All wrapped up in Kampala

….And a very merry Hanukkah Night 5  and a happy X-mas, too

Saturday, 17^th December

It’s been a while since I last spoke of the work I’ve been doing here.  I think the last thing I talked about was Interview Candidate #4.  Well I got a News Flash! Interview Candidate # 4 didn’t show up for an appointment he made to discuss terms of the contract.  Four days later another News Flash! Interview Candidate #4 alerts us that he has accepted a job from another organization (thanks but no thanks).  One and a half weeks later yet another News Flash! Interview Candidate #4 shows up at our door asking us to again to be considered for the position.  He says that the organization he accepted the job from had not been truthful about the amount of travel he would be doing. 

I discussed this with my colleagues and, at first, we disagreed on how to handle this.  My feeling was that he did a poor job managing his interview process and should have strung us along by not making the appointment to discuss contract issues.  Instead, he doesn’t show up for his appointment and prematurely sends us a notice about his other job offer.  He is a young man near the beginning of his professional career, let’s cut him a break.

However, my colleagues felt different.  They said that this exemplified the typical Ugandan way of doing things: coming to us when he wanted something but not alerting us of his absence for our meeting (his excuse was that his internet was down, he tried phoning the office but the office phone didn’t work, and the only other number he had was that of our ED, which he tried but she was in a workshop).  Perhaps this isn’t someone who will go above and beyond the call of duty, a key characteristic we are looking for.

Fast forward, we interview four more candidates for the position and hire a young woman capable of the job, though I had to teach her the double-click method for selecting icons (she has chosen to continue her right-click campaign despite my protests against right click > Open).  Almost simultaneously, we interviewed seven candidates for the Finance Officer position and found a really smart person from an International NGO, which we had to make a new category in our salary for, but he is well worth it.  He is plenty excited to get started and start tinkering around with the Excel tools I made to generate reports, and log transactions.  His past experience at a well run Netherland-sponsored NGO has equipped him with great ideas to make the internal operations more cohesive and robust.  Good Luck to you, Samuel.

One difference with employment in Uganda is that both these new employees’ former organizations required a one and two month(s) resignation notice, respectively.  If they were to leave any sooner, then the missing weeks of pay would be a burden of the employee.  In both cases, since we needed them to start during that penalty period, we shouldered the penalty.  We have also changed our contracts to reflect a one month notice, or pay stipulation.  When in Rome…

The rest of my time at work was spent training new staff, ironing out all the changes I made, teaching them to the staff, and making sure I leave a proper trail of the new way of doing things.  Dropbox was a big implementation—for those curious, I ditched the Google Docs because of strong recommendations from a consultant the organization will have as part of a grant they are participating in.  Concerns such as network reliability are serious here, and Dropbox allows users to update forms and documents while not online, which Google does not provide, yet.

So now I’m finished.  Made a few manuals and did my very best in attacking as many issues regarding the internal operations as I could with the intention that it is sustainable, easy to carry out in my absence.  I organized a protocol for budgeting which will allow them to better plan for the future as opposed to making funding requests based on short-term immediate needs, and I learned a lot about NGOs and how they can get so much done with so little resources.  There is a lot of work to do here, and people are knowledgeable in the subject matter, but there could definitely be more technical support when it comes to regular office management, financing, and conducting monitoring and evaluation (M&E) two to four times a year. 

What Was it Like?

The big question I would ponder before departing on this journey was What will it be like?  Working and living in Uganda.  What is Kampala like?  I’d never even seen an African city before this trip.  What will the office be like?  What will the people be like?  How will I get to work?  How big are the snakes?  Those were the fears.  My hopes revolved around being able to make an impact at my org.  Lucky for me and them, the role I played was in line with my strengths and much more pivotal than I could have ever imagined.

Working in Kampala was an experience, to say the least.  I can honestly say that the first month to month-and-a-half were much more difficult than the last month and change.  The longer we were here, the more I felt like we could do this for a longer stretch of time.  The this I’m referring to is not the life that Ugandans lead, though.  Our fellow muzungu friends all had cars, nice large living spaces, ate plenty of nice meals (out or cooking in), and had a comfortable network where they would frequently see each other as a large group.  Always something to do.  It was similar to life in New York, but a lot more manageable, we were not overwhelmed with a social life here, but we certainly enjoyed the company we kept: unique and fascinating people with similar interests to ourselves.

In the last few weeks I did not let my frustrations get the best of me.  Sure I had my rare—and much needed—venting of emotions in whatever form it came out in, but in Uganda, in Kampala, like any abroad situation, it is best to roll with the punches.  When the price is too high, bargain it lower; when the taxi is crowded, shrink up into a ball and throw your hand out the window beckoning for more to join; when it’s just another boring Sunday, go to church to hum along to the beats of Jesus and Jehovah; and when it’s raining so hard that you can’t see the ground in front of you, just wait it out, everyone will understand.  Just one thing I never got used to, everyone answers their phones.  I trained two new employees and each incoming call was handled.  Learn to expect it and use it as a bathroom break.

Despite Internet and Mobile Phones….

….Everything else is a throwback to earlier times.  I am often reminded of the life my grandmother lived when she was a young girl in 1930s Poland.  Ugandans that are not wealthy, the majority—those without two-story homes and big fancy Mercedes Benz’s—use tools to clean and cook similar to those grandma likely used in the “old town.”  The main type of work is sustenance farming, cleaning, and running a small roadside business.  After work women sit on the roadside selling maize on the cob slowly roasted over a coal fire.  Commuters sitting in “the jam” place their order from the car (think taxi driver buying a pretzel just outside the Lincoln Tunnel).  Other times people walking home on the roadside will stop for a fresh roasted ear.  It’s interesting to see how the two worlds (those with cars and driveways vs. those who survive without electricity or running water) intersect. The class-divide, although in existence throughout the world, seems more apparent here.  I heard someone say that life in Africa is “life in the raw” and we both now have a very clear picture of what that means.  I’m reminded of this phrase often, especially when I  walk by dwellings with no privacy: where cooking, bathing, laughing, eating and general living are done essentially in public.

Instruments are seemingly impromptu.  Brooms consist of a bunch of straw tied together at the end.  Every once in a while a stick is attached to the bundle, but most everyone else I see with the broom, bends at the waist to sweep, sweep, sweep the dust that never seems to go away.  Mops are ad hoc too.  In the big center-of-town shopping center, much of mall promenade area is outside, covered by an overhang.  After it downpours—as it often does for a few minutes every day this time of year—the mall staff is out with squeegees that have an old towel draped over the rubber blade, pushing it around the floor and wringing it over a bucket.  I think I’ve seen them clean the floor with soapy water in much the same fashion.

How do I open this can of tuna that I brought 7,000 miles to my kitchen in Kampala?  Well, that dull knife used to peel carrots and apples, yeah, that one over there, point it straight down into the inside rim of the can and bang on the butt of the handle.  Move it over a centimeter or two and repeat, all the way around the can.  Tuna never tasted so good when the work to open it is so palm-numbing.  (Editor’s Note: In order to facilitate more quantities of tuna, I broke down and bought a can opener for $1.50.)

Grandma always had a way of getting the grass stains out of my jeans, and was the woman to turn to in order to get the good silverware polished and looking great for the holidays.  Now, when I scrub the heck out of my socks and other clothing, I realize that this is a much more efficient way to get those pesky stains out, at least to be certain they come out.  Sure there is Tide and Tide with Bleach, GM performs studies and experiments and spends millions of dollars to find the best way for their state-of-the-art machines to get those stains out without elbow grease, but from the looks of my sparkling clean tennis shorts, there is nothing quite like a bar of soap and some knuckle rubbing.  It’s too bad I have the cuts on my hands to prove it.