happy anniversary

I realized today as I was sitting in the office doing quality checks on a seemingly endless pile of sandals, that yesterday as my one year anniversary in Uganda.

One year. One whole year.

In some senses a year is a long time.... like when I think about how long I've been away from my family and community in the States. But in a lot of ways it doesn't feel that long, when I think about people who have lived here for five years or twenty years or their whole lives.... and when I think about how much I still have to learn about Uganda and how much I want to experience here....

One year. 365 days.

I've learned a lot in the past year, and this place has become familiar. I know the names of all the neighborhoods in the city from Ntinda to Munyonyo.... I know that you pronounce "kirombe" like "cheer-om-bay"... I am no long intimidated by the idea of going down town and finding my way through the taxi park... I have a set of favorite restaurants I like to go to with my friends.... I have roommates that I love, that I have lived with for a year now...

I feel like a year gives me the right to look back on this time and say that I "lived" in Uganda. A month or so I would categorize as a visit.... And when I talk about my time in Spain I might say that I lived there for a summer, but I wouldn't ever say "Oh yeah, I lived in Spain for awhile." To me, saying you lived somewhere is a heavier term than just a quick jaunt or a dabble in a place. It implies that you put down some kind of roots. That the place feels like home.

When people ask me where I'm from, I always have a bit of a challenging time answering them. I could say I grew up in North Carolina, but most recently lived in Texas. Or I could say that I was born in Dallas, or that now my parents live in Houston (but I've never really lived there), or that I'll be moving to Austin when I move back to the States.... But I don't really have a particular home-base, which I suppose is pretty natural after living somewhere else for a year. And I'm fine with that. Because I have enjoy this year. Immensely. And I can't think of somewhere else I would rather have spent it.

So happy anniversary, Uganda. It's been a good one!

a move of the sseko-variety

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, how many words is a video worth?



I realized today that I told you that Sseko moved, but I didn't actually give you the details. It's true. We've moved. And it's also true that my new office has an amazing view of Lake Victoria!

For almost a year, Julie and I lived at work. We often walked into our living room to find it covered with stacks of shoes from the previous day's quality check. At the end of the day, the next day's work was always staring at me from the office right off our kitchen. There were definitely benefits of work {like being able to roll out of bed and start the work day five minutes later when you sleep late because your phone died in the middle of the night and no alarm went off to wake you up} but I think ultimately that I'm glad to have work and home spaces separate now.

These days Julie and I have to hop on a taxi back into town for about a 20 minute commute. But don't worry- we've made good use of this time. We're currently listening to the 7th Harry Potter book on my iPod during the drive home each evening.

And if you didn't notice from the video, the new Sseko Workshop is pretty legit. It really feels as if it was custom made for us. So we absolutely love working there each day. It's hard to believe we've only been working there one week! It feel so familiar, so homey, and so right already.

home sweet home (the second)

This week my roomies and I moved to a new house.... We had been planning on moving for awhile, because we wanted to be closer to the new Sseko workshop in Munyonyo. The new location of our house is only a 20 minute commute instead of the previous 45. Massive improvement is an understatement.

Strangely enough though, our move felt rather impromptu: we got home from work and decided that we wanted to move later that night. It was a flurry of boxes and packing and shoving things in the back of trucks.... and we didn't really get a chance to say a proper farewell to the Kikoni house the we had fondly dubbed "Sparkles the House."

But for some reason, leaving the place that had been my home for almost a year wasn't all that hard... And here are a few reasons:

1) the riots: any time a riot happens in town, the students at the university near my house tend to join in on the "fun" by doing stupid things like throwing rocks and the police or starting fires in the middle of the road with old tires. The riots were particularly near a couple Fridays ago.... the day that happened to also be the day that Kate and Prince William were married. We decided to splurge on our internet usage and stream part of the royal wedding live... And to make ourselves feel closer to London, we pretended that the sounds of gun shots and tear gas canisters exploding were actually just fireworks and confetti cannons being set of in celebration of the royal family's big day.

2) power outage: we were without electricity for six days straight. Then the power came on for about half a day and it left again..... Only to return in small spurts for the remaining four days. This led to a smelly, rotten fridge and lots of days spent working at coffee shops to use their power outlets.

3) landlord drama: our landlady is crazy. She does things like shows up without warning, threatens to kick us off her property, and then claims that we are like daughters to her. Schizophrenic much? And on top of all that, she's been over charging us on rent for the past five months.... And normally I wouldn't feel bad confronting someone about a situation like this. But here's the catch: she's old. Like ancient old and decrepit. She is always having health issues and seems so fragile that I feel like I can't chew her out for being completely unreasonable.

Needless to say, we were all glad to be out of the place that we had started calling "The Hell Hole." And all that made the small, teensy-weensy, insignificant problems of the new house seem like nothing at all.

Here's a link to Julie's blog with a picture of our new casa. (Sorry to have to send you elsewhere for a picture, but my Internet is currently acting up and won't allow the upload).

Lovely, isn't it? We sure think so....

The only bad experience I've had in it so far involved a rat. The story begins with a sleep over. Since we had just moved in, my bed frame hadn't been assembled properly so I moved my mattress onto the floor of Dani and Julie's new room. We thought a roomie slumber party would be the perfect way to celebrate our first night in the new house. Well, around 3:00am I woke up with a jolt. I wasn't sure what happened... if it had been a dream or not.... I prayed that it had been a dream. But I thought that a rat had just scurried across my legs. So for obvious reasons, I couldn't fall back asleep. I went out to the couch in the living room and finished the night there.

I told my roommates about it the next morning and couldn't remember the details.... only that it involved a rat and I wasn't sure about it being dream or reality. Well, the reality part was confirmed when Dani was unpacking her things and found said rat hiding her her suitcase.

For obvious reasons, I will never sleep on a floor in Uganda again.

But besides all that rat drama, I love love LOVE our new house. The location is so much closer to work, it's local without being so loud and susceptible to riots, it's a few blocks from the US Embassy (a little slice of American soil!), and we get hot water + amazing water pressure at the same time.

And when it comes down to it, little things like that add up to making a big difference.

absence makes the heart....

The phrase is supposed to be "absence makes the heart grow fonder"..... which I suppose is true. But experiencing friends departing here is so different than anything else I've experienced..... I think it makes me want to change the phrase to "absence makes the heart ache, and then move on."

Some of my best and longest friends left Kampala yesterday. Jon and Amanda had been in Kampala for 10 months.

Katie had been here 9 months. In a place where people are constantly coming and going, they were the stable ones. But now they're gone..... And even though I woke up this morning knowing that my life here had changed over night, I don't want this blog to become some sobfest or pity party, thinking "woe is me, my friends are gone!" Because I still have a good number of long term friends here. I still have my roommates, Dani and Julie, who will be around even after I leave.... and then I'll be the one who is the stable-long-term-friend that's leaving.

It's sad to see people go, and it changes the ebb and flow of life.... one person's presence (or in this case absence) can have a dramatic effect on the feel of our friend group. But then that's also the thing that makes this place exciting..... You never know who's coming next.

The summer-rush is about to come. We're getting our Sseko-Summer-Interns. Other friends' organizations are getting new interns. Random people will be backpacking through and sleep on our couch for a week. Cornerstone visitors will fill up the basement and we'll see new faces there every few days. The summer always brings in the masses. Some of these people will be interesting. Some I'll click with. Some I'll think are strange and won't understand. Some I'll share stories with and hear better stories in return. Some I'll watch come and go. Some will watch me leave this place. And that's just how things go here.... But you have to learn to love it.

I have to choose to get excited about the next round of people coming in. I can be sad about my friends who just left, reflect on the memories of all our good times, and know that the element they brought to my life here won't be replaced..... but also recognize that something else is always just around the corner.

I miss my freshly-vanished friends already, but I am choosing to look toward the next landing airplane and wonder who will exit the air craft and walk into my life here.

bunyonyi or bust

This is the place I had the pleasure of spending Easter weekend... And I think it ranks at the top of most beautiful places I've been. Luckily for my friends and I, Uganda celebrates Easter with a four day weekend, which gave us time to make the trek out to Lake Bunyonyi (in the southwest corner of the country, near the boarders of Congo and Rwanda). Some of us camped, some of us stayed in hut-like half domes that opened up to the lake. We went hiking, boating, and rope-swinging. It was pretty magical to be always surrounded by such beautiful sights.

I think what made Bunyonyi so stunning was that it seemed so unspoiled. Yes, there were tourists, but it felt different somehow... Like it hasn't been ruined yet by the tourist attention that it draws. It's things like the absence of guard-rails and trail markers and flashy billboards and swanky restaurants. I felt so spoiled by the weekend, but not because of the indulgences... but because of the time away spent with good friends and the amazing scenery that surrounded us.

It seems that we often have a tendency to want to mass-produce and package experiences like this... But what makes this on in particular so great is that it can't be done. Part of this is because of inaccessibility: I'm sure not everyone is willing to sit on a Ugandan bus for 10 hours to make it to a vacation spot. But for those who are, the trip is totally worth it. And the other factor is exactly what I said before about the unspoiled quality.... If people were herded in on cushy buses to see the lake, and the place was built up with high rises, I think it's development would be it's downfall.... Because so much of the draw to Lake Bunyonyi is it's untainted charm.

And I hope it stays just the way it is.

a world away

Today Uganda feels so far away... I'm in the States at the moment for my college-roommate's wedding. Going back and forth between the US and Uganda has always been an interesting experience.... they always feel like different worlds, but today I am experiencing an even stronger sense of that.

There are riots in Kampala right now. I heard about them yesterday (here's BBC article for more info), and honestly wasn't too concerned.... The presidential candidate who lost the election to the 25-year reigning Museveni was organizing some protests about the rising food and fuel prices. My roommates back in Kampala said that things were pretty tense and they heard gunshots throughout the day, but that just seemed like some of the post-election violence we experienced about a month ago.

Today was a different story though. The riots hit close to home: students at Makerere University began protesting rumored tuition increases. They started burning tires in the street and making a general ruckus... and not just on any street. But our street. Nanfumbambi Road. Apparently those acts were more fascinating than frightening, but then the police showed up to subdue the protesters and the intensity rose.

I got a full report of the events that took place in our neighborhood from Julie over skype this morning. I was sitting on the couch in College Station, Texas... about to leave for a manicure appointment with the other bridesmaids, and I was hearing stories about gunshots on our street and tear gas canisters that exploded on our compound.

My friends are all safe, just shaken up... But it was so strange for me being here, and them being there.... experiencing that.

So today, Uganda feels far.

the other shoe company

"Oh, so you're like TOMS Shoes?!" This is the response I often get when I tell people about the work I do with Sseko.

So I figured it was about time I did a post about TOMS Shoes.... For those of you who aren't familiar with TOMS, they are a shoe company that has a "one for one" policy: every time you buy a pair of shoes, they give a pair to a child in need. Sounds great, right? Style and a cause?.... I thought so too, when I first heard of TOMS. I bought a pair. Wore them proudly and spread the word. I even applied to be a summer intern with them (just fyi, I made it half-way through the selection process, but had to drop out because of another internship offer I accepted... so don't worry, this is not coming from disgruntled, rejected place). However, the more I learned about social business, economic development, and giving... the more I realize that I have some pretty serious issues with the TOMS business model.

Here's the first: what happens to local shoes salesmen in the places that TOMS drops shoes? The issue in these developing economies isn't access to shoes. There are shoes available in local shops in all of these countries. This issue is that parents can't afford to buy them for their kids. So shouldn't the solution to be helping the parents provide for their kids? I believe that some like providing vocational training or employment opportunities would do much more for the communities than free shoes. In fact, free shoes can be harmful to local economies. Who would buy shoes from a local salesman when they get them for free from TOMS?

{side note} Zambia is a classic example of the "free stuff" issue- they used to have a growing clothing manufacturing industry, but since the country started allowing containers of free second hand clothes to enter the country, all of the industry progress that had been made was shut down. Years later, there are now no textile or clothing manufacturers in the country. "The skills, the infrastructure and the capital of an entire industry are now virtually extinct" (quote from an interesting article). The country now has an abundance of low-priced, second hand clothes... but at what price? Maybe they can buy a 1998 Chicago Bulls Championship t-shirt for 50 cents, but what about all those potential jobs lost with the exit of a clothing manufacturing sector? ... I'm not saying that the impact of TOMS is this severe, but this is just an example of how giving things away can do more harm than good.

The second issue I take with TOMS is the issue of dignity. Since living in Uganda, I've come to realize how important it is for people to know that they have value, that they are capable, that they are people just like you and me. That's not the message I get though when I see well-off trendy white 20-somethings putting shoes on the feet of brown and black little kids. To me, this image just furthers the expectation that the white man will come in to save the day. This is a mindset that our company has tried to battle while working in Uganda. We try to preach the message that we believe in our girls, and that they are helping us just as much as we are helping them.

This conversation isn't new to the social-business scene.... but for those of you who aren't involved in that sector and are just the average consumer, my intention with this topic is to challenge the way you think about what you buy, and even to question the companies that appear to have a good cause. And I hope you don't get discouraged in this process. There are fantastic companies out there that making an amazing social impact on the world.

And with all my criticisms, I would like to say that I still believe that TOMS has good intentions... But I'd love to see them make some changes to their model, so they can be part of a movement that is truly allowing consumers to change the world we live in.