Welcome everyone to the rainy season of Kampala!
And they were not joking when they said rainy season! Like clockwork, October 1st rolled around and the rain came on and as we go on in the month, the rain gets more and more frequent. This week it has pretty much rained every day/ night, which means that at least 2 hours out of the day are constant rain. It usually happens that the next four hours are sunshine, so there is not much to complain about. However, it does make it a lot easier to stay home at night and watch a movie, so not too many exciting African outings to report today, but that’s ok because then I get to talk more about the real reason I am here: my job!
Now that I have been at work for a little less than four weeks, I have started (but by no means finished) getting my bearings and creating a schedule for myself. I wake up at 7:30 and am out the door by 8 (this is after getting out of my fortress of a house with the four locks I have to open and lock again just to get to our driveway- you’re welcome ray) and get to work around 8:30. I say ‘around’ since I just stand on the street waiting for a matatu or taxi and sometimes they are waiting for me and sometimes I stand there for 20 minutes waiting for one. This would probably bother me a lot more in the US. Here, when I get to the office is when I get to the office. Usually I say hello to whoever is already here, get a cup of tea, log onto nytimes.com and maybe play a game or two before starting work no earlier than 10AM. This is quite different than my usual getting up at 6 at work by 7:15 to prep myself mentally for high-schoolers at 8AM. Sometimes this is a welcome difference, sometimes I still half expect to have to go into the hallway and say ‘good morning’ 180 times. Working in an office is definitely very different than a school- that part is clear!
While here, I am meant to be helping out two components of my organization. One is what they call “education campaign.” This is a project that hopes to raise awareness of Special Needs Education (SNE) and get more children with disabilities into schools. There is a sense in Uganda that it is embarrassing to have a child with special needs. Many parents, especially not in the city, will keep their child at home rather than deal with the embarrassment of having other people see their child. Many might think they have been ‘cursed’ to have a child with any sort of disability. So far, I have made a booklet of what to do in an inclusion classroom and am hoping to do some goal setting for a special education classroom. However, clearly you can all sense some of my boredom so any and all suggestions would be much appreciated!
The other part that I am helping out with is the parent support group. These are groups of parents located all over Uganda with around 7 central locations. My NGO is hoping to gather parents of children with disabilities to get them together to raise awareness, again, and to organize to make sure that everyone knows their rights. I’ll be honest, I’m not too sure as to what these rights are, but I love the idea! My job here is to help organize them, which is proving pretty difficult with no emails or phones… but slowly, yet surely, we will…. Well, I’ll figure something out.
So, my office in Kampala is just one of the many offices around Uganda. It feels funny that this is the hub of the organization since there are only around 6 people working here on any given day. There is the executive director (Tolorence*) who was recently made ED but no one filling her old position so she is crazy busy doing around 15 jobs at once! Then there is my counterpart, Jonathan* who is delightful young man who is actually slightly older than the 18-year-old he appears to be. He is very nice to me and loves to discuss the differences between American and Ugandan culture including marriage age, dowry, economics (which I rarely understand) and Rihanna (which is obviously my favorite topic!) Yup, he reads the celebrity gossip that comes out once a week in the paper- how he controls himself to once a week is impressive to me! There is then two accountants- apparently these are very important in NGOs: Paul* (the wildly inappropriate man who lived in UK for 10 years and loves to discuss Judaism and the universal differences between men and women) and David* a gentle man who is from Mbale right next to the Abuyudaya tribe and stops by every morning for WAY too long to chat. Finally rounding us out is Frances* a blind woman who works part time as a program officer. She is the most fascinated by my Judaism and when introducing me to someone said “this is Shira. She doesn’t believe Jesus is the son of god, can you believe that?” And our dear administrative assistant who may or may not be my favorite (don’t tell anyone) Violet*. She is a bossy, strong woman with an adorable 5-year-old who comes to the office every afternoon and she will laugh at my jokes and compliments my never ending supply of Kenyan earrings, so we get along real well. And that’s the office! It is fun to write about them, but, let’s be honest, just as much fun to make up names for them that have some connection to their real names…guesses?
Although there are definitely differences between a school and an office, I’m pretty sure that there are many more differences between an office in America and an office here- based on studies from friends here and in the US (not that I would really know.) First of all and most importantly is time. We have started to refer to it as Africa time. If a meeting is supposed to start at 9AM, be ready anywhere from 9-11:30… for the next three days. There are many things that come up, especially in an NGO world and time just doesn’t mean the same thing it does in America. (This is not restricted to the work place, but seems to be true of many places in Kampala.) Another main difference is ability to hang around and chat. Many times a week- sometimes every day- the power goes out. We have a generator but when that is out of fuel, people pretty much just wait. There is no 15-minute rule as to the amount of time you wait before going home- you just wait. You hang out, you chat to your colleagues… personally I play some solitaire and it generally adds to the more laid back attitude of this office.
Off to a Jinja adventure: falls and some white water rafting! Wish me luck!!!
Shira ZK
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