the successful projects from last year interns, and we really want this to continue happening. So I will do my best to push this project no matter what. After all, this not only helps people to be sensitized but also raises SACCO's reputation and engagement socially with people.

In Our Ugandan Finery

Focus Groups

A few lessons:

1. In Uganda, time is relative. We’ve been planning focus groups for 1:30 and not a one of the three we’ve held so far has started before 3:00. This, while predictable, actually adds another layer of difficulty: at what point is it no longer worthwhile waiting for another person who might just be very, very late?

2. No one likes Coke. I’m actually kind of shocked. (Coke here is delicious and made with real sugar instead of corn.) We serve soda at the focus groups and no one yet has taken a single Coke. I may need to drink them myself just so we can return the bottles and get our deposit back.

3. The SACCO has no reliable way of getting in touch with a huge percentage of its membership. Application forms don’t even have a space for phone numbers, though most people have them now, and no one comes in to update their account information. We can contact about half of the inactive SACCO members.

Most importantly, the message we’re getting from the people who do participate in the focus group is that no one actually knows what services the SACCO offers. People with means don’t know about the long-term savings account and people without them don’t know about ledger fees. No one knows what interest rates or dividends are. Loans are easier to come by than many participants believe. Of course, some people have unrealistic expectations: SACCO is not getting an ATM this year or next, and people will always need some kind of collateral or guarantee in order to get loans. However, it is clear while that SACCO has done an admirable job attracting people to its services, once people are enrolled, SACCO has not done its job educating people about how they can get the best use out of the organization.

Bye Mzungu!

Of all the things that have ever been shouted to me on the street, I mind “Mzungu” (and its other Bantu equivalents) least. In America, we would think this rude beyond imagining, a barefaced contradiction of the noble lie of a colorblind society. Here, for me, it’s a reminder that our foreigness in Nkokonjeru is privileged, that no matter how good our intentions or hard our labors there is always a degree of voyeurism in short-term work, and that there is a reason (historical and exploitative) why visitors are viewed as oddities, wealthy, or targets.

Nkokonjeru has a platoon of aid workers here at any given time, staying for anywhere between 2 weeks to 3 years. The longer you stay, the more the community should know you: at a certain point, you’d like the children in your neighborhood to yell (if they must yell) your name rather than your foreigness. If your stay lasts months upon months, you can learn the language, build real relationships, and attempt as much you can to be a member of a community. Still, though, you are privileged: you chose to come here and you will leave when your contract is up.

For shorter stays, it is arrogant to believe that you can be accepted as a member of the community rather than as a transitory oddity. Why learn to recognize the Westerners (they all look the same anyway) you’ll never speak to when they’ll just leave after 2 months or 3, only to be replaced by another few? Better to refer to “Mzungu” or “Abazungu” than to try and keep them straight. People here know what we sometimes forget: our time here is short and we are both stranger and less unique than we would like to think.

Of course, as soon as it's not a small child doing the yelling, things change. It's still pretty rude for one adult to randomly yell at another on the street.

Being (o)mzungu here

Culture shock is everywhere. It happens in every transition you make from place to place. It's even in one country, although the extent you feel will be less radical and easy to adjust (or ignore). Coming to Uganda was actually not much different from my transition to America from Korea. Whether the place is developed or developing is not really important, but how much you are ready and willing to accept new ideas and new rules is much about everything that matters. Once I learned that I should not be freaked out or judgmental about new custom, it becomes easier to discover that people in Uganda (or any other places) have more in common than different with us. The only difference is that they just have lived that way. It's just the way it has been, it is, and it will be.

Saying so, though, does not mean I have no curiosities or questions popping up everyday. There are always some parts that need explanation. Not like 'Why are they doing so?', but more like I want to listen to their stories.

"Bye mzungu." is one. No matter we are walking toward or alongside the kids, they just yell at us 'Bye, mzungu.' There's no 'Hi' or 'Hello, mzungu,' but it's always 'Bye.' I'm not trying to make this sound more intriguing anyway, but this is actually out of pure curiosity.

"Give me money." is another thing. I just do not wish to hear kids saying it. Kids like us, or at least, they like to be around and observe foreign people. Whenever we pass some school, kids just run out of school and follow all the way to wherever we end. I'm pretty sure all teachers would hate us. Anyway, there are some kids who just push their hands toward us and say 'Give me money' as though they are saying something innocent with no intention like 'Bye, mzungu.' It's just bold and guiltless or shameless that I feel like I somehow owe them money and need to give some. Apparently, many of kids just learned this from their older siblings or even their parents by hearing them so many times from young. I've heard and seen many parents push their kids, even very little ones, to ask money to those on the street in Kampala. When I'm in a matatu on my way back to Nkokonjeru and the vehicle stops, some girls usually come beside window on my side and put their hands together in front of me. Also, women on street put their children in front of them when asking for some favorable donations.

There must be many different stories beyond them acting these ways, but poverty should hit one of them I assume. And this sometimes creates an invisible wall between foreigners and locals. Difference in wealth between us and them can be an excuse for acting innocent while asking for money. Also, we, foreigners, can be blamed for giving out one-time help, gifts, too easily to locals. No matter what lies as reason, it is really sad we are still not looking through each other as we are. I feel like there are always pre-formed description on each of us. We have some prejudices and opinions that were already formed toward one another part.

Not getting light or using outhouse is just a simple thing. You just go with it and bear with it. You will become used to whatever, but this thing is the real cultural barrier, the one that we need to overcome.

Martyrs' Day, and Religion in Uganda

Friday was Martyrs' Day in Uganda. Though there seem to be some special celebrations to commemorate it in Kampala, to most people this is just another bank holiday, like Memorial Day or President's Day. Now, since we work at a bank, between bankers' hours and the word "bank" being in "bank holiday," we clearly didn't have to go to work that day. Our consequent weekend journey to the Crater Lakes was very well documented (see Pictures 2011 link in the sidebar), and I'm pretty sure David and Heehyun will be writing about it.

Martyrs' Day, according to the font of all knowledge (Wikipedia), commemorates the murder of a group of Ugandan saints by a Ugandan king in the mid-19th century. Unsurprisingly, Uganda is a very religious country and a high percentage of its population is Catholic. You can hardly walk a few feet in Nkokonjeru without seeing another church or church-sponsored project. The only other credit union in the area, Caritas, is a church-sponsored organization. Many organizations, including the government, may be secular in the minds of their participants but you would never start or end a meeting or event without a prayer.

Mosque in Fort Portal

What's interesting, though, is the relative interchangeability of religions. At one meeting last week, we bent our heads for the prayer to begin and I fully expected to understand exactly zero of what was being said--but then the man leading it began with "Bismi Allahu Rahmani Rahim ..." and proceeded with a Muslim prayer in Arabic. About 12% of the population is Muslim, and it's not uncommon to see people wearing traditionally Muslin clothing. More than half the people in the room were Christian, but nobody minded. A prayer is a prayer. I certainly can't yet understand the nuances of the religious relationships in town and I would never presume to say that there is complete harmony and tolerance, but things have come a long way since Muslim traders and Christian missionaries competed for converts in the 1800s.

Loans for Fertilizer

Moses explaining the project

The SACCO is currently developing a pilot program for agricultural loans. The loans give farmers—here, everyone is a farmer—money to buy fertilizer for matoke crops. Matoke, the staple food in Uganda, looks like a banana but is starchier. Though most people grow it primarily for personal consumption, there’s a large outside market for the crop that could make any surpluses quite profitable. Fertilizer that is specifically targeted to each farmer’s soil quality could improve the yield of a given matoke plant several times over. Before offering the loans as a product, however, the SACCO wants to run a pilot assessing local yield increases and profit increases, as well as expected default rates, to best structure its interest rates and loan repayment timetables.

Rather than laboriously counting the actual matoke at each harvest, the SACCO has an ingenious method of very accurately predicting plant yield. If a plant’s stem is measured during flowering, there is a direct relationship between the girth of the stem and the number of matoke it will produce. Part of the pilot program, then, is recruiting volunteers to measure matoke girth on the pilot participants’ farms over the course of the next year. The measurements will then allow the SACCO to predict how much additional matoke each investment of fertilizer creates, and then use market prices to estimate how much additional profit a farmer could make with a fertilizer loan of a certain amount.

The SACCO held a meeting this week with potential volunteer recruits. About 9 people showed up, more than the SACCO needs, although of course we also expect some attrition. Everyone was really enthusiastic, though it’s unclear that they understand what their duties will be yet. It was a promising start to a program that’s a new venture for the SACCO, in high demand locally, and has a lot of potential to benefit both the farmers and the bank.

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