It's been a busy week

Time goes fast and today it’s Saturday again. I’m not entirely sure what this post will be about, I guess we’ll just see where my thoughts and fingers lead to. Almost all photos are from Bugiri (see below to learn what that means, haha). Maybe not the most interesting story so far, but hey, also in Uganda real life doesn’t consist of constant spectacle and fancy trips away! This week has been a busy week and in terms of research I guess it was a good one. I did a total of eight interviews this week. That sounds more impressing than it was, they’re not all very long, but it took a fair deal of time, patience and flexibility to get them done. Last time I wrote about my work, I find it hard to believe that’s over a week ago already, I said I had only done one interview, now the total number is 9. Hopefully next week I can do the remaining two or three interviews and then analysis part starts, which is both more and less exciting. It’s going to be cool to properly have a look at the content of the interviews to see if I can make any form of purposeful conclusion, but it’s also going to be boring to spend forever transcribing interviews and be back in the office most of the time.

Right: an office in Bugiri I visited

As you can imagine, I didn’t see much of the office this week. I’ll just go through things chronologically, that usually works best. Monday started off disappointing. I was meant to have an interview in the morning and one in the afternoon, both in different parts of town. Fortunately by now I know that it is best to first call people before heading out. I called in the morning and of course, one of them asked if we could change 11 o’clock into 3 o’clock, and the other said that, oh actually, I am busy so maybe we can do it on Wednesday. As I said, patience and flexibility… So in the morning I worked on transcribing my interview from Friday (with GOAL Uganda’s country director) and after lunch I headed out on a bodaboda to the National NGO Forum for a discussion on NGO partnerships with one of their staff members.

Breakfast in Bugiri

Tuesday I was scheduled to have two meetings in Wakiso town, the ‘district capital’ of Wakiso district, a large district that surrounds half of Kampala. However, on Monday one of them had called asking if we could meet at a fancy hotel in Kololo (fancy part of Kampala) because she had a meeting there already anyway. Of course, I was going to say yes, anything for the interviews… So in the morning I headed out to Wakiso, which is not too far distance-wise, but given Kampala’s traffic it took probably an hour and a half to get there. I had a nice meeting with a district officer there, he even drove me around a little showing me the district headquarters and some of Wakiso town. Then the long trip back to the city, straight to the Protea Hotel, a 4 star place near Kampala’s golf course. Unfortunately, I had to wait nearly two hours before this lady finally had half an hour time to talk to me (even though I later found out she was just having lunch while I was waiting… *count to ten… count to ten…*). Enfin, I reached the office at just before five and thus had spent around 7 hours for maybe 80 minutes worth of interview…

Wednesday I was meant to have two meetings in Ntinda, the one from Monday and another one in at an NGO nearby that I had strategically planned on the same day to save me from having to go there (travel time is around an hour) twice. But of course, the same lady who cancelled and postponed our interview three times already did the same this time, and so I went to Ntinda for 1 interview in the afternoon. I really am losing my patience with this woman… we rescheduled for coming Monday, but I can tell you that I’m 80% certain she’ll ask me to reschedule again (UPDATE: she did... hopefully coming Friday this time...). It’s a shame she works for one of my key case study organizations so I can’t just dump her…

I initially had no plans for Thursday and Friday and was even looking forward a little to just being in the office instead of touring the city again for hours. But then on Wednesday afternoon I received a call from one of the people at GOAL saying they had a vehicle going to Bugiri district on Thursday, coming back on Friday. Little bit of context: GOAL offered to take me to their partners in Bugiri when they had a car going there so I wouldn’t have to find the place all by myself. Eager to get those visits done and see Bugiri, and not knowing when and if another opportunity would arise anytime soon, I happily accepted their offer and thus spend the evening preparing and packing my bags. Thursday I left at 6 in the morning on a bodaboda to the other side of Kampala where at 7 the GOAL car would leave. I’m afraid I wasn’t great company on the way there as I dozed for most of the three hour drive (which was quicker than I anticipated). I spend a nice day in Bugiri talking to staff of partner organizations and some field staff from GOAL, adding four interviews to the pile. I enjoyed being out of Kampala in a calmer town and seeing and learning more about the country. In the evening I ended up walking through a pitch black Bugiri (there was no power for a while and half the sky was covered by a thunderstorm you could see light up frequently) only lit by the light of a bright full moon peeking through the clouds. It’s amazing to see how much light the moon can provide, something that’s impossible to tell in ‘our’ countries where there’s so much light it’s never really dark anymore. I didn’t walk around on my own, I met two interns from Ugandan universities working at GOAL and one of their partners, they showed me around and provided nice company. Back in the hotel I had the squeakiest bed ever and, a major major disappointment, there was no warm water in the shower, something I had been looking forward to a lot.

Friday morning at 8 we left Bugiri again, stopping a few times on the way for various reasons. The driver’s (Michael) sister had had an small traffic accident so we stopped at a hospital and I also had to go in (the entrance to this particular building is behind the tree). Very interesting to get a sneak peek into a hospital, but also a bit awkward because yeah… what on earth was I doing there visiting a random woman while her mom and some others were standing around the bed… We stopped at a shop Michael’s family owned, where I bought a t-shirt with the colours of the Irish flag saying ‘Obama’, because there’s people here calling me Americano and asking me, in their most gangster English, how Obama’s doing. And because I wanted to say thank you to Michael for driving me around for two days, so I ‘invested’ in his shop. I also bought six giant avocados for around 70 eurocents and half a kilo of fresh tea for around one euro forty… life’s good! Back in the office I worked a little bit, but gave up soon enough because I felt like I had done enough work for one week. Time for the weekend to begin!

I’ll just keep boring you with my life a little longer. We planned to go away this weekend on a three day safari to the west, but because we both had plans on Friday and the safari guy couldn’t confirm for sure that the trip was happening, we cancelled the tour on Thursday. So this weekend we have no plans… Today however, finally again, the weather is gorgeous and so far (it’s nearly 16.30) we’ve had perfect summer weather with sun and a bit of a breeze. So while the Netherlands and other parts of Europe suffer from a record breaking heat wave (it’s amusing to read how in the Netherlands the weather is currently more important than the situation in Greece, the immigration debate and other ‘real issues’) we are mainly relaxing today. We walked to the Kabaka’s lake (of which I posted a photo sometime last week already, here's another one) and sat there in the grass for a while. Now I’m sitting outside in the Guesthouse, enjoying a day rest. Tomorrow we might head out to Entebbe again, who knows!

Also (and I promise I’ll really stop now), it’s weird to not be at the annual Caretakers of the Environment International conference, that took place this week in Portugal. Though I got some updates from Jana and through Facebook, it’s of course not the same as the past three years, when I had an active part in the conferences…

(I'll try soon put up something about Sunday, but after six weeks of peace my stomach has decided to rebel... and I've wasted enough of today already with doing things that are not work :P So hopefully tomorrow/Wednesday!)

Few more pictures from Bugiri: