No big deal, I just interviewed a Darfurian refugee today.
But first things first: I was going to take a taxi to work today, since Fauzia showed me how to walk yesterday. At the last minute, the owner of the motel offered to drive me into town, since she had a doctor's appointment, and I figured -- free is better than 1,000 UGX, so I accepted. I appear to be getting to the office before everyone except the man I share an office with upstairs, and today was no exception. At least Debbie, the woman who makes us lunch every day, has figured out that I need to drink a lot of coffee in the morning, bless her heart. My mornings look something like this:
Anyway, I read yet another report (this time on the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo) for most of the morning, although I had to read it in the dark. I haven't mentioned it yet, but the power fails in Kampala pretty regularly -- both at the motel and at the office. The motel has a generator that it runs whenever the power shuts off, but in the office, we just sat around in the relative dark until it came back on. I think it was out for about 2.5 hours... most of the morning.
While I was reading the Congo report, the lead interviewer in Kampala for the Darfur project (Joseph) came in to tell me he wanted me to visit the refugees with him at noon. I headed out at around 11:45am, despite the fact that the boda driver didn't know the place I told him I needed to go. I had Joseph talk to the boda driver, and he said he knew where to go.... and then charged me 4,000 UGX to drop me off in the wrong place. I flagged down another boda boda, who talked to the interviewer on the phone again and agreed to take me the rest of the way for 2,000 UGX. It was a really short distance though, and when Joseph heard how much I was being charged, he insisted that I only pay 1,000. So I guess I got less ripped off than I would have otherwise.
We walked a bit to the home of a Darfurian refugee. It was a bit removed from the main road, and there were definitely goats tied up outside the house. In the capital city. That's the kind of stuff that I mean when I say you see things in Kampala that you would only see in rural South Africa. I'm not even kidding, I saw two giant cows walking along one of the main roads yesterday... who knows where they were going. Anyways, we went inside and sat on one of the beds in the front room, and Darfurians sort of... trickled in, until there were about 30 of them sitting on the floor. Joseph explained our project to them through a translator, a really cool Darfurian refugee named Quoscondy, who was an interviewer (rather than an interviewee). I was not just the only white person in the room; I was also the only female. There's a whole separate group of women refugees that we'll interview later, so it will be different then. Once we had introduced ourselves, we figured out who would talk to us when, and then the 5 or 6 of us doing interviews went to get lunch and discuss logistics among ourselves. We went to an Ethiopian place nearby, and I thought the entire time about how much my parents would have hated what we had to eat.
After lunch, the first group of refugees came for the interviews, which we did at the restaurant because of lack of space in the house. There was one refugee who spoke enough English that he was comfortable talking to me without a translator, so I sat with him for around two hours. I'm not allowed to say exactly what we talked about (it was confidential, after all), but generally speaking, we talked about the conflict in Darfur, life as a refugee in Kampala, the referendum for independence in South Sudan, and how he identifies (as a Sudanese, as a Darfurian, etc.). His English was really good, although he hesitated to really tell me a story -- he instead waited for me to ask questions, which we were hoping wouldn't happen. Still, I think it was a fairly successful interview. I finished first, because I didn't have to do any translating, and I sort of sat around until Quoscondy finished his interview. At that point, he got us some beer from the guy who owned the restaurant (I think?), who he knew, and he and I sat and chatted for a while. He studied philosophy in university in Khartoum, so we talked about our favorite philosophers and theories about government and power. It was a surreal moment: drinking beer in the late afternoon in Kampala with a refugee from Darfur, talking about John Locke's humanist theory of tabula rasa
When the final interview wrapped up, we all reconvened and talked about general impressions, themes from the interviews, and challenges we encountered. It didn't take very long, and then it was time to get home -- the true challenge of the day. I was so far away from the motel that a boda boda would have cost an arm and a leg, but there was no direct taxi route back to Bukoto. We ended up taking a taxi to one of the taxi parks, which was complete and utter chaos. I didn't really get a chance to look around much, because I was so busy trying to follow Joseph and not get run over by a taxi, bicycle, boda boda, or truck. Quoscondy eventually left us to go home, and Joseph found a taxi going in the right direction and shoved me into it, then promptly disappeared. I took the taxi to Wandegeya, where it stopped and we waited to re-load... then off in the direction of Ntinda, which is the suburb east of where I'm staying. It would have been fine, except that it was about 7pm by then, and the sun set very quickly and all of a sudden, it was dark. Most of Kampala looks the same to me, so I was keeping my eyes desperately peeled for landmarks I would recognize so I would know when to get off the taxi. Unfortunately, the taxi cut through a petrol station and drove for a while on a road I had never been on, and it was pitch black outside. I started to panic a bit, and asked the fare collector if we were even going to Frobel stage (my "stop"), and he told me we weren't there yet. So I relaxed a bit, and when we did approach it, he remembered me and made sure the driver stopped.
Crisis averted.
In other news, Ugandan mosquitoes find me delicious. I have at least a dozen bug bites, mostly on my feet and legs, and I am itchyitchyitchy. I went to the pharmacy the other day to get something to make them stop itching, and I wanted to buy bug spray, but they only had a repellant cream (?), which I haven't used yet. I would be perfectly content if all mosquitoes spontaneously died and/or stopped biting me, though. That would be just peachy.
But first things first: I was going to take a taxi to work today, since Fauzia showed me how to walk yesterday. At the last minute, the owner of the motel offered to drive me into town, since she had a doctor's appointment, and I figured -- free is better than 1,000 UGX, so I accepted. I appear to be getting to the office before everyone except the man I share an office with upstairs, and today was no exception. At least Debbie, the woman who makes us lunch every day, has figured out that I need to drink a lot of coffee in the morning, bless her heart. My mornings look something like this:
Anyway, I read yet another report (this time on the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo) for most of the morning, although I had to read it in the dark. I haven't mentioned it yet, but the power fails in Kampala pretty regularly -- both at the motel and at the office. The motel has a generator that it runs whenever the power shuts off, but in the office, we just sat around in the relative dark until it came back on. I think it was out for about 2.5 hours... most of the morning.
While I was reading the Congo report, the lead interviewer in Kampala for the Darfur project (Joseph) came in to tell me he wanted me to visit the refugees with him at noon. I headed out at around 11:45am, despite the fact that the boda driver didn't know the place I told him I needed to go. I had Joseph talk to the boda driver, and he said he knew where to go.... and then charged me 4,000 UGX to drop me off in the wrong place. I flagged down another boda boda, who talked to the interviewer on the phone again and agreed to take me the rest of the way for 2,000 UGX. It was a really short distance though, and when Joseph heard how much I was being charged, he insisted that I only pay 1,000. So I guess I got less ripped off than I would have otherwise.
We walked a bit to the home of a Darfurian refugee. It was a bit removed from the main road, and there were definitely goats tied up outside the house. In the capital city. That's the kind of stuff that I mean when I say you see things in Kampala that you would only see in rural South Africa. I'm not even kidding, I saw two giant cows walking along one of the main roads yesterday... who knows where they were going. Anyways, we went inside and sat on one of the beds in the front room, and Darfurians sort of... trickled in, until there were about 30 of them sitting on the floor. Joseph explained our project to them through a translator, a really cool Darfurian refugee named Quoscondy, who was an interviewer (rather than an interviewee). I was not just the only white person in the room; I was also the only female. There's a whole separate group of women refugees that we'll interview later, so it will be different then. Once we had introduced ourselves, we figured out who would talk to us when, and then the 5 or 6 of us doing interviews went to get lunch and discuss logistics among ourselves. We went to an Ethiopian place nearby, and I thought the entire time about how much my parents would have hated what we had to eat.
After lunch, the first group of refugees came for the interviews, which we did at the restaurant because of lack of space in the house. There was one refugee who spoke enough English that he was comfortable talking to me without a translator, so I sat with him for around two hours. I'm not allowed to say exactly what we talked about (it was confidential, after all), but generally speaking, we talked about the conflict in Darfur, life as a refugee in Kampala, the referendum for independence in South Sudan, and how he identifies (as a Sudanese, as a Darfurian, etc.). His English was really good, although he hesitated to really tell me a story -- he instead waited for me to ask questions, which we were hoping wouldn't happen. Still, I think it was a fairly successful interview. I finished first, because I didn't have to do any translating, and I sort of sat around until Quoscondy finished his interview. At that point, he got us some beer from the guy who owned the restaurant (I think?), who he knew, and he and I sat and chatted for a while. He studied philosophy in university in Khartoum, so we talked about our favorite philosophers and theories about government and power. It was a surreal moment: drinking beer in the late afternoon in Kampala with a refugee from Darfur, talking about John Locke's humanist theory of tabula rasa
When the final interview wrapped up, we all reconvened and talked about general impressions, themes from the interviews, and challenges we encountered. It didn't take very long, and then it was time to get home -- the true challenge of the day. I was so far away from the motel that a boda boda would have cost an arm and a leg, but there was no direct taxi route back to Bukoto. We ended up taking a taxi to one of the taxi parks, which was complete and utter chaos. I didn't really get a chance to look around much, because I was so busy trying to follow Joseph and not get run over by a taxi, bicycle, boda boda, or truck. Quoscondy eventually left us to go home, and Joseph found a taxi going in the right direction and shoved me into it, then promptly disappeared. I took the taxi to Wandegeya, where it stopped and we waited to re-load... then off in the direction of Ntinda, which is the suburb east of where I'm staying. It would have been fine, except that it was about 7pm by then, and the sun set very quickly and all of a sudden, it was dark. Most of Kampala looks the same to me, so I was keeping my eyes desperately peeled for landmarks I would recognize so I would know when to get off the taxi. Unfortunately, the taxi cut through a petrol station and drove for a while on a road I had never been on, and it was pitch black outside. I started to panic a bit, and asked the fare collector if we were even going to Frobel stage (my "stop"), and he told me we weren't there yet. So I relaxed a bit, and when we did approach it, he remembered me and made sure the driver stopped.
Crisis averted.
In other news, Ugandan mosquitoes find me delicious. I have at least a dozen bug bites, mostly on my feet and legs, and I am itchyitchyitchy. I went to the pharmacy the other day to get something to make them stop itching, and I wanted to buy bug spray, but they only had a repellant cream (?), which I haven't used yet. I would be perfectly content if all mosquitoes spontaneously died and/or stopped biting me, though. That would be just peachy.
Seriously Katie - am totally enjoying my "daily dose"! You should try and publish all of these after your trip! Hope the mosquitos let you sleep tonight! xo Lise
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