Claude Misplaces an Heirloom

Claude (the world's most forgetful volunteer) is currently wondering around topless (his preferred state) and although I generally advise that this is not good etiquette in Uganda, it’s actually a very good thing today because when he was wearing a shirt, it was his favourite one, the one with naked women on it.

We're currently on a weekend away and as you would expect, he’s losing things around the hotel. I was joking with the barman yesterday and advising that he didn’t give the room key to Claude since they only have 1 key for a dorm with 6 beds. I explained that if they found any items lost around the complex, it probably belonged to Claude. By way of an opportunistic response the barman cheekily pointed to some towels he had found abandoned. I recognised Claude's instantly. When I next saw him I told him where it was. This morning at breakfast Claude came to me, having totally forgotten the conversation, to tell me that his towel was lost…

Last weekend he misplaced something substantially more valuable: his watch. It is a very expensive model, went out of production 50 years ago and is a family heirloom (I didn't even bother to ask why he thought it was a good idea to bring this to Uganda). Considering that Claude's family are members of the French aristocracy, I dread to think how much it was worth! He thinks he lost it when we went to visit a swimming pool. The trouble is that it's taken him a full 4 days to notice that he doesn't have it and so he could have lost it anywhere! Nevertheless Claude decided that he would go back to the hotel where we'd been swimming and speak to the cleaners (who would have long since fenced the watch if they had ever had it) as well as offering a monetary reward on the local radio station to anyone who could return it. I’m not sure I’ve met anyone here who listens to the radio yet.

As you would imagine, the watch has not yet been recovered...

Learning to be a biker

So, Motorbikes. This is something that I’ve had to get used to. Everyone gets about here on motorbikes called boda bodas. At first I was very nervous about getting on one. Betty (my much-loved Ugandan colleague) explained to the driver that it was my first journey and he was nice and steady – despite the fact that I had wedged the ice cold bottle of water I’d just purchased between my thighs and his back, so as to have both hands free to hold on. As we travelled from supermarket to home, there were many moments where I couldn’t look – the roads here are busy and sometimes it was easier to shut my eyes than see him pulling out inadvisably at junctions. Equally, with my eyes open I could see potholes coming and be full of fear that he’d drive into one, allowing me to simply bounce off the back. While I seemed to see many inescapable holes coming with my eyes open, the anticipated bumps never came, which suggests that his judgement was always better than mine.

The next boda boda journey I did was on an untarmacked road, it was much more bumpy (which wreaked havoc with metrics of the pedometer that I  was wearing). Going downhill was reminiscent of a roller coaster and we got faster and faster. Without the water bottle in front of me this time, I had to keep remembering not to grip the driver with my thighs whenever I was scared. I was acutely aware that there’s a special term British motorbikers use to describe those who chose to ride without leathers. I can’t remember what the exact phrase is but it roughly translates as ‘he who wants to die painfully’.

Despite this, the more I ride the more relaxed I feel. We’re taught to be selective about who we get on a bike with – riders with number plates, wing mirrors and helmets are held to be more responsible than those without. I've come to realise that no one uses their wing mirrors, but those who haven't knocked them off tend to be better drivers. I’ve got my own helmet too which I take everywhere with me, the brand is ‘Care’ so I have adapted it using masking tape and pen to read ‘Clare’.

Now I've moved into my host home, bikes are the only way to get to and from town (another upset for the pedometer) and so I've had to learn to be a good passenger. We ride each day through a deep ditch created by railway tracks and despite the need to lean forwards/backwards I rarely bump the drivers head with my own (with about a 90% success rate) and mostly no longer hold on to the bike (like a local). I dread to think what my mother would say but I feel like a success!

Claude and the 20,000 Shilling Challenge

No month would be complete without a Claude update... All the volunteers were doing a ’20,000 shilling challenge’ last week as part of their training. They were given 20,000 shillings along with 24 hours and they had to pretend to be entrepreneurs, be innovative and make a profit. At the end of the challenge they must give back the 20k, but could keep the rest. The scenario that Claude's group were given was that they had to innovate a salon. They didn’t know the first thing about African beauty, not even what different hair styles were so they decided to make bracelets out of braided synthetic hair. Unsurprisingly they were having trouble selling this innovative new product. It’s particularly hard to do when you have only 12 hours and no shop front from which to sell from - all the volunteers went out on the streets to try and catch passers by. With time running out they needed a new sales strategy and so they approached a friendly music shop owner, who put on some tunes and the whole team started dancing. None more ferociously than Claude. A large crowd very quickly gathered to see the white people dancing (in fact I was passing on a motorbike and it was pointed out to my by my driver. Knowing that a white person causing a scene was likely to have something to do with my team, I ran over to see what was going on, swelling the ranks of onlookers further). The team used this opportunity to sell bracelets to the crowd, who struggled to comprehend that a white person would be dancing for business...They didn’t actually make a profit at the end of all this, but they made less of a loss than they would have otherwise made.

Flowers and Finance

One night I came home to find Yusuf, my 31-year-old host great uncle with a stack of papers. He very happily told me that he’d been working with 2 of my volunteers and they’d shown him how to record the finances in his shop. He showed me everything he’d been taught (which was actually quite long winded because there were a lot of examples which were not of particular interest at all). Through doing his finances properly for the first time he’d learnt that he was losing money on sales of oil (something he didn’t seem too upset about) and he was waiting until 9:30pm for the shop to shut so he could work out what had made him the most money in the first financial day on record.

We took him to the pub to help make his waiting easier. The establishment was so small that when we asked for 5 beers they didn’t have enough in the fridge. As it turns out the place was actually a brothel so perhaps beer wasn’t their primary focus (it’s only a small village, we haven’t many drinking establishments to choose from!)

When I spoke to his volunteers about this shortly afterwards they said that he had been some sort of financial records before we arrived…but that he’d drawn flowers all over them so that you could no longer see the numbers. Clearly the value wasn’t fully understood.

It makes me so happy to see someone gain the skills they need to steer them well through their business life.

A lesson in Western culture: Marshmallow toasting

One of the first things that the volunteers do with their entrepreneurs is the ‘marshmallow challenge’ (in which they learn to embrace failure and to put their customer (marshmallow) at the centre of their business). So yesterday I’ve been distributing marshmallows…and yesterday evening I introduced my host family to marshmallow toasting. We all crowded into the little dark outhouse that is a kitchen, even the men (although they didn’t pass the threshold by too far - men don't do kitchens here!) and toasted them on forks over the charcoal stove. While I was very pleased with the toasting, these guys hadn’t ever tasted a raw marshmallow before, so they didn’t fully appreciate the beautiful transformation that occurs when the foamy sweet turns soft, hot and gooey with that sugar crisp shell. My host sisters kept trying to store the finished article in a mug, which doesn’t work; if you eat cold toasted marshmallow it just tastes like burnt caramel.  Nevertheless, it brought the whole family together which was lovely. I’ve been asked to save a little bit of marshmallow for the youngest child who wasn’t present, which I’ve taken to be a very good sign.

An introduction to my Ugandan family

So now I’ve moved into my host home and while this isn't story-worthy in itself, it probably is worth describing so that you can imagine my whereabouts: Mama is a domestic servant and Papa is an esteemed business man. Luckily for me I’m treated like a guest here and so no one expects me to spend my days in the kitchen. I’m reluctant to change this status because for the women here, domestic labour is their life and I don’t have time for that.

I’m here with 2 other female volunteers: Emma and Emily. Our rooms adjoin, I get my own one with an ensuite, and the girls use my room like a hallway in order to get to and from said bathroom. The key problem with it is that it keeps flooding and my room gets very very wet, which I find rather annoying. (Actually, one of them has taken to going to the bathroom outside in the night, which is even worse as our heavy steel door can’t shut unless you slam it. The bolt also doesn’t slide across smoothly but needs to be noisily jammed up and down in order to move. We will have to talk about this…)

We're in the suburbs of Iganga town, it feels quite rural and we've got a number of chickens in the yard, now all with names (and featuring one called Edwina Curry). Our household is the furthest out of all the volunteer host homes. It's attached to a shop where our host great uncle (aged 30) sells grains along with our host mum.

Right now it’s raining too hard for us to leave the outhouse we live in and get the day started. It’s also raining too hard for the women to make breakfast, so I imagine if we did leave, there wouldn’t be any point anyway. I think that waiting for rain may be one of the key things people do in Uganda. It’s an incredibly lush country, at least it is in the countryside, in the urban areas it’s very very dusty. I was amazed to see rice paddyfields here! Apparently Winston Churchill described Uganda as the ‘pearl of Africa’ because everything that it’s possible to find in Africa can be found here (mountains, swamps, paddyfields, apples…).

I’ve just spotted Emily's underwear hanging from the bars of my window (I'm not imprisoned, but security against the outside world is a top priority here). I must’ve been too absorbed in blog writing to have noticed her hanging it all up. It’s actually bizarre that she hasn't hung these personal items in her own room. This is the kind of thing that you have to accept when you're living with unknown people in an unknown culture: many surprises! I'll add this to my future list of odd confrontations...

Uganda might be OK

When I first arrived at the airport at Entebbe, I thought my journey was over. Little did I know that I had a 6 hour minibus journey ahead of me! The population of the bus was mystifyingly small. There was Betty (not my line manager but my immediate senior – she was my friend and teacher in Kenya before she became Program manager here) and also 2 drivers. This may have been uneconomical but at least it meant I could lie on the back seats and get some rest. I woke up at about 7pm for a pit stop. Do not imagine a service station, rather a toilet block, hidden behind some shops (I had to wonder whose toilet it was?!) and many hawkers selling (amongst other things) baked plantain (savoury bananas) and barbecued chicken. This roadside food really was top notch and I began to think that food in Uganda wouldn’t be so bad after all.

The hotel here isn’t too bad either. There’s hot and cold running water (although in practice there’s rarely any difference between the two advertised temperatures), I’ve got a double bed, and the smooth but unfamiliar flooring material doesn’t appear to be concrete – you can put your possessions on it without having to clean them after.

It's a good start!