The Beginnings of a Life in Uganda
{ July 25th, 2008 }
So here we are in Kampala.
We’re officially starting our third full day. It’s been a trip being here. On Wednesday morning, our first day here, Jon and I went for a long walk around the city. After we’d trekked through what I think is considered the largest taxi park on the continent, I turned to Jon and asked, “So, isn’t it wild that we’re actually living here?” I think we were both a little bewildered, but we’ll get adjusted. The city center is definitely busy busy busy, but once outside the center just a little, it seems to calm down quite a bit.
Jon and I spent all day yesterday looking at houses. We found some really nice ones and some not so nice ones, all for really reasonable rates. We had been worried because when we started looking for houses online while we were in Atlanta, all we could find were houses that were renting for $1800 to $4000 a month–way, way out of our price range. On Wednesday night we went with a new friend to visit his apartment complex and his landlord showed us a really awful small apartment for $1000 a month. I was horrified and was really frightened that we’d have to pay a more for our house here than we did in Atlanta. I went to bed really put out and feeling like maybe we’d made a big mistake.
However, yesterday, we went out and saw nearly a dozen places. Not one of them was for more than $800 a month, and they were all beautiful. We looked at one that had incredible fan banana trees when you enter, an enormous yard, and was just huge overall. It was way more house than we need, but it was $800 a month, too! It was oh-so-tempting, but when all is said and done, I think it would have felt really weird living there. Also, it was in a neighborhood, which, while lovely, to me felt a bit like a compound. Like many places there were massive walls and everything was really secluded. All of the neighbors were expatriates, which in some ways is nice, but I was also worried that we’d end up only having expatriate friends, which I really don’t want.
We settled on a beautiful house in an area called Kitintale, and we’ll move in on Sunday! It was both Jon’s and my first choice and favorite. It’s a little ways out of the city, but close enough that we think that we’ll both be able to get to work relatively easily, wherever work ends up being. The house has three bedrooms and three bathrooms–still probably more house than we need. It’s nice, though, because we’ll turn one of the bedrooms into an office for Jon, and we’ll use the second bedroom as a guestroom (so come visit soon!). I’ll also probably use the second bedroom as a yoga room when we don’t have guests, and perhaps as a place to read.
It has a really good-sized great room/dining area. It’s all one big room, so we’ll be able to define it how we want to. It has a nice-sized kitchen, pretty basic, but definitely functional. Or at least it will be once we buy a fridge and a stove–a project for today. Off the great room, and visible from the kitchen (I think, we saw so many houses yesterday that I’ve forgotten a little) is an amazing porch. It’s tiled and covered and it overlooks the city. It was lovely during the day, and I’m sure it will be very pretty at night, too.
One of our favorite things about it, is that it has a beautiful yard. It’s really green and lush, and is pretty mature, already. I’m hoping that we can plant a vegetable garden, or at least some herbs, and it has some beautiful flowers already, including some lovely habiscus which makes me really happy.
So today we’ll start looking for furniture. Kitchen appliances and a bed will come first, and then we’ll do the rest as we’re able. It’ll be a challenge to figure out the logistics of moving appliances and furniture from the store and/or market to the house, but we’ll figure it out in good time, I’m sure.
Jon has also been really good at meeting new people here. He invited a Couch Surfer to dinner the other night, and we had a really nice time. His name is Naizi, and he’s from Uganda. He works for a tour company that specializes in river rafting on the Nile and taking people out bungee jumping. There’s no way he’ll get me to go bungee jumping, but I’d love to raft at some point. He was able to give us a lot of clues about which internet providers to use, as well as some other good advice, too, which was good.
Yesterday we met up with a guy, Oscar, who was a friend of a friend of a friend of ours in Atlanta. Oscar was able to connect Jon to a professor, Michael, at Makerere University who heads the IT department. It was exciting to hear them talk about the possibilities for collaboration.
Once we get the house a little more settled, I’ll begin looking into office space and figuring out how to actually go about starting this office. I’m looking forward to meeting a gentleman named Alex, who I’ve working with from afar to register the office here. We were going to meet this afternoon, but now that we’ve found the house, I’m anxious to get things set up there so that Jon and I can both work more easily, so I think that we’ll try to meet up on Monday, instead, when hopefully we’ll have some of the housing basics covered.
Our other project is figuring out how to get internet at the house, so we may be offline a little when we first move. However, I know that Jon won’t let us be without internet for very long!
And here’s to Day 3!
