The view from my roof terrace

After one year in Uganda and Kenya, I returned to the States for a two-week holiday. In that short fourteen days I fell back into life in the U.S. so seamlessly that my time there seems to have been much longer. It’s true that on the first couple of days Florida felt a bit foreign. The roads a bit too wide, the parking lots a bit too expansive, the palm trees grew in patterns that seemed a bit too planned and orderly. But one week in, and it was almost as if I had never left. As a result, having returned to Nairobi just a fortnight later, I am going through a very peculiar phase. My mind adjusted so quickly to the U.S., that I am looking at Nairobi with a fresh pair of eyes. I feel like a tourist in the very city where I live and work. The avenues I have walked hundreds of times are suddenly smaller. They’re thickly lined with bougainvillea and hibiscus plants that I did not always used to notice. The parking lot at Junction Mall is startlingly tiny, when just two weeks ago that parking lot seemed vast. My perspective has completely changed and it has caught me off guard.

I awoke this morning with an objective. I would go to the corner of George Padmore and Chaka road and get fruit salad. I had gone there once before and ended up ordering one large fruit salad and then another. My friend Roopa laughed at me, and I told her that I have an insatiable appetite for fruit that I don’t have for anything else on earth. Fruit makes me so very happy, I imagine in a way similar to the satisfaction a carnivore gets from flesh ripped hot and fresh from the loins of its prey. Now there’s an image. So I set out to stalk my prey: melons, pineapples, bananas, mangoes, avocados, papayas! I was moments away from bliss.

Jehoshaphat has the keenest eye for ripened fruit this side of the Milky Way. Business at his fruit stall is booming. I asked him, how many customers do you get in a day, twenty? So many, that he didn’t know the number. I took Jehoshaphat’s phone number so that I could call him ahead of time and pick up fruit salad to go. Jackpot. His fruit is delicious, yes, but more than that Jehoshaphat’s sincerity keeps customers coming back. I enjoy his fruit salads immensely, but it is Jehoshaphat who leaves a smile lingering on my face.

The morning got me thinking about my time in Nairobi and the months that had led to that moment. I realized that Nairobi and I have had a rocky relationship, but that something significant had changed recently. Just yesterday I caught a pickpocket on the bus. Just yesterday I was telling my friend Sharon that my jet-lag induced drowsy stupidity was not a good combination for Nairobi’s public transportation. Just yesterday I remembered how strange and lonely this city had been to me so recently. Still, I finally admitted to myself that I have come to regard this place tenderly.

I walked into Premier Touch Restaurant and ordered a fruit juice cocktail and asked for a fork to eat the fruit salad that Jehoshaphat had given me in a take-away baggie. As I sat down at a table right next to the kitchen, Whitney Houston’s How Will I Know came on Classic 105. A clear favorite of the kitchen staff. Whitney, it seemed, was asking me a provocative question. Am I finally starting to feel something for this city? How will I know?

With Kampala it was love at first sight– passionate, a whirlwind affair! Nairobi and I on the other hand have taken time to warm up to each other. Maybe what it took was time apart to realize that Nairobi and I really do have something special going on.

***

A Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up 
like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore–
And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
 like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

On February 22 at 3:45pm Norbert Mao, one of Uganda’s former presidential candidates for the 2011 general election began his speech by reciting A Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes. Considering the results of the latest elections in Uganda, a lot has been deferred, including the dream of a free and fair election.

The Presidency, stolen

Friday the 18^th, the day of the Ugandan presidential election, was a national holiday. Millions of people across the country hoped that the date would mark the day that a new president was elected into power. They hoped that Yoweri Museveni would finally leave the office after a continuous twenty five years in office. On the morning of the election, several hundred international civilian observers were dispatched to polling stations all over the country. However, right under the noses of Ugandan citizens, as well as the international community, the election was rigged and the office of president was stolen, once again.

In the days leading up to the election, many of my friends left town in case there was civil unrest and rioting following the announcement of the election results. At my house, we stocked up on gas, water, and food. A Ugandan colleague of mine told me that Museveni has been falling out of favor since he took the presidency for a third time in 1996. He is now going to start his sixth term as president of Uganda. It goes without saying that there is deep dissatisfaction and anger festering within the people of Uganda.

Uganda’s Political Climate

The question that comes to mind, especially considering the winds of political change blowing in from North Africa and the Middle East, is why Ugandans are tolerating Museveni’s monopoly on power. I believe that the answer to that question partly lies in Uganda’s history. Yoweri Museveni rose to power in 1986 following the end of Milton Obote’s second regime, who had himself returned to power following the collapse of Idi Amin’s dictatorship. Museveni was lauded by western governments as representing a new era of peace and development in East African politics.

His first ten years in office did see a return of stability and investment to Uganda (with the notable exception of the conflicts involving the LRA in the North). Uganda has also risen to become the trade and commerce hub of East Africa. Museveni and his party (the NRM) announce proudly that Uganda’s GDP growth rate was 7.2% in 2009 and 5.8% in 2010.* Unfortunately, those figures mostly reflect the growth in business around the Kampala urban area, which is dominated by a select few. Inequality in income has risen considerably since 1996 (the Gini index in 1996 was 37.4, and in 2002 was 45.7*), and nepotism is rampant. Sadly, oppression, murder, and fear are still vivid in the memories of many older Ugandans who lived through the Obote and Amin regimes, and it seems, at least presently, that the average citizen accepts the status quo, whatever the cost might be.

An Unfair Election
The list of grievances from this election is long.

To fund his campaign for the presidency, Museveni has used 160 billion Ugandan shillings from the State treasury, in addition to printing and releasing billions of new shilling notes into circulation (which has sent inflation skyrocketing). There are reports from all over the country of bribery, misconduct, ballot stuffing, and out-right fudging of the vote count. To add, Museveni has also deployed thousands of troops throughout the country to intimidate any would-be rioters. As I was riding to work yesterday in Kampala, a tank was following just behind and someone fired a gun shot into the air. The following excerpts from Norbert Mao’s speech go into more detail:

“President Museveni decided to re-appoint the same discredited Electoral Commission which messed up the 2006 elections.”

“…in Parliament, President Museveni was given a blank cheque to spend State resources for his campaigns. The instrument of a supplementary budget was abused to give State House and President Museveni a total of 160 billion shillings yet our main hospitals get less than half of that amount.”

“The Electoral Commission deleted voters’ names from the register and in other cases transferred voters to other Polling stations without notifying them and without their consent. Consequently, on Election Day millions of voters were disenfranchised and denied the right to vote through willful incompetence and a malicious intention to frustrate them. In addition there was widespread vote buying by NRM operatives. In many cases, these vote buyers were being escorted by armed soldiers.”

“In Kiruhuura, results from four polling stations were cancelled because the number of votes cast exceeded the number of registered voters. In Omiyanyima Subcounty of Kitgum it was first declared that 11,000 people had voted for President Museveni only to have the announcement annulled because the Sub County has not more than 7000 registered voters!”

“DemGroup… argued that given how young Uganda’s population is, it is statistically impossible to have almost 14 million voters out of a population of about 33 million.”

“Our sources indicate that over 150 billion [Ugandan shillings] was spent to buy voters.”

“The NRM and President Museveni know that they have achieved a hollow victory. Otherwise why should someone who has garnered almost 70 percent of votes have to deploy thousands of armed troops around the country and impose a virtual curfew?”

As more and more issues come to light, a heated discourse has been taking place on Uganda’s airwaves and street corners, and in offices and homes. People are talking, and time will tell where this discussion takes the country.

*Economic statistics are taken from the CIA World Fact Book.

Note: Due to a lack of well-rounded and informative coverage of the election results I had a limited number of sources to draw from when researching for this blog post. Norbert Mao’s speech has been the only open condemnation of the election that listed real statistics.

Nila is a roaming Kiva Fellow in Kampala, Uganda. She is passionate about East Africa and looks forward to working with several Kiva partner microfinance institutions throughout the next few months in Uganda and Kenya.

The key idea behind our social mission is that work is at the core of human dignity.

Today we live in an incredible age where anyone, anywhere with a cheap computer and an internet connection can log on to the internet and do work remotely. Samasource has harnessed the power of educated and able populations all over the globe to do work for companies that need high quality and cheap outsourcing solutions. Essentially, we’ve reworked the traditional outsourcing model and brought much needed work, along with a chance to develop skills and earn an income to marginalized populations around the world. The workers we’ve given work to range from villagers in rural Jarkandh, India to youth in conflict zones near Somalia in northeastern Kenya. Check out our website here: http://samasource.org/

As the East Africa Field Operator, I am based out of our first regional office in Nairobi, Kenya. The focus of the Nairobi team’s efforts are to develop and build the Samasource model in the East Africa region. Part of my job is to tell the stories of the people whom we have given work to. Check out this video I made of Kalekye, a Samasource worker in Nairobi, Kenya!

Every blogger has that romantic period. When you begin your blog. Those first few entries. You think to yourself, ‘for everything I always wanted to say, I now have a medium!’ How exciting is it to know that there may be a soul somewhere out there in the internet netherworld that may chance upon your writing! So you embark upon the journey of the writing life, eager to speak your mind and tell your story. This is how it is.

What’s my story? I began this blog as a college student about one and half years ago. It was a travel blog then. I thought I would be here in East Africa for a fixed period of time. I thought I would tell stories of far away islands, sparkling cities, and remote villages. I thought I would share my encounters with wise women, witch doctors, friendly villagers, and city slickers. I thought I would recount times both happy and sad, of isolation and loneliness, but also of kindness and joy. All of this I have done. And now I am no longer traveling.

I envy other bloggers who have more discipline than I. Even after the blogger’s honeymoon period has lost its allure, they continue to write. I have sat before my computer countless times only to find that I am too afraid that what I have to say is boring, or worse yet, pointless. So I don’t get beyond the first sentence. And I quit. I even tried to fool myself into thinking that what I write is just for me. And indeed it is. But a blog is in fact a public medium, so again I would fall into the trap of being terribly fearful of painstakingly putting words to paper only to find that I have created something bland, mediocre, and not worth reading.

Despite this, I know that as a writer, in order to hone the craft and urge along the flow of words the only thing I can do is write. And write with a fearless abandon. I have to do exactly what I am afraid of. That is what brought me here to Nairobi after all. So today, this 12th day of the 11th month in 2011 I will christen Day 1 of my 30 Day Blogging Challenge to myself. Considering that I always felt like I was too cool for a 30 Day “anything” Challenge, this is a big step. Since these days I have less free time to write than ever before, the challenge is all the more important because it will force me to find the time to calm down enough to gather my thoughts and put them into words. It will be the push I need to think critically about the ideas I have in my head on any particular day. I might be able to identify patterns and gain a perspective that I wouldn’t normally from an unexamined day. For the next 30 days I will write on my blog every single day. My hope is that this exercise will open the so called writing flood gates and make it easier for me to transform my free-flowing thoughts into words, clear and simple.

Wish me luck.

N

The view from Ngong hills of Nairobi city in the distance.

I’ve been through so much physical pain in my life that I thought putting a bullet through my abdomen might hurt less. I have been so sick and felt so alone. I’ve been so broken, so shattered a human being that I thought it better to cease to exist. My physical strength has been tested so many times. I have felt like my body has been run through a meat grinder. And I have made it through each and every time. Those who know me personally, know what I’ve been through. But even still, somehow that physical pain does not stand up to the pain I have experienced since moving to Nairobi.

I moved to East Africa last May 2010. I bid my American life farewell. I ran like hell. I left my family behind. I let my best friends go like a fistful of feathers loose in the wind.

I made my way. I hurt, I cried, I was furious. I loved, I laughed, I was euphoric. I was innocent, I was wise. I lost, I gained. Mostly I gained.

I don’t know what it is about this city, Nairobi, that has ripped me to shreds. I ask myself over and over what is different about this city from Stone Town and Kampala. I had more of a footing here when I started than I did in both Stone Town and Kampala. There were people to support me, I had a home to retire to, and comforts that I could only dream of in those other two cities.

I have felt more anonymous here than in anyplace else. A beating heart inside a warm body within a sea of forms chiseled from stone. Agitation, tension, aggression. I instinctively pick these feelings up in the air and internalize them. In Zanzibar I had to be on the offensive from the moment I set foot outside my front door, but here I feel groundless, and the feeling is worse. As if the rug has been pulled out from underneath me and I have remained frozen in mid-fall, bracing myself, preparing to hit the ground– but never actually hitting it and never actually regaining my footing either.

I have never had to handle so much uncertainty and so much disappointment in my life. Until very recently I did not know where I’d live, how I’d earn money, and which humans I could count on in my life. I was perched precariously on the edge of a widening rift between where I thought I’d be in five months in this cold new city, and the actuality of a life in limbo. It wasn’t all disappointment. There were incredible moments, places, and people. I have never been happier, actually. Delirious delicious joy. The kind that makes your heart pound through your chest. I’ve been so happy here that I was afraid to blink and miss a moment. Which is why when things went badly, each and every time one of those incredible things was taken from me, I hurt like I never had before.

The problem was, I could not hurt in this city. There was no room for weakness or fragility. The Maasai tribesmen claim that they slice the Achilles tendons of every newborn so that they will grow up and run like no human can. I think this is impossible. But I still wore my hurt like open wounds on my most vulnerable parts.

My hurt is raw and my strength has worn so thin.

Traffic patterns, raindrops, and locks of hair falling haphazardly into the trash bin. Choke on diesel fumes, curse out the cops, outsmart pickpockets. I’m anonymous, I’m a slumdog millionaire, I’m a piece of shit on your shoe. I’m a gangrenous smog that settles deep into your lungs. Breath in. Breath out. These cracked heals just need some cream. Let’s agree to disagree.

These sidewalks? Infinite. And these people? Warm. Be patient, I can make your skull implode. Delicious, palpable, white hot anger. Atta girl, you’re coming along nicely. I’m cosmopolitan, I’m sophisticated, I’m chic. I’m decaying underneath your feet. I’m a putrid current flowing through your veins, Poseidon’s trident through your heart.

I’m a condiment smothered across your lips; a furtive, sideways glance across a table. I’m an uninvited dinner guest. To a grand feast of shoes. Tooth to rubber sole. Flesh on gravel. Vulnerable. Exposed. Let me whisper sweet nothings in your ear, silky soft and smooth. A candle wick burning to be lit. Writhing, waxy dreams. I’m a shotgun misplaced. Limp but brazen. I’m the bullet that escaped into the night.

I’m the quiet that follows. The monsoon that has settled. I’m the ricocheting shards landing at your feet.

It’s your move.

Nathan at work visiting borrowers of Juhudi Kilimo

“It was my first day on the job,” Nathan says with a wide grin.

“I wore a coat and tie, I looked very smart! I was going to work for a bank, sit in a swiveling chair, and swing my legs!”

Nathan and I are standing on the side of a road. The occasional share-taxi barrels past us, but mostly we are surrounded by the hush of farmland that stretches as far as the eye can see. We’re in the Southern Rift Valley of Western Kenya. Nathan is neither sitting, nor swinging his legs. We cross the road. The mid-morning sun casts our shadows long across the hot asphalt.

“I got to the office that day and they told me to go and get a cow from a farmer who was not making his loan repayments. So I walked ten miles pulling a cow back to the office. On my first day.” Nathan laughs, and I am incredulous.

Nathan works as a loan officer for Juhudi Kilimo, a Kiva partner microfinance institution in Kenya. Juhudi Kilimo makes microloans to farmers to finance the purchase of assets, like dairy cows. Of Juhudi’s roughly 3,500 borrowers, around six or seven will default in a given year. When that happens, a loan officer, and in this case Nathan, is asked to go and collect the asset so that Juhudi can sell it and recover some of the loss.

“I almost quit.” He says, “I almost called the office the next day and said I wouldn’t be coming in.” But he didn’t. And here he and I were, two years later, visiting another farmer outside of a town called Litein.

Two years ago when Nathan applied for a job as a loan officer with Juhudi Kilimo, he had just graduated from college. Considering that he was expecting a comfortable desk job, and met instead with physical labor on his first day, I would say that he is nothing short of dedicated.

One thing I that I did not expect when I started my Kiva Fellowship in January is the respect and admiration I have gained for microfinance loan officers. When I am not working in the office, I am in the field visiting borrowers. I have spent many a scorching and dusty day walking alongside a loan officer, and I consider it an honor and a privilege. It takes humility and tremendous patience to do the work that they do. A sense of humor is essential.

The workday often begins before sunrise and finishes after sunset. Share-taxis only get a person so close to the final destination; many farms can only be reached by foot. A real lunch break can be a luxury, and very often it is skipped entirely. Furthermore, I think that ‘loan officer’ is a misleading title. It may make the work seem restricted to dealings with monetary exchanges, but I would argue that ‘motivational speaker,’ ‘business consultant,’ ‘advocate,’ and ‘educator’ would all be just as appropriate to describe the work of a loan officer. From my experience in Uganda and Kenya, the borrowers themselves actually prefer ‘teacher.’ I too find it to be far more fitting.

Back on the farm, Nathan and I have reached the home of the borrower we are meeting with. We’re served steaming cups of tea while we sit on a bench under the shade of a tree. A pair of puppies dart back and forth between our feet and a goose ruffles her feathers. Nathan smiles, takes a sip, and swings his legs.

***

Check out Nila’s other blog posts on the Kiva Fellow’s blog:

The View from the Ground

In Defense of “High” MFI Interest Rates: Part II

Video Blog: The Story of Lini Nanyonga

Video Blog: The Kiva Story

My Heart has Taken Root

Microlending Behind the Scenes: How MFI’s Judge Credit Worthiness

Make a micro-loan on Kiva today to an entrepreneur like Adella, Deborah, or Florence.

Also check out Video Blog: The Story of Lini Nanyonga.

The Source of the Nile in Jinja, Uganda

My Rough Guide to Kenya has been open face down on my desk for the past few days. My time in Uganda has been incredible. I have seen and experienced so much in such a short period. Like my life has been on fast forward. This country captured me instantly. Drew me in. And held me close. Whispering. This land is unlike any other.

But it seemed as if from the moment I set foot upon this soil, my presence so fleeting, that my footprints would disappear almost instantaneously. I knew I would be here for only two months. And my heart didn’t want to take root.

This city built on seven hills. Kampala. I’ve relished her. Hours spent on the back of motorcycles and stuffed in share-taxis. Open air markets. Shoulder to shoulder. Senses ablaze. Rainforest and a roaring river. Ubiquitous orange dust. Mud-caked and stained. Friendships. The kindness of strangers. Lives so vastly different, yet so much alike. Laughter and pain, sometimes one and the same. Like a cartographer’s quill, my mind races to fill in the blanks. I am at a loss. Restless.

I’ve lived in East Africa for more than eight months now. I wonder to myself if I am a different person from the girl who bounded aboard the flight to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania last May. Heart aflutter, mind racing, ready to embark upon the next chapter of my life. I suppose I was always a romantic, an explorer. My gaze was always upward, towards the horizon. I dreamt of far away places.

The French call it Le Mal d’Afrique. An illness, a disease. This continent, she will rob you when you least expect. Everything you ever thought you needed and desired will be replaced with just one thing. You will feel and behave as though you were making your own choices, but they won’t be yours, because from the moment you’re infected every decision you make will lead you back to her.

But for me, it is that and so much more. It feels as though one has awoken from dormancy. As if emerging from a cocoon of silk, feeling sensations anew. The burn of the sun on the back of the neck; the tingle of the breeze as it grazes the lips. Like one could unfurl limitless possibilities, entire worlds with each pealing layer.

If fury and euphoria were one, and infinity stretched between my thumb and forefinger, I would pinch the threads of time. And if I thought this feeling in my chest would dissipate, those threads would transform and ensnare me. My heart has taken root.

Nila Uthayakumar is currently finishing up her Kiva fellowship in Kampala, Uganda. She had the pleasure of working with two Kiva field partners, MCDT and BRAC Uganda, and is looking forward to working with several more partners in Kenya. She is moving next week!