Almost a month has passed since I arrived

The rainy season is upon us and Entebbe has become a haven for mosquitoes. I have never had this many mosquito bites in my life. Everyone around me seems to be falling sick with malaria. As for me, I have only caught the flu thus far. Fingers crossed I don’t catch anything else.

I have been busy in my first month here. First off, it didn’t take me long to look for the Latinos. A couple of weeks ago I went to the Kampala Latino Club but the only Latino I met was from Suriname and didn’t even speak Spanish or Portuguese. There were about two Latinos in the club, the rest were African or white and, much to my dismay, there was no dancing. Yesterday I went to a German church service in Kampala. First my African friend/guide and I went the wrong way and then we couldn’t find it so we had to ask a boda boda (motorcycle taxi) to take us. Three people on one motorcycle with no helmets, me sitting side saddle as I was wearing a dress, first riding against the traffic down the wrong side of the street and then turning onto one of the worst kept streets of Kampala, in my opinion (it was muddy and bumpy). It took us a total of 1.5 hours to get there and the people weren’t very friendly (other than the priest), so I don’t think I will go again. And I ventured into Kampala by myself last week and think that’s what gave me the flu. Kampala = chaos, confusion, pollution, beggars. Every time I crossed the street I was happy I survived. When in Kampala with friends I usually hold their hands crossing the street and just let them drag me across. It somehow seems safer to me. In conclusion, I do not like Kampala (but somehow I always find myself having to go there) and am quite happy to be living in sleepy, little Entebbe.

On another note – I was mentally prepared for the extreme poverty I saw in the field. It is the poverty one studies at university and sees in advertisements for child sponsorships. And the short bursts in which I witness it don’t change the course of my daily life. But the poverty and life situations of my coworkers – that is something I struggle with. You would never guess the reality by looking at them – they are well dressed and usually quite chipper. But I am working with and caring about people who sometimes cannot afford to eat. Who, as orphans, rely on relatives for support and are often mistreated as a result. Who have close family members who cannot afford to go to school. Who have experienced the brutalities of war. Who talk of dreams that I have fulfilled for myself a hundred times but which, for them, will likely always remain in the imagination. My difficulty in life is having too many options for my future. For most of them the difficulty is having too few. It makes my personal problems often seem rather ridiculous. But for them this is a fact of life and they don’t let their problems faze them.

This has become a major concern for me as a week back it was announced that the funding for the project the current staff were hired for has been cut, as our sister organization in England is having problems with the funders. Thus everyone is being let go at the end of the month. That means no more income for the fifteen people working on the project and little hope of finding employment elsewhere. In the end, however, I doubt they will let everyone go as someone has to keep monitoring what has already been done, not to mention the other projects that are up and running. And, if rumors are true, the two people I consider to be friends will be amongst the lucky few to be retained, as they are also closest to and most trusted by the director. And one of them really has nothing to fall back on, so I do hope he stays. But such is the life of development workers. Even the missionary of the 19th-century I studied for my MA ran into funding problems for his projects at least twice. Some things just never change…