Yesterday I was in our Masaka office and asked about the event today at the school. I discovered we would be preforming our organizations standard baseline survey to assess the overall condition a sponsored Orphan or Vulnerable Child (OVC) is living in. I asked what time we were starting and my supervisors face went blank, like she didn't understand the question. She replied, "We should start the event at 10." I responded, "We should? or we will?" As it turns out, no time was ever really established for this event, that people had to come to.
The next morning I got off to a pretty slow start and instead of being out and about by 8:00 didn't really leave my home till about 9:00. Not much was going on so after circling the compound, and saying 'good morning' to a few folks I headed back to my home sat on the couch and grabbed a book. Five minutes till 10:00 it started to rain, I knew right then that it was going to be a while before the meeting. I knocked out a couple chapters and eventually looked down at my watch to see it was 11:10. The rain had stopped/slowed to a drizzle so I decided to walk about and see if there was any sign of the meeting coming together. Despite the fact that we were now over an hour past the "hoped" start time I was extremely confident I hadn't missed anything. I found my counterpart on the compound and he told me he has phoned my supervisor, who was still at our office 45 minutes away, and told her that nobody has showed up for the meeting yet. We talked for a while, I asked him some questions about how to say things in Luganda, and then headed back to my sofa and book.
During the day my organizations director and a member of the board showed up on the compound. They each came inside and talked to me for a bit and were on their way.Around 1:00 my counterpart came by and asked if we could talk. He told me there was a rumor going around that I have given keys to my home to girls at the school. I had given for 1 day the key to get into my kitchen to the girl who does my laundry, because I was away and wanted her to drop off my laundry. I was advised not to do that again.
Around 2:00 I took a walk and saw that some of the people who were going to attend the meeting had showed up. My counterpart and I headed into the meeting hall and by 2:30 our boss showed up and the meeting got started. I got about a 20 minute introduction. I had a talk with my boss yesterday about not putting so much focus on me just because I am a white Peace Corps volunteer, so I was pleasantly surprised that she obliged and shaved 10 minutes off of my usual 30 minute introduction. The meeting wrapped up around 6:00. On my way back to my home I was stopped by our building instructor and spent 30 minutes doing concrete trowel work with him on the porch banister. After all that I wasn't in the mood for cooking so I decided it was a rolex kind of night. I switched from my usual 2 - 2 egg rolexs to 3 - 1 egg rolexs. The chapati in this town aren't big enough for a 2 egg rolex anyway. Not only did I enjoy the 3 - 1 egg rolexs more, but it actually cost me 100 shillings (about 5 cents) less than 2 - 2 egg rolexs. Ate em with Zaxby's Zax sauce, further making me believe that sending exploding prone sauce packets half way around the world is one of my best ideas ever.
Do You Want Another Rap?
Ladies and gentlemen, the President of Uganda. Enjoy
No comments:
Post a Comment