signing off for a while...
on Random Uganda (Uganda), 08/Apr/2010 13:15, 34 days ago
Nancy flew into Entebbe last night, after a brief stopover to visit Anabelle in Paris, and a quick plane change in Amsterdam. We treated her to the burning piles of trash tour of the Entebbe Road at night.At the moment she’s back at the ranch taking a nap, but when she wakes up we’ll start checking out Kampala, and then greater Uganda. All this to say that the free time I would usually spend reflecting on the condition and meaning of life as manifested in rambling blog posts of questionable coherency will now bespent entertaining Nancy and making it up to her for leaving her alone in San Francisco for much of the past year. As such, this is likely to be the last posting for a while.We are bound for the wine garage tonight and Murchison Falls for the weekend—hoping for some good safari karma, some rain-free mornings, and a kilometer or two of pothole free road.On the housing front, we are still squatting at the old house. I did get an email from VSO last Thursday saying:“Hello Rob. Hope you are well, am writing to inform you that your house where you will be moving to is ready as per today i.e. its located in kironde in the same compound with the Cowans, hope you are ready to move please try to pass by office to receive the keys…” Needless to say, this piqued my interest, so I did pass by office to receive keys, and dropped by my new digs just to check things out. And, as you might expect, the place wasn’t quite ready for occupancy: the power was off, the water was off, there was no furniture other than a single bed, a small plastic table and four plastic chairs (this is a 2 bedroom house that I am going to share with another VSO couple, Richard and Pat, who apparently didn’t learn their lessons during their first placement and so are being forced to repeat them….), and there was not a single lightbulb to be found in the house. And, oh yeah, the place was a filthy mess.So, as you might expect, I didn’t move in. Instead I wrote a polite email back pointing out the problems with the space that would need to be corrected to make it habitable. But I did cc the email to Richard. And apparently this struck a nerve because in September of ’08 they had been dumped into the exact same sort of situation at 5pm on a Friday night and were left to fend for themselves. So Richard shot off a rather scathing reply and cc’d to Kevin (IMG’s CEO) and Benon (director of VSO Uganda) saying something about turning right around and getting back on the plane… And apparently this got some people yelled at and rousted from their Easter Monday holiday, and this has made me immensely unpopular around the VSO and the IHK HR offices. Without even really trying.I ran into Richard and Pat in the hall today (they are off on a drive to Lira tonight and back tomorrow, with Kevin, a punishment in its own right) and they suggested that the house might be ready to move into by the weekend…And, in another interesting development, it appears that my little blog has come under scrutiny by the senior management of the hospital. The head of HR e-vited me into her office to“discuss your work in IHK, its value to both parties and agree on way froward/ specific achievable goals…” Appealing premise to address in the waning days of my placement, to say the least. It came out that although she herself had not read Random Uganda, others who had were afraid that my ‘cynical’ point of view might be ‘injurious’ to the Hospital. I explained to her that yes, I am a cynic by nature, but that I tried to find humor and amusement where I could find it. And I am not trying to be injurious to anyone, merely reflective on my own position here.But it does beg the question. If the truth is injurious to an organization, what should that organization’s response be?I will think about that. I will let you think about that. I am off to spend some time with the most beautiful, loving and understanding woman in the world.