Anytime you do something for the first time there are bound to be mistakes made substantial and insignificant that make the first few steps of your new venture wobbly. You sort of stumble along initially with no small amount of adrenaline and energy surging you through your fresh undertaking with the anticipation that in a few months time your endeavor won’t take so much focus, that the bumps will smooth over with the knowledge you acquired through first-hand experience. New jobs, parenthood, traveling abroad, living in a new city, new co-workers, new circles of friends – they all take some getting used to and inevitably you will learn from them and unavoidably at times you will learn the hard way. Okay, now imagine all the things listed above sort of happening at once in a place so different you can’t believe you are still on the same planet.
Well, as my year in Uganda winds to a close in just a few short weeks, I am already starting to look back, kind of looking ahead preparing to look back, mentally accustoming myself to the huge shift that is about to take place, going from a place where I am constantly dirty and constantly different, am the focus of constant attention and the target of constant questions, I will become reacquainted with what was formerly familiar: cleanliness and anonymity, and a host of other things precious, most importantly family, friends, Western food, high speed internet, oh and of course wine.
Below are some of the lessons I’ve learned both great and small. For those of you thinking of moving abroad, especially to establish or manage a sustainable project, hopefully this post will make you all the wiser.
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
`By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?
1) Managing Tropical Diseases
If you start to feel under the weather, strange headache, stiff joints, unusually tired, diarrhea, go get a malaria test, but go to a good hospital preferably in Kampala rather than a local clinic or lab because the latter will almost always say you have malaria even if you don’t. For example, maybe the local lab will say, yes, you have malaria then treat you for it, but after you complete the treatment you still feel bad so then you go to the better hospital in the nation’s capital and they tell you, no, you don’t have malaria, you have another parasite, a thread worm, but you have to be careful because you can have something else and malaria, in fact many times you will have both since the two will work hand-in-hand weakening your immune system, and, of course, you can get malaria despite being on prophylactics. I've lost count, but I believe I’ve had positive malaria results somewhere around eight times now, two times I was so sick I ended up in the hospital and during my second hospitalization I had the pleasure of also having of H. pylori, an ulcer-causing bacteria, in addition to the severe malaria flare-up, so, really it’s actually advisable to also get full blood work and a stool sample along with the malaria test whenever you are starting to feel bad just to be sure.
"And now the storm-blast came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:
He struck with his o'ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.
2) Managing Your Pocketbook
Get to know the costs of goods and services. Do all the purchases for your projects for some time yourself so that people you later leave in charge will have a more difficult time ripping you off. Ask people you know before you buy anything or take a boda or taxi anywhere how much they think the item or fare should cost because generally speaking when Ugandans see a muzungu they assume money magically grows from your hand and will attempt to overcharge you, sometimes in ways nothing short of ridiculous. At first this habit of fleecing might not annoy you so much and maybe you will take the stance that yes, I do have a lot more money than them relatively speaking, so it is somewhat fair, but then after you’ve been living with Ugandans for some time, sleeping under their roof, taking their food, laughing with them, commiserating with them, celebrating with them, mourning with them, forgetting oftentimes you are in fact a muzungu (maybe you’ll even catch a reflection of a fair arm in the rear view mirror of a car and think, what is a muzungu doing in here ? and then realize the reflection is of you) and so you feel like you are also a Ugandan in so many ways including that you like them do not have a job and have very little money and so the constant attempts to cheat you become offensive and tiresome and instead of thinking that such unofficial racially-based pricing policies are okay, you begin to think, but does Starbucks charge Bill Gates $10,000 for a latte just because he can afford it?
At length did cross an Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came;
As it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.
3) Managing Men
When strange men, including boda drivers, taxi drivers, or any of the scores of men just standing around or taking drink at the small bars in town want to talk to you, ignore them or politely, but quickly respond to their greetings while continuing to move. The first weeks I was here I would try and talk to everyone, but I quickly realized that 1) I would never get anywhere if I talked to everyone that wanted to speak with me because it is just too time-consuming, and 2) generally the strange men can be categorized as respectful, but not as good conversationalist and they will employ rather unoriginal tactics to accomplish their two objectives: sleeping with you and parting you with your money, and while they have been entirely unsuccessful with me in both attempts, their aims become exceedingly clear and boring after a short while.
And a good south wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner's hollo!
4) Managing Sustainable Projects
I had heard it was difficult, extremely so, to establish successful sustainable project in Africa – I had many, many tell this before, but they wouldn’t really say why. Well, here is the why.
When setting up sustainable projects, and I would imagine through the entire course of administering them, operate with extreme skepticism of all people involved regardless of how sincere they are, how much they may sweet talk you, particularly if those assisting you with the project administration and management are not direct beneficiaries; in fact, assume these people are always looking to take something on the side for themselves in addition to whatever you agree with them openly. And never, under any circumstances have one person or a group of people who know each other be responsible for everything, including finances, reporting, oversight, management, etc. There must, must, MUST be layers of accountability and no one point of contact. To be sincere, charities here regardless of the size and level of funding are viewed as gold mines. Working for a charity in Africa is like working for a blue chip company in the West – they are well-paying, highly-coveted jobs. Why? Well, because charitable organizations, unlike everything else here in Africa, receive a continuous stream of revenue by wealthy outsiders who have a vested interest in seeing that their projects continue. In other words, Africans know that in most cases the money will keep coming generally no matter what happens. It is exactly the opposite of charities in the West where the low-paying work is done out of compassion, so BE CAREFUL!
I just had the pleasure of meeting an American woman who set up a charity that operates as a support group for AIDS/HIV orphans. A wonderful woman with a big heart decided to try and offer support to children affected by HIV some nine years ago, but for some reason or another, and candidly I think rather foolishly, hadn’t come to visit her programs in person in as long. And over the course of the last nearly decade she has had one person responsible for running her organization, one person responsible for receiving the money and in-kind donations for the kids, one person reporting to her results and finances, etc. and as she sat describing to me the things she has seen during her less than two-week trip, including some weird situation with an interpreter that her one contact insist they use and finding half the boxes of clothes she had shipped to him for the kids still sitting in his home, I just shook my head and told her that this guy she has left in charge of everything is just stealing from her and she needs to slowly take all control away from him, completely reorganize, take inventory, consult an attorney and not send this one guy working for her anything in the meantime, but that she also shouldn’t confront him or act like she is suspicious of him as he will probably bolt and take all of her organization’s possession, including a car, microscope, computer, etc. with him. I didn’t tell her that the little work she did see while here, the orphans’ meeting she attended, one of the meetings that has supposedly been taking place regularly these last nine years could very well have been a shame, the kids not really beneficiaries of her program and this guy could have just told the villagers to bring some kids together for the visiting muzungus to look at and they wouldn’t know any different because of the language barrier. And at the end of my conversation with her I thought, God, I’ve made some mistakes, but at least I figured it out in a month and not nine years!
`God save thee, ancient Mariner,
From the fiends that plague thee thus! -
Why look'st thou so?' -"With my crossbow
I shot the Albatross."
5) Managing School
When it comes to school for kids under your care there are some things you should keep in mind. First, buy them sturdy black sneakers that Velcro and not the standard patten-leather school shoes because all the wear and tear coupled with the Ugandan red dirt and mud means the non-sneakers fall apart very easily, buckles crumpling apart, soles ripping to shreds, toes poking through holes, and require the constant annoyance of repair and polishing. Second, go talk to the kids’ teachers so that they might give more attention to your children. Your children are just a few in classrooms of scores, at times a hundred kids; one of many little bodies squeezed into hot, airless rooms crowded together on wooden benches, hand-made posters with lessons hung from the concrete walls, all the children looking the same in their school uniforms scribbling in small, flimsy exercise books with broken pencils with just one teacher trying to dictate lessons; if you want your child to have a bit more of an edge in learning, go talk to that teacher.
"The sun now rose upon the right:
Out of the sea came he,
Still hid in mist, and on the left
Went down into the sea.
6) Managing Wishes
If you are looking after children who were once destitute and often without basic living requirements, they will find happiness in and be thankful for the smallest things you give them, and although they are never demanding or act entitled, in fact, hardly ever even ask you for anything, they do, nonetheless, enjoy their new lives and its new benefits so much so that maybe at times your four-year old, having spent the afternoon with you in your snack shop, keeps telling you she is hungry despite just being fed an entire plate of food complete with meat, matoke, nakati, rice and beans for lunch, despite also just being given a pancake (a fried sweet made of cassava flour and ripe bananas), despite also just being given a cowpea samosa (a fried pocket filled with cowpeas, which are like big lentils), know that your child is just trying to eat as possible because her previous life didn’t include so much food and delicious food prepared and bought in town at that, her previous diet probably consisting of just boiled cassava and roasted maize from her family’s garden, and as much as you love her you turn to her and smile and tell her, No, Rachel. Your Mommy knows you are not hungry, do you want water instead? And oftentimes she will say, Yes, is water, because she still doesn’t quite grasp English well enough to properly ask for things and because, well, she just likes you giving her something, mostly, attention. Which bring me to one of the most important things I’ve learned here so far….
7) In a Word
There are so many, many children here – products of consistently one of the highest fertility rates in the world, about seven children per woman – it is impossible to step outside here in Uganda and not see so many children and all of them responding in very noticeable ways to your very noticeable muzungu presence. And all those children giggling and screaming and greeting you are at times without shoes and aren’t in school and don’t get all the food and medicine they need and drink dirty water from wells and springs and play in fields of filth with toys of trash – balled up plastic bags and old bicycle tires, smashed water bottles and bent bottle caps. And these dirty, shoeless, undernourished and poorly educated children, believe it or not, despite lives of poverty as we would describe it, are incredibly, inspiringly joyful. In fact, Ugandan children are in my humble opinion generally happier than American kids who are blessed with proper nutrition and regular schooling and modern medicine and modern homes and mattresses and toys and TVs and Segas - children who have everything in some senses, but little to none in others.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
Of course extreme circumstances like drought and war and natural disasters and the like withstanding, African children are refreshingly content and beautifully resilient despite their relative lives of need and want and I can only conclude that their happiness is an outcome of their culture of inclusion: African children are a part of expansive African families and clans and tribes giving them a sense of belonging, a sprawling context and substantial support to their lives. And in seeing so many glad, but “poor” children, I have learned what a child really needs to live successfully, more than food, water, clothes, shelter, medicine, or educations. A child really, truly, deeply needs more than any one other thing essentially is love.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all."
The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone; and now the Wedding-Guest
Turned from the bridegroom's door.
He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man
He rose the morrow morn.
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