Elections, Boredom, Being Download-Happy, HR Management, etc.
20 Feb 2011 Leave a Comment
Hello amigos/mikwano,
Let me just tell you. We’ve been planning and planning and taking precautions and talking and speculating and dreaming and pondering — about these elections that took place on Friday. Now, I didn’t necessarily want there to be an Egyptian/Tunisian/Bahrainian/Yemenite/Cote d’ivorian/Nigerian/Algerian/Djiboutian style revolution in Uganda (yes, if you read the news, there is currently revolutions going on all across Africa and the Middle East). But these elections in my opinion, as obvious as the results were going to be from Day 1, were very anti-climactic.
So, I was supposed to stay at my house, which I didn’t because I was dying of boredom and all seemed calm on Friday and Saturday. Friday was calm and creepily quiet. Many shops and the major stores/banks were closed, but I got some street food and went home. And since there was about 10 polling stations within 1 km from me, none of them had lines. No one was selling cassava near my house and the taxis were not filling up. When I went out on Sat., things were back to normal everyone straight chillin’ doing their regular thing. Women waiting for huge trucks to come pick up their cassava, yelling at boda-boda drivers, children yelling “Give me a car!” at me, boda drivers greeting me in Lusoga because they think it’s funny and ask me for money (My new comeback when they ask me for 200 shillings in Lusoga is to ask them for 10,000 shillings in Lusoga), and the animals were back out, with one particularly daring chicken that came onto my kitchen table and wouldn’t leave even after I hit it with a bag of sugar (sorry PETA, get over it).
I also realized that Ugandan languages are demanding in nature. There really is no word for please, hello, “Can I have”, “Can you give me”, “Would you be able to”, etc. It just doesn’t make sense in their language. So, I’ve have to get used to it. (grrr I wrote three paragraphs after this, then saved the draft and went to town and it didn’t save, so now I have to remember what I wrote, not that I don’t have plenty of time to do it) So when a child comes up to me and says, “Give me some money.” He really means “Can I please have some money please?” Either way the answer is going to be no, but still it take some getting used to. The nature of Ugandans seems demanding but according to the book that Michelle and Ashley gave me in my going away present, it’s because help among peers is just naturally expected rather than just an option. So most people when going to the shopkeeper say “Mpa amadhi” or “Give me water”, or when she shopkeeper says “Oyenda ki?” (What do you want?”), rather than “How can I help you?”, they’re not being rude, it’s just how their language is formulated.
So, today being Sunday, I really didn’t have to much to do after the past two days off. The elections were really anti-climactic, the expected happened – the current president is winning with about 70% of the vote and the main opposition about 20%. I wasn’t looking for a revolution, but some little excitement to pep-up my weekend would’ve been nice. I usually have a work week from Monday to Saturday, which I was thinking I’d be off all weekend when I came to the PC. But I really enjoy the people I work with. I have a great organization and I consider them to be my best friends here. Most of the people around my age here either have husbands or wives and children, so there’s really not much for me to do around here on the weekends. So, working on Saturday s really takes up a good portion of my day and then I have the next day and a half to myself. The work week, for me at least, is flexible. I’m always on time to meetings, events, field work, but if there’s not much for me to do around the office I take 2-3 hour lunches, come in when I feel like it and leave when I feel like it. If I’m having a particularly bad/lonely/annoying day, I can take the rest of it to go home and rest, etc. So, my work here is important, but I don’t have a specific job at the SACCO and a lot of my work requires waiting for other people, conversation with my manager, and organizational development, which is a very slow moving process.
I’m looking forward to skyping/talking with my parents this weekend. Otherwise, I’ve spent the weekend on facebook, reading Wikipedia, on gmail, cooking food, staring at the walls, slowly reading the books my mother sent me (I don’t like to read unless the power is out, or else when the power is out.. I will have nothing to do if I’ve read all of my books.) When you have a limited data usage, I can’t just spend the day watching youtube videos and using stumble upon which can take up a huge portion of the day. So, I’m limited to certain websites that I can look at and then I must find something else to do. I’ve been a bit download-happy, remembering old trance songs from my high school days and have been using way too much bandwidth downloading the audio tracks from youtube. I’m actually really looking forward to going to work tomorrow and hopefully next weekend doing something fun with my Peace Corps buddies somewhere in the country and getting out of Kamuli!
But the last week or so at work has been eventful and uneventful. It required a lot of Human Resources work and development. We’ve been having weekly meetings every Friday morning at around 7:30 – 8 am., which all 6 of the staff attend. This past Friday, Edith had to go to Jinja last Friday morning (Feb. 4th) to type up and send her training reports/homework to the UCA (Ugandan Cooperative Alliance). This was the first staff meeting that was conducted without her, ever since I came to Kamuli Twisania SACCO in October.
Since the manager wasn’t there, during the new Business section of the meeting, my colleagues trusted information about the problems that they were having and problems between the manager and the staff. I listened intently and asked them if they would feel comfortable having a separate meeting (with the manager) about the issues at hand. They said yes. I separately met with Edith, my supervisor, for about two hours to brief her on the issues at hand. The appointment of Three staff members (Patrick, Julius and Joffrey) who have been working since August as volunteers at Twisania (what we call the SACCO for short), Overworking / Staying Late Hours / Duty Allowance (extra pay for working on days off such as Sunday or working very late during the work week), Role Delegation in case of absentees, Calling out of work / Sick Days / Death or Sickness of a Family Member / Request for days off for important events in the future.
When I told my manager about these ideas, she had taken the initiative to organize a Human Resources Comittee meeting, and a Board of Directors meeting about the appointment of certain staff to take place on Feb. 16th. She worked out the issue with the Table in the Board room on her own with my co-workers. Overworking has solved itself (my co-workers are not completing the work during the day leading to them having to stay later at night to complete it) and we all figured that one out on our own. A Role Delegation meeting will take place after the elections outlining and talking about each person’s roles and responsibilities and who will take care of them if someone falls sick for a few days. My manager took the initiative to create attendance sheets, absentee sheets, and request off sheets regarding the need to take days off in advance. These will be presented to the staff at the meeting on Monday and it also provides a system of checks and balances, as to keeping track if someone is abusing the privilage to request days off, or calling out sick too often. All of the issues were solved mostly before even having the staff meeting.
So, I didn’t have much to do this week, since these were the main topics at hand. The manager took the initiative to solve most of the issues herself and a lot of the problems were realized by the staff themselves. I was basically just a catalyst in being there to work the problems out and being the middle man at times. But it was a very successful week and I think everyone at my job is happy because of it. A lot of my ideas are developing and now that the school year has started, I will be working with schools again teaching business ideas and working with the class that will be corresponding with my Aunt Sharon’s class in NJ. That usually takes up a lot of my time. But for right now, I’m bored out of my mind and I’m looking forward to some upcoming changes in pace.
I hope all is well at home with everyone and I miss you guys a lot. I’ve been having dreams about pizza, sandwiches, donuts and cupcakes with sprinkles on them. I’m dying for some good food. I’ve also probably lost about 15 pounds since I’ve arrived in Kamuli. I’ve been eating a lot of chapattis (tortillas made with wheat flour) and have become quite addicted to them and mandazi (fried sweet bread). I eat a lot of pasta and vegetables for dinner and eggs for lunch. I just finally bought some rice and made some fried rice, but I was missing the main ingredients. Plus, the rice I bought, you have to pick the rocks out of before you can eat it. Next time, I’m buying the rice at the supermarket, so I don’t have to tediously search through each grain of rice for mini-rocks. And I’m going to get soy sauce so I can make lo mein. Hopefully, I can make some decent lo mein. And if anyone has any good, simple recipes, please send them to me! [by simple, I mean no crazy ingredients, like cheese/red pepper/refrigerated items]
So I’m going to start adding a psytrance quote of the week (or whenever I decide to write a blog), which is a quote from one of the songs I’ve been listening to, just because I want to. For those of you who don’t know what psytrance is, it’s a type of electronic music that originated in Goa, India in the early 1990s, from Goa Trance. It became psytrance circa 1995 and has been evolving ever since. I discovered the music in 2005 and have been listening to it ever since. It’s pretty much the only genre of music that I listen to in addition to all other types of electronic music and you can read about it here, if you’re bored or want to know more about me:
http://psychedelic_trance.pagesperso-orange.fr/psy_history_part1.htm
http://www.australiens.net/features/3/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_trance
Quote of the Week:
“When you dream there are no rules. People can fly. Anything can happen. Sometimes there’s a moment as you’re waking and you become aware of the real world around you, but you are still dreaming. You may think you can fly but you better not try.”
- From the track “People can Fly” by Astral Projection (Quote is originally from the movie Kalifornia, spoken by David Duchovny)
Be good my friends and family, but not too good!
Dan
