Hey All-
How’s things in the states? Hope this email finds everyone well.
I was talking to my sister last week, and she wanted to know what I do in a typical day here. Last Friday kinda summed up what its been like to be here so far, so I thought I’d just describe what happened.
Before I dive in, I wanted to tell you a few quick things. A few of you have told me that you’d like to make a loan with Kiva, but want to loan to someone I personally know. The organization Im working at (WITEP) is currently going through a routine financial audit, so we’re not currently posting any businesses, so I won’t currently know anyone personally. Its looking like we may post a few business in the near future, and I’ll let you all know if there are a few clients who I feel could really use the loan. In the mean time, please let me know if you loan to someone in East Africa (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania). I won’t know the person yet, but will try to meet them if I visit their MFI.
So…Last Friday I woke up at about 7:30 from the sound of a rooster crowing. The rooster had wandered into our yard, as many animals do – there’s probably 2-8 random animals in our yard at any given time. Often they come to feed on the giant pile of trash that we, like everyone else here, have in our yard. There’s no trash service, so every few weeks you gather everything together and burn it. Nothing like the smell of burning garbage! We usually like the animals that wander by (typically chickens, sometimes goats, and even a cat once), but we always scare off the dogs because they can sometimes have rabies. My roommate Robbins, a loan officer for WITEP, summed it up best by saying “I love dogs but hate rabies. Its kinda like sex,” of course referring to the rampant AIDS problem here. The roosters are kinda like a natural snooze button – in a few minutes they’ll go off again, so I snoozed for a few minutes, then woke up to check on Robbins, who has malaria (He’s doing fine, and is almost better by now. I’m taking pills so I wont get it, but its pretty scary to think that any day they can get a potentially life threatening disease). The power and water were out, but I was able to get a half bucket of water for a bath (I’m starting to get good at this! Last week’s Pantene Pro V incident was definitely amateur hour).
After a quick breakfast of coffee, locally grown eggs, and fresh Mango, I took off for the office by taking a bicycle taxi (called a boda boda), which costs about $0.15 for a 3km ride. Kinda surprising to me is that most Africans are actually pretty small. Often I’ll see a kid and think he’s 7 or 8, and find out he’s 14 – surely due to poor nutrition. So, when its me and one of my much lighter African friends grabbing a boda together, they usually pray that I’m not the one that gets on their bike. I always feel so bad, so whenever we get to a hill I jump off and walk up it, and I usually leave them with a pretty nice tip. I got to the office, where there was power, and did a bit of stuff on the internet, which takes forever. I bought my mom flowers for her birthday (HAPPY BIRTHDY MOM!) which took over an hour on the site given the internet connection (Could I be a better son? Not likely.) Then I worked for a while on designing WITEP the Microfinance institution where I’m working) a computer based loan management system using Microsoft Access (Currently, all records are written out, despite having a nice computer).
We then left for the village to meet some potential clients, and tell them out WITEP. Remember, Moses, the guy with HIV from the last email? Well, he’s the chairman of a group in his village, Katchumbala, called Katchumbala Positively Living Members Association, which is kinda a support group for people living with HIV. Although he HIV rate is quite high in Africa, there is still a terrible stigma against having it, and many people will even forgo treatment to avoid embarrassment, so groups like this are great. Anyway, we told Moses that we’d love to help people in a similar situation to his, so made plans to him and 4 people from his organization to tell them about WITEP. Instead of 4 people, 72 people showed up at the meeting, almost all of them HIV positive and in serious need of some help to treat themselves, and sustain their families. There were a few stories that just broke my heart. A woman, was asking for a $50 loan for her baking business that she started a year earlier with $2.50 that someone had given to her. She was a single mother to 5 children (lost her husband to AIDS 4 years ago), had AIDS herself, and was struggling to feed her children, pay their school fees, and pay for her transport to get treatment. The stories go on and on. While I was taking loan applications, I was stung by a Wasp. Twice.
After we finally got through taking all 72 loan applications, we went close by to Janet’s (head of WITEP) village, where 3 of her 6, yes 6, mothers live (whoa polygamy). About 10 people live in a small area in the bush in 5 grass huts. They were busy making bread from scratch. And making bread from scratch definitely means something different in an African village than it does in the US. They took millet (a grain) grown nearby, smash it to break it up, go through the broken up pieces to one by one pick out tiny seeds, sift the seeds to remove impurities and rocks, then make it into a dough and bake the bread. They fed us lunch, which was actually pretty good, but it was a bit strange because it was the first time that I had eaten with my hands (no utensils). Its definitely a bit tricky to eat rice covered in sauce with your hands, well, maybe just more messy than tricky.
We came back to Mbale, the town where I live, and I headed home, where the power was still out. I had a bit of work to do, so I did it in my room with the light from a lantern. After, we had to go get water about 1km away, then made dinner on a charcoal stove. Before we went out (it was a Friday after all), a few of my roommates friends came over, one of them drives a bus between two small towns here. Clearly I ended up driving the bus to the bars in town (there are a few here). We started off playing pool (I cleaned up!), then went to the one dance club in town (think bad 80-90s pop mixed with Luganda, which is like reggae in a tribal language) until 3am, when we finally went home. As if I don’t feel like I stick out as a Mizungu enough, I have to dance with Africans all night (all really good dancers), and my pasty whiteness and uncoordinated flailing dancing are quite accentuated.
Well, hopefully that describes a bit better what life is like here. Its definitely different, but a great change, and I’m still really enjoying it!
Best-
Shelby
