Extortion, Pork, and Photo Shoots

This week started off in fairly normal circumstances with Derek and I working with ILF on their stove project and brainstorming about our business. Tuesday we learned how interesting things can be here. We were planning a day of meeting various groups that work within a farming co-op and learning how they operate. We had a full day of driving planned and were going to the supermarket in the middle of town to get some water and snacks for the car ride. We popped into the supermarket for about 5 minutes and came out to our truck had a boot on the tire. Derek and I were pretty confused because our driver had been in the car the entire time and we didn't understand how someone gets a boot on their car while they are still in it. We saw that he was arguing with a few men and they were pointing to notebooks that they had and kept flipping through them. What had happened, as our driver explained, was that these men worked for the city and said that we owed money on a parking ticket. Our driver had a handful of paid tickets and they had no proof of the outstanding ticket but said that it was back at their office and when they went back to get it, then we could get the boot off. If we wanted it off now we had to pay 30,000 shillings (about $22). We told them to forget about the money and sent our driver to the office to inquire about the ticket. He eventually came back with the men's boss and said that there had been no proof of the ticket so their boss was going to make them take the boot off. The city workers had come back and, with their boss in attendance raised their price from 30,000 to 60,000 to take the boot off of the car. We were with a few Ugandans and they all recognized it to us as extortion. Derek and I were frustrated and I ended up being pretty harsh on one of them. The time that they were holding us could have been time that we were helping other Ugandans out. They ended up walking off and their boss was stuck with us. The whole affair ended with a police officer coming and inquiring as to what was going on. After having the situation explained to him he immediately began to attack the municipal worker who had come with our driver as being the reason that foreigners fear Uganda. He went on to say that people in his profession only cheat and that they are ruining the entire country. The police officer gave us clearance to saw off the boot and a large crowd had gathered to watch. After the boot was gone we finally got moving again and the whole situation seemed to be just a big waste of time. The men who had put the boot on the car were apparently going to be arrested for their attempted exploitation. It was interesting to see that the police officer was the moral authority over someone who worked for the local government. It was nice to know that at least there was someone who had the authority and the judgment to take a stand and help us out.

The rest of our day was pretty unremarkable in comparison to the morning. We met with the co-op and saw a ton of chickens. We learned that there are a number of different farming practices that are done in the urban areas in the South that are just being introduced to the North. Some of them sounded like sound business ideas that could very well if implemented correctly and the co-op was hoping to diversify its portfolio. There had been large farming co-operations before the civil wars had started and now the government is encouraging the formation of large commercial farming co-operations. It is good to see there is the idea of taking something that everyone does to survive and trying to generate additional income in the form of commercial farming instead of simply subsistence farming.

The rest of this week we have been involved a bit with closing out our professor's time here and networking with local businesses. We are getting to the point where we have to realize what legal status we need to obtain here in Uganda in order to fulfill our organization's goals of encouraging the development of business ideas through education and loaning. The next few weeks should fly by as we have quite a list of things to accomplish. Hopefully soon I will have some news of the development of our organization.

Halfway

At this point I am about halfway finished with my African experience. By recognizing that I’m not saying that I am eager to finish up and that I’ve been homesick. I am looking forward to the comforts of Oregon, especially when the only consistent daily reminder of home is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The power has become increasingly unreliable and I have given up on the internet. Luckily, the organization that we have been consulting has just completed a new office with satellite internet and is looking into getting a generator. But in the meantime I can only reflect on and some of the things that I have learned without the ability to download any new songs or check my Facebook (really roughing it).

The rainy season here is like a mildly wetter version of the summer in Portland. This is awesome because it’s sunny for a few days, rains like crazy for a few hours, then back to being sunny. I’m hoping to come back with a bit more color than my friends who have been around Oregon all summer. We are planning a trip down to Tanzania and the beaches of Zanzibar Island, which I couldn’t be more excited for, so being back home with good color is almost assured. Derek and I have become a bit bored with the Ugandan scene and are looking forward to hammering down our business plan and taking off to see some more interesting parts of the region. In the guidebook we have the pages that are filled with vibrant color pictures are dominated by scenes from Tanzania and Kenya so we have been getting the feeling that there is much more around than the blandness of Northern Uganda.

People who work for NGOs abroad are downright badasses. The guys that we are living with who work for the International Lifeline Fund are complete soldiers, at least in my sense of the word. They are willing to put up with bad living and working conditions, the constant threat of fraud, and human management chaos in order to really create a positive impact on the world. One of the guys who we are living with, Ben, has been working in Afghanistan, Sudan, Malaysia, to name a few and continues to not be completely burnt out from the work. Most of the NGO people we have met take everything in stride, whether it was attacks on them in Darfur or terrible food in Kabul, and work without a lot of recognition. They aren’t doing it necessarily for the good of a nation or group, but work towards the betterment of all mankind. They have stories that range from life-death situations to stories that are completely hilarious and will never be replicated. It has been pretty cool to be able to hear some of the experiences that they share with us and you get a little jealous of all the experiences they have had. Veejay, the deputy-director of ILF and a complete badass, said to “get the f*** out and travel as much as you possibly can”. No matter where I end up getting locked-down in my career I am going to make sure to keep getting out and seeing the world. It seems like that is the best way to put your own life into context no matter what you end up doing as a career.

Overall; the largest problem with Africa has got to be the complete lack of public infrastructure and absence of faith in the government. It’s not that people talk about the government frequently and with a lot of distaste; it’s that it takes a lot of prompting to get people to do so. Things are very different when you have discussions with people from different areas about the federal government. Up here in the North there is a complete lack of trust of the current President because he is from the South. In a conversation with a Southerner who currently resides here in the North I learned that, from his perspective, the Northerners are only concerned with fighting each other. The tribal conflicts here are the main focus whereas the work of the central government is trivial because they feel no real connection to the leadership in Kampala. After going around to villages and constantly having them ask for lower fuel costs, more hospitals, better education, and clean water you begin to get the sense that they don’t think the government will do much for them. Driving around and seeing the state of the roads, (the worst of any country I have ever been in) it seems like the absence of services that we figure to be so basic of a government (like road repair) shows a complete failure of a government to work in the best interest of its people. I am in no way saying that faith in the government will change things for the people and that “get out the vote” programs will change anything. They won’t. What I’m saying is that in a modern era where Africa is becoming more relevant in the global economic scene, the countries that will succeed on this continent are the ones that can become successful in helping the everyday worker complete their basic task and add to the production of the country. If roads are poor, people are sick, higher education is difficult, it doesn’t matter how well you pitch foreign investors into coming to your country. Globalization has created native pockets around the world of multi-national corporations and the easier that nations can help multi-national corporations create their vision in a local context (hiring locals, seeing that nation as a potential market, etc.) the more willing companies will be to relocate to that nation. And it isn’t the recognition that these problems will help their nation because the leaders certainly know.

It’s in the actual implementation and, in Africa, that’s where most of the things fall down. Ideas and planning here need to have direction and goals because people will take advantage of vagueness and weakness. Having concrete plans and wisely investing at the start are the best way to carry an organization forward in Uganda. Anything that is kept as a concept here surly will fail.

Kampala, Uganda = Meh

So the past 2 days we have been here in Kampala, Uganda. It is a bit different from Lira as it is the capital and, due to its status as the commerce center of the country, the only city where wealth flows in from foreign nations. Already, after having been here for only 2 days, I am starting to get an itch to not only get out of Kampala but also Uganda. It shows flashes of what its neighboring countries are but when you talk to Westerners about Uganda the conversation always ends up in discussing the neighboring countries and plans to explore. We have heard a number of things and Kenya and Tanzania and Derek and I are planning a trip to briefly visit those countries before we head home.
Here in Kampala there is the usual big city problems like awful traffic and pick-pocketers however there are also a few other problems unique to Africa and maybe Uganda. For one, the power goes out frequently. It’s surprising to say that as we have had the same problems 300 km north in a much smaller town. To say that in the capital city doesn’t say much for the country’s infrastructure. Also, there is an abundant amount of very mediocre places to eat. Derek and I searched today for almost 2 hours looking for something interesting to try but didn’t see too much that looked good. There is a lot of Ugandan interest in fast-food and there are a number of large food courts that have very Western-looking food stalls. We wanted to get some interesting crafts as well and were sent to a large “market” with stalls that all sold the same corny African wood carvings and lame t-shirts. Besides this market and a few smaller, more expensive art galleries, there was nowhere else to get some interesting gifts. The only things we picked up were from an antique shop because the carvings there were rather inexpensive and had various significant meanings to the small tribes that produced them. At least we got a bit of content with our gifts. We are hopefully that in Nairobi and Dar-Es-Salaam we are able to pick up some interesting scarves and beads to take back home with us. I have always been interested in Arab culture and both of those places have very different influences than the British influence on Kampala. Today we even made it up to a mosque on the top of a hill over-looking the city and for 5,000 shillings (less than $4) we were able to go up into the minaret and take pictures of the city below. They started the call to prayer while we were up there and it ended up being a pretty cool experience for both of us.
So far Kampala has not really shown us too much but it is nice to get some amenities that we have come to miss since being up in Lira. We are leaving for Jinja tomorrow morning to go rafting at the mouth of the Nile River which will be a welcome change of scenery. I’m sure after this long weekend of traveling we will all be ready to get back on Monday and get back to work.

Village People

The past few days we have been going into villages to gauge how much interest there is in starting businesses and new products and services. The first day we were working directly with a group that is based out of an Internally Displaced Persons camp called Rochacoco and who serves windows. They try to help them develop useful skills in things that they are interested in so that they can provide for their families. Many of the widows take care of more than 5 children as it is typical in this culture to pass of your children if you can’t provide for them. Families will only have a few kids but will be burdened with providing for as many as 10 as others simply can’t provide for their own. We learned more about their organization and discussed different partnerships that we are thinking about entering into with them then took a tour of the town. The IDP camp had previously held almost 10,000 people but now many of them have returned to the villages and things have become very quiet. After walking around for a while, and being stalked by a group of easily 50-60 children, we met up with a few of the widows and talked with them for a while. The women in this culture are very willing to start new businesses as the income gained greatly helps when supplemented by the income gained by their husbands. With this group there were no husbands so they were very eager to pose ideas about the types of businesses they would start if given some start-up capital and it was interesting to hear a few of their ideas. None of the ideas were really anything radically different from what we have heard before and there is really a lack of imagination when it comes to thinking of new products and services.

Yesterday we went out to the home village of someone that the professor I am traveling with had met walking in-front of our house (?). She had mobilized the village and we had received many of the local head councils of the various smaller villages outside of the main village, Aromo. We had decided to break-up into different groups as to not speak and ask questions to the larger group as a whole. I had said that I would work with the men and later on found that this was going to be a very daunting task. Derek, my colleague, had taken the “youth” group which included people from 15-35, so that meant that I was going to be working with all of the “older folks” in a culture where the life expectancy is 45. All of them were farmers and most had been since the left primary school (7^th grade). As I probed I found that nearly all of them were growing the same 5 crops and when the prices of the crops went lower, they all suffered. I tried to ask if any of them had any ideas about how to avoid the low prices and they said if they had businesses that made a lot of money then the prices would go up. I responded by asking questions about the type of businesses that they were thinking of and kept hearing responses that talked about what they would do if they had more money. What I had learned was that in these smaller villages it really takes them being given an idea to try out rather than being given money to creatively use to generate income. I had a type of a break-through when I asked about what they would do to generate income if they were “fearless” and having “no risk” in starting anything. The answers I got relayed to me fears of the rebels and from thieves. It made me realize that in the US we talk about people having fear from starting a new businesses and being worried about the businesses going under. These people had no experience with this type of failure at all and really hadn’t seen start-up businesses generate any successes because there really were no start-up businesses. This group of older men had lived through not only the Lord’s Resistance Army burning their school as recently as 4 years ago to the rein of Idi Amin. They didn’t speak in terms of successes and failures but were hardened by living a life where things were either given to them or taken from them. By the time the conversation had ended and they stopped asking me questions they had asked me for help rebuilding their school, help in getting water, help with higher fuel costs, help with low food prices, help with rebuilding their church, money in general, and a soccer ball. It’s tough sitting in-front of all of these people and repeatedly saying that I was eager to hear ideas that would enable them to be able to help them generate their own income to solve these problems. I’m sure they wrote me off after a while as being able to help them at all. However; they did say that they are eagerly waiting for me to return.

All around here the people are so distanced from the flow of aid, business, whatever that when they see us Westerners it’s like the rest of the world has come to sit and listen to their problems. Americans are constantly relevant in the stream of global progress and when we come it’s like plugging them into that global stream. When we leave they get disconnected again and struggle every day until we come back and hear their problems. Even if we promise them nothing there is the sense that their hope stems from us simply being there.

Iffy Internet

I am starting to get back on track after having some internet troubles for the past 2 weeks. The first 2 days that we were here the internet worked perfectly and I think that we all immediately took it for granted. Then all hell broke loose and it was down and has been back up but only working on one computer since we have been here. Also, after the first week or so of having very consistent power we have started to have all sorts of troubles with that. Steep learning curve I guess but as long as my computer and iPod have a battery I am content for at least a few hours while the power is down. So far when it goes down I have found that a good way of passing time is by climbing on the roof. There isn’t a whole lot to see (and the kids who live near-by go nuts)but sometimes the sunsets are pretty cool to check out. So after being here for 2 weeks there are a few main things that I have noticed that I will briefly get out.

Firstly; they love to interact with white people. Going through a crowded place you end up having nearly everyone stare at you. Some of the children will look and laugh while some of the younger kids are terrified and being to cry uncontrollably (It isn’t just me, it has happened to other people too). They greet you very warmly with a big smile but usually as the relationship moves on they eventually end up asking you for something. Most of their interactions with white people have been with aid organizations so they are usually expecting something when they meet someone as pale as myself. It has been difficult to try to conduct business thus far with people who are immediately expecting a hand-out.

Secondly; there has been a vacuum of culture. I guess it’s from all of the civil wars and the terror that these people have been living under for decades. My perception of Uganda would be a rich cultural area where tribal customs and crafts remain preserved. Tribes have been reduced to clans that organize a group of people are families are mostly for watching over each other. The only type of cultural activity that I can see that’s around is pot making. Lots of goods are imported from India, Taiwan, and China that are cheap and I’m told that if you are looking for good crafts, most of them are imported from Kenya or Ethiopia.

The food is a bit of a disappointment as well. Ugandans are eager to start their own businesses and get involved with growing crops but aren’t really willing to go out on a limb and try something new. Cassava, maize, sunflowers, and some fruits and vegetables are what consist of the Ugandan diet. Not a lot of spices are involved and the food tastes rather bland.

Most of this is a bit heart-breaking but there is a new generation (and it’s a large generation, Ugandans love having kids) that will be growing up in probably the most peaceful time Uganda has seen in years. With the Northern-Uganda based rebel group, the LRA, on the latter end of peace talks it looks like the immediate future is bright for Ugandans.

3 Flights 8 Hours in a Car and 1 Full Night Later

Hello Everyone,

I have finally made it to my home for the next 2 months; Liratown, Uganda. We left Monday night and got here late Thursday night and I am starting to acclimate to my new surroundings fairly well. It certainly is a world away from what I am comfortable with though. As we were flying into Uganda from one of our connecting flights from Amsterdam the most noticeable difference between Entebbe airport and any other airport I have been to is how dark it was. I had no idea we were about to land apart from eventually seeing the ground from the flash of the airplane’s lights. There was no surrounding towns or cities and the entire ground just seemed pitch dark. Starting out of the window of the plane at the floodlights that lit the tarmac it looked like it was raining upwards and it was difficult for me to stomach the realization that it was actually the amount of bugs attracted to the light. After going thru customs we headed to our hotel for Wednesday night prepared to embark to Lira the next day. Thursday we headed for the capital Kampala and spent a few hours there packing the truck and meeting with a former Oregon student who we will be staying with while we are in Lira. The drive was only a few hundred kilometers but ended up taking us nearly 7 hours or so as the “highway” is not very developed. Ugandan logic is that when a road is under-construction (which from what I have seen, 90% are but no one is working on them) they build make-shift speed-bumps from gravel for the entire length of the construction zone. This is absolute hell as the construction zones can vary in length to the point where you have non-stop speed-bumps every 40 feet or so for nearly 25-30 minutes. After finally making it through all the bumps and pot-hole filled roads we finally made it to the north. Lira is the 3^rd largest city in Uganda and has a bit of an urban sprawl with the town as the center of trade and there being a large number of outlaying villages. Today (Friday) we were able to start out work observing the International Lifeline Fund’s stove project and look for areas where our microloans will be effective. We traveled to a factory/distribution center for their basic rocket stoves which are a circle of bricks that are bound by metal wire. Today was the first demonstration for the women from a near-by village on how effective these stoves can be and at the end they were given one to take home. There were nearly 300 women that showed up, exceeding the ILF’s estimates by over 100, proving the massive demand for these stoves. The demonstration showed how to use these pieces in combination with a few clay pieces and some mud to create a stove that significantly decreases the amount of wood needed to cook (it works like an oven where much of the heat is kept within the stove by the mud; here in Africa this is a technological breakthrough). This is very important to many of the Ugandan woman because with rising food prices they have had to decrease consumption and a saving on the money spent on wood would be massive for these families. It is also safer because what many Ugandan woman use to cook now is a simple open fire that is dangerous for children and has a great impact on the amount of carbon that is put into the atmosphere through its ineffectiveness with burning wood. The next few days we are going to be asking a lot of questions to the main people in this stove project to find ways where Ugandans can find employment while increasing the size of the distribution network for these important stoves. From what I hear it is very tough to find a win-win situation around here that doesn’t involve killing someone (I guess it’s a win-win depending on who you ask) but we are hoping that these loans can decrease the massive unemployment rates and increase the number of stoves in use. The next few days we should get a better idea of how feasible this is.

Pre-Departure Thoughts

I just wanted to get this started off before I take off because I am very much so hoping that I can stick with this. I have officially waited until a few hours before I take off to get this started and it's giving me a little bit of closure to get in my "going really far away" mindset. I know that a lot of people have expressed interest in knowing what I am up to on the other side of the world and I would really like to provide a first-person account of what is going on in Northern Uganda. It will be nice to put a face to the number of people that we have been in contact with and to get to work once we get down there. This past week I have really been enjoying everything that home has to offer and now I'm glad to move on for the summer. There's no doubt that I will miss my back deck, the pudding in my refrigerator, my gym, and I guess my family. Now moving forward it's difficult to imagine the scale of impact that we could have in this small area of Uganda provided we work diligently and keep our minds very open. A quote from the Proverbs reads "In labor there is profit, in mere talk there is poverty". I feel that as we have been preparing here in Oregon we have come closer to understanding the position these people are in without coming any closer to necessarily solving any issues. It is much easier to figure out that someone is stuck in a well than how to get them out. With yearly spending in the area averaging around $11 a year it's clear that a capital infusion is necessarily. At this amount a McDonald's meal in the States would be the relatively equivalent to a down-payment on a house. Even with comparisons like this it is very difficult to personify an issue that is 9,000 miles (a continent, ocean, and half a continent away). Maybe the issue of the suffering in Africa is that they are just too far for most people in the States to take equity of the problems in Africa and help for the good of humanity as a whole. Hopefully being on the ground we will have a better idea of what they can do to bring themselves above adverse poverty. Being there we will have a better idea of where Africa can go and where it wants to be (because life there can never be like life here). The issue is not growing up in a developed versus undeveloped economy but growing up in the land of opportunity versus place where opportunity is hard to come by. Through our research and loans we are hoping to give opportunity, something we have been blessed with, to a small amount of people in Northern Uganda. Whether this opportunity will be seized and can have a lasting, self-sustaining effect remains to be seen. I know that all three of us will take a lot from this opportunity; I'm just hoping we are successful in what we leave behind.

 

See you in Africa