Mubende!

I will probably eat my words later, but I will never again complain about the Purple Line on the El! Even though Mubende is only about 150 kms away from Kampala, it took a full day to get here. I left my house around 10:30 and took a boda to the new taxi park (there is an "old" park as well as a "new" park) where I found absolute chaos! It was pouring rain, my shoes were soaked through, and there were hundreds of taxis (huge vans) trying to get through a gate to find a spot to park. It took me almost half an hour just to make it into the park because the cars were so close together! Once I got in, it was a complete madhouse and took another 20 minutes to find a taxi going to Mubende. I sat down in the taxi and waited for it to fill up so we could go...although I had no idea how we would get out of the park as we were surrounded on all sides.

Being a muzungu in the taxi park caused quite the commotion! There is quite the market in the taxi park, with people running around selling everything from pots and pans to handkerchiefs to children's toys. Someone came to rap on my window every 2-3 minutes begging me to purchase something. I only folded for a snack after sitting there for 2 hours, and even then used my negotiation skills to haggle the price down 25%. Yes! After the taxi filled up, we then had to get out of the park, which took another 30 minutes or so--this is all before the 4 hour drive! Oyyyyy. I finally got into Mubende a little before 6 and was so happy to stretch my legs!

The "nicest" hotel here (it is very nice, but I put nicest in quotations because it costs $17.50/night) is fully booked tonight and tomorrow so I'm at the second-nicest hotel for a few days. The room is fine, but I am excited to switch to the hotel for the amazing view! The other hotel is called City View Hotel and sits on the top of a huge hill in Mubende and you can see on for miles...absolutely stunning. Prossy, my coworker, who met me at the taxi drop-off, helped me to my room and we went for dinner together at the City View to enjoy the sunset. It's so interesting to talk to her about her life--she's about my age, but it's so different to be in your early 20s here. She isn't allowed to have her own apartment yet and will stay with her uncle until she gets married (later this year, I am tempted to come back for it, haha) and moves into a house that her boyfriend is building for them! Anyway, I'm off to do some thesis work and hopefully have a call with my advisor. Tomorrow will be early morning survey reviewing followed by an afternoon of shopping at the local markets with Prossy-woohoo! I'm determined to squeeze as much fun as possible into this last week and a half in Africa :)

Mityana Reflections

I've been in Mityana 4 days now, and to be totally honest, I am so ready to come back to Kampala! Of course, I will stay as long as needed to help out with the survey and organizing, but I cannot remember the last time I felt like such an outsider. Every time I leave the hotel, literally all of the people on the road stop what they are doing to look at me. Not to mention, the children who are super cute until they run up to me and say "Money!" in English. I just want to go for a run, or even a walk to buy airtime, in peace. I never thought I could feel so out of place since I usually make friends very easily. I thought I got attention as a muzungu in Kampala, but that was nothing compared to this!

There's good news and bad news with not wanting to leave the hotel--good news is that it makes it easier to focus on my thesis. The bad news is that the power outages here are awful and I keep getting stuck for 2-3 hour periods with an uncharged laptop. How annoying! However, today (apart from survey sorting) is starting off strong without any power outages yet :)

My daily routine here has pretty much been waking up around 6, seeing the survey team off, talking to the bf before he goes to sleep, and then starting thesis work/survey stuff around 10. I visited the field the first few days, but yesterday and today are too far away for me to realistically go out there and it's easier to meet with the team in the evening.

I also set my schedule for spring quarter--it's funny how these things sneak up on you! I wasn't able to limit my classes to Tues/Thurs, but I did get away with only one discussion on Fridays. I ended up going for better classes even though it means class every day. Poor me! It should be a great quarter, complete with real showers and lots of yoga classes!

Anyway, I am going to get cranking on some thesis regressions now. When technology is functioning, I am having an obscene amount of fun playing with my econometric models. I may be changed in terms of my mature wordly perspectives, but this econ nerd isn't going anywhere!

Hair Braiding and Surveying

Wow! This last week has been absolutely nuts. I got my hair braided and it is ridiculously awesome. Not to brag, but one of the women who works at Base told me that I am the only muzungu she has ever seen look good with braids :D It took two women about 4 hours to do it! It hurt a bit while I was doing it, but my head hurt a lot more the next few nights as I was trying to fall asleep!

The hair braiding did have great timing, though. Today is our first day of enumeration and we all headed out to the field yesterday. I am staying at the Enro Hotel in Mityana, which is surprisingly nice, but I cannot figure out the whole bucket-shower thing. Thankfully, having my hair braided means I only have to/should wash it about once a week! It's only been four days, but the lack of washing it isn't bothering me yet. When I was 16, I spent two weeks hiking the Appalachain trail and didn't wash it at all then; however, it was so tangled when I came back that I lost a good deal of hair untangling it. Hopefully that won't be the case with the braids! I think I am going to come back to Chicago with them and have them taken out there. It will be interesting to see how the French react to my braids when I stay in France for a week! (which I am sooooooo excited for)

We spent an enormous amount of time going through enumerator training and preparing for the field, but somehow everything yesterday/this morning seemed to go wrong! The surveys weren't numbered properly (some had the same number, which is a total disaster), people put the wrong bags in the wrong matatus and the hours I spent organizing the papers for each team was gone to waste, the team lead for Mityana insisted on stopping at her house to pick up her bag on the way, the question randomization sheets were running a program based on the old survey. Not to mention, my new Orange internet card still wasn't working, my Blackberry was/is tempermental on me, I am out of my favorite vanilla mint toothpaste, it rained all day......Aaaaahhhhhh!!! However, I have chilled out a lot. I woke up yesterday morning, saw that is was pouring rain, and realized that I would just have to laugh at everything that went wrong and go with the flow as best as possible. So far, it seems to work a lot better! I don't expect to have a functioning computer/Internet/Blackberry, and then I am pleasantly surprised if and when it works properly. Key takeaway: Low expectations are best for developing countries. And bring a book/Kindle everywhere!

I went running last night in Mityana, and wow, was that an experience. I am literally the ONLY white person here and although I am tan and have braided hair, I still stuck out. All of the kids absolutely freaked out to see me and they all wanted to touch me...kind of strange, but cute at the same time. Anybody above the age of 10 just looked at me like I was an alien! Not only is being white an extremely rare occurrence, but people don't exercise here like they do in the States, or even in Kampala. If I could take a guess what the average person was thinking, it would go something like this, "Wow! A muzungu! Everybody look at the muzungu! What the heck is she doing? Is somebody chasing her? What's on her arm? What's on her head? Are those braids? Why is she wearing spandex? These white people are absolutely crazy." I also have no clue where I am and seemed to run through the busiest part of town. Awesome!! At this point, I don't really care if people think I'm crazy...I just hope that I am not offending/disrespecting too many people. At least I wasn't wearing my short shorts :)

As soon as my computer charges (power outages are much worse here than in Kampala), I am going to run around and do some printing/copying for the Mityana team and then finally get some thesis time before meeting the team at the trading center around 5. Hopefully we have all of the logistical problems sorted out by then and things are otherwise running smoothly! The last few weeks have been so insanely busy that I've barely had time to sleep, let alone work on the thesis draft that's due March 15th...Professor Dafny, if you're reading this, I promise I will have an update to you in the next few days :) If there are no major issues with the surveying, I will have 8:30am-4:30pm or so every day for the next week to focus strictly on schoolwork, which will be a big change from enumerator training, survey translating and running around like a crazy person making copies and the like!

I think I will be in Mityana until the end of the week and will probably head back to Kampala for the weekend. Hopefully, I will cross some things off of my things-to-do-in-Uganda list! Although my hotel room in Mityana is nice, I don't feel as comfortable here as I did in Kampala and am pretty limited with things to do after sunset. It may be a good thing, as it will encourage more thesis-ing and perhaps a few practice GRE/GMATs. It's still very cool to

Speaking of, my computer is just about charged now and it's time for me to convince the local bank to print 15 copies of some documents off of a USB stick. Wish me luck!

"I own a goat"

We just found out that "I own a goat" translated to Luganda means "I am a virgin," and is therefore inappropriate for our survey! Oops. We have now changed this statement in our List Randomization to "I raise goats." Tomorrow, our enumerators head out to the field to see who makes the cut--and I head to the salon!

I am so excited to get my hair done, African-style! There will definitely be a picture posted as soon as it is complete. I have been warned that it will take 4-6 hours to do the small braids/extension all over and that it will be painful, but you only live once, right? One of my Ugandan friends, Peter, manages a local salon in Kamwocha, and he has recruited one of the hairdressers for me.

Things are pretty nuts here as we try to pull everything together for the big trip to the field tomorrow, but I wanted to write a quick entry. I have finalized permission to leave a little bit early to visit Kay in France, and I am sooo excited to see her, my extended French family, and eat a ton of delicious French bread! Unfortunately, it will still be pretty chilly in France in March, and my warmest clothing consists of a light Banana Republic zip-up hoodie, but I figure that it's a good excuse to purchase a cute new spring jacket :)

Kareem, my partner here in Uganda, flies back to the U.S. tonight to interview for an honors scholarship with the UVA economics department, so hopefully things will run smoothly in his absence. I assured him that I would be as anal about the enumeration logistics and paperwork as I am about my computer/Excel documents, and he seemed reassured. We all know that my Excel skills are off-the-charts! We have a conference call with Dean, the other PI on our project (apart from Julian) and the head of IPA, in ten minutes to decide how many respondents we should interview in each trading center--kind of a big decision, but I'm sure everything will work out just fine.

On a side note, somebody from SHAPE passed on a document about long-distance relationships and tips to make them work. One of the ideas was to "make babies" by going to MakeMeBabies.com, one of the creepier websites I've come across in my lifetime. You upload images of you and your significant other and it shows you what your baby will look like. So bizarre and entirely unnecessary to include on a suggestion list to make a long-distance relationship healthier! As they say on Curb Your Enthusiasm, "MF, WTF?" I think Kate Hudson did this in How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days...so if any of you are trying to totally freak out your boyfriend/girlfriend, try this! :P

Still Busy!

Things are still pretty nuts at work as we start Enumerator Training in two days! We are still scramming to finalize the survey and translate it and prepare the Enumerator Manual for the training. I do think that things will go well, though. We are lucky to have our team leads returning and a lot of the same people from the baseline working on our survey teams, so hopefully things will run smoothly! Last year, enumerator training seemed to run much longer and be more tedious than expected, so I put together a Powerpoint to hopefully make for an efficient start to training. No matter what, it will be a long week. I have little doubt that I will be in our office super late tonight, getting the survey finalized, and running around tomorrow to ensure that all of the training materials are ready. Sunday through Thursday is training every day, 9-6, although without a doubt I will be there closer to the hours of 7:30-9. A major yuck, but it's all worth it to ensure that the data we collect is as precise as possible (for IPA and my thesis' sake!) Saturday, we leave for the field and Sunday marks the beginning of enumeration. I can't go along for the surveys, because the "muzungu" factor is too big...although as we joked, they could simply add a muzungu dummy in the variable to account for the fixed effects of my presence.

I'm looking forward to and am anxious at the same time about the actual enumeration. We will be in the field for about 2 1/2 weeks, and I don't really know what to expect for my daily routine or lodging accomodations. I'm able to sleep through the night on a thin, rock-hard mattress at my house and a noisy leaky toilet and fan, so I imagine I will be able to sleep just fine, but I'm worried about having all of my electronics stolen. I can take them with me most of the time, but I don't know if I will be able to go for a jog or take a shower without stressing about my computer being stolen. I guess I will see what happens when I get there, and maybe use my luggage locks (although it seems like that would attract more attention than prevent theft). We'll be staying in the district center and leave for the trading centers from there.

For daily schedule, I am guessing I will wake up around six, make sure that the team has all of their materials, and send them off to the trading center around 7 or 7:30. Then, I will call the team leads to check on the progress throughout the day, but won't have much to do until they return at night for debriefing. The first few days, I will probably go in the early evening or afternoon to oversee the monetary payouts and make sure that things go smoothly, but in general there won't be a whole lot for me to do during the day. It will be nice in a way to have time to read, work on my thesis (I'm hoping to get a first draft done during these few weeks), perhaps take a practice GMAT/GRE, but I'm a little worried about going crazy! I will of course bring my yoga mat and super cool resistance band set, but as I said, I don't think I can do much jogging without fretting over my personal belongings. Pia said that if I end up feeling like I am truly not doing anything and would be more productive in Kampala, I can come back, so we will see how it goes. I want to be in the field and see more of the country, but I also don't know how to manage things like laundry, exercise, eating vegetables, etc. and it might not be that much fun. It would be ideal to go for 3 days, back for a few days, out for 3 days, back, etc. and go back and forth, since none of the districts are more than 2-3 hours away. The roads are absolutely horrendous here, but I still manage to doze off in the matatus on the way to/from the field. There is a lot of government/corporate corruption, and the money designated for roads often ends up in the pockets of officials or spent on crap materials so contracts are renewed more often. It doesn't help that we ride around in matatus (called 'taxis' but are more like buses) designed for 12 people but often crammed with 15-18 people, so the road bumps are complimented by being very squished and not so lovely body odors.

No matter what, going into the field and being here is truly an experience. It's different than I expected, and challenging in ways that I wasn't expecting, but I do know that I will grow from it. Nevertheless, knowing that I will be wiser and more patient when I return to the U.S. doesn't make being here any easier. There are so many frustrations every day where if I didn't have seven years of yoga experience, I think my eyes would bug out of my head!

It's also incredibly hard to be so far away from family, friends, and most of all the boyfriend. I knew that I would miss him a lot, and while it has gotten easier, I am impatient to get back home. Anyone who is in Chicago in February should understand how big that statement is ;) Luckily, we are generally able to talk once or twice a day, which makes life a lot easier. Communication with everyone from home has been good and bad--the time change is generally good, because there are no distractions during my work day, when most people are sleeping. I am lucky that one of my best friends, David, keeps an insane sleep schedule and is usually awake during my work day to help me out with various issues like activating credit cards. I am going to make him a delicious batch of cookies AND a trifle (his favorite) when I get back.

Luckily, I am busy here and have plenty to look forward to when I get home :) And now, I've spent way too long writing this entry and need to get back to work.

Technology Fixes and Frustrations!

Yesterday afternoon was partially successful in fixing my life--I finally got my permanent Visa card, activated it, and got cash! It was not an easy process, and the final two hours of finding the FedEx warehouse and getting the package was equally tricky. I'm glad it's over!

I also went to the Orange store to find out why my modem wasn't working. Their lovely customer service department said that sometimes this happens, they have no warrantee, they can't fix it, but I can buy a whole new modem for a mere 150,000 UGX ($75, and more than it cost the first time). I wasn't in much of a position to argue, as my wireless router on my laptop is also broken, so I just bought it. Yuck, so many technology problems! My Blackberry also enjoys randomly shutting off (usually in the middle of BBM conversations), my virus protection software won't install, and I still can't get any wireless connection to register. Oh, the joys of being in Africa! I am just glad to have some of the problems fixed, and I will work on the Blackberry and wireless problems as much as I can while we prepare for training.

On a side note, I bought all four seasons of Prison Break yesterday downtown for 33,000 shillings ($16.50). Not bad, right? I keep hearing what an amazing show it is, and I'm looking forward to watching it!

Yesterday evening (and this morning), I took our dog Molly for a jog/walk. She's on the chubby side for a dog, so jogging doesn't always work out but I really love taking her out. It's really nice to have her trotting by my side and it is quite amusing to see the pickles she gets herself into when I let her go off-leash. The roads here are absolutely awful--potholes everywhere, huge speedbumps, and massive dips off of the side. Molly likes to go on the other side of the dip, but then she will realize that we are suddenly too far apart for her to easily jump to my side. She'll whimper, paw at the ground nervously, and then take a running jump to scamper over to my side. It's very cute! She also enjoys scaring the numerous goats that chill in our neighborhood by chasing them at full speed, haha.

After taking Molly out, I met up with my friend Nadine at a supermarket near her house, where I discovered a great meat selection! I have been avoiding most of the meat here, but this place is legit! They have really nice, fresh, deli meat and I picked up 400g of pastrami. Nadine had never had pastrami before, and she tried it and loved it! Apparently pastrami exists but isn't very common/popular in Germany. If only they had rye bread here!! We picked up some chicken skewers and fruit and made dinner at her house; then, I came home and read on the porch with my roommate Jorrit. It's very nice to sit and relax with a book outside, no jacket necessary! That is one huge benefit of winter on the equator :)

Bain had their first round interviews yesterday, so I awoke to a set of emails filled with good and bad news. I am incredibly excited for the people who have final round interviews (and really hoping that NU gets more interns than Michigan!) and disappointed for those who received bad news. It's a really rough process, and I remember all too well how much rejection hurts. The only thing I can say is that I do think it all works out in the end--most seniors I know that are going into consulting/finance are very happy with their full-time job. It's a bit like sorority recruitment: a super intense process filled with rejection, but for the most part people end up loving their house! So all of you juniors, keep your heads up high and finish up the interviews on a strong note!

The Usual...

Is it strange that I now have a "usual" in Africa? I've been here 3 1/2 weeks now, and it's surprising how quickly I've adjusted to life here. I know how much to pay for a boda ride across town, I look right and then left when crossing the street, and I stopped wearing a watch (doesn't serve much purpose here). I've gotten used to seeing cats, dogs, and goats run around the city and women carrying enormous baskets of bananas and containers of water on their head. My getting up at sunrise to run plan has subsided, and I now wake up around 7:30 or 8, shower, and go straight into work. Not much different than working at ZS last summer! After work, I'll go to yoga/pilates/run, make a late dinner, chat to friends, read, and head to bed.

It's still cool to be somewhere so different, but not as exciting as it was the first few weeks. There are certain frustrations that I am growing tired of, but they will all be valuable lessons, I am sure. In general, everything takes longer here, whether it is downloading a file, getting to work, or asking somebody a question. I have accepted that time is relative, rather than absolute, but my patience is definitely being tried. I will definitely appreciate the efficiency of meetings and communications in the U.S. when I get back! In the meantime, I try to bring my Kindle or books everywhere when I am waiting for things, and if all else fails, my Brickbreaker score on my Blackberry is getting pretty high :)