TIA TIA TIA

Firstly, a little reminder to myself: "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others." - Philippians 2:3-4

Deep breath. Africa can be so frustraaaaaating. I'm very hesitant to use the words "corruption" or "laziness" about any of the people here because they seem such dramatic words, but they're serious problems, at every level of organisation. Because they're so widespread and just 'part of the culture', it seems very difficult to do anything about them without feeling like a colonialist coming and stamping our own values and systems onto everything. On the other hand... there's a complete lack of accountability here ---

[[OH MY GOODNESS THERE IS THE MOST MASSIVE SPIDER I HAVE EVER SEEN ON THE WALL OPPOSITE ME AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE COME HERE AND TAKE IT AWAY?!?!?!?!]]

More deep breaths. Complete lack of accountability. High levels of distractability. There's not really any need to keep proper financial records, or to get accreditation for a charity, so it's then very easy to, y'know, divert funds. The URF volunteer website gives the following breakdown of what the $400 donation might be used for:

On-ground Admin: $100 (airtime, taxis, internet, stationary, jjajja's services, etc) - So why are we paying for our own internet, and then the URF staff are borrowing the modem from us?!
Hope Academy: $90 (teachers' salaries, electricity, photocopying, stationary, chalk, etc) - Electricity, haha. Engineers Without Borders provided the solar panels for free, and the other power isn't even working. Maybe once it's fixed that will be a reasonable expense. Teachers' salaries etc, fair enough.
Orphanage: $90 (food and daily upkeep)
Health Care Fund: $60 (clinic/ clinic trips untill clinic is built ) - We've heard some complaints about the clinic; it's supposed to be a free service but charging for drugs to cover costs. However, locals are saying that they have to pay to see someone there. There's either a miscommunication between locals & clinic, or between clinic & us.
Women's Programs: $60 (crafts, piggery, poultry, etc)

So, in general this isn't so bad, but as I said there's not a great emphasis on record keeping so it's difficult to see how much the money is really being spent on this. When I sent my $400, the volunteer coordinator said that it would go towards the building of domitories for the school which is supposedly in progress. There are some half-built brick structures here, but they're not 'in progress', though they might have been a couple of years ago! I'm going to make some enquiries with the staff about the building work - like who's being paid to work on it, what's the schedule, where are the materials and equipment coming from? And why isn't it happening right now? And if they can't answer those questions, I'm going to take that $400 and spend it on doing up their science lab and computer room so they're of working standard, then set some kind of system in place so they will actually be used when I'm gone. As for the rest of the accountability questions, we're going to work on setting up some kind of spreadsheet for the finances so everything can be tracked properly. I don't mind donating this much money, but when I do it's incredibly frustrating to see the inefficiency with which it's used.

Right. Rant over for now.

Yesterday we went to a Ugandan wedding. I thought this would be super-exciting but we turned up at the wrong time. The event goes on all weekend, with the 'introduction' (hosted by the groom's family, with lots of speeches) on Friday, then the ceremony (at the church, with lots of speeches) on Saturday afternoon, the reception (hosted by the bride's family, with lots of speeches) on Saturday evening and the dancing and partying continuing until Sunday. We decided not to go to the ceremony since it was all in Luganda, so turned up just for the reception. The whole village, and everybody from the surrounding area, was invited. We thought it started at 6 so turned up at 6.30 knowing that 6 means at least 7 in African time. As it happened, it didn't start til at least 9. Then the bride and groom didn't turn up til 10 (in the meantime we had a lot of excitement with the power randomly cutting out and turning on again, giving us brief glimpses of the stunning night sky) and the speeches and present-giving (SO. MANY. SPEECHES.AND.PRESENTS.) went on and on and on and on until at about 11 I decided to go home because I found myself napping in my chair. It seems that was a good decision, as according to the others the dancing part of the party didn't start until past midnight. Anyway, the sitting around wasn't so bad as we got to admire lots of beautiful dresses and laugh at the alcohol being served - cloudy brown moonshine in clear plastic bags being handed out to everyone. Including pregnant and breast-feeding mothers. We didn't laugh at that bit. Also it was reeeeally strange when the bride and groom turned up because the bride just looked at the floor the whole time and almost never smiled. But we found out later that the bride isn't allowed to look at the groom until after the ceremony, so that's probably why. Seems like a silly tradition to me, but hey, TIA.

I feel like this post is coming out very complainy. It wasn't meant to be that way! In general I'm having a lovely time here and feeling very positive. Today (Sunday) some of us headed into Masaka on a very pleasant and reasonably-priced coach (let's ignore the fact that he dropped us off about 2 miles out of town) and had lunch at a very nice Western-style restaurant (with lovely Western-style prices to match) and then Katie and I headed to the orphanage sponsored by the URF, Nazareth Children's Home. The children are delightful though many of them are sick. One young girl, Bridget, has had TB recently and has a 'TB spine' and a nasty cough. She's adorable though, and curled up in my lap to sleep for a while. The others just love any attention you can give them, whether it's singing or dancing or playing with a ball or reading their alphabet poster to them for the millionth time. I know that of all the projects I can help with here, the orphanage is the one that I will probably have the least personal effect on in the long term, because although playing with kids is fun it's not exactly life-changing... but they're so beautiful, and even if they are snotty and half-naked I just want to burst with love when I play with them.

Today I had ice cream. It was a lovely treat. Also I bought more airtime for my phone so I can call home again. If anyone wants to phone me and say hello, you can buy credit on skype and then call Ugandan numbers for about 15p/min which is cheaper than I can do from here. I can't use skype cos the internet connection isn't fast enough. I'm not entirely sure what my Ugandan number is cos I threw away the paper with it on by mistake, but maybe someone I've texted will post my number on here?

Less complaining next time, I promise!