I really did not want to be seen by anyone in the Peas office because they all always look so smart. Especially the women with their braided hair and well fitting African print dresses. I need not have worried though, as when I arrived the office was bare; there was absolutely no-one else there except the caretaker. I wasn't at all surprised though. At 7.00 am that morning when I was trying not to "spy" on the household next door whilst waiting for my kettle to boil, there was an unusual absence of life.
No children playing in the sand. No young adults washing themselves or their clothes. No women cooking. No men wandering around with mugs of tea. No-one sanding down wood in the distance. No-one sweeping. (I know this last one is pretty obvious, but the Ugandans are always sweeping and so it does have to be said!) Even the road was empty. Normally there would be lots of children walking to school (school starts at 8.00am) and quite a lot of traffic. But no, everything stops in Uganda when it rains. "But you see," I was later told later in the office, "in Uganda we always know its going to stop raining, unlike in England!" Actually, reflecting back on the state of my family's "back garden" that morning, I'm not surprised people stay indoors and wait it out. The thought of stepping out into all that slippery sand and getting clean clothes dirty again is enough to put anyone off, especially when you have to hand wash everything.
Going back to a comment I made in my first post, I undermine the men in "my family". They are actually quite an industrious lot. One of them, I think, works as a mechanic on the other side of the road, the rest all help with the family furniture business. When I walked on the road round the front of their home a few days ago they were producing all sorts of handmade furniture and they work long hours. A busy lot. The men also play with the children in the evening. There's a lot of sitting around, yes, but everyone seems to be playing their part. The women also sell food on the roadside - an extension of their family meal probably. They are sure to be cooking rice, beans, matukio, posho and probably chapattis too. Where else in the world In the schools I visited, posho and beans are served every day. The students take huge portions and queue up for more. It will probably be the only meal they have all day. Here in Kampala, most locals will eat some combination of the five aforementioned carbohydrates plus, maybe, a tiny bit of meat. And that may well be the diet for breakfast, lunch and supper!
(lunch time at school; the boys on the right are waiting for seconds)
I don't have far to walk to get to my office. The day is 9.00am - 5.00pm. Very few are there before 9.00am or after 5.00pm. This is normal in Kampala. If you are stressed out in London, this may be the place for you! The pace of work as well as life is relaxed. Don't expect meetings to start on time, or unimportant deadlines to be met. This all makes it a rather charming place to work. There is time to be polite. This extends from the genuine hearty handshakes received from fellow office workers every morning to those I meet in the street on my walk to work. People I do not know often greet me with a warm, "Good morning" or "How do you do?". Very old fashioned. Very English in many ways. I think this must be quite "a good" area of Kampala to work and live in.
Three people left the Peas office this Friday. The leaving lunch was something special to be witnessed. There were speeches, of course. Lots of them. Everyone in the company who had anything to say to each of the leavers had their chance and the leavers themselves said as much as they wanted to. And these Ugandan workers do like to have their say! But it was a chance for everyone to say what they were really feeling. I felt there was a lot of honesty and sharing of the truth rather than the more political stance we might expect back home. The leavers were certainly made to feel special and no-one left anything unsaid.
Over the past two weeks I have been out to "the field" twice, staying in rural hotels and eating at traditional eateries. Prices are incredibly cheap. The hotel we stayed at in the second week was 30,000, or £6 a night (see photo). It was clean, the sheets were clean, and I slept well. Couldn't really ask for much more. There are more upmarket hotels around, but the jump in price from a local hotel to a "touristy" hotel is quite pronounced. Breakfast in the local eatery was 1,500 Ush (30p) for a chapatti, water melon and a cup of tea; the evening meal was 4,000 USh (80p) for chicken, pillau rice and tea. The eatery was a couple of tables in a small room on the roadside.
At weekends, and sometimes during the afternoon when I want a change of scenery from the Peas office - sitting at a desk all day can get pretty tedious when you are not having meetings and have no reason to visit other workers - I go to one of the nicer cafes in town. Somewhere where there is internet connectivity. In fact I'm sitting in one right now. I hate to admit this but I've just spent 10 minutes trying to work out how to make my computer take a photo of the cafe rather than of me. I've even been into the user manual! Obvious really - it doesn't have a reversible camera. Why would anyone expect a reversible camera on a laptop!!? Must still be missing my much loved iPad.
(bemused and perplexed)
(my view in the cafe, once I eventually realised I had to turn the laptop round)
Perhaps its not PC to say this, but as I walk around my local area which is to the east of Kampala city centre, Ntinda, I feel I am the only white person around. But here, in this cafe, most of the clients are white, as they are in the modern shopping centre over the road. Don't think they're tourists. Definitely seems to be a bit of an expat community thing going on here.
When I was walking home from town around 6.00pm one evening, there were so many people around in uniform and with guns I started to wonder if I should be worried for my safety. I did a rough count. About 10% of the people I was passing seemed to be policemen, guards, or in the military. What I hadn't realised is that most offices and dwellings have an armed guard at night, and 6.00pm is the time they all come on duty. Most supermarkets and restaurants and shopping arcades do too. Guards are everywhere, but not as "in your face" as they were in Nairobi or South Africa. They are laid back and don't make me feel nervous. And I suppose such a cultural set-up provides a lot of jobs. They don't get paid very much. The going rate is around 100,000 USh a month, or £20. Its a similar aspect of working life here to the fact that almost everyone with a job has a maid. They get 50,000 - 80,000 USh. It seems to be a national duty to provide jobs for less well off workers if you can. And who wouldn't have a guard and a maid at these prices?
Much of my work this week has been focused on teacher training where the going wage rate, as I think I have mentioned before, is between 250,000 and 500,000 USh a month, £50 - £100. To put it into context I spent 150,000 USh, or £30, on a wonderful little gadget that is available here - a mobile server. For the first time in all my travelling I have excellent internet connection. But it does kind of highlight a massive divide in this country between the haves and the have nots. There is a huge challenge involved in motivating these young, rural teachers.
(a teacher training session in a Peas school)
I have really enjoyed my work in helping Peas develop their teacher training programme and also in reviewing their enterprise education. There's lots for me to do and its good to feel useful.
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