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 :)

Busy, busy, busy!

The end of last week was crazy! Julian, the PI on our project arrived, and we spent most of Friday going through the survey on a macro and micro level. We still have a few big decisions to make, namely the survey size! The "power" and budget of our study will vary based on the number of people we track down from the baseline and the number of new people we decide to survey. We originally surveyed 30 people in each of 60 trading centers, and we seem to be leaning toward 20 old respondents and 20 new respondents in each trading center for our endline study. A bigger sample size would generate greater "power" and confidence in our results, but it would be a logistical nightmare. What good is a greater sample size if the accuracy of the surveys goes down?

We went through the survey piece by piece until late on Friday night and then went out to dinner at a pretty good (but horrible service!) Indian restaurant. On Saturday, Julian, Kareem, Pia, Charity (field manager), Nester (our auditor), Prossie (other/new field manager), Margaret (head of the enumerators) and I headed out to Mpigi to pretest the survey on non-Kampala Ugandans. Pre-testing proved very fruitful and we gained a lot of insight into ways to better our survey, which is good. I also went to the bathroom for the first time in a hole in the ground! However, the bathrooms were surprisingly well-engineered--they didn't smell and the hole in the floor was sloped appropriately to ensure that all bodily matter ended up in its proper place.

It is still very hard to see the poverty that people live in--more so in a village where the overall wealth is much lower than the poor parts of Kampala. You see pictures on TV and read about impoverished Africa in books, but it didn't prepare me at all for being there in person. It was particularly striking to see how similar people were to people in the U.S. Even though they didn't have shoes and had a house the size of my bedroom for 8 people, the kids still giggle when I stuck my tongue out at them and the women complain about their husband/boyfriend's wandering eyes (among other things...infidelity is quite rampant here). There's not really much to say about the poverty. I wish I could do something about it, but as Catherine (one of my yoga friends) says, the people of Africa need to help themselves. A bunch of Western money may help temporarily but does nothing to permanently change the underlying problems.

Anyway, after a few long days, I had Sunday off! I went to a great yoga class and stayed after for cake and coffee, followed by grocery shopping and an afternoon at the Kabira Club filled with swimming, reading, a massage, and steaming/sauna-ing. Verrrrrry nice :) I tried gooseberries for the first time, which are like small, tart tomatoes and are absolutely delicious! I also had some chocolate biscuits, which were so-so on their own but amazing dipped in coffee. Everybody seems to eat biscuits here, which are a cross between crackers and cookies. They aren't particularly good or bad, but they serve its purpose and I don't get a tummyache from them (I am suffering from one right now after a small piece of questionable beef/goat/something meat at lunch). After Kabira, I had a nice video chat session with Eric and did a little more work/saw the movie Avatar. I liked it a lot, although I like most sci-fi movies. We saw it in a restaurant/club that happened to have a big movie screen--a bit random, but it works!

This week looks to be another big week, filled with survey finalizations and training preparations (enumerator training got pushed back until Sunday). I'm also helping a number of classmates prepare for case interviews, which I am happy to do. I hope that my mentees land great internships! Hopefully, I will get to go to a few yoga classes and get some thesis-ing in between everything.

"Muzungu muzungu!!"

Yesterday afternoon was spent pre-testing with Prossie, one of our field managers, in Kamwocha, a nearby district of Kampala. I thought that I had been to an African market, but apparently I hadn't until yesterday! It was really, really cool--a lot like the markets in the more rural parts of Israel. Behind the "main strip" of shops and street stands, there was a covered, open area about 100' x 100'. The space was packed with different vendors selling all sorts of fruits, vegetables, and grains and the sides of the space displayed all sorts of raw meat and fish (sketttttchy, haha). It was quite the experience!

I really want to take more pictures of the city, but feel uncomfortable every time I take my camera out. I attract plenty of attention just being white (although I am growing quite tan!) and after being pickpocketed, I hesitate to do anything that makes me look even more like a naive tourist. I will have to set aside some afternoons where I go around with my camera and 10,000 UGX ($5) and not carry around anything worth stealing. Because I go so many places straight from work, my bag has my laptop, my wireless Internet card, my Blackberry, my wallet, etc....definitely not something I want to get stolen!

When we pre-tested yesterday, I befriended a group of Ugandan children by sticking my tongue out at them while we interviewed one of their mothers. They immediately loved me and we proceeded to make different faces at each other and imitate each other's faces for a solid 30 minutes--it was awesome! After that, they followed me around for the rest of the afternoon, yelling "Muzungu muzungu" (white person, white person!) and making faces at me. They were soooooo cute. I don't particularly like when adults call me "muzungu," I am oddly offended--it's like somebody yelling "Hey whitey!". I prefer when the boda drivers yell, "Hey sistah!" I suppose I should get over the offended 'muzungu' thing...not much I can do about it! With kids, it's different because a lot of them have only seen one or two white people in their entire life and it seems to be more of a fascination thing. Some of the kids just wanted to touch me, which was funny.

After work, I went to a pilates class in Bugulobe with my roommates Becca and Jorrit. I explained the Jersey Shore reference of "the situation" to my roommate Jorrit, who found it hilarious--so we have decided that we are going to create a "situation" of our own through pilates, haha. I sense that there is a solid future of "situation" jokes in the future....now we will have to find a way to stream Jersey Shore so I can show him the real "situation." Oh, Jersey Shore....

After pilates, we all had dinner together and hit a grocery store on the way home, where I found oatmeal and multiple kinds of soymilk (I bought cappuccino flavor, yum!). I got home around 9 and started a series of case phone calls. Bain has its first round of interviews for interns next week and asked me to go through cases with a number of candidates. I'm excited to see a number of friends on the list and very happy to help them out with cases and answer questions that they have. Hopefully, next year's Chicago class will have more NU kids...Michigan has been taking over the last few AC classes, and we can't let that trend continue! :P I am sending very, very good vibes to all of you NU juniors--you will make it through OK, I promise!

It's rainy and cool this morning, which is a nice change! I'm planning on developing some training materials today--we start enumerator training a week from today, which is hard to believe! I'm working a ton, but it is still nice to get a break from class and have a regular sleep schedule. I don't miss midterms, that's for sure :)

ATM Card Frustrations and Good African Coffee

Kareem and I spent the afternoon yesterday working at a coffeeshop called "Good African Coffee," which was in fact very, very good. I don't know why it took me so long to discover the amazing coffee here, especially since I am such a coffee nut at home! Thankfully, I've discovered it now and will now continue to frequent Kampala's coffeeshops. Our office is pretty crowded due to IPA Uganda's rapid expansion--it is fun to have lots of people around but the office itself can get pretty stuffy, so it was great to get out and work somewhere else. Last night I went over to the Kabira Club to work out with my friend Paul. It is probably the nicest gym in Kampala but is not up to par with American standards--half of the machines are out of order and the treadmill I ran on was lumpy...the belt was uneven, haha. Luckily, because I went with Paul, who lives there, I didn't have to pay :) After working out, we swam in the pool to cool off and watched the movie I Love You, Man.

Although my day was relative relaxing, my post-Kabira evening was spent on the phone with Charles Schwab and Visa trying to have a new ATM card sent to me. After almost two hours of frustrating conversation, Visa overnighted a "temporary card" to Julian, the PI on my project, who is heading to Kampala tomorrow! I am still working out the details on getting my real card, but the temporary card will let me withdraw cash if I go to see a bank teller in person...and that will have to do for now! I am disappointed in Visa's Emergency/911 service; I expected that an international company known for its customer service would have an active action plan for every country in the world in case a customer ran into a problem, but my experience has been a tedious, difficult one. Nevertheless, I am happy to have some emergency cash with me and multiple back-up plans for my supply of cash.

I am hoping to get away from my desk and pre-test the latest version of our endline survey this afternoon! Kareem and I spent most of yesterday expanding the Health Knowledge questions on our survey, which is the most important as it will be how we assess our outcomes, and cutting down redundant/irrelevant questions in other parts. The survey is extremely long (~90 minutes) so anything that can be cut out will help make the surveying experience better for everyone involved :)

Mmm...Coffee

As Eric so kindly pointed out, it's about time to update my blog! I knew I was fading off a bit on the posts, but life hasn't been super exciting and there wasn't anything I had a desperate need to write about!

I am sitting in a coffeeshop in Muyenga now called La Patisserie where I tasted the first good bread I've found in Kampala (in a chocolate pastry! Yum) and had my first Ugandan coffee. Delicious! Our office is pretty cramped and with a recent spike in temperatures, it was nice to get out of a stuffy room and sit in a peaceful coffeeshop while I work. It also happens to be close to a yoga class that I am going to hit in about an hour...sweet!

I spent the morning pre-testing the survey; I went through two full-length surveys with our field manager, Charity in a nearby district of Kampala. I administered both myself (although the second one required a translator), which was a lot more fun than just listening to the survey in Luganda and not understanding anything. I'm a bit concerned about the length of our survey--it is very long and a lot of the questions are somewhat repetitive. This makes me worry because if the enumerators or respondents are rushing to finish, their answers may not be accurate. We will be working to pare down the questions this week and have the survey finalized next week--training for the enumerators begins in 10 days! Everything is happening very quickly.

In general, I am enjoying everything but can't help being a little bit homesick. Thankfully, I'm very busy here with work, my thesis, yoga, and running, so I don't have too much time to think about it! Anyhow, it's back to the survey and potentially another pastry for me... :)

1st Day in the Field/Yoga!

Work has cranked up this week as we develop new survey questions and go into the field to pre-test them. Today is quite the headache as we try to correct the miscodings in our baseline survey--it seems that the parishes and sub-counties (location identifiers, VERY important) were all entered incorrectly. Not so fun.

Yesterday, we took our new health knowledge and 6001 questions out into the poorer areas of Kampala to test them. I knew that I was living in the more posh area of the city, but I don't think I was quite prepared to see poverty that I did. The worst part is that I know there are so many people even worse off in different parts of the city and country. Many of the people live in tiny shacks that look like they can't last more than a season or two of Kampala's heavy rainstorms, and of the people wearing shoes, they were full of holes and the soles were falling off. It is very sad to see such poor living conditions and I am hoping to find a way to get involved or volunteer in some way during the little free time I have.

On a brighter note, I went to my first yoga class in Uganda last night in Munyonyo, a far away but beautiful area of the city right on Lake Victoria. It is a class run by two guys, Kevin and Gavin, who live in this UNREAL house right on the lake with a patio/hut area in their backyard for yoga. It was very well-done, not intense, but a nice stretch and very relaxing. They both trained in South Africa, and told me that there is a Kripalu teacher in Uganda they are going to put me in touch with! Speaking of Kripalu teachers in Uganda, one of my friends, Jon, that I did teacher training with, is doing his Bahai service in Jinja, and I am planning to meet up with him in an upcoming weekend to get my official Kampala Bahai temple tour. It's quite the coincidence that we are both in Uganda at the same time--before he was in Uganda, he was in Akko, Israel, another country I happened to visit when he was there.

Anyway, it's back to work for me!

Sunburns, Sweet Potatoes, and Salad

I spent most of the weekend with Hannah, my high school friend, before she headed back to the States early this morning. We went to a contemporary African dance show on Friday night and then to dinner at a place called Krua Thai where I had perhaps the best Thai food I've ever eaten! On Saturday, I went to a party at Hannah's house with my friend Paul, and went out from there with Paul and his cousins, who are from Kampala. We had a lot of fun going to a place called the "Latino club" where the DJ played 1/3 new rap music, 1/3 rap music from 5-10 years ago, and 1/3 random music that I had never heard before that was generally not very good, haha. I tried a sort of sparkling apple cider drink that is popular here, but it was on the sweet side for me. The price of drinks is great--the most expensive drink was 5,500 UGX which is just under $3.

Sunday was spent lounging at the Kabira pool, finalizing my conclusion that my Lady Diana sunscreen is, in fact, just lotion in a bottle. Thankfully, Aaron, one of our new IPA hires, brought me some Banana Boat sunscreen this morning from the States, so I should be done with these horrific equatorial sunburns! He also bought me SPF 50--a smart move, which isn't surprising as he is a Northwestern grad! Go Cats! He graduated in '04 and just finished his master's at Columbia, and will be leading a 4-country savings program that launches in Uganda. On the sunburn side, I was fortunate enough to befriend a very nice dentist/fertility clinic worker named Carol who lives nearby. She went home and picked some fresh aloe vera from her garden for me, which feels even more amazing than the gel I purchased last week (for 32,000 UGX!) and my skin already looks much better. Carol also has decided to set me up with a young Ugandan guy named Josh, who I am apparently meeting soon. I made it clear that I have a boyfriend, so hopefully this won't be an awkward experience and I will make a nice Ugandan friend my age!

Yesterday, I had my first dinner salad at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Garden City, a nearby mall. I came to Uganda very wary of any raw vegetables because of the water issues, but so far no problem. Talking to people that have lived here, it seems that any place that actually serves salad or raw vegetables takes the proper precautions. My dinner of salad and cake (actual cake, not just dessert as Ugandans will refer to just about anything sweet as "cake") was delicious, and followed by several hours of Kindle reading and Dexter before bed. Today, we all went to eat at Potman, a local restaurant for some Ugandan cuisine. Back to beans and rice! I do miss salads and deli sandwiches, but the food here is fine. I actually love the sweet potatoes here, which are more of a white-yellow color than the orangey American hue.

As Dan, one of my co-workers, likes to say, the "brick" of local food has settled and I am craving a mid-afternoon nap! Luckily, my work is still extremely interesting. Today, I am updating our final survey to incorporate questions on 6001, the SMS system we are evaluating, in a sneaky way. We don't want the enumerators or the people being surveyed to know that the survey is specifically about 6001 (double-blind bias), so we are adding in small questions about the system here and there. Kareem and I are going to pretest some of the new questions tomorrow afternoon, which should be a lot of fun!

Excel-Loving and Internet-Hating

Let's get the hating over with first.

To begin, let me say that Internet in Africa Sucks with a capital S. When it is working (so far 75% of the time, but never when I really want it), it is soooooo slow. As I download our November data from Google, I have completed 2.8/11.6 MB, with a mere 27 minutes left! I can't upload my pictures without first converting them to a much smaller resolution image (does anybody know how to do this en masse?) and forget about watching any Jersey Shore. Anyway, I am extremely grateful to have my Blackberry functioning extremely well for the most part, and I will do my best to set much lower expectations for my Internet speed.

Now, onto the loving. For those of you that don't know exactly what I am doing here, I am working for a company called Innovations for Poverty Action. It is a nonprofit economics research group that sends people all over the world to evaluate various interventions in developing countries. Essentially, people hire us to tell them whether or not their product/approach to help people works. (sort of like a really cool consulting engagement, right?) The product I am evaluating is a new technology MTN (a large African telecom carrier) is providing that allows people in Uganda to send SMS messages asking questions about sexual and reproductive help and receive an almost instantaneous SMS response. We are partnered with Google and the Grameen Foundation for technological and financial support. (I think that's about as in-depth as I am allowed to go!)

IPA conducted a baseline survey about a year ago and collected a great deal of data on the demographics, health, and information level of Ugandans to understand how people obtain information related to health. MTN began the SMS service in the summer, and I don't think I can legally disclose how we have our treatment and control groups, so let your economic minds wonder :) Now, we're here to do the follow-up survey and evaluation to see how the service has been working and if it is changing the way people obtain health information.

Right now, I am appending mass .csv files into a beautifully labeled and formatted Excel document so we can understand the uptake rates (the percentage of people in specific groups that are using the services) and create some base assumptions for our follow-up survey. I am proud to say that my fingers have not lost my consulting-trained Excel touch, and I am even learning some new commands. While I was disgraced to see the state of some of the documentation we receive, it was a delight to transform it into a spreadsheet masterpiece.

On a more personal note, I think I am going to turn into a peanut from eating so much peanut butter. Today, I mixed it up by making a PB/Nutella (off-brand) sandwich for lunch...highly recommended. It is my fuel for my planned return to Kampala jogging tonight, which will happen as soon as this next set of data is downloaded (will let the final set download while I'm running).

On Ugandan Communication

In my 21 years of life in the U.S., I have discovered that brevity is most appreciated when communicating with fellow Americans. The straightforward, two-line email elicits an immediate Blackberry response, whereas the reply to a 4-minute voicemail is indefinitely postponed.

It is exactly the opposite here in Uganda. The most efficient way to obtain information is to make a significant initial investment in befriending a Ugandan, and then ask your question. A simple question like "Where is the nearest ATM?" will almost surely be replied to with "I don't know" (a red flag, as Ugandans always have some sort of answer, even a wrong one!) if it is not prefaced with at least 10 minutes of small talk. From an economic standpoint, it makes the most sense to make a few friends with a solid knowledge base early on.

A demonstration of Ugandan knowledge and communication: Jenn plans to meet friends for dinner at 7. She knows that the hotel where they are staying is 10 minutes away. Jenn gets on boda at 6:45. Boda driver insists that he knows where La Fontaine is. Boda driver drops Jenn off at a random location across town at 7:15, insisting hotel is nearby. Jenn gets off and goes to ask for help. At 7:45, after discussing the U.S., Chicago, economics, MTN, and her boyfriend (at least 3 times), the valet driver at a nearby hotel (who has ignored at least 5 cars) calls a cab driver to take her to La Fontaine. Jenn arrives at 8, after driving back across town. Luckily, "Africa time" holds, and she was only a few minutes past the rest of the group arriving :)

It's A Small World...

On Sunday afternoon, I went with one of my colleagues, Sarah, to a breakdance performance show. That in itself was pretty cool (and very cute, it was all kids performing!), but the amazing part was seeing Hannah Cunningham, a girl I went to high school in NC with! Just after I sat down, she came up to me, and we both freaked out! Talk about a crazy place to run into an old classmate! She worked in Uganda for a year a couple of years ago, and is back for a month doing some independent research through Williams. I went to her house for dinner afterwards, and we caught up on Chapel Hill gossip. Hannah is only here for another week, but it's great to have someone I know here as I begin to acclimate.

Yesterday, Monday, was the first day of work and my introduction to real Ugandan food! There are 10 of us (or so) working for IPA Uganda, although about half are leaving in the next week to spread to more rural areas. We spent most of the day going through administrative orientation-type stuff and learned some useful guidelines for living in Uganda. Lunch was matoke and rice with chicken. In Uganda, you order "food" and "sauce"--not much of a point in looking at the menu, since they are usually not serving a majority of the items! "Food" is a starch or choice of starches (rice, yams, some sort of porridge, matoke...I'm sure I will learn the rest). I tried matoke, a steamed plantain with a mashed potato consistency. Not very good. I had eaten matoke chips with Hannah that were delicious the night before, so perhaps my expectations were too high! The chicken was a full piece of chicken in a nicely flavored broth, that I poured over my rice. My meal, with a bottled water was 2,500 UGX (~$1.25!) Insane.

We went out to dinner with the extended IPA family for Ethiopian food, which I have never had! We ordered four large platters, two vegetarian and two carnivore. On each platter, there were 6 different foods on a large round piece of sour bread that looked like a big sponge. There are no utensils, each person grabs a piece of bread and uses it to pick up the food and eat it with the bread. Very different from anything I have ever tried, but pretty delicious. I especially liked this coleslaw-ish cabbage dish on the veggie platter. I stayed away from the meat platter; so far, the meat has been seasoned nicely but is very tough.

I spent the morning working on my thesis and at the Kabira Country Club pool--so far, the Lady Diana sunscreen seems to be doing its job. I am a little pink, but that's normal! I was planning on running, but the hills in Kampala proved to be a bit much for me yesterday morning, my leg muscles have been on fire all day! Quite a different workout than in Chicago...

Headed off to Day #2 of work now! Things are on the relaxed side now, as the survey doesn't begin until mid-February, so as Pia suggested, I am enjoying the chill work schedule. This afternoon, Kareem and I will meet with Pia for 2 hours before meeting our team leads (the people who will be supervising the survey teams).

Soy Milk in Uganda!

Last night, I went out with my housemate Becca to her friend's house for a delicious mojito and burger night and met a number of her friends/extended friends. Largely ex-pats, the group was all involved in very interesting work here, ranging from solar energy to political action to private equity! After dinner, we headed to meet Pia, the IPA country director and one of Becca's good friends, at a party at the "mazunga house." Mazunga means white person in Luganda, the local language. It's referred to as the mazunga house because there is a constant influx of new white people living there, organized by a group of Harvard grad students (I believe). I met Pia and Kareem, the guy I will be working with, there. It was a large crowd, mostly "mazungas" but some native Ugandans as well.

It seems to be a very ex-pat culture here, heavily divided, with a number of upper-class Ugandans merging into the ex-pat social clique. I'm hoping to make some native friends while here, but we will have to see!

I woke up this morning at 8:30, excited to be setting my clock to local time. After a peanut butter on "brown bread" slice (there are two kinds of bread at the grocery store, "salt bread" and 'brown bread," which seem to correspond to white and wheat), I took my yoga mat and headed up to our rooftop to get my day started right! Our dog followed me up there and promptly fell asleep. After 30 minutes, the sun was beaming down, and I became worried for my pale Chicago skin, so I moved inside.

Then, I took a boda boda (motorcycle) to Garden City, a mall one of my roommates recommended, to buy some hand soap, towels, and some other things. Grocery Store #3 was my savior--after a soymilk hunt yesterday, I happily purchased two large cartons of Vitamilk "Lait de Soja" and I could not be happier right now! I was amazed to see the premium sunscreen commanded--the least expensive bottle I found was 90,000 UGX (about $45!). Seriously?! There were a few bottles that were slightly less expensive, but they were all SPF 15 or below, and we all know how I love my Neutrogena 85. After asking some fellow shoppers, I went to a pharmacy down the street, and purchased a bottle of "Lady Diana" sunblock cream, with SPF 40, for 20,000 UGX ($10). I was slightly wary, and told the pharmacist that if I turn red, I'm coming back to find him! He assured me that I would be fine, but I can't help but be a little skeptical.

I went to a nearby Middle Eastern restaurant as soon as I saw chicken schwarma roasting...yum! The pita and hummus were mediocre, but the schwarma did not disappoint. I retreated home in a taxi with a deliciously full belly. It's cloudy now, but I'm hoping to hit the nearby Kabira Club pool in a few hours to test out my Lady Diana sunblock.

First Day!

So, my plan to sleep on my first flight, a red-eye from Chicago to Brussels, and stay awake from Brussels to Entebbe so I would be thrown into the new time zone was an epic fail. I napped for an hour or two on the first leg, but was so tired on the second leg that I slept for the first 5 hours! By the way, anybody who plans on flying through Brussels--leave a generous amount of time for your layover, as you have to go through full security again, multiple lines, and take a bus to get to the transfer terminal!

When I arrived in Entebbe, I bought my visa (very easy process), grabbed my luggage, and the IPA driver William was waiting for me with a sign. The Entebbe airport was very interesting--a huge room covered in Barclays logos where we got our visas, a large luggage area, and then a tiny waiting room area where there must have been 50 Ugandans waiting with signs to pick people up. We drove to Kampala on one highway, but I couldn't see much because the highways aren't lit. We did see a lot of people out--walking, biking, driving to bars and clubs, which were all along the highway.

I arrived at Red Chilli, a hiker's/camper's type hotel around 10:30. There were a lot of people hanging out in the bar area, but I was sorely disappointed to find the kitchen closed. I went to my room and ate Clif bar #2 (#1 was on the plane when I slept through lunch). Extremely tired, I wasn't much in the mood for socializing, but I couldn't sleep very well either. I stayed up reading my Kindle, fell asleep for a few hours, and woke up surprisingly alert around 4:30. Without much outdoor lighting, the grounds were pitch black, so I decided to break in my new Manduka Mat, eat Clif bar #3 and read a little more. The sun rose quickly between 6:30 and 6:40, and I headed down to the concierge/main area. They didn't open until 7, so I hung around outside and enjoyed the beautiful view...I also discovered that a massive amount of dogs and goats like to chill around the hotel. I even spotted a few roosters...totally random.

At 7, I went inside, finally got on the Internet, and made connection with the outside world! After some mysterious fruit (black egg-sized fruit with yellow inside and lots of seeds, very delicious) and some black tea, I headed into town on my very first boda-boda ride! I set up my Blackberry and phone (I can only do data on the BB here), exchanged some money, and went to check out a room in a house that I am now living in! The house is on Naguru Hill and it is absolutely stunning. The doors are wooden and carved, there is a roof on the top that looks perfect for morning yoga, and I even have my own bathroom! (Pictures to come later)

I moved into the house in the afternoon and hung out with my new housemate Becca. We sat on the porch and watched a quick, but mighty rainstorm that Becca told me was common. Kampala has a set of "micro-climates," so while it is pouring rain in one part of the city, it can be bright and shining in another. After the rain settled down, we walked to the nearby Kabira Club to sit by the pool with some friends and stopped by a grocery store on the way home so I could pick up a few things.

As of now, it is 6:20pm and I am absolutely exhausted but determined to stay up long enough to forcibly adjust myself to the new time zone. We are headed off to get drinks before a BBQ dinner, where I will meet Pia and Kareem, the 2 main people I will be working with at IPA.