First day at the office

Sarah with one of the tailors

Emily, Joseph, myself and Sarah

First day at work. Yesterday we were introduced to everyone and we scheduled for this morning a conference call with Irene, the CEO of the organization who we briefly met in Kampala.

The 5 minute walk to the office is made through the middle of bushes, pineapple and corn fields. That’s our way of escaping the dusty main road. The office is a cute house and it’s a lot fresher than I could expect for a place without air conditioning.
As I could probably anticipate, the picture they made in the US of the poor work conditions here was exaggerated. They’re obviously poor when compared to a top-notch company in the US but they’re definitely decent. The internet connection is fine, slow but perfectly ok to check email and navigate through most websites. The only problem is that the four of us have go share two connections.

We use a cell phone to call Irene since someone took home the only phone with conference call capabilities. Funny. The conference call is not of great help, they have very few answers and it appears that we have to build a strategic plan from scratch. That was not exactly planned but we’ll see.

The day at the office ends at 5pm. We go to town to run errands: phone card, groceries, a soccer ball that we forget to buy. I understand what it feels to be a minority. We’re the center of all attentions wherever we go. We enter what it looks like a street market. A lot a men with sewing machines tailor suits and dresses on the street. That might explain why and how people look so groomed here.

Joseph, a phone card seller, runs to us. He wants to sell phone cards but we already bought ours. It doesn’t matter, he just wants to know about us: where are we from, what are we doing here, when are we leaving.

- I want to visit all your countries, he says