Running through Foreign Lands

Yesterday I had a profound realization.  Well, a couple, and all in the span of 38 sweaty minutes.  It was a big run for me for a lot of reasons. 

In general, running in Uganda has some element of adventure associated with it.  The roads leave a lot to be desired, when they are there.  There is a constant gaggle (I will get back to gaggles…) of small children running, laughing, pointing, generally creating chaos around you when running.  Often there are myriad wild to semi-tame dogs that take interest in the activity.  There are adults that sporadically take enough interest to cast a lazy call of  mzungu (white guy), and sidelong stare to indicate their general sense that what I am doing defies logic.  Then there are geese.

This is where I go back to gaggles.  On one particular running route that I follow in Hoima, there is a gaggle of geese that torment me.  It started about 3 months ago.  I first came running down there on a rainy morning.  There were two geese, a white goose and a speckled goose.  As I approached them, jogging slowly along, they began to crane their necks and ruffle their feathers.  I moved to the other side of the road and kept going.

The next few runs I didn't see them.  But then, about a month ago, I was running, and as I got to that section of road, there were at least a dozen geese, grazing the road where I was supposed to run.  At first I thought, "they are geese, they should see I am a superior animal, and get out of my way, like chickens do."  This was VERY incorrect.  The geese tightened into a pack, craned their necks, opened their beaks to expose razor-like rows of something akin to teeth (do geese have teeth?) and HISSED at me!  They lifted their wings and jabbed their goose heads toward me.  My heart was racing (I realize writing this how pathetic it is, don't worry).  My heart was racing (I was running after all) and so I darted to the side of the road, and sprinted past them.  I also hissed back.  I don't know, it seemed right at the time.

Then, yesterday, again I was running, and not only did I time my run such that I encountered every school child in Hoima leaving school for the evening, but the geese (more like geese-stapo) were in the road again.  So after enduring 30 minutes of heckling by children (I mean I doubt they are judging me, but I don't speak the local language, and really, they are of course judging the giant white man running nowhere in particular) I got to near the end of my road and again had to meet the geese.  They are intent on adding an additional component to my work outs by adding shots of adrenaline into my runs.  This time, the side of the road was blocked, because someone turned the shoulder of the road into a garden for growing sweet potatoes and cassava.  I couldn't trample the garden.  In my head I imagined running through the garden, killing all the sweet potatoes, and a mother and 14 children all weeping, fists balled up against their eyes, wailing "what's to become of us?"  So I made the choice to run through the geese.  They moved.

So all in all what has happened?  In sum, nothing.  I dealt with running through crowds of curious children and geese.  I saved a Ugandan family from starvation by not trampling their garden due to an unreasonable fear of domestic fowl (someone once told me that geese bite), and I lived another day.  It is often curious running in East Africa.  There is always something that reminds me how excited I am to run when I get back to the US.  At least I can take solace that in Rock Creek Park there will be no attack geese, and the whole city of DC will not be alerted to the fact that one white guy is running.

But really, why does the owner of the geese just let them out like that?

Back in Uganda: Kicking off 2015

I am back in Uganda after three and a half wonderful weeks in the US.  I am thrilled to be back in Uganda.  It was such relief to step out of the plane into the warm, supple air in Entebbe, and not need a sweater for the first time since leaving on December 19th (except for two gloriously warm days in Santa Monica).  I briefly hung out in Amsterdam on the way to the US, and that was the first temperature shock.  But the worst was 9 degrees in DC at one point.  9 is just not enough degrees.

It is a great feeling to be back with the team here.  I was out in the field the last two days carrying out disbursements of our second grant.  The recipients were part of our RCT, and were in a village that was randomly selected not to receive our full program, but instead just a cash-equivalent version of our program.  Needless to say it was a pleasure to be back out in the field.

It was an odd experience being in the USA on Sunday, shopping, going to target, eating Mexican food, and being American.  I woke up in Dubai on Monday night, and by Wednesday I was deep in the field in rural Uganda.  This is one of the sets of juxtapositions that has interested me most as I have been working in Uganda now for a year and a half, (only returning to the US in the last 6 months).  It is really astounding how much freedom we have as Americans to move in the world.  It is amazing that the excess of Dubai can coexist in some fashion with the sever underdevelopment of rural Ugandan villages.  It is also to move from one day to the next through both settings.

I think this time it forced me to think about why these sorts of inequalities persist, and where real change can come from.  With Village Enterprise we are doing incredible work.  We are fomenting economic growth in the lowest strata of the Ugandan and Kenyan economies.  We are helping to build a base of economic growth that hopefully will lead to people creating sustainable business so people are equipped with the resources to eventually move out of poverty.  But we can't do it all. We have many partnerships, and really, I think that developing more, and stronger partnerships is going to be important in development.  NGO, Institution, and Aid collaboration and organization is going to be about the only thing that might promise real change.  Siloing projects, organizations, and people from one another only ensures repetition (sometimes of bad projects and programs), lack of communication, and waste of resources.  But who can work on aid collaboration?  It is like a giant process evaluation, a very meta, but very needed job.  I would love to see where some of the best efforts are if anyone has them.

Regardless, I am happy to be back in Uganda.  I am happy to get to go to the field, and I am looking forward to visiting our Kenya office next month.  I am also looking forward to our innovation summit where I learn from our staff about how much I still have to learn from our program.  The next two months are going to be very exciting and move so quickly.

Hiking in Santa Monica on Tuesday

In Dubai the following Monday

In the field in Nyamundeija for Disbursements

The Wings

The wings are everywhere.  They are piled in corners like silvery grey snow drifts.  They have accumulated in the dishes that are drying.  They have plugged the drains and they have filled the sink.  They are floating in the toilets and they have dusted the tops of tables.  I tried in vain to sweep them outside, but they stuck to my ankles and filled my shoes. I made an effort in vain to wash them out of the shower, but they swirled around my feet.  Pairs of wings, single wings, broken wings, wings with veins of silver thread, all as long as a ring finger have filled the house.  The swirl in clouds when the doors are opened and shut, and the flit gracefully out of drawers.  The wings.

Last night it rained epically hard.  It was like being on the set of a movie where they are using a rain machine.  Except there was nothing contrived about this rain.  It rained biblically, and in turn, there was an exodus of white ants (termites) that flowed forth from the earth.  It sounds dramatic, but at times last night it was hard to hear the roar of the rain over the pounding flutter of wings.  The White ants were drawn magnetically to our lights in the house.  They were pulled towards our safety lights outside as if by gravity.  They seeped through the cracks in the doors and windows like water and many made it inside.  They made it inside and rushed chaotically, like a flooding river around the lights, and they lost their wings and began to die.

I eventually shut myself in my room in the dark to avoid the incessant flurry of insects and I fell asleep to the sound of wind, wings, and rain.  In the morning I came out to survey the damage.  The blizzard of wings had settled.  I began the process of sweeping them up and moving them back to the outdoors.  I tried to eradicate the house but the wings were to feathery to sweep, so I just pushed clouds of them as well as I could.  Once they were outside (with the white ants they had been attached to) I poured insecticide on them.

Then our colleagues arrived and lambasted  me for killing and wasting a delicacy.  Then I ate a handful.

Uganda Be kidding Me

I have been in Uganda for a week now and I think I am just starting to realize I am here. It has been a fantastic week, and I am excited to see and do more.  The weather is generally perfect, and my living situation is absolutely comfortable.

On the surface, Uganda looks very similar to Rwanda. It is green, it is tropical, it is striking in its functional calamity. However, there are some subtle differences as well.

The roads and infrastructure in Uganda are in worse disrepair. The blackouts are fairly consistent, and given that Uganda is so much larger, it feels more sparsely populated.

Kampala of course is an exception to that. Kampala is chaotic and lively, a vibrant shock of people and cars and matatus (collective taxis) and boda bodas (motorcycle taxis). It's hard to tell sometimes if people are parking or driving, because both situations involve tons of traffic and people mixed together in the roads, and really neither move quickly.

Kigali in Rwanda, on the other hand, is clean, quiet, orderly and almost eerie in its pristine state. It's cleaner and quieter than many large cities in the US. As such it is harder to get a sense of the character there, whereas my initial observations indicate that Kampala sort of shoves it in your face.

Many of the foods are similar between the two countries, though Ugandan food seems less flavorful. There are lots of carbs (rice, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, yams, casava, ad nauseum...) and then generally some sauce or stew. Here in hoima there is a lot of fish, given our proximity to Lake Albert. Also they make a sauce out of peanuts that is savory and then they stew meat (goat or beef) in it. It is pretty good. It is rich, and not sweet-peanuty like Thai peanut sauce. Both Rwanda and Uganda feature the buffet, which consists of about 97 types of carbs, various types of the aforementioned stewed meats, beans, and then you just pile your plate high for about $3.

There the similarities begin to diverge, and I am less able to comment. I will hopefully have some more insight in coming posts.

So far Village Enterprise (click on the hyperlinked name for the website) has been incredible. The work that we are doing in Hoima is so cool. I have been sitting in on induction trainings for our business mentors and it is amazing the training, interviewing and high levels of performance required just to be hired. On the one hand it puts a lot of pressure on candidates, on the other hand it demonstrates that we choose smart, capable people and respect their abilities enough to push them to perform. It is a unique way to demonstrate the culture of the organization and indicates the level of commitment that will be necessary for success. It's very cool.

I have more to say, but instead I'll add a few photos and save the rest for another post.

Cheers!

Have Uganda Uganda?

I am moving into a final phase of interviews for a monitoring and evaluation fellowship that will take me to Uganda for a year. It is hard to think of leaving for a year so soon after school, but I am thrilled by the opportunity. I will be traveling back and forth between Kenya and Uganda overseeing staff. It will be a real job. 

I will have final details next week!

The First Week in Rwanda

Rwanda is really a beautiful country.  We are located in Kigali, the capitol, and it is a surprisingly ordered developing world city.  The city itself is built across many dramatic hills, and nearly everywhere you look is a breathtaking view.  It is lush and verdant.  There are many tropical flowering trees and bushes and birds that chirp lovely songs and dramatic valleys whose walls are lined with tiny huts, shacks and houses.  The roads in the city are generally good, its only when you get of the main arteries that they are unpaved.

We went upcountry yesterday for our interviews and drove 3 hours from the capital to a small village on the top of a mountain.  Rwanda is called the land of 1,000 hills, and it earns its nick name.  We wound up and down past steeply terraced farmland, tea plantations, small mud huts, past rivers and waterfalls and eventually up to the top of a high mountain.  According to my GPS we were at 7,200 feet.  The village is isolated as the roads are steep, deeply rutted and muddy, hugging like copper-red gashes the sides of the mountains.  It is hard to get there and remote.  The cluster of huts was proper in the small village.  One Rwandan man took us past some of the huts to a vista point and pointed out the hill that started the border with Uganda.  We were only a few kilometers away. Though the drive was long and bumpy and slow, it was worth it just to meet people, hear stories about how this development project is changing their life, and take in the fresh air.

I was partnered with Diana for the day to complete our interviews, and we were the center of attention as soon as we pulled into the village.  You could hear little children squeak “muzungu” or white person.  The word sort of rippled through the crowd of people waiting for their delivery of school supplies, and all eyes were trained on us.  No one smiled until we would wave or say “muraho” which is hello in Kinyarwanda and their faces would break into a large grin.  We conducted interviews inside a small municipal building for nearly 5 hours and the whole time there were small curious faces peeking over the windows to get a glimpse of the muzungus doing their interviewing.

Rwanda is certainly a developing country, and it is certainly poor, but meeting people and hearing about the context of their lives through the lens of this development project is really exciting.  It is amazing to hear success stories and see the projects I have learned about in development come to life, and to know that they are real.  People are still suffering, but it is not the focus of the people we have been speaking with.  It has been reassuring to me to come here and to realize that yes, I do want to do this.

We have been working 10 to 12 hour days for the most part since we got here, so it has been exhausting. There have been so many meetings, so much to prepare and so many different things to see that it is hard to soak everything in.  My brain is on overload, and I don’t know quite how to process it all.  It is good to be working in a group, because this would be monstrous to tackle alone.  Tomorrow is our first day off, so we are going to lighten things up by going to the Rwanda Genocide Memorial…

I have so much more to say but it will need to be updated for tomorrow.  At this juncture I am going to go nap for a bit.  Or maybe I will go for a walk. Yes.  I will go for a walk. More later.