girls weekend in Kampala

By the end of last week, I finally started to settle into my role at One Acre Fund. It feels good to have a leadership role on a few projects, initiating/leading meetings and monitoring fieldwork. (Left: Passion fruit plant, an important part of the major budget overhaul. Right: Collecting, weighing, and sorting the passion fruit into Grade A vs Grade B.) In just a few days I have gone from seeing the Kenyan countryside as a beautiful and picturesque landscape to seeing it in more practical terms: how big is the plot? what are the farmers growing? Which is why it's nice that I have been continuing my near-daily runs, as they allow me to step back and continue to enjoy it for its natural beauty.

Group of OAF farmers on my Friday morning passion fruit collection. They actually requested that I photograph them and then lined up nicely (my mother's never-realized dream for annual Christmas photos).

However, since I'm sure I'll have a plethora of work stories coming up in the next few months, I'll focus this entry on my past weekend spent in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. In numerical terms: I got about 8 hours of sleep total, two paintings on cloth to decorate my room, one pound of delicious coffee (decent coffee is not available in Bungoma, since all of the good produce is packaged for export), two real showers, and one black eye.

The four female OAF employees - Veronica, Melissa (my housemate), Anushka, and me - left in a van for Busia, the border town I visited during my first week in Kenya, around 2 pm on Friday. In Busia we picked up two more girls, Katie and Jamie, and headed across the Ugandan border and toward the capital.

Just across the border into Uganda. Why did the baboon cross the road?

The Ugandan border patrol made all of the Southeast Asian country connections seem smooth and orderly. Crossing the border took an inordinate amount of time - insurance and registration for the van, $50 each for Ugandan visas that no one bothered to stick in our passports, a maze of hawkers, a long line. Well, for 5/6 of us it took a long time - Katie simply caught a boda and rode through a nearby hole in the fence. Apparently that's pretty common and easily done; there are rarely officers on duty and according to Katie they are usually playing cards and not paying attention anyway.

We didn't arrive in Kampala until about 9 o'clock, and then settled into a 5-bed house for the evening. And by "settled" I mean we threw our stuff down, changed and put on make-up (which felt strange and sort of uncomfortable after two weeks without), and went through four bottles of wine with loads of homemade bread, cheese, and Nutella. Why don't we do this every weekend?!

After a few hours, we headed to a recommended nightclub - the beginning of an evening that extended until 4:30 on Saturday morning, as the nightlife in Kampala is famous and appropriately so. We danced until about 2:30, met some locals, and headed to another bar for pizza. I had a lot of fun, with only a couple minor blips:

• One, security at all nightclubs is super-tight, and they wouldn't let me bring in my camera. I wasn't willing to leave it sitting out on a desk in the entrance (how many cameras does a girl need to lose?), so I went back outside, hid on the other side of a van, and put it into my underwear. Despite the extensive security pat-down, I was let in. This whole situation was rather un-noteworthy, except that a few hours later a guy approached me and mentioned me having put my camera into my pants. Perhaps I wasn't as discreet as I thought...
• Two, my black eye: actually not a good story at all, although the outcome was impressive. Jamie hit me in the face with a wild dance move... although we vowed to come up with a better story for the boys upon return.

Saturday during the day was spent at a country club, swimming in a pool and eating Western food; shopping at a market/mall; going out for sushi; and dancing/chatting until 2 am at a local Irish pub. We were up on Sunday morning in time to head to a market and look at fabrics - some of the girls have had skirts/dresses made here and I might have to jump on that bandwagon - as well as get sandwiches and coffee before departing at 2 pm.

Relaxing poolside at the country club. There is really nothing like this in Western Kenya... Good excuse to spoil ourselves.

Needless to say, I slept very well last night. After a nice morning run, a staff meeting, and playing catch-up on my projects after a weekend away, I am already feeling back into the workweek swing of OAF.