I had initially planned to wrap up my work with KickStart in mid-March, travel around Tanzania for a few weeks, then make my way to Kampala overland through Kenya. When I found out from my contact at Grameen Foundation that the Uganda office could really use my help starting March 22nd, I agreed to let them pay for my airfare and decided that I could always do my planned trip in reverse at a later date. The timing worked out so that I was able to wrap up and present the findings for most of my work at KickStart on a Friday and fly to Uganda Friday night to begin work Monday. It was sad to say goodbye to Alfred, Hillary, and Bodie, who had been such wonderful hosts to me and really included me in their family over my time in Tanzania, but the farewell was made slightly easier knowing that I have a return ticket and will be making my way back through Dar sometime in the next three months. Still, Bodie's assurance that he would miss me and that I could come over and play anytime was almost enough to get me to haul my bag back into "my" room and stay until forcibly removed.
My arrival in Kampala was a bit of a story. Although Grameen was supposed to arrange accommodations and transport from the airport, I hadn't received any confirmation, so a friend in Kampala scheduled a cab to pick me up and bring me to her place to crash for the night. When I got off the plane, I saw a driver holding a sign with my name and went with him, not discovering until after picking up two other Grameen employees at a restaurant and getting dropped off at an apartment with them that he was in fact not the driver my friend had sent.
It all turned out fine though, as I've been staying in a VERY nice apartment with Josh, a former Sony-Ericsson Product Manager from Sweden who is here as a consultant for four months, and Vlad, Grameen Foundation's IT Manager from DC who is here for a couple weeks. They're both great people to work and live with and I've been enjoying the fact that they're both even more tech-savvy than I am. Vlad was supposed to head to Ghana at the end of last week, but ended up extending his stay because the IT setup has taken longer than expected and he also wanted to be able to go into the field with the group (including Josh and myself) that is heading out tomorrow. Vlad is an experienced IT professional has been working for Grameen for five years and believes strongly in its mission, but never expected to go to Africa until he was told last month that he would be taking this trip. His wide-eyed wonder and enthusiasm has helped Josh and me appreciate each new experience that much more.
Kampala is incredibly lush and beautiful, but still manages to feel more like a city to me than the parts of Dar es Salaam that I saw. Every morning, Chris, Grameen's driver, picks Josh, Vlad and me up from our posh apartment overlooking the city (don't worry about wasted donations: it used to be an executive's apartment and we'll be moving to more modest digs at the end of the month when the lease runs out) and drives us 10-20 minutes (depending on traffic, which is terrible) down the hill to Grameen's office, where we fight for chairs packed two to a desk in a room in a building owned by MTN, the large telecom company who, along with Google, is a founding partner in Grameen's AppLab initiative. The three of us are contributing in our own ways to building the capacity of AppLab and its two dozen staff as they move towards launching their Community Knowledge Worker program, which will involve training 4,000 rural Ugandans to use mobile phone applications to provide information services in the areas such as agriculture, weather, and health to people in their communities and to collect survey data on behalf of NGOs and businesses.
My initial agreement with Grameen was to come here for two weeks to assist the finance and legal teams with making sure the accounting software is working, meeting with local accountants and lawyers to understand tax and compliance requirements, ensuring necessary paperwork is filed to complete registration and open a bank account, and training staff on basic accounting procedures. Those tasks are all going well and I've been enjoying working with the fantastic team here, so I'm hoping that we'll be able to find a way for me to stay on longer.
My social life has also been going well in Kampala, even beyond the great people I've been working and living with. Since arriving, I've spent quite a bit of time with Dave, a friend and former CWV intern who is in Kampala working for a small NGO and launching a Uganda/Ethiopia investment fund, and Eleanor, a Clinton Foundation staffer who I'd only met previously over email via StartingBloc. Eleanor had four friends from the US and Israel here over the weekend, and we spent Saturday night gorging ourselves on Ethiopian food, going on a massive run at the blackjack table at a casino, and then dancing at bar until 3am. The next morning, we all got up before 7, and along with a better-rested Josh and Vlad, took a 1.5 hour bus ride to Jinja, where we spent the whole day on a whitewater rafting trip down the Nile. It was an exhausting but unforgettable weekend. (For the record, I've now traveled along the Nile, the Ganges, and the Mekong in the past six months!)
In summary: things are going very well at the moment, and while I'd like to find a way to extend my stay in Kampala, I'm also feeling very comfortable just going with the flow and seeing what opportunities open up for me. I miss my friends and family back home and will be quite happy to move back to DC, San Fransisco, or somewhere else in the states when the right opportunity comes along. Until then, I wanna have an adventure!
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