Recently my for-profit Uganda start-up Appfrica Labs was funded but that’s just the beginning. Now I have to make that money worth someone’s while! Anyways, here’s pictures of the new office, and the equipment I’ve purchased.
Last Saturday was the big “Facebook Developers Garage” at Makerere University that I helped organize here in Kampala. Someone from the Facebook staff (a senior engineer no less) actually flew to Kampala to run sessions about making Facebook Applications. You can find out more details about it all at the links below.
There were just over 100 attendees and everyone was focused, eager to learn and thrilled that someone from the company took out the time to come to Africa. IMHO, ICT is going to change this continent, we haven’t even seen the beginnings of what’s coming.
Project Diaspora’s Interview with me
While out running some errands this morning I stopped to get some lunch to bring back for Sarah and I. We tend not to eat at the ’street’ vendors, mainly because the majority of them don’t come out until night time, well past normal dinner hours. I think this may because during the day the local restaurants are open but at night when people come out to party and enjoy music, the street vendors replace them. Still, today I managed to find one woman who had a stand making some weird concoction of…stuff.
I am happy to share today that Water For People—Uganda has been officially registered with the Uganda NGO Board!
This registration is a major achievement. A team of people began the registration process in March of this year, only to find that the requirements they had been given were not the right ones for an international NGO. We began the process again in May from the Denver office. Because I would not leave for Uganda for another two months, the Executive Director of the Uganda Water and Sanitation NGO Network (UWASNET) agreed to allow their Program Liaison Officer, Alex Mbaguta, work with us on the registration process.
Over the next two months, Kathy Miller and I had regular correspondence with Alex. We gathered the documents that we could gather in Denver, and Alex gathered the pieces that we needed from various offices in Kampala. He helped to arrange a Post Office Box and talked to numerous people in the Ministry of Water to gain their support of our application. Alex also worked with a lawyer, Robert Lubega, to ensure that all of our documents were in order and to put the necessary official face with the registration; we couldn’t turn in the application without Robert’s presence saying that we are a qualified organization.
When finally I arrived to Uganda, Alex, Robert, and I pulled together all of the pieces that we’d collected. We took them to the NGO Board the last week of July, but were turned away saying that we did not have a letter of support from local government that was required, but not was listed on the requirements sheet.
Alex, Robert, and I had the necessary meetings (several letters were needed in order to get the one required by the NGO Board), and returned with a newly completed file on August 1.
The NGO Board was set to meet later in the week, but we were told that their program was already too full and so we’d have to wait until the September meeting. The September meeting was delayed by several weeks, but was finally held on September 26. Although Alex, Robert, and I each visited the office several times in October, it was not until late October that we finally learned that our application had been accepted.
Several visits later, I took our file number to the office on October 24, and Grace at the NGO Board said that our certificate was being signed and to try again the following Tuesday. I was in Malawi that Tuesday, and didn’t get back to the office until today, November 12.
When I was finally seen by the NGO Board staff member who held the certificates, he told me that I was lucky, because the signed certificates from September 26 had only just been delivered yesterday. Three signatures and a photocopy of my passport later, I left the office carrying our certificate of registration!
What does being registered mean? Well, it means that we can finally start to build more substantial relationships with government and potential partners. Before being “official” I found that many people raised their eyebrows at me when I was speaking with them, as though they didn’t believe that we were really going to be able to program in Uganda. I look forward to going back to some of those offices to begin conversations again.
Being registered also means that we can continue with a host of administrative tasks that are very important to our existence in Uganda. Among them are projects like filing for tax-exempt status, purchasing a truck, and opening a bank account. I can also begin to look for an office , hire staff, and enter into agreements with partners.
In essence, being registered means that we have a green light to move forward with all of the exciting work that we have planned for Water For People—Uganda. Hurray!
Written by Sarah in Life, NGO, News, Uganda, water for people, work ~ Comments
Home for Halloween
By IRSHAD MANJI
Published: October 31, 2008
FOR me and my family, Oct. 31 has always been significant. Not because it’s Halloween, but because that’s the day we arrived as refugees to a free part of the world.
Beginning in August 1972, thousands of Asian entrepreneurs fled the East African country of Uganda after its dictator, Idi Amin, declared us to be bloodsuckers, seized our property and gave us three months to leave or die.
My family and I had only Ugandan passports, so we couldn’t escape to Britain or India like many of our neighbors. We’d been in Africa for two generations; my father and his brothers owned a car dealership in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. We didn’t know where to go, but we knew we couldn’t stay: Amin viciously enforced his 90-day deadline.
By the final week of October, the nations that would otherwise accept Ugandan exiles had exceeded their quotas. My family heard that Sweden and Canada might make room for a few more, and so out of desperation my mother, my sisters and I flew to Montreal, with Dad to follow. We had no guarantee that Canada would admit us.
We also had no guarantee that we’d meet an extraordinary immigration agent. But on Halloween 1972, we did.
Though the middle-aged woman had doubtless been dealing with a flood of Ugandan refugees, and though burnout could have led her to turn us back or indifferently wave us through, she chose to talk with a harried mother shepherding three girls under age 7. “Why do you want to live in Montreal?” the agent asked, en français.
My mother, who grew up in the Belgian Congo, mercifully could respond in French. “Why do we want to live in Montreal?” Mum repeated, buying a few seconds to think. “Well, Montreal begins with the letter ‘M,’ and our family’s name begins with the letter ‘M,’ so maybe God believes we will fit nicely together.”
Sensing my mother’s fear, the immigration agent assured her that this wasn’t an interrogation. “It’s just that I’m looking at your daughters,” she explained, “and I realize that they’re all dressed for tropical weather. Madame Manji, have you ever seen snow?”
Terrified at the prospect of being booted out, my mother blurted out, “No, but I can’t wait to!”
“Then you’ve come to the right country,” the agent assured Mum. “With your permission, however, I’d like to send you and your children to Canada’s version of a mild climate.” Several stamps of the paperwork later, we boarded a plane to Vancouver, where I learned to make peace with rain.
Some would reduce this immigration agent to a shrewd gatekeeper of cheap labor, carting us off to a city that would get rich from the Asian work ethic. And yet she was more complex than a caricature. Instead of simply unloading us on the local authorities, the agent cared enough to ask what we might need more of — peace, yes, but also fleece. Her small act of empathy bucked an ice-cold system.
As an adult, I’ve come to understand why I’m so blessed to have immigrated to an open society. Here, the individual — and the choices she makes — matter. The agent chose to practice the first lesson of human rights: just because a problem doesn’t affect you personally doesn’t mean it ceases to exist.
Mum tells me that she’s never been able to track down the lovely lady who let us into Canada. Still, she won’t be forgotten. As Madame Manji reminded her girls on Halloween in 2002, “When we touched this soil, we won the lottery of life.”
Idi Amin died in Saudi Arabia a year after that. Friends assumed that I’d be cursing his corpse. No. His hatred introduced my family to the gift of choices.
On Halloween, one can be forgiven for obsessing with murderers, but it’s not Idi Amin who will dominate my thoughts. It’s the immigration agent.
Irshad Manji, the author of “The Trouble With Islam Today,” is the director of the Moral Courage Project at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University.
Written by Sarah in Africa, Articles, Life, News, Uganda ~ Comments
Cauliflower and Bell Pepper Chowder
This is a recipe that I adapted from Cooking Light Magazine’s treacherously slow-to-load website. The original recipe called for several ingredients that I either can’t find, I deemed not worthwhile searching for, or just didn’t have at the time. It came out pretty well nonetheless. I’ve made it twice, and Jon and I have liked it both times. I think it’s a winner.
Ingredients
1 T canola oil
3-4 red onions, chopped (red onions are the local ones and they’re little–like somewhat overgrown shallots)
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
3-4 small bell peppers, chopped (red peppers would make a prettier chowder, but I can’t get them)
1 head cauliflower, chopped
3-4 small red potatoes, chopped into small cubes (wash them well or you’ll get lots of soil in your chowder!)
2-3 bouillon cubes (if you can’t find bouillon cubes, I’ve used beef vegetable soup mix before and it worked well)
About 6 cups water
1 box (500 mL) milk (I use 1.5% because I can’t get skim, and I don’t like whole milk)
pepper to taste
Instructions
Heat oil in a large pot. Add onion and garlic. Stir frequently until onions are cooked and clear. Add bell pepper and stir for about 3 minutes until just softened. Add water (about 2/3 up the side of the pot) and bring to a boil. Add bouillon cubes and stir to dissolve. Add cauliflower and potatoes to the pot, return to boil, and cook for 15 minutes or until potatoes and cauliflower are soft. Stir in milk and pepper to taste (remember that spices in Kampala seem to not go as far as you may be used to, and so you may need a lot of pepper to get the desired flavor). Return to a boil, briefly, then remove from heat.
Additional Information
This soup is good immediately, but also stores well and so can be eaten throughout the week by simply returning to the burner and reheating.
This week Sarah arranged for a voter registration party at our house here in Kampala, Uganda. The turn out was massive, far more people than we initially expected (around sixteen in total). In addition to many Americans there was a French person, a Rwandan, a Ugandan, two Brits and a Belgian. Two of the Americans who showed up hadn’t registered for their abroad vote so we got them all registered. All in all it was a great evening. Many thanks to Bob Barad and Melissa Mensah from the Obama campaign who encouraged us to make this happen!
My friend Melissa sent this to me today. I haven’t heard anything about it here, but I’ll admit that I haven’t been following local news as closely as I should. It seems to me that mini-skirt distractions on the road wouldn’t be nearly so bad if someone did something to regulate the traffic. But what do I know? And what will I do with all my mini-skirts?
This is sort of fucked up.
Uganda’s ethics and integrity minister Nsaba Buturo is seeking a ban of miniskirts because of the distraction it causes, equating it with nudity:
“What’s wrong with a miniskirt? You can cause an accident because some of our people are weak mentally. . . If you find a naked person you begin to concentrate on the make-up of that person and yet you are driving . . . These days you hardly know who is a mother from a daughter, they are all naked.”
Cause an accident? This reminds me of the typical movie scene where a “hot chick” passes a gentleman who, in his trance o’ lust, walks into a pole or gets hit by a car.
Buturo is seeking to have miniskirt-wearing as punishable by law. Let’s keep in mind this guy also compared the indecency of wearing a skirt with the other “vices” of Ugandan society such as “[t]heft and embezzlement of public funds, sub-standard service delivery, greed, infidelity, prostitution, homosexuality [and] sectarianism…” Sigh.
Our bed is here. The septic tank is repaired. Grass is beginning to grow in the back yard again. The volunteer tomato plants have taken root and are getting bigger. Our internet connection is slow, but more or less reliable when the power is on. Life is beginning to get normal.
Normal is really good. I went to Fort Portal the other day for a meeting. I called a friend who lives there. We were going to have dinner. But when I called, she and another friend were in the process of making cookies and were going to watch movies, and she invited me. When I got to her house, Trisha and Emerald announced that they had eaten most of the peanut butter cookie dough, but that they were going to bake some anyway. That was dinner. And it was great. We looked through Trisha’s collection of pirated movies with Asian subtitles and chose season 4 of Desperate Housewives. So it was cookies and trash TV. After an episode or two Trisha made tea. It was mint tea with honey. I’ve only found black tea, and so to have mint tea with honey was really comforting, too. It was a great night.
In addition to the activity feeling really familiar, it was really nice to be with people that I didn’t need to explain myself to. Jon and I have been very conscious to not only hang out with Americans. In fact, we haven’t really even met so many Americans in Kampala. However, the other night, it was nice to be with Americans—not because they were Americans, per se, but because we share a common background, a common way of talking, and a common way of relaxing. I didn’t have to explain what I was doing in Uganda. Emerald and I did the normal, what do you do, oh, what do you do, and that was it. No one was trying to network. No one was trying to create partnership or work together or compete. It was just friends. Easy friends.
After a few episodes of watching Bree Van de Camp and crew do mean things to one another, after a couple cups of tea, and after enough cookies for several weeks, it was time to go back to my little hotel room. I got on the bus back to Kampala early the next day, and came home to Jon.
It rained a little later, and Jon and I listened to Jason Mraz while watching the rain and writing various emails. Again, normal.
Mom asked me the other day if being here feels real yet. If it’s a real life. And I think that it’s getting to be. It’s nice to know that we’ll be going home in December and we’ll be able to see friends and family for the holidays. But being in Kampala, with Jon, and our house, and some friends is really beginning to feel like a place that we live, not a place that we’re visiting. It’s nice. It’s getting to be normal.
