Communication

I often find the communication in East Africa pretty different than back home. Working here can be a challenge because answers are not always as direct. Here's a good recent example from a Gchat with a co-worker in Uganda:

martin:  Hi

 Sent at 3:47 PM on Thursday

 me:  Hi Martin, how are you? Please remind me which Martin you are! There are so many.

Kampala based?

 Sent at 3:48 PM on Thursday

 martin:  Ok

 me:  So you are the Kampala TDR or area sales manager? or a different Martin?

 martin:  Ok

 Sent at 3:54 PM on Thursday

 me:  Ok what? Are you confirming or saying no?

 martin:  Yes

 Sent at 3:57 PM on Thursday

 martin:  Andrew am Martin.Fenix

Area Sales Manager

How's Rwanda?

Work

I almost called this post 'white privilege', but that's not entirely what it's about. I was told before coming here that people really respect white people doing business here, which is a weird thing considering the colonial past unless I guess you take into account that there’s issues here with inferiority complex’s even today. I benefit from this phenomenon and it’s weird. I remember reading an article awhile back in the Atlantic Monthly about how in China you can hire a “white guy” for important business meetings. So basically as a white guy you can go there and pretty much get paid to act, and go to fancy cocktail parties and schmooze, kind of a good deal huh? I am sometimes asked to come to meetings by colleagues and always wonder how much of it is trying to give legitimacy or added weight to the meeting vs. I actually have something they want me to contribute.

I was hired at my company Fenix as the “innovations manager,” which is a cool but vague sounding title. Just exactly what am I managing? In fact, I don’t actually have anyone specifically working under me but when I moved to Rwanda to our small little operation of just 3.5 people (our accountant is a part-time person), all Africans, the two non-managers automatically started introducing me to others as a (or their) new manager.  I was given a lot of trust considering I had been with the company for two weeks when I was moved and asked to help manage this new office (about 8 months old) and make this operation work. Maybe it’s just that most white people here are aid workers, NGO or non-profit employees, or volunteers, so by virtue of our numbers business people are more rare?

So coming here has been pretty good. People ask for my opinion a lot, even when I really have no authority or background on something. It may be an ego boost but maybe it actually helps you grow too? And I can get people to do things when other people can’t (like get a meeting or push someone to follow up), which is also strange as I don’t think I’m doing anything that special. The other day, the manager of our office, Eric, was working on our monthly budget. I submitted what I thought I needed and tried to keep expenses down. I also felt like my accommodations budget should be less than the two traveling salespeople even though their numbers seemed ridiculously low (a little under $40 for lodging for the whole month on the road). Eric said I should take more money for lodging and specifically told me that “I was more senior” so I should get more money, even though I’ve been here three weeks, and again, have no official power. But I suppose this is also all part of being at a start-up. It really is so fast moving and our business strategy evolves every day.

Our office is housed within a larger human resource consulting company. Fiona, pictured front, center, celebrated her Birthday recently

So far the work has been good and challenging. More updates on this to come

The best cure for terrible diarrhea…

 It turns out is not a two hour moto ride into the bush. Let me rewind to provide some background as to how I got to this point. After two trips to Africa and a fair amount of time spent on the continent my lucky streak of never getting sick finally came to end. I always thought I was especially strong or something, but maybe I’m just like the rest of you. It’s not like I ate some suspicious meat off of the ground this time, in fact I've only been eating “known” sources of food but somehow I got a 24 hour rush of the most horrible something or other that I will not describe here in more detail for the sensitivity of my younger readers (ok I don’t have any younger readers, that I know of, but I might have some one day) but just know that it involved stuff coming out both ends. I suspect in the end that it may have been a salad prepared at work and some strange dressing but I can’t know for sure. I also had some local water at home, which was boiled, so it shouldn't have been a problem (and no one else from my house got sick). Drinking boiled water here is actually really common in a way that it was not in other developing countries that I've been to. I wonder if the water is “good enough” that you can do that here for some reason but not in other places? It cuts down quite a bit on cost not having to buy water all the time.

Anyways, getting back to the story at present, so I had unfortunately timed some in-country travel with getting sick just perfectly which really sucked. I traveled to the “college” town of Butare this week to begin some work for my company on a new pilot project with a micro-finance organization who can help people get affordable loans for our product. It’s a nice town, although I used quotation marks around college because we couldn't find food past 10 pm and there was no real places to go out outside of the Friday-Sunday usual nights, which is really surprising for a town with the country’s biggest university (over 15,000 students go to Rwanda University). I suppose college town is a cultural U.S. thing (I know even in Europe in college towns students often live at home still with their families for example). I was already committed to visiting a rural area where people already wanted the loan for our product when I was sick, so when I felt slightly better at 6 am the morning of our excursion I decided to go, and we literally left at 6 am. Spending two hours on the back of a moto on rough, bumpy, and steep hilly roads though is a pretty horrid experience; my back was killing for two days after this. There’s no support structure, or something to really hold on to on these bikes. Considering how far we went, the $16 or so we paid is pretty cheap.

We were right next to the border in this town called Nyarugulu with Burundi when the “muzungu” show arrived. Meaning, me, the “muzungu” (white guy) was the attention of town and everyone who saw me, especially children thought it was important to tell me, or remind me, that yes, indeed, I was a muzungu, thank you Rwandans. It’s not that I find it that rude, it’s just weird. No one in America would see a black person and say “black guy,” hey, “black guy,” and not really say anything else either. Cultural difference I guess but I never know how to respond to this call. I sometimes just say “Rwandans,” “Rwandans” in return, but this seems to just confuse people.

the view from the road

me on the suzuki moto bike

Urwego bank (lender to the poor) loan officer Steven. Good friend now, with members collecting money in the field. Beautiful fields of maize in the background!

When I was told the trip would take two hours I actually didn't really believe it. But it was actually just about two hours. You can’t really believe people around here with time. People even joke about being on “African time,” which usually means being late. But in the case of the bus to go to Butare, they swore that the bus didn’t leave until 11:30 (I just missed the last bus around 11 and I wasn't wanting to wait) but looking down at my phone as we pulled out it was 11:20, I knew the 11:30 “time table” was a bunch of BS. The bus here leaves when the bus is full. 

March Update from Rwanda

March has arrived and I have now spent equal amounts of time in Rwanda and Uganda. Within Rwanda I’ve traveled to Gisenyi and the Congo border (at Goma) and stood at a pedestrian only crossing where thousands of people pass freely every day between countries (see billboard sign here). 

Standing in the sun all day marketing the ReadySet was exhausting and pretty boring since most people here only speak Kinyarwanda and sometimes Swahili. But it’s an interesting job going around to farmer cooperatives, meeting up with UNICEF, and working with Africans as co-workers. I got to stay for the weekend to check out nice lake Kivu (one of the African great lakes), which is where I snapped this classic white dude with small African children picture.

The other day I was walking down the street and a small group of school girls walked by. One of them turns and spits on me for no reason. I got pretty upset and the girl (maybe 12 or so?) got scared and started to run away. Eventually she apologized but it was such a bizarre event that I can’t imagine happening in the U.S. Besides getting the middle finger randomly one other time (and I don’t know if it was on purpose), Rwandans have been very friendly. They really like Americans (really most foreigners outside of Belgium/France for obvious reasons) and many people you meet on the street want you to stop to say hello and find out what state you are from.

I bought a mountain bike to get to and from work, about a 15 minute hellish commute down one steep long hill, through a golf course, and then up a very steep hill. Everything around here is about going through these dips or going all the way around the valleys. I usually show up to work sweating terribly and then arrive at home at the end of the night in a similar state.They call Rwanda the land of a 1,000 hills but there's got to be way more, and who's counting anyways? 

I am paying $320/month for rent in Kigali, which is more than I would have thought it would be here, but everything else is similarly expensive, except moto taxi rides which are usually less than a $1 and take you pretty far. My rent does include utilities though, meaning water, electricity, and oddly enough the “house boy,” which sounds off to call a “utility.” Back in Uganda in Kampala this also usually meant the guard since all of the places were gated with a security person. Here we have rex, the dog, so I feel safe (not that I wouldn't anyways actually, Kigali is incredibly safe). The house boy does the laundry, cleans up around the house, cleans the dishes, and even cooks us meals at night. It’s incredible; it’s like living in a hotel. It’s also the opposite of the living situation I came from where as a member of the coop, I had jobs and felt like I continually needed to clean more. One could get used to this life style here. It is a bit weird though still and has taken me time to get used to it. Edward, the house boy, does not speak any English or French, and he hardly speaks otherwise. So it’s kind of weird just having this person who goes around the house (he’s probably a few years younger than me) that I know actually nothing about. It also feels weird having the African wait on the muzungus (white people, same word they had in Uganda for us) here but I guess it’s a job and normal here. It’s just a different culture.

At work we have a cook, Deo, from the Congo, who makes bomb food every day. It costs 2,500 francs (which is like $4.20 or something). We also get a free breakfast, it’s kind of amazing. American offices should learn from this (google has). We are more productive when we are well fed and we don’t waste time going out for lunch.  

The first picture here is of Kacyeru, the neighborhood I live in, looking across from Nyarutarama, where i work. There's also a couple pictures below of the breakfast and lunch we had recently at work.

Potatoes, collards, pasta and veggies dish, sauce, and fried fish for lunch

cassava, bananas, and avocados for breakfast

One 15 hour bus ride later....

click on photo to blow up and read

...and I'm in Rwanda. The ride should have been 12 hours (by car it's more like 7-8 hours) but the bus had three flat tires. You can't even imagine how bumpy this ride is, and I took an overnight one so I did not sleep! Waking up at the border to go through immigration at 4 am was also not pleasant. I think I'll fly back...

The sign above is posted in the bathroom at NFT, a human resource company where my company shares an office (by share I mean we have one tiny room that we cram into). No peeing on the seat, written in multiple languages in case you don't understand.

Kigali, the capital, is a big change from Kampala, it's very nice. I've heard people say that it's "Africa light," ridiculously nice and clean here with very solid roads) now just weeks after arriving in Kampala. I had just found a place to live and had met a few people when I was asked by my work to come over here. I’ll be here for a month and I'm supposedly an MFI (micro finance) "expert" in trying to get a program running with a cool micro finance organization. Apparently in April they have a memorial week where no one does any business and everyone just remembers the genocide, which I’m sure is tragic.

Rwanda is sort of the opposite of what I expected. I think I really have a skewed perspective in general of Africa because I never spent that much time in major cities like this in my past visits. But Kigali in particular seems like a 1^st world city. But they go one step further, when you have someone like Kugame for President you can just make things happen more easily – there’s no plastic bags allowed in the country and this is enforced. There’s also a cleanup day on the last Saturday of the month and you can be fined if you don’t send someone from your household to represent you and help clean. This is taken very seriously, I'm not sure what to do as a muzungu (white guy).

I was also surprised that a lot of people, even most maybe, at this point don’t speak French here. While many restaurants and roads have French names , it does not feel like a Francophone African country. English is probably more common, and everyone seems to speak Kinyarwanda. But it’s weird not knowing which language to start in when you great someone. It seems like a lot of people that were forced to go abroad in the genocide times learned English and in addition to not being huge fans of the French here, there is a strategic and economic advantage for Rwanda to join the Anglophone East African block. But it’s a strange mix here, they drive on the right, but you can feel a British influence here, while economic monetary conversions are made to dollars.

In my first weekend here I played in a huge annual Frisbee tournament. Before coming to East Africa I didn’t know that ultimate Frisbee was even a thing.  I assumed it was just a hippie white liberal arts college’s thing but this tournament had more than just British, French, and American players, there were people from Burundi, Kenya, Uganda, and of course Rwanda. There’s a social aspect to the game that distinguishes it from soccer, basketball, or other sports. There’s a whole lot of running involved, which I don’t mind, but some people are seriously into the game and are a little more intense than what I can tolerate. Tennis seems to be a lot bigger here in Uganda (and soccer too) so I’ll probably start to seek that out.

I haven’t had a chance to blog as much as I want because internet is so ridiculously slow and I haven’t bought a modem for home use. When I do have internet, I can't really download things, or even watch YouTube videos. Can you imagine, Friday afternoons at the office at the office and you can't watch YouTube videos?! 

I'm off to Gisenyi for the weekend to do some work at the Congolese border

Until then,

Akesselfish

a quick photo shot

Here's that monkey from my last post (well ok, probably not the same exact one, but they all look the same to me and I see them pretty often), and me out in the field with a co-worker and some new clients after a recent solar installation.

Uganda

The minute I stepped off the plane and smelt that familiar burning trash smell I knew I was back in Africa. This time though, stepping into the taxi on the “passenger” side, I realized I was in a different region, because that’s where the driver sits (I continue to screw that up). The British colonial system of driving on the left seems strange, and so does hearing English (I’ve only previously visited French speaking African countries). Just 5 days after arriving, I also have realized how hard it is to get around the bustling and sprawling city of Kampala. Biking will not be an option, walking is too far, and driving a car, while possible, is pretty scary around here with the amount of people going everywhere every which way at most hours during the day. So I’ll take the infamous boda boda for now, which is also pretty scary, but maybe my best option to get around.

I did not have the chance to get over jet lag as I started at my new position at Fenix International the very next morning after I arrived this past Sunday late-night. I’ve been living at the office in a guest room while I get my bearings. It’s a very interesting eclectic group of new co-workers. Some are British, some are Ugandan, and a few of us are from the States. Several staff, both U.S. and surprisingly Ugandan, are really into ultimate Frisbee, which I joined in for a pick-up game. It felt sort of surreal playing ultimate Frisbee in Uganda and then people talked about getting pizza after the game and I for a minute forgot where I was. Some moments it feels like I am just in any other metropolitan area minus the crazy animals and dust everywhere.

I did my first “road” trip the last two days for work going to the lovely city of Jinja (yes sounds like Ninja), where the river Nile ends (or rather the source is found, which is weird because every other river in the world flows in the opposite direction I think). I had a crazy 2 days – went to an enormous sugar plantations owned by some Indians, a Virginian missionary’s house, met a hunched back crazy old Jewish white dude who was convinced he’d met my co-worker somewhere (he hadn’t), got  a flat tire driving with my co-workers several hours in the bush, went to a club where no one danced -dozens of Ugandans were there staring at the England-Brazil friendly soccer match, ate some amazing local food and then some amazing Indian cuisine another night, and drove for hours on some of the bumpiest worst roads to get to these tiny villages to talk to them about the Ready Set.

Overall, things are going well, but I have no idea where I’m going to live yet and I have very little orientation of this city yet. What makes matters worse in part is that the numbers for street addresses in Kampala are not necessarily in order (2, 3, 4, etc.). Much more to write but I’m off to explore Friday night in Kampala…Oh, and a monkey walked by my desk the other day (it’s a half inside/half outside cool type of office).