Saturday, October 31, 2009

Visit to Stella



Last Saturday Stella, the woman who cleans and does our laundry, invited us to a bazaar at her girls' school. Actually it's her husband's school as well because he teaches there. They live on the school campus in housing the school provides. Stella had asked us several times to visit, so this seemed like a good opportunity. We may not have mentioned yet that few streets have street signs to mark them and fewer houses have numbers, so finding places is dicey. We knew Stella lived across town, but since Jill, a young architect with EMI, was going too, we figured we could get there.

We started off at 9:30 Sat. morning. Paul and I harbored a secret hope that we'd be back in time to still go out for coffee, our Saturday routine, by early afternoon. Hah. The drive to Stella's took an hour and a half. We took a shared taxi, the ubiquitous 14-passenger vans, into the downtown taxi park and got stuck in market day traffic. When we got to the taxi park, which is the definition of organized chaos if there ever was one, we found the taxi that goes to Stella's, but then we had to wait for it to fill up before the driver would leave. When it was full the driver figured out that the taxi parked next to us was at the wrong angle for us to be able to pull out. The driver of the other van was AWOL, but some guys got it into neutral and moved it back about 8" so we could pull forward. We went about two yards, but then there was another taxi perpendicular to us blocking our way. This doesn't seem to bother anybody. They deal with each impediment as it presents itself.

Anyway, eventually we got out of the taxi park and to Stella's. This school is larger and nicer than the one where Janet, EMI's cook, and her husband live and where we had visited a few weeks ago. We hurried to a grassy field where the students were singing and dancing before the bazaar. We were late, but we hoped to catch at least a little of the music. We needn't have hurried. We sat through 3 1/2 hours of singing, dancing, and speeches. Unfortunately, there were a lot more speeches than there was singing and dancing. People in Uganda tend to be flowery in their speech by Western standards, and floweryness takes time. Fortunately, we were seated under canopies or the heat would have been brutal. Really, the music was amazing, and if we just could have watched the kids it would have been an enjoyable afternoon. But...let's say it was a valuable cultural experience that we hope to never have to sit through again.

Stella took us to her apartment when it was over and fed us lunch. She served similar food to what Janet cooks for us at EMI every day: matoke (cooked mashed plantains) and rice over which you put a meat or peanut sauce, vegetables and fruit. It's a good and filling lunch. Stella cooked green beans and carrots just for us. For some reason plain vegetables are considered mzungu (white) food. It was hilarious to see her girls gamely attempt to eat a plain green bean but give up. It was just too strange for them.

Stella's house was similar in size and arrangement to Janet's but with two rooms instead of one. The front room was partitioned in two with a sheet. There was just room in the "sitting room" for a couch and chair lined up, a coffee table, and a chest with a t.v. and boom box on it. Behind the sheet was a bunkbed. We didn't see the second room, but it must have had the kitchen and more beds. Stella, her husband, five daughters, and her sister-in-law all live in this small space. Stella's daughters range in age from 11 to 1.

Finally we went to the bazaar. The girls had made baskets, napkins, cards and quite a few other things to sell to raise money. We bought a little, visited briefly with Stella's husband Peter, and then took off shortly after that, arriving home about five. No coffee for us that day.

Looking back on it, we were happy to have visited Stella, but we find days like that draining. Although we feel like we're learning our way around, there are still so many things that we don't know how they're supposed to work or what is expected of us. We always stand out. We were the only whites at the school, the only whites on the taxi, the only whites most places we go. People are nice to us, but you can never be inconspicuous and sometimes you just want to blend in.

This week Paul is up visiting the Ngenge villages, his primary focus for his time here. We've only been able to talk briefly, but things are going well. Rev. Rusty, the minister from the Episcopalian congregation in Alabama which is supporting the work, is there too. Paul met with a well driller today that he hopes will work for them in the area, and he also surveyed more of the villages and found out their needs. He'll get home on Tuesday and I'm sure will post details after that.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

The skies opened...

I wish this title was metaphorical for our experience in church this morning, but it's literal. We had a deluge here the likes of which neither Paul nor I have ever experienced.

Our church meets in a school cafeteria. Like many public spaces in Uganda, the building has no glass in the windows. There are just half walls and above that is all open. There is a wide cement veranda around the outside of the walls, and a metal roof covers everything.

The storm came up fairly quickly, as storms often do here. The rain came down in torrents and the wind began to blow. Soon people began to move towards the center of the room as rain blew in. The minister gave up trying to speak above the sound of the rain pounding on the roof and we went back to singing. You can imagine how loud rain pounding on a metal roof sounds. You could hardly hear the congregation of 200 sing or the instruments play. Then it began to hail, and people were covering their ears because the noise was so loud it actually hurt. Finally we just stopped the service and people stood as close to the middle of the room as they could get. The surprising thing about the storm was how long it lasted. We've all experienced heavy rains for 10-15 minutes, but this went on for a full hour. Streams turned to torrents, and the soccer field behind the school was a lake. Of course, that lake called to some of the teenagers, and they answered the call and had a great time running around getting soaked.

Finally it ended and people were able to get to their cars to get home. There was no way to exit the church without wading through fast-flowing water, so you could choose shoes or no shoes, but you were going to get wet no matter what. Paul and I live just a three-minute walk from the school, but we got caught in a brief after-shower and were pretty soaked by the time we got here. Looking on the bright side, though, we got to remember what it's like to be cold. It's kind of refreshing after months of feeling hot.

Friday, October 23, 2009

House Tour #4




We'll end our house tour with the bathroom. I could show you our second bedroom too, but it's boring, being used as a storage room until Scott comes back, and messy. So we'll skip it. Just a reminder too that if you click on the photo it will enlarge.

We're fortunate, as we've mentioned, to have running water in the house. There's only one temperature, lukewarm, but that's fine. We have a water heater attached to the shower, so we turn it on when we're ready to shower and it heats up instantly. The only time it fails us is when the electricity is off. Then we get to choose between a chilly shower right away or a warm one later. As we'd be taking the shower in the dark, we usually opt to wait. As you can see from the photo, there's no shower curtain. Behind our orange laundry tub you can also see the large squeegee on a pole, which we use to push the overspray to the floor drain after we're done. Since the floor and lower walls are tile, this works fine. They had the same method in Jordan when we lived there.

Before we start to shower we sit and scrub our feet. Someone joked that when you leave Uganda it takes six weeks to get the dirt off. It's not really a joke. We scrub hard and get the top layer off, but a lot is just ground in I guess. Paul had showered last night before we went out to a dinner theater with some friends. The only walking we did was a short distance to catch a boda boda (motorcycle taxi) to meet our friends. Paul was wearing socks and close-toed shoes. When we got home at the end of the evening, his feet were dirty. Magic!

On another subject, I taught my first English class yesterday. Solomon, the young man who is the main teacher, had worked out a detailed lesson plan for me. He wanted me to teach the women the numbers 1-20. I was to say the numbers for them to repeat, have each woman say them, have them match them, write them in words, etc. Then we were to do basic addition like 2+2=4. Solomon and I were chatting before the women arrived and I asked him what he had taught the class the day before. They had done multiplication and 4 digit addition - in English! So why was I teaching them the names of the numbers? I had no idea and didn't want to offend him by asking. Since it was my first time out, I decided I would just follow his plan. Those dear women patiently repeated the numbers to me and dutifully wrote them down in their notebooks. And here's a final twist to the story: a white friend of mine talked to these women that evening, and they told her the class was difficult. What?! There are obviously some things I don't have figured out yet. Anyway, it was enjoyable, and next week Solomon wants me to teach them verb tenses, parts of the body, furniture and food. Since that's material for about four months, I should have plenty to do.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Water obstacles

Uganda's challenges and obstacles in achieving safe drinking water for all:
  • 40% of Ugandans obtain their water directly from rivers and lakes.
  • 31% of Ugandans live below the international poverty line, which is defined as $1.25 per person per day.
  • A shallow well with a hand pump, which is capable of producing about 10 liters per minute (2.5 gallons per minute), is considered sufficient for 300 people. A rural household is considered to have safe drinking water coverage if there is a safe water source within 1.5 kilometers.
  • The India Mark II hand pump is a quality product that is used throughout Africa. It will operate 1-3 years without any maintenance (but definitely not forever). Village water committees are often started when a new well and hand pump are installed. Unfortunately, since the pumps operate 1-3 years uncared for, that's just long enough for committees to dissolve before they are needed to service the pump. (Obviously, that's not an absolute. But it's not uncommon.)
  • Only one-half of Uganda's 200,000 wells are operable at any one time.
  • Training local hand pump technicians has been a priority for a number of NGOs. It often happens that those with the greatest aptitude for maintaining and repairing the pumps are the talented individuals who move away from the villages for better jobs.
  • Theft of hand pumps is not uncommon in some areas because of the value of the metal for scrap.
  • The lack of good goverance (the prevalence of corruption) thwarts many good people and organizations in their work to provide safe drinking water. (The Water Integrity Network, formed by Transparency International, recently estimated that $5-10 million intended for Uganda water improvements is lost to corruption each year.)
  • Water-borne diarrheal diseases cause 17% of the deaths among children under 5 years
In summary, there are great needs and great challenges. It will be wonderful to make a contribution to safe water even if it's just for a few. To them, it will be huge.

Paul

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Doing business in Uganda

Everything's done by cash in Uganda. No stores take credit cards or checks. You pay water bills, buy appliances, and even pay rent by cash. That often means many bills with many zeros since $500 is equivalent to one million Uganda shillings.

No credit sounds like a good thing coming on the heels of the worldwide credit and financial crisis. As Americans, we're often reminded by the media that we save too little and put too much on our credit cards.

No credit has its downside, too. It adds a risk to doing business. We hired an electrician today to replace a breaker in our circuit board. (Our refrigerator had been out the past two days because it wasn't getting enough power. It's now running and we're delighted.) The electrician evaluated the problem and said he'd need to buy a breaker and it would run UGX 60,000 ($30). We paid him up front so he would have enough money to buy the parts. He returned a few hours later, successfully installed the parts, and we settled by paying UGX 30,000 for his labor.

That's typical; you pay businesses up front so that they can buy materials. The risk isn't great for a new breaker but it's significant when you're hiring a well drilling company at about $8,000 per well. You may not have to pay all $8,000 up front but would probably have to pay half. The company needs the money to buy the hand pump, purchase fuel, pay lodging, buy cement for grout, etc. They don't have a line of credit and so they purchase these things only after they are paid.

I heard more than one story about losses incurred because of this system. One group hired a well drilling company to install wells and everything went smoothly for the first two. They extended the contract for additional wells and the owner left town with $25,000. We're doing our best to avoid a similar results in working with the villages but as you can imagine, this group thought they were doing it right and they lost (and so did the people needing those wells). Pray for wisdom and God's grace to avoid this outcome.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Home visit

Last evening when Paul got off work he and I walked to do some errands. Along the way we met Janet, EMI's cook. She invited us to her home which was nearby. Knowing that hospitality is an important part of Ugandan life, we accepted. Janet took my hand as we walked down the street toward her house. In Uganda, as in many countries outside the U.S., you only hold hands in public with people of your same gender. It was such a sweet gesture that it wasn't hard to overcome my initial discomfort.

Janet's husband is a teacher and they live on the school compound. The compound itself is a series of small concrete classrooms around a central dirt courtyard. The "homes" are also just a series of rooms in a one-story concrete building. This is another occasion where I wish we had had our camera along, because words fall short. I'm guessing their whole house is the size of our dining room at home. I have to guess because there was a piece of fabric stretched across the width of the room to separate the front room from the rest. This front room had a couch and chair and small table. There was a piece of linoleum on the floor. The edges of the room were neatly piled high with suitcases and cookware. Along the edge of the back room we could see a wooden bunkbed three tiers high. There are seven to nine people living in this home: Janet, her husband, their five children, and a couple children of relatives staying with them. One of them is Janet's cousin's child who is 14 and cooks and does childcare for them. The house had electricity but no running water or toilet.

Our first reaction, though of course we hope we hid it well, was shock at how little they had. I'll be posting soon on privilege and guilt. However, this was tempered by Janet's ease in her surroundings and the happiness and liveliness of her children (although I thought her one-year-old appeared listless). It's one thing to know that Africans don't have much, but to see it worked out in the life of someone you interact with daily takes it to another level.

Janet offered us Cokes, though she herself didn't drink one, and we visited. We got one of her daughters to sing us a song, and in turn I taught them "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes." We met her husband who left his classroom early - apparently he usually works 7 to 7 - to come say hello. He struck me as a warm, dignified man.

EMI tries to give its Ugandan workers a leg up by offering them an annual schooling stipend which they can use for themselves or their children. Janet had used hers to get a counseling certificate. As far as I can tell, a certificate is something beyond high school but less than a college diploma. Maybe it's like a two-year college program. Anyway, she has her certificate but can't find a job using it. So she stays with EMI for the time being, but has the potential to move on someday to a better paying, more challenging job.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Vanilla farm trip

We had such an interesting day yesterday. We went with about ten people to a friend's vanilla farm and processing plant. This is a case where pictures would be worth a thousand words, but we sent our camera to RVA for Scott to use so we didn't have it along. We may get some pictures from others who went so we'll post them if they turn out.

Anyway, we saw vanilla, cocoa, and coffee growing. The vanilla was especially interesting because of how involved it is to grow. They train the vine up a tree that provides shade for it. Each vanilla bean grows from a flower and - get this - each flower only blooms for one day and they must hand pollinate it during that day. It's an amazingly labor intensive operation.

After traipsing around the hillsides where the plants grow we went into the processing plant. Again, it's a fascinating and long process to get the beans ready to ship. It involves boiling them, wrapping them in blankets, setting them out on trays in the sun for a couple hours a day for weeks, sorting them by hand (there must have been 100 people sitting on the floor of the sorting room going through the beans one by one) and then storing them for months to let them cure.

Phil, the farm owner, told us about many other aspects of the operation - things like the problems of selling to the Fair Trade market, the complex chemistry of vanilla, and various aspects of marketing. Apparently the vanilla market is subject to boom and bust like many other things. There was a boom in the early 2000s which peaked in 2004 with beans going for $500/kilo. Now they sell for $20/kilo. Uganda is one of the world's leading producers of vanilla though it trails far behind Madagascar.

Being that Phil and his family are British, we broke for elevensies in the midst of our day--a snack of tea and biscuits and fruit around 11:00 a.m. Quite a nice tradition.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Expatriats

First of all, happy Independence Day to Uganda! Today marks 47 years of independence.

One of the things Paul and I learned when we lived in Jordan 20 years ago is the expat community is filled with interesting people. We have found the same to be true here. In the short amount of time we've been here we've met a doctor who has worked in Africa for 30 years, an American military adviser to the Ugandan army, a businessman who imports cocoa and vanilla beans from Congo, a documentary filmmaker/fish farmer, and a man and his wife who were both born in Uganda, grew up in LA, and now have moved back to Uganda for good. A number of the people we've met have spent time living in the bush without electricity or running water. Also, almost all of them have lived overseas most of their adult lives, generally in African countries. Paul and I are lightweights being here for only ten months.

The expat church community is equally varied. Our church, Kampala International, is composed of about 2/3 Westerners and 1/3 Ugandans. The Westerners are largely European, though there are a fair number of Americans. Things have a European flavor. Nobody hugs when they meet - they kiss each other once on each cheek (and I was told the Dutch just keep going). Alcohol is more widely accepted than you would find in American churches, though Americans certainly have become more relaxed about drinking than they used to be. We were at a Bible study group last week, and when we were finished looking at the Bible and praying, our host brought out whiskey and Bailey's Irish Cream and people had a nightcap. Then we were at a church dinner last night and there was drinking, smoking, and dancing well into the night. What unites us, of course, is that in spite of cultural differences, all these people have found Jesus a compelling figure and are trying to figure out what it means to follow him. I really want to be able to listen to them and learn from them, especially from the Africans, most of whose life experiences are so different from my own.

This just in: those of you (our moms) who have read our blog from the beginning may remember that in an early post I described our neighborhood and that next door we have two "mansions." We noticed an unusual amount of activity there today, so Paul decided to be bold and go over to see if he could find out what those houses are. He met the owner, a gregarious Ugandan man, who welcomed him in to look around and said he'd invite us to the housewarming. It turns out the largest house is his private residence and the other one is his guesthouse. My. Can we use the pool?

Karen

Thursday, October 8, 2009

House tour #3


This is our bedroom. As you can see, there's not a lot in it except the bed, dresser, and mosquito net. At night we untie the big knot the net is in and drape it over the four posts on the corners of the beds. We've had few mosquitoes anyway, so the net probably isn't really necessary, but it's easy to open out so we do. The bed's mattress is just a piece of foam, which is a typical mattress here, but it's comfortable enough and we sleep well.

In Paul's last post he mentioned that our water tank had run dry. He figured that the city had failed to pump water for a day or two and that was why it had run out. We were puzzled, though, because the EMI interns in the apartment next door had water. Paul did a little exploring and found out that someone had turned the valve off leading to our tank. Once we had used up the water already in the tank no more was going in to refill it. Why did someone turn the valve off? Who turned the valve off? We have no idea. Anyway, it was a quick and easy fix to turn the valve on so that was nice.

I've baked twice! Pretty successfully! I made chocolate chip cookies to send to Scott over the weekend and cinnamon rolls yesterday. This isn't really a big deal, but it feels a little like a big deal to me. I suppose it's because I had to overcome a number of small obstacles to accomplish it. I may have mentioned that bake ware is hard to find and very expensive when you do find it, so I ended up baking the cookies on flat aluminum pan lids and the cinnamon rolls in a rusty old 9x13 pan we'd found in the office that I lined with foil. Ingredients are slightly different too, as are measurements (I used the computer to translate grams to cups and fahrenheit to celsius). We were disappointed to find that the cookies I had put in a plastic container were covered with ants a few hours later - I had neglected to press one corner of the container down tightly. We were determined not to give up our cookies,though, so we spent about 20 minutes brushing every last ant off those cookies and putting the cookies in a different tin.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Water tank addendum

Our water tank had saved us, up until this evening. We returned a short while ago from an evening church group dinner. We were hot and dusty and ready for a shower but the water dribbled out and stopped. It seems the city water has been off long enough for our tank to run dry. You could look on the bright side and say it will help us be sympathetic toward our neighbors and people in the villages with no running water, but right now it mostly seems crummy.

Paul

Water tank warning



Water tanks are a great thing as long as you read the warning label.

You see water tanks outside of every building in Kampala; well, every building that has running water. Why here and not in Corvallis?

In Kampala, like most developing world cities, they make the difference between having water and a dry faucet. The Kampala water system doesn't operate continuously. It runs most of the time but there may be several hours a week when the pipes are dry and no water reaches your house. One of the faucets in the EMI office is plumbed directly from the city system, bypassing the storage tanks. There's a time or two every week when I turn on this faucet to fill the teapot and nothing comes out.

The water tanks for our apartment building (pictured above) save the day. They have allowed us the privilege of running water every day so far. But here's the warning label: Water tanks suggest intermittent service and unsafe water. Whenever the pipes are empty, all the leaks (and any system has them) allow who-knows-what to enter the pipe and find its way to your glass. Think twice before drinking water in a city that has water tanks.

What to do? You can buy bottled water, which is the typical approach among the expat's. You can boil your drinking water, which is the most common approach among the majority of the city's population. The second photo shows another alternative. It's a prototype of a hand-crank powered treatment unit that uses ultraviolet light to disinfect water. (Many thanks to Chris for assembling it for us.) Given enough time, the UVC rays in sunshine are quite effective in killing pathogens. This treatment unit speeds up the process so a 2.5 L batch can be disinfected in under a minute.

Could something like this take the place of boiling and bottled water? Maybe, but that's a longer story for another day.

Paul

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Pickpocket and dinner

We had a not-good afternoon yesterday, followed by a nice evening.

Paul took the afternoon off work so we could shop downtown. We took the usual 14-passenger van to the "taxi park," where about a thousand taxis crowd into a space the size of your living room. From there we walked across town, about a 40-minute walk, to a western style mall. Along the way we stopped into a bank to exchange Ugandan shillings for Kenyan shillings. We planned to send the money to Scott and his guardians with a friend who is heading to RVA next week. About ten minutes after we left the bank, as we waited at a crowded corner to cross the street, Paul was pushed by two men who came at him from either side. When he regained his balance he realized the men were pickpockets and had, just that quickly, gotten the Kenyan money . Of course they had melted into the crowd and there was no chance of finding them. Normally Paul wears clothing with zippered pockets when he's carrying a quantity of money, but since we had plans to have dinner at friends' house that evening, he had put on a dress shirt and slacks and had the money in his front pants pocket. As anyone can tell you who has experienced a theft of any kind, it's not only the loss of money that hurts, but the sense of violation. We wondered if the thieves had followed us from the bank. We certainly were an obvious target, being two of only a few white people in the downtown, and white people, by definition, are rich.

However, things looked up after that.We went to dinner at the home of a friend of mine from high school, Alene, and her husband Steve. They came to Kampala about ten months ago on a USAID project that Alene is working on having to do with monitoring HIV/AIDS programs. I haven't seen Alene since high school, and it was great to catch up with her after all this time. They live in a lovely home outside Kampala with a pretty yard, a swimming pool, and a view of Lake Victoria. After our hot, crowded, difficult afternoon (I had also gotten us lost), it was wonderful to relax in a peaceful spot with enjoyable company and a delicious dinner. We also got to visit with their daughter who is a sophomore at the international high school here. It was nice to be around a teenager again and fun to hear her impressions of her time in Uganda.

Today we had our usual Sat. morning coffee and grocery shopping trip, and tonight we're meeting friends for dinner. It's our 28th anniversary. Kudos to Paul for putting up with me all these years, and only every once in awhile turning to me and saying, "Have you ever had a wife?" I love you, dear!