First week in Uganda

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FYI: I will be periodically posting pictures on my yahoo site in a folder cleverly titled "Uganda"
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/leslie_628/my_photos

I arrived in Entebbe, Uganda on June 28, coincidentally my 28th birthday, which I celebrated the previous weekend while in London. Some quick background: I am here for 3 months working on a USAID/ JSI (http://www.jsi.com/JSIInternet) Project called UPHOLD (Uganda Program for Holistic & Human Development - http://www.upholduganda.org). It’s a five-year project that ends in September 2007, which supports education, health and HIV/AIDS interventions and programs throughout 29 districts in Uganda. I am working in the M&E (monitoring & evaluation) department. My terms of reference are pretty wide and we are still discussing the specifics of my responsibilities but generally speaking my responsibilities are: revising and editing survey materials; data analysis to measure progress in order to direct programming; evaluating local NGOs working with UPHOLD in the field and their respective programs; and writing and editing a report presenting the findings of the 2006 survey which will be conducted in August 2006 as well as writing articles with the aim of getting them published. I will be working out of the UPHOLD office in Kampala with some periodic travel to the field.

I am still learning a lot and trying to figure this place out, a task that I will not complete as any country and society is infinitely more complex and diverse than a few months can allow for understanding- but I am getting to know the city and people bit by bit. Ugandans are extremely nice and sharing people, I am not harassed on the streets, when someone begs for money they are not persistent at all (nothing like I’ve encountered elsewhere) and will leave you alone at one shake of the head “no”. Kampala is a modern and large city, with a main downtown comprised of luxury hotels, nice restaurants, bars, high-rise office buildings, and street level shops. It is clean though dusty and with horrendous traffic and the associated smell of exhaust, but only along the primary roads. There are squatter homes, mud or concrete homes with corrugated steel roofs, but they are well hidden from the main road but can be found along the outskirts and scatted throughout and among the various neighborhoods that surround downtown Kampala, neighborhoods situated on the seven hills that characterize this city. For instance, I am living in Ntinda and working in Nakawa, both are only a 20-minute taxi ride from the center of town. There are no real traffic laws per se and people drive offensively as needed to maneuver through the crowds. I would never imagine trying to drive here, as I am sure I would cause an accident, plus they drive on the left side of the road, which is enough to confuse me without the intense traffic. If you don’t have a car people get around in mini-buses, which are called matatus, or you can pay to ride a bodaboda which is a motorcycle or motorbike, you have to ride without a helmet of course and they drive between and through the cars as if it’s the safest thing in the world. English is the official language but everyone people in Kampala speaks both English and Luganda, there are many other tribal languages throughout the country but I don’t know what they all are yet. Even though everyone speaks English they say certain things differently which I am getting used to and trying to mimic, such as when you are introduced to someone or someone is inviting you in the say “you are welcome” and what asking you how you are they ask “how is the day?” The food is actually pretty good, in fact gourmet compared to what we ate in The Gambia. The staple, served with all traditional meals, is matoke. Matoke is boiled & mashed plantains that are steamed in banana leaves and have the consistency of very thick and gooey mashed potatoes. They are usually served with beans in a sauce or a peanut sauce. Otherwise there is rice (obviously), meat (usually chicken or goat), beans, vegetables and lots of cabbage. There is a large Indian population here and therefore Indian food is very popular and easy to find, and really delicious. What I find odd is that although we have cereal in the home I am staying each morning they pour hot milk over it, which I am not sure my taste buds will ever quite warm up to. Uganda suffers in terms of electricity- half the homes receive power one day and the other half the next day and so on and so forth. On days when your home does not have power you either use a generator or make do with candles.

One of the most difficult and necessary adjustments is always switching from American time to the “time” of whatever country you are in, and I am not referring to jet lag and time differences. People here do not keep time, i.e. they are never on time. Everyone on the sidewalks, walks very slow, people come and go without any real acknowledgement of time. It’s a particularly difficult adjustment coming from New York, where I feel like everything should have been done five minutes ago. But it is a nice change, although a frustrating one to make, even though I do find myself walking faster than everyone else and cutting my own path on the sidewalk as I go about town. There are so many things to adjust to that I am not even sure I am aware of them all, but the concept of time is the most immediately obvious and one that I am actively working on. Although I have hardly been here a week and it’s a little ambitious to think my internal clock will be able to adjust that quickly. What is funny is that I have heard on various occasions people refer to time as their enemy.

When I arrived the office sent one of their vehicles and drivers to pick me up which was a saving grace after about 20 hours of travel, seven of which I was sitting next to the guy who insisted on hogging the arm rest and jabbing his elbow into me the entire plane ride- lovely. They dropped me off at Margaret’s home, where I am staying my first few weeks. She is the senior health advisor for UPHOLD. She was still at work when I arrived so I settled into my room and relaxed. That day we did not have power and the generator wasn’t working so when she returned about 9:00pm it was dark and we were squinting in the low light to greet each other. We sat for dinner, visited and then I crashed for some much needed sleep. (Side note, people eat dinner here about 10:00pm which is already been difficult for me to get accustomed to.) I am not sure anyone knew quite what to do with me my first few days, I wanted the time to relax, explore Kampala and begin to orient myself, but that was not quite how it went. They took me into the office on Thursday afternoon, where I checked my email and read the newspaper… not productive. Then Margaret had a guest fly in from Kenya so I came home alone, read a book (yes the whole thing) ate and went to bed. Friday I went into the office first thing in the morning, met everyone in all the departments. There are probably about 20 people involved in the project (plus or minus). They showed me my desk, got my computer set up and I started catching up on some email and some reading etc… There was a conference planned for Monday (July 3) so there were some dry runs of the presentations that afternoon which I observed. I was itching that afternoon to do something else besides sit at Margaret’s home, so after work Margaret showed me the public transport, walked me around town and got me somewhat oriented so I could explore some on my own over the weekend. Friday evening was nice because I met Alex & Allie (SIPA first years interning here this summer) for dinner at an Indian restaurant. Saturday I took myself into town, walked around, took myself to lunch (inadvertently at another Indian restaurant) while I read the newspapers. I located a nice coffee shop where I spent most of the afternoon reading and drinking some very weak coffee. As there were 2 world cup games that night and it was our homes’ turn to receive power I went home and watched the games, relaxing on the couch. Margaret and her guest from Kenya (Andrew) returned about 10pm, right as the Brazil/France game started so I actually missed that one while we sat around the table eating dinner, drinking sherry and discussing Ugandan politics and development. We had chicken that night, which I didn’t give a second thought to until I noticed it had been strangely quiet all afternoon? We were in fact eating the rooster that had been waking me up every morning at 5:00am, so I cannot say I was all that sad to see him go. But he was pretty tough and actually not so good to eat.

Sunday (July 2) I hung around the house before heading over to Alex’s host family’s home for a party. Alex is staying with an American couple, Paul & Helena. Paul works for DFID in microfinance and is Alex’s advisor for her project this summer. Helena is an HIV/AIDS specialist and just completed a USAID project called AIM (HIV/AIDS Project) which was affiliated with the UPHOLD project. The party was kind of a closing celebration for the AIM project so mostly ex-patriots and Ugandans who were working in the public health sector. Alex and Allie and I spent most of our time just hanging out and talking, eating and watching the dancing. They hired a group of musicians and dancers who performed throughout the party. They were really very good. The leader or “daddy” of the music/dance group is Isaac who is 25 years old. The group is comprised of orphans ranging in age from 11 to 19, they all live together and Isaac acts as their guardian, paying for the food, board and school fees through grants and money they earn by performing. Did I mention he’s only 25? Pretty amazing and the kids were amazing, so energetic, and talented and obviously enjoyed what they were doing. I took some pictures which I will post.

UPHOLD and USAID hosted a national conference on Monday morning, which actually, almost, began on time and was held at the Sheraton in downtown Kampala. I knew it was a big conference but was not really expecting the event that it was, for example the Prime Minister gave the opening speech to start it off. It was a really strange speech and had little or nothing to do with the topic at hand, although he had something written which he was supposed to read it appeared as though he delivered something off the cuff, which was odd to say the least. (Many people later agreed with me on this fact.) He discussed punctuality, milking cows, and other assorted and random topics. The conference was to cover the survey method that UPHOLD has been using to direct programming, so it was a great overview of the methodology which served as a good concise orientation for me. The conference lasted all day (9-5) with an hour for lunch. Afterwards they hosted a cocktail party, which was a lot of fun and a good chance to get to know more people in the office. I met the program manager from JSI who was in town for the conference and for some other work associated with the project, also met a guy who works with Save the Children. From the office I specifically got to know Kenneth and Rianna better; Kenneth, is Ugandan and works in the health sector on behavioral change and Rianna is Dutch who works on child health. Afterwards Kenneth offered to drive Rianna and I home, we dropped her off first and she invited us in for dinner. Rianna has been living in Uganda for five years, her husband Joseph is Ugandan, and they met while he was attending University in Denmark, married and have been living here ever since. He is an agriculturalist. They have two children, Lisa who is three and Benji who is eight months. We had a nice dinner and Joseph spent most of the time espousing wisdom on the realities of agriculture, subsidies and development in Africa, through his experiences with foreign donors (mostly American and European).

Since the project is USAID funded we get not only Ugandan holidays off but also US holidays off so we had July 4th off. I didn’t do much on my day off except run errands and join the local gym, which is surprisingly very nice and relatively convenient to my office. That evening I went to a local bar/restaurant with some friends from work to watch the world cup game. It didn’t begin until after 10:00pm so with overtime I didn’t get home until close to 1:00am, but it was fun and worth being a little tired the next morning. We went to a place frequented by the University students; it was an outdoor bar with white plastic chairs and tables, candles, waitress service and a huge, life-sized screen television showing the game. One of the better university’s in Africa, it might have used to be the best and still could be am not sure whether I have my facts straight on that one, is located outside Kampala and called Makarere University.

Back at work on Wednesday we had a Regional Monitoring Meeting in the morning. It lasted from 9:00am until 1:45pm. However the first item on the agenda took from 9:00am until 12:00pm leaving only an hour and forty-five minutes to cover the remaining seven items, another example of not “keeping time”. We had to end at that time because we had a catered lunch planned as a send-off celebration in honor of the Chief of Party (COP) Nosa Orobaton who is moving to Geneva to work with the Global Fund. Lunch was nice and was followed by three hours of speeches by various members of the office. The speeches finally ended at almost 5:00pm so everyone had about half an hour to get some or no work done before the cocktail party, again to honor Nosa, started at about 5:30. There was music, beer, soda, finger foods and people from various development agencies not only UPHOLD. There were more speeches from the Ministers of Education and Health etc… as well as skits performed by different departments within the UPHOLD office. I met Nosa, a very nice individual who requested that I concentrate on getting something together for publication and that he would like to review and edit my work so that we can get something published on behalf of the project, so am crossing my fingers that a publishable deliverable does indeed come out of all of this.

So I’ve been here for a week, and have basically spent it attending conferences, lunches, cocktail parties and meetings. Tomorrow morning I have a 8:00am meeting with the M&E department to discuss and nail down my terms of reference and deliverables so that I can finally get going.

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