I figured out that you would be more interested by the pictures below than by some of meetings and speeches. But don't get me wrong: we do work!

The railway company was sold by Amin Dada...

Experimenting... (the bicycle had no break and I didn't know)

In Lira

Rafting in Jinja (yes I am on the boat)

My bed on a bicycle!

A saving group in a village near Lira

In Lira

Another kind of taxi...

In a village near Mbale

This is me with Betty when we were in Mbale.

Kampala

Kampala. On the wall of the muslim building it is written: not for sale. Because chinese are becoming the owners of most stores in this area?

Boda-boda in Lira

Boda-boda are the faster type of taxi in town, and sometimes the only ones too...

One month has passed already...

Apwoyo! (Hello or thanks in luo)

After almost one month spent in Uganda, it is time for me to give some news. I am right now in Lira (north of Uganda), taking an african tea (tea with milk) at the hotel I shall leave today, because I will stay at Betty's place from now on.

Betty Akullu is from a village called Aromo near Lira and is the field director for MAPLE Microdevelopment in this area. This is a post-conflict region, many people having lost family members during the presence of the LRA (Lord Resistance Army). Because economic activities have stalled during that time, it is also one of the poorest part of Uganda. Despite their hardships, people here are hard-working and very friendly. Betty is doing a great job, teaching business skills in luo (the language spoken here, the one that Obama's father's family uses to speak) to villages and city groups of men and women, who seem to respect her a lot.

My role will be a bit different: I will perform industry and market analysis to help the groups' members to expand or diversity their revenue generating activities. I may also explore the possibility of organizing cooperatives to purchase consumption goods at a better price, specially in the case of villages, or the opportunity of business connexions between the different groups we are working with.

These last days, I attended with Ron Severson (the executive director of MAPLE, also professor at the University of Oregon) various meetings of these groups. They welcome us singing and dancing, then seat (women on one side on carpets, and men on another on benches) and we mutually start to ask questions. Everybody participates cheerfully, shyness is not an issue is this collectivist and oral culture (I am learning from them on this aspect!).

Overall, I like this place and its people very much, feeling even more at ease than in Mbale or Kampala. There is some distrust between the South and the North of Uganda, but some comments I had heard about the North have until now proved to be wrong.

Ron will leave Lira next sunday and Uganda a bit later. He generally comes once a year to see how things are going here. Now that I am posting this, he has in fact already left Lira, and I learned that the taxi he was in first had his breaks broken down, then ran out of gaz, and after solving both problems finally decided to stop midway; but Ron is a very patient person.... He is also creating with some colleagues of the Makerere University in Kampala (a prestigious public university in East Africa) a microfinance research center.

There are 2500 microfinance institutions (MFI) in Uganda! This number however includes SACCOs and VSLAs. While the biggest MFI are institutions(i.e. FINCA, PRIDE, etc.) lending outside money to medium or small entrepreneurs, the two latters are groups of individuals who save and pool their own money on a regular basis in order to borrow the sum on a rotating scheme (with interest). There are subtle operating differences between SACCOs (Savings and Credit Cooperatives) and VSLAs (Village Savings and Loans Associations). One of the challenge of institutional microcredit is that the poorest people can't afford the risk of offering their land -often their only property- as collateral, plus it generally requires a bank account they may not have, specially if they live in a rural area. As a result, self-help groups such as SACCOs and VSLAs are the only option for them, but savings don't grow enough in this context to allow for significative investments.

I was in Kampala with Ron a few days, assisting to meetings with various stakeholders of the microfinance sector, and as a novice in this area I learned a lot. Kampala is a vibrant and chaotic five millions inhabitants city, and every time I crossed a street was an adventure (partly because I always look to the left first instead of to the right... it is the UK system here!). The bombing of July 11 that killed around 70 persons during the world cup final had somewhat emptied restaurants and bars (the somalian rebel group Shabab has claimed responsibility for the attack, in retaliation for the fact that Uganda is one of the two countries that provide soldiers for the African Union's peace-keeping force in Somalia).

Previous to that, I had spent two weeks in Mbale, an eastern city of the country, observing the work of the team already in place here (half ugandan, half "muzungu", which means white people in luganda): mainly business trainings in villages and an empowerment program for young women. I learned the basics about ugandan life: boda-bodas (taxi motorcycles, I burnt my leg on the exhaust pipe of one, which is a common incident here), matoke (smashed plantains) and chapati (crepes, called "rolex" when filled with eggs!), fast weather changes from sun to rain, greeting habits, etc. I also used my free time to think about a way of improving information sharing between arriving and leaving interns (reading the weekly field reports is time-consuming), and I will continue working on that in Lira.

I took the opportunity of the trip from Mbale to Kampala to make a turistical stop in Jinja, where I rafted on the Nile! (grade 5, supposedly the most difficult currents before it becomes impossible to raft, but we were surrounded by skilled kayakers to rescue us when we fell off the boat). A dam is being built which will flood this place in a few years, and rafting activities will be relocated downstream. Jinja city is also close to the oficial source of the Nile. Another major turistical attraction in Uganda is mountain gorilla tracking, but permits are very expensive.

Now that I am finishing writing these lines, I am in Betty's house, and I hear the singing of a nearby church's members. Ugandan are mostly protestant or catholic, and there are muslims too, mostly in urban areas. Polygamist practices are present in both groups, although churches preach against them. The population is also divided between bantu tribes (in the South) and nilotic ones (in the North). There is an indian community, composed in particular of two prosperous families, despite the fact that most indians were chased out during Amid Dada's presidency. Chinese are more and more present too.

This is all for now, a special greeting to my dear husband and to our friends back in Montreal - I miss them even if I enjoy my time here... -, to my sister-in-law in NY, and to my family in France! (who I miss all the time).

Irene Ndiaye