A Day in the Field

Post by Nicole

As we come to the end of our second week of work here is Kampala I’m getting more comfortable at my NGO and falling into a nice rhythm.  First, a little about the office environment I’m working in, my first office environment in a long, long time.  The office consists of approximately 11 people, many of whom are Ugandan interns or volunteers.  Since the job market is dismal here, it is common for well-educated locals to volunteer at offices in exchange for transport and lunch. The office is small with modest furnishings and a pantry area where people eat lunch and can help themselves to coffee or tea. I work in the “resource room” which also serves as the meeting room.  Electricity is intermittent and the generator seems to be on the fritz.  I might have contributed to this fritz when the other day the power returned I plugged in my computer, felt a slight electrocution, and heard a loud bang.  Two computers and a copy machine went kaput.  When electricity goes off and the computers die, people are seemingly un-phased, they turn to chat with their neighbor or pull out a newspaper.  I’ve been advised to “roll with it”—very wise words.

I spent the first several days learning about the NGO, which advocates on behalf of marginalized people in the workforce.  They do quite impressive work with few resources and are currently on a big campaign to ban child exploitation.  It is very common here for families—even poor families—to “hire” orphaned or poorer children from the villages as domestic workers.  Although there is a law prohibiting child labor, and technically primary school is mandatory for all Ugandan children, I have learned quickly that there is a major disconnect between the written law and the enforcement of legislation.

After a week and a half of learning, reading, editing documents and helping create web content for the organization, I finally had the opportunity to get out “in the field.” I joined a group of three young men who are recent college graduates and interns in the Child Labor and HIV Education Department of the NGO.  Since July they have been creating mapping tools, holding community meetings and working on a task force to identify children in one community between the ages of 14-17 who are working as domestic laborers.  The NGO has a grant to pay the boarding school fees and uniforms for these children to attend a 6-month vocational program about 1.5 hours outside of Kampala.  The team had identified approximately 100 children and they collected important information about each child (name, age, where they come from, what, if anything, they are getting paid, living conditions, medical problems, job description, guardians, etc).  Each child was asked if he or she would like to go to school and each employer was then asked if he/she would grant permission for the child to be taken from the home and placed in schools. 

On the day that I joined the team, each of the children had been spoken to already.  This was a second go around with the intention of getting verbal consent from the guardian (at times a parent or relative and at other times an employer).  The twist to this story is that the first community targeted is the police barracks.  This warrants some explanation:  all types of officers in Uganda live with their families in the police barracks, which is essentially a slum. It is a huge community of small concrete or tin homes—one on top of the next, none larger than two rooms and each housing many people. Toilet facilities are communal. They do have intermittent electricity and running water. In some of these homes, as many as eight people live in one room. Each family is large, in part because a mother’s  “children” include her biological children, her husband’s children from prior marriages, her brother’s orphaned children who she is looking after since he died, etc.  It is what we could call “blended families” to the max. Officers, on average, earn 200,000 shillings a month, which is the equivalent of 71 USD.  Obviously this is a very low wage and stretching it to cover and family of ten often leaves parents with the inability to pay school fees (approximately 50 USD per child per year).  Often the eldest child is responsible for caring for the younger kids while no parent is around—sometimes the parent is on duty far away for upwards of two weeks at a time.  In other cases, a relative has taken a child in because her own parents were too poor to feed or clothe her.  In reciprocation for food and shelter, the child is put to work.  This usually involves washing the clothing, preparing meals, cleaning the small home and looking after the other children. Still other times a child is sent from the village to the city under the guise of going to school and is instead exploited as a child laborer.

Ironically, these officers who employ child domestic workers are either unaware of the law prohibiting child labor or have complete disregard for the law (usually the latter).  Some are cases of clear exploitation while other cases are far more complicated. As you can imagine, this becomes a tricky process.  

My First Day in the “Field”

I got in the car, super excited for this adventure with my three new intern friends who took me in as if we’d been buddies forever.  As they sang along to some Snoop Dogg, we exchanged stories and had some good laughs. We arrived at the police barracks and my young intern friends suddenly became very professional as we met with the commander of the police department. He is a middle aged, happy and engaging fellow who expressed full support for our project.  He offered to assist us if we ran into trouble with the employers (other officers).  He was hoping our interaction would remain friendly and that after we explained to the other officers that the organization will be paying for the school fees and this is an important opportunity for these young people, they would quickly consent.  Turns out, it was not quite that easy.

Our team consisted of myself, two invaluable women from the community who are the task force member leaders, and the three interns.  Our goal was to, over the course of two days, reach all 98 of the children and obtain consent from them and their guardians, answer questions, and ensure that each child has a mattress and bed sheets to bring. The vast majority of the targeted students are girls since domestic work is largely the job of women in this community. 

I was immediately struck by how shy and respectful these young girls were. Many curtseyed to me as they shook my hand.  One child, just shy of 2 years old, got down on her knee to greet me as a sign of respect. A couple of girls brought tears to my eyes when I saw the joy and appreciation in their faces at the prospect of going to school. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” they whispered.  They told me that they feel blessed to have been chosen.  It was incredible to see how eager these kids are for even a small fraction of a formal education.  Many aspire to be hair dressers, tailors, or shoemakers and are hoping to learn those skills in vocational school.

I was equally impressed by the way my intern colleagues worked in the community and the way in which they were able to connect with the children and their families.  They were professional, respectful, caring and non-confrontational. I think this is partly Ugandan culture and partly the nature of these young men.

I was a novelty in the village and soon children appeared form every corner shouting “muzungu.”  I was feeling the love.  “My muzungu,” one girl told her friend.  No, “My muzungu,” the friend argued.  We all had a good laugh as I assured them that there was plenty of me to go around.  A little further into the day, a gentleman on a motorcycle screamed, “Muzungu I love you!!!”  I probably can’t take credit for all the love I received today as they associate muzungu with donor funding and movies.

But, not everyone took to me so quickly. One small boy burst into tears when he saw me. The grandmother cradled him and began to laugh, explaining to me that he had never seen a muzungu and that I should not be offended. Smiling at the child only made him cry louder so eventually I accepted that not everyone was ready to make the muzungu their friend. Maybe next time.

For other young girls who were being given the opportunity for school, today’s story did not end happily.  Many of the employers refused to let the children be taken because they have nobody to look after the other kids. Other employers were not around to give their consent.

And then there is the complicated issue of the villagers hoping that since I have white skin, I can fix their problems.  I was brought to the home of a family with a child who is disabled. “Please see her,” the community task force member asked.  “This girl, she cannot talk or walk and it is so hard for her family, ” she explained.  I met the mother and child who clearly has cerebral palsy. My heart broke for this family who cannot afford therapy for their severely disabled child.  Since the mother must constantly tend to the child, her earning ability is nil and thus all 7 other children also suffer. I’m now on a mission to find free or heavily subsidized therapy for this child. Fingers crossed.  At the end of the day the task force member asked if I knew of anyone who would sponsor her children.  Sometimes being white here is a tough cross to bear.

Of the 60 homes reached today, we managed to get consent from 22 families. Another 26 are pending and the remaining employers refused.  The next step is to develop a strategy to convince these other employers to release the children. We are all hoping that after mediation and some more counseling, we can convince the employers. If not, legal action will likely be taken.

Ultimately, my role here will be to educate these lovely adolescents after they are settled in the vocational school.  I’m developing a basic health education curriculum and plan to discuss nutrition, pregnancy and HIV prevention, and how to make healthy lifestyle choices.  I have also been asked to counsel these young women and teach the interns some basic counseling techniques.  This will be quite the learning experience for me, as I do not have formal training in counseling.  If anyone reading this blog has ideas, please share!

I am starting to feel that there is a higher purpose for me being here. I am overwhelmed by how much I have learned on only my first day out in the community.  I can only hope that as time goes on I can reciprocate in this incredible process of knowledge sharing across the globe.

CFO for an NGO

...well at least for the next two and a half months. 

...And maybe not CFO, but I just found out that I have all financial responsibilities of the organization I’m working with.  Let me rewind a smidge, yes?  I knew I would be taking over some duties, the main one being QuickBooks, from a woman who is very pregnant, her last day is Friday, the Friday at the end of September.  But there was no urgency on her part to bestow upon me the inner workings of her position, despite my poor attempts to set up a time to meet with her.  From my initial perspective it did not look like she was terribly busy.  And I was not clear on when her last day would be. 

On Monday I reminded people that I would be out of the office Thursday and Friday due to Rosh Hashanah, aka the Jewish New Year.  All of a sudden it’s an emergency in the director’s eyes that I have all the knowledge of the finance operations of the NGO.  I’ve got two and half days to learn it.  Somehow two and half days shrinks into a 4-5 hour review of budgets and QuickBooks entries.  I will be writing checks, making bank withdraws, issuing the payroll checks, managing the keys to the safe, transferring the wires into Ugandan Shillings from the donors (chances of receiving donor funds in the next three months are slim), and all things related to finances.  I’ll also need to devise a system for creating a more accurate budget.  At this point the budget is a very rough estimate of expenses with a 5 percent inflator on every single line item, rent to program costs, across the board.

In some ways I can make this job much more difficult than it is, in others I can go along with the system they’ve set up, make a few excel models that can be used in the future for predicting budgets and call it a successful volunteer run.   

In short, I will have a lot to be busy with these next few months.  My mission is to keep things simple but create a more accurate way for the organization to plan for the future when I am no longer there.

Organizational Change?

One thing I don’t think I will be able to change is avoiding these crisis modes of operations.  I have learned my lesson that I need to be a bit more direct in arranging meetings with staff so that we don’t end up meeting at the eleventh hour.

This got me to thinking about managing style in Uganda and the US.  I’m speaking about the average norm, in both cases there are certainly exceptions on both sides of the spectrum, but the general feeling is different in the two places.  In the States there are a variety of manager types but the basic mentality, countrywide, is the expectation that employees do their work and perform to some level of expectation.  When the boss says to do something, it gets done.  I’m wondering if that is the norm in Uganda. 

What I’m finding and hearing, is that in Uganda there is a level of expectation from the employee that as long as he shows up to work, he will get paid.  This is not a mentality that starts in the corporate or nonprofit workplace.  It is spread throughout all sectors, most notably, the government.  Corruption is rampant in the government sector.  The expectation has become that the government doesn’t provide, but donor funds from the west will support the country.  In fact, donor assistance contribute to almost one third of GDP.  To give credit where credit is due, President Museveni has done a magnificent job enticing donors from all over the world to contribute to his country.  For the students who make it to the university level, I was told recently, that they are there to “think, not to do work.”  Upon entering the workforce, given the environment of leaders leading through taking bribes and receiving other monies on the side, and an education background that graduates students for not necessarily completing all the work in the syllabus, employees then expect to be paid merely for showing up.  One would encounter this more regularly here than in the States, of course this mentality exists in American too.  Again, this is the general stereotype of the Ugandan worker, not necessarily the mindset of people everywhere.  

So when the boss kicks an employee out of a meeting for not producing their quarterly report, which is supposed to include highlights of the work that the employee has performed in the past three months, the employee perception is that the boss is mean and strict.  In a world where traffic laws do not cover what lane of traffic you are in or how fast to drive, and banks cannot track a person who takes a loan and moves to another town when they cannot pay it back, the feeling of freedom is much stronger than that of an American who has to deal with so many rules, courts and the system that can track and follow through more thoroughly.

In jobs where the pay is much less, like the taxi drivers, police and street market vendors, any opportunity of easy money is seized upon.  The mentality for most of these workers is that the White West has all the money.  And for the most part, it is true.  If I pay four dollars extra in a special hire cab, I probably won’t know or make a big deal about it.  Sometimes it’s not four dollars. 

A friend of ours was recently pulled over by a policeman for answering his phone while driving.  This was not a traffic policeman who is the only police that can issue a traffic ticket, evident by the type of uniform they wear.  This officer said that talking on a phone and driving is a very criminal activity and that the only way to cure this situation was for our friend to mobile money the officer three million shillings, about a thousand USD.  Mobile money is a way for people to send money through their mobile phones.  Our friend does not have the mobile money service and the officer took whatever money our friend had and told him to get the service and send the money.  They exchanged numbers.  As luck would have it, a few days later after not following through on the officer’s demands, our friend was driving by the scene of the incident and the same officer pulled out and started following him.  Our friend decided to head straight to the US Embassy.  At a stop along the way the officer pulls up alongside our friend and orders him to pull over.  Our friend replies that what the officer is doing is harassment and that he is driving straight to the US Embassy and not to bother him again.  The officer continues to follow until our friend is about two blocks from the embassy, at which point he stops his pursuit.

The officer’s plan of an easy three million shillings went terribly awry and he grew scared.  So scared that he called our friend a few days later to find out what happened at the embassy.  Now with the upper hand, our friend told the officer over the phone that nothing will happen as long as the officer does not harass or do anything further regarding this matter.  The officer’s reply was “thank you.”

My point is that the expectation of the worker is different, much different from what I am used to.  Uganda is a country where people get by with very little money.  Even with a job, the rungs of the ladder get very narrow and not many people can get themselves up it without receiving help from someone higher up on that ladder.  Jobs are scarce and many qualified people work for free or nothing.  Some people take matters into their own hands to earn money, and easily get away with it most of the time, that is what their leaders do.  I’m hopeful that this mentality is changing.  Western culture is becoming more the norm and as the country develops so will the schools and the workplace….hopefully.