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!