The new Fellow

The time for my fellowship is drawing to an end, can you believe it? I'll be coming home on June 10 and this week is my last at the MCDT office.

A new Kiva Fellow arrived in town on Friday who will be working with MCDT starting next Thursday, ensuring a very smooth transition for everyone, I think. Her name is Taryn and she's getting an MBA from Cornell so you know she knows a heck of a lot more than I do about finance, micro or otherwise.

We met yesterday for lunch so I could fill her in a little on the background. We ended up spending the rest of the day together, taking a couple of matatus, first up to my apartment in Bukoto and then back to the Garden City Mall to see "Sex and the City" (as I talk about in the next post; very strange experience, seeing that movie here).

At one point, our matatu, full to bursting with people, was chugging painfully up the hill to Ntinda when it stalled and died. The driver got it started, promptly turned around and zipped back down the hill. Taryn asked me, "What's going on?" I said, "We're going to the Shell station." She said, "How did you know that?" And the strange answer is, I just knew.

I knew exactly what had happened. The matatus don't get a full tank of gas, usually buying 5,000 or 10,000 shillings-worth at a time. The matatu had about run out of gas, so they needed to head back to the gas station that's strategically placed halfway up the hill. That's just what happens here.

Taryn asked how I knew what the fares would be for the matatus, and that too has become something I've gotten a feel for. It's strange to me that it's in this very little thing, the matatus, that I am so aware of nuance and etiquette while other larger issues are still rather monolithic. Probably because I have spent a lot of times using the matatus, more than I have, say, visited people's homes, I have a slightly better sense of the complexities of the social interactions there.

As we headed back downtown, I pointed out various neighborhood: the stop where you get off to go to MCDT; Wandegeya where Taryn will catch matatus from the place where she's currently staying. Taryn said, "How do you know all this?" And the thing is, of course, I didn't at first. I told Taryn, wait 10 weeks and you'll know all this, too. I mean, I knew absolutely nothing when I arrived--certainly less than Taryn does, who spent a month in Tanzania last year. But I certainly now have proof that I have learned something in my time here. And it is satisfying to know that for a newcomer, at least, that knowledge appears to be impressive.

Water

For some reason, the water in my bathroom isn't running. It started on Tuesday night when I wanted to brush my teeth and the faucet wouldn't cooperate. I used some water I'd boiled earlier in the day.

The next morning, still nothing, which was a problem because, boy, did I need to bathe. I asked Robert, the new Alex, about it and he clambered up to the compound's water tower to turn taps and things to no avail. I heated up a couple of pots of water, hauled them into the bathroom, and sluiced myself off as best I could.

Now, all this was, you know, not perfect but tolerable because of one key thing: the toilet still flushed. Today, this is no longer the case. Something's got to change or it's going to get really nasty around here soon.

But believe me, I have gained a new appreciation for the gift of water. I went with Joseline to visit her mother Joy on Sunday. No running water there either. As we walked from Nakulabye to Kasubi where she lives, I saw children getting water from a dirty stream. I'm hoping and assuming that the water I had at Joseline's mother was from a tap somewhere.

After some cassava chips and tea, Joy showed me around the house. This is actually a house she owns, which is a big deal. It has three rooms, a kitchen in a kind of lean-to to one side, next to a garden with some matooke trees, a jackfruit tree, and some other useful plants. And on the other side, the loo--two outhouse sheds--and "the bathroom," which was an open-air enclosure, a little larger than a shower stall with a wall up to about shoulder height. The cement floor slopes down and has a drain that empties onto the ground outside. That's the bathroom.

Yesterday when I came into the office after visiting the center, Justine and I were comparing guilt, which was helpful in a way to know that Justine, too, feels the kind of pain and sorrow of knowing that her life is more comfortable than those of the people she works with and for. "What do I have to complain about? I sit here all day in a comfortable chair, looking at a computer screen," she said. I talked about my water problems and about heating up water for a shower that morning. "I never take hot showers," she says. "Growing up in a boarding school, there was no one to boil it for us. If I need a hot shower, I know that I'm sick." Yeah, like that. No complaints, really. None at all.

A busy week!

Hello, there!

It's going to be a short update right now as I only have about 9 minutes left at the internet cafe. I thought I would take advantage of the unlimited internet access I still get at the Life in Africa internet cafe but a) the power is down and b) Ezra is packing up as LiA prepares to move back to their original location. They can't afford the rent where they are any more. Alas!

But I've had a good, very busy week at MCDT, going to four different neighborhoods ranging from rural at the edge of Kampala, to slums, to urban/downtown, to an industrial edge of town.

I've also heard there's a new Kiva fellow who will be arriving next Friday, so I'm starting to make transition plans.

All in all, things are going well and I'll add more details when I can. Today is for laundry, grocery shopping, and general housework. And all is well.

Learning to cook

I feel very proud of the cooking I have been doing here in my little kitchen in Kampala. I’ve always liked cooking, but I have also had tremendous resources to carry out food preparation: cookbooks, for one thing; ovens, microwaves, food processors, and any amount of kitchen equipment for another; a car to cart things from the grocery store for third; a huge refrigerator and freezer, with reliable electricity, for a fourth.

And if I were too tired to cook, there were any number of restaurants, take out places or, best of all, home delivery.

So it has been a revelation to me how much I could do with very little, using whatever is at hand and making it up. And then eating it anyway if it turns out to be terrible.

I’m feeling my way and adding gradually to my repertoire as well as to my kitchen. My kitchen came supplied with four sets of silverware and dishes, four mugs, four glasses, three serving bowls with glass lids, a dull knife, a carafe, three pots, one skillet, and two (small) strainers. As you learned earlier, I did buy a toaster which has been a wonderful thing. I bought a cereal bowl, a decent knife, two dishcloths (that double as potholders) and a potato peeler (most of the people here peel with knives, but I simply don’t have the facility, as I found trying to peel a couple of carrots and ending up with nubbins).

I also bought curry powder. This was huge. At home I have a vast array of spices that I keep around just in case I ever need, you know, marjoram. Because you never know. Here I started with salt and pepper and then branched out radically by adding the curry powder.

Curry powder is wonderful! I can pick up whatever vegetables happen to be at the vegetable stall on the way home, chop them up, sauté some onions in butter or oil, add the vegetables and any meat I may happen to have, add curry powder and some water, and simmer them until they are soft and cooked through, and serve it with rice. Voila! Healthy meal!

My other staples include spaghetti with a fresh tomato and onion sauce or sauce from a jar (often adding eggplant or another vegetable), or a pan-grilled meat with potatoes and some kind of vegetable. I also make a kind of sweet and sour pork dish using fresh pineapple, green pepper and onions. Tonight I am going to try dal, a kind of curried lentils, using a recipe I pulled from the internet.

Mostly it’s the making do part that has been important to me. If all I have is green beans and potatoes, then by gum, I’m having green beans and potatoes for dinner. I’m beginning to get a glimmer of the concept of “that’s all there is.”

I confess, I really miss cheese, though.

Basics: Trash

I have been very curious how they handle the trash here in Kampala. I have one trash can in my apartment, in the kitchen, about the size of an upended mailbox. Alex empties it every day, but what happens after that?

There's a lot of trash in the small field I walk through every day on my way to work, much of it organic in nature--banana peels and the like. Occasionally, someone burns it, as they were doing today. Not an open flame when I walked by; more of a smoldering smoky mass.

Similarly in the back area next door, which belongs to the restaurant downstairs, a pile of trash is occasionally burned. Also there is a marabou stork, carrion eater that it is, that picks through it.

But on Tuesday morning, I finally found out the first part of my question of where the trash goes after it leaves me. An open-bed truck was driving up the dirt road that runs in front of my house. Three men on the truck were piling up black plastic trash bags, about the size of a kitchen trash bag, that had been placed outside each residence. Near as I could tell, there was one bag per residence. Certainly a lot less than I see at home, which makes sense, since there's not a lot of prepackaged food around here.

What happens to the after the truck takes it away, I really couldn't tell you. I'm mighty curious, though.

A superficial understanding

On Monday night, I went over to Joselyn's for dinner. What I didn't know was that there was going to be a Bible study and prayer group. It was a very subdued group, with the exception of their time of praise singing, and I felt considerably out of place. I was aware of the fact that I was breaking rules I didn't know about and couldn't do anything to prevent it. For instance, each time someone would begin to speak, the dialogue with the group was prefaced by the speaker saying, "Praise God," and everyone responding "Amen." Understandably, this did not come naturally to me. But beyond this rather obvious example, I sensed that I was stumbling around in areas I did not understand.

This was only reinforced as I came home via matatu from Wandegeya. Every time I have taken the route from Bukoto to Wandegeya, it has cost 500/=. When I arrived at my stop, I handed the conductor a 500/= coin. "It's 800," he told me. I got a bit shirty about it, saying that every time I had gone that way before it was 500, etc., etc. Eventually, I did get out and give him another 100. He slammed the door and went on.

I called Joselyn to report I was home safely and complained about the matatu conductor trying to rip me off. "Eight hundred is right," she told me, with great cheerfulness and not a spot of blame. "They charge more at night." Making me feel like a big jerk for getting all bent out of shape over 22 cents. On the other hand, how was I to know?

I think the first flush of discovery is waning and I'm now at a point where I have to work harder for every bit I'm going to learn. And there's a lot to learn.

Basics: on cell phones

As I'm sure many of you already know, cell phones (mobiles) are everywhere here in Africa. On the Kiva Fellows blog, one of the Fellows in Tanzania pointed out that "cell phone service is better than in the U.S., but you can't get running water," which is about right.

In a place where electricity is sketchy or unavailable and people are very itinerant, cell phones are fantastic. And in a place where mail service is pretty much non-existent, it's all on a pay-as-you-go system. On every street practically every shop allows you to buy airtime minutes: 2,000/= for a small slip of paper with a scratch-off part that reveals a code you can enter to add more minutes. Receiving calls is free, though, so even if you are out of minutes, you can still get calls.

People don't answer phones here; they pick them. "He's not picking," is a refrain I have heard often, and may suggest that the receiver doesn't want to talk to you (as when you are trying to visit a borrower who is late paying back a loan).

I bought a cell phone soon after my arrival here, and it has been an amazing tool. Even relative strangers give out cell phone numbers freely, and entering that information into my contact directory has been the best way to keep track of who is who.

The neighborhood

Finally, here's a picture of the road right outside my apartment buiding.



There's an amazing number of shops on this street: little markets, food vendors, a beauty salon (or beauty saloon as they are often called), a public telephone, a pharmacy, and others I haven't discovered yet.