Thanksgiving #2

We were to celebrate Thanksgiving a second time on Friday with my friend Alene and her family. Alene and I had been e-mailing for a couple weeks getting the food organized. The plan was that Paul, Scott and I would get picked up by her driver, stop and pick up the turkey we had ordered, then head to Alene's to cook. It was a good plan, but we all know what happens to good plans. The driver, through no particular fault of his own, turned out to be a couple hours late and that made it impossible for us to get the turkey cooked at a reasonable time. So we had delicious beef fillet instead and Alene was to cook the turkey today. It was disappointing, but we had a good time visiting and swimming in their pool. We did have apple and pumpkin pies for dessert, so we had a bit of Thanksgiving anyway.

The first Thanksgiving

Hey everyone, this is Scott! I'm back home now and writing this blog post for my parents. We had our first thanksgiving dinner tonight and we have another tomorrow. It was at the Crawford's house. The Crawfords are the Ugandan EMI leaders. It was very American with turkey and pie and such. I was happy.

Miscellaneous observations about hair and taxis

When I visited Amy in India I quickly fell in love with the women's saris and the gorgeous fabrics they were made from, each seemingly more beautiful than the last. Here in Africa I'm not so taken with the clothing, but I love women's hair. I never dreamed there were so many ways to do cornrows, braids, and curls. Many styles are intricate and must take hours to complete. Women also wrap their hair in headdresses, again with a multitude of styles. I suppose I've seen 30 different ways you can wrap fabric around your head and have it look lovely.

On a completely different subject, I've been wanting to explain a little more about how the shared taxis work here. I get quite a bit of time each week to analyze them as I ride from place to place. As I've mentioned, they're 14-passenger vans. Each one runs a more or less set route heading into or out of the main taxi park downtown. They will stop anywhere along the route to pick up passengers. Each taxi has a driver and a conductor. The conductor sits in the seat nearest the side sliding door. His job is to collect fares, notice passengers wanting to be picked up, and help people on and off as necessary. People carry all kinds of things on taxis, including large burlap bags of who knows what, so the conductor will help them with their parcels or hold their babies while they load and unload.

Passengers know to go to the back or far side seats as they get in. There are seats in the aisle that fold up, so if someone in the far back corner needs to get out, for instance, the people in the fold up seats get up, fold their seats up, get out, let the passenger out, then climb back in. It's really quite a workable system. The vans are made for 14 passengers, but that number is flexible. People here don't need the personal space we're used to, so if the conductor wants to let 16 or 17 people ride, you just basically sit on each other.

When I go to Bead for Life I leave our home in Kansanga, pass through Kabalagala, then catch a taxi downtown to Luthuli Road in Bugalobi. Aren't those great names?

Karen

Grasshopper (Warning: don't read just before your Thanksgiving meal)

In the spirit of cultural adaptation, I indulged at the EMI lunch. I ate a fried grasshopper. And lived to tell about it.

Paul

Corruption dams the river of righteousness

The prophet Amos spoke a harsh rebuke to Israel on behalf of the Lord.

I know how many are your offenses
and how great your sins.
You oppress the righteous and take bribes
and you deprive the poor of justice in the courts.
(Amos 5:12)

The injustice of corruption has become more tangible during our stay in Uganda. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Uganda has all the problems and we have things straight in the US. But corruption isn't our biggest challenge, thankfully.

Transparency International recently issued its annual corruption index. Uganda slipped four places from last year to rank 130 out of 180 countries. The higher the number the worse the corruption. The top forms of corruption in Uganda are bribery, embezzlement or diversion of funds, extortion, and nepotism. What's striking to me are the personal examples I've heard:

• Moses lives in Kapchorwa Town. He recently completed enough of their house for he and his family to move in. Although there is a city water line next to their property and he applied 3 months ago for service, the city has not yet connected his house to the system. He matter-of-factly said the reason was that he hadn't paid a bribe.
• John is an EMI staff member who is providing construction management for a school and training facility in a nearby city. On behalf of the owner, he purchased 23 rolls of flexible water pipe. Each roll was sold as 100 meters in length. It was impractical to unroll them and check the length at the supplier's office and plus, he naturally assumed that he was buying 100 meters as they were marked. He recognized a shortage as the pipe was installed and realized after checking and rechecking measurements that the rolls were only 78 to 95 meters in length. There wasn't a single roll that provided the whole 100 meters. The supplier cheated him by removing a few meters from each roll.
• Kathy and Nigel have been renting a house for several years. Recently a dispute has arisen between two individuals, each claiming to own the property. An official of the court showed up at their front door one day two weeks ago telling them that he had an eviction notice and they must vacate immediately. As they were in the process of removing their goods from the house they discovered that in fact there was no eviction notice and that the court official was in cahoots with the lawyer for one of the claimants.
  

Later in the same chapter of Amos, God spoke even stronger words, words quoted by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 2500 years later.

I hate, I despise your religious feasts;
I cannot stand your assemblies ...
Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!
(Amos 5:21, 23-24)

Paul

Good things come from coffee shops

This post's title is the moral of the story. Paul was in a coffee shop here in Uganda about six weeks ago and struck up a conversation with a man who turned out to be a fellow Pacific Northwesterner. This man's wife had started an organization called Bead for Life (www.beadforlife.org) which helps impoverished Ugandan women. Paul asked if they had room for volunteers, and that's how I ended up helping there twice a week. I've told some of you about it already, but I thought I'd explain how the organization works in a little more detail.

First, women are referred to us who are below a certain poverty threshold. Once accepted into our program, they are taught to make beads from paper and to string them into necklaces. This type of necklace is becoming increasingly popular in the U.S. so many of you may have seen them. Every two weeks the women (divided into groups of about 50) come to the BFL office and sell us their necklaces. We then ship the necklaces to the U.S. where they are sold at home parties. The women are given half their money in cash and half is put into their savings account, which they can draw from at any time. The women are enrolled in this program for 18 months, after which they graduate. During their 18 months with us we teach them literacy and business skills, the goal of which is for them to open their own small business. So they don't sell beads to BFL for the rest of their lives: this is a jumping off point for them. They earn capital to begin their own business and may also be eligible for a loan from BFL. Many of the women open small fruit and vegetable stands or buy a plot of land to farm or raise animals on. It doesn't take much of a profit here to make a difference in people's lives.

My part in all this is small - I do data entry. I've spent most of my time so far entering data from exit interviews with the women into a spreadsheet. It has given me an overview of the impact the program makes. We ask the women things like, "Since you've started working with BFL, have you been able to buy a radio, bicycle, or mattress?" "Have you been able to make improvements to your home such as a metal roof or concrete floor?" Many of the women use the money they make to pay their children's school fees or to begin to support other family members (a typical use of income in Africa). One woman commented that the greatest improvement BFL has brought to her life is that she doesn't have to beg any more.

As a side note, I have an interesting commute to the job. It's across town, so it usually takes me a little over an hour using two boda-bodas (motorcycle taxis) and two matatus (14-passenger vans) each way. Sometimes, for reasons I don't understand, on the way home the matatu driver will drop us off before reaching the downtown taxi park where we normally get off. Yesterday he dropped us off in a part of town I was unfamiliar with. I couldn't see any landmarks, but I started walking in the direction I thought was right. After awhile I still couldn't see anything familiar and was starting to get frustrated and mildly panicked, so I called one of the EMI staff who has been here a long time. She was able to head me in the right direction based on a couple buildings I could see in the distance. It was the opposite of how I would have gone so I was glad I called her. Remember, very few streets are named, so everything has to be done by landmarks. One benefit of being lost was that I walked by blocks of used clothing stores. I'm thinking maybe when the girls come at Christmas if we're feeling adventuresome we can go down and shop.

Old and young

Africa values its elders. "Pondet" is the title they're given in Ngenge. It always elicited a warm smile of appreciation when I met an older person and referred to him or her as pondet. The two pondets in the photo have experienced a different life than you or I. I wonder what stories they would tell.

Africa's also a young land. Their shorter life expectancies and larger families mean lots of kids, whether you're in the city or the villages. (Click to enlarge photo's. Photo credits to Rachel.)

Paul

Life in Ngenge

Two of the leaders of the Ngenge water project are Rev. David from the local Church of Uganda diocese and Rev. Rusty from Christchurch in Alabama. These two individuals and their churches have worked together for several years to contribute to community development in Ngenge. For example, during my recent visit, a dentist (Bubba) and his assistants (Corky and Bill) provided dental services to more than 200 people.

The top photo shows Rev. David, Rev. Rusty, and Rev. David's brother, Jackson, during our visit to Jackson's home in one of the villages. If you look closely at the photo, you can see the light green of his cultivated fields, a potato field behind his hut and a watermelon patch to the side. These small fields represent his livelihood. If the rains fall and his crops produce, he has some income. If not, his extended family will help provide for him, but they don't have much more. Seeing this first hand made the $1-2 a day income of the villagers more real to me.

The second photo shows Jackson by his potato plants. If it had been a solid rainy season, the plants might be twice as tall and twice as productive. He doesn't have options for irrigation. There's no river near his property and the nearest borehole is about 2 km away. That's a long way to carry water just for your domestic purposes let alone for irrigation.

Jackson showed us inside of his hut. Apart from his foam mattress on a hand-made wooden bed, his possessions would fit inside of our suitcase. They consisted of a few extra clothes, a few cooking pots and utensils, a radio, candles, and a couple of jerry cans. The first watermelon from his crop was carefully placed by his things. It was maybe 12" in diameter so small compared to most we buy in the US. It would have fetched him UGX 2000 ($1) at the market. I say would have because the next night we ate dinner at Rev. David's house, with Jackson joining us, and he contributed his watermelon for dessert. It was one of those humbling moments when you experience the kindness and generosity of Ugandan people.

Ngenge water

Ngenge's a sub-county in eastern Uganda, north of Mt. Elgon and Kapchorwa Town if you're looking on Google Earth. I just returned from my week-long visit. We visited additional villages to evaluate the condition of their boreholes (wells) and met with the church leaders who are spearheading the development activities in this region.

We hope to initiate the training programs for hand pump mechanics, community WASH (water and sanitation hygiene), and for the local water committees in just a few weeks. In addition, the local firm we have selected will repair 10-12 broken boreholes. In the meantime, many of the 10,000 villagers are walking miles for their water or using poorly treated river water. Their needs are huge but I never heard a word of complaint. Rather, I heard "kate-a-bon" over and over. "Thank you."

The first photo shows a cattle herder taking a break at a borehole, and the other one is some of our team with local villagers.

Paul