My office for a morning:
Had an interesting experience at this club. We were about an hour into the surveying when one of the respondents admitted that he had been asked by the club's patron to say he was somebody else.
For each of these clubs, we'd met with them once before to collect a list of club members. From these lists, we randomly selected 12 to be our respondents. As we are returning to the clubs now, to do the actual full individual-level survey, we call in advance and ask that these particular 12 club members be present. People routinely promise high and low that all 12 of them will be there, no problem. And low and behold, about 75% of the time the enumerator teams actually arrive at a club... they're not. Usually only about two are present, and frequently several other club members are there. The club patron usually makes some comment along the lines of "well I figured you could survey these club members instead, because those other ones that you wanted aren't here." It is frustrating to a profound degree. Why do people just straight-up lie? I DON'T UNDERSTAND. I mean, we'll be in the matatu on our way to the club, talking to the patron on the phone and he/she is saying "yes! All 12 are here right now, we're waiting for you!" and we show up and every damn time it's a damn lie! Half of the time it's just the patron him/herself sitting there with a finger up her nose and a shrug on her shoulders, and a comment along the lines of "they are around" in response to "where are the 12 members?", which more or less directly translates to "I have no idea where they are but I'm pretty sure they're alive".
UGH. Mobilization: my own personal hell.
And what's more fun is when, as in the case of this club, the patron decides that she think she'll get some sort of reward or service (read: handout) for getting these 12 members there. So, rather than being honest about not being able to get them all there, she lies and asks club members present to impersonate some of the 12 respondents who are not there. Charming. And it's usually pretty obvious, when after calling someone's name four times, someone elbows that "respondent" in the ribs and says "oh he is right here!" and that "respondent" looks profoundly confused and then brightens up and says "oh yeah, that's me". At least try to be cagey!
Sooooo I wound up having the joyful experience of pulling the patron outside and informing her that by instructing her club members to impersonate, she was violating the law and causing us to violate law as well. She was... unapologetic. But she did at least then agree to help identify who the actual respondents were, so I guess it was a net win.
Aaaaanyway. Back on track.
Pretty pretty scenery:
Wound up back at that second-story restaurant doing some work
Caught up with the other team later, unfortunately just as they were finishing the club. So we sat in the nice sunset light and did some survey review
Nothing quite like tucking a company-logo tee shirt into your jeans to make you feel like a real doofus
And then had some dinner at Mukwano Guesthouse (some of the best rice I've ever had... which I attribute to the presence of coriander seeds)
I decided I'd done my duty in Mbale, so it was time to rotate to another district - I'd head to Arua, Justin to Mbale and Charity to Mukono.
Bright and early
I caught a bus from Mbale to Kampala.
I'm not entirely sure why, but at one point we had to get off the bus, walk about 200m while the bus, empty, drove the same distance, and then re-board. Oooookay.
Saw a guy crawdad-fishing along the way
This guy boarded the bus at one of the stops and hawked some drugs for a while. See, you can tell his drugs are legit because he's wearing a lab coat!
The scary part is how many people bought from him.
At a gas-stop, I picked up some snacks, including one of my favorite local snacks, banana crisps... and apparently these ones are made by me! As a diet?
Four hours from Mbale to Kampala, hopped off the bus and zipped home for 20 minutes to take a shower and do the dirty-for-clean laundry-swap, then hopped aboard a bus for the eight hours to Arua.
Jeez, it looks like Africa!
Endless green plains
Upon arrival, met up with team leaders Innocent and George and auditor Ivan to get the low-down. Sounded like things were going generally well - good to hear! Also, as I later learned, not true.
Found my room at Jershem Hotel and sacked out for the night. Up bright and early (ugh) to meet up with the teams the next morning
More churches
Hung out with one team for a while, then hopped a boda to find the other team
While waiting at a trading center to wait for Ivan to come pick me up in the matatu, decided to have some local breakfast: chapati and incredibly over-sugared tea
Caught up with the other team and settled in to some survey-review
Churches...
Daniel gives Two Thumbs Up to local architecture!
Driving to the next survey site. Approaching 45 degrees:
Went for a walk through the village to meet up with the other team
Starting feeling a bit lost, so a local guy offered to help direct me. As we walked together he told me all about how some muzungu missionary had come and Christianized the whole area. Also, he reeked of booze.
At another point, I walked past a trio of young men, one of whom was holding a crying child. As I approached, the man holding the child looked at me then said something to the kid, resulting in raucous laughter from the other two men and a look of sheer terror from the kid. As I walked by, they informed me that they'd told the kid that if he didn't stop crying, the muzungu would "slaughter" him. Lovely! Scary part is that it worked... the kid shut up!
Found the other team at this remarkable "cathedral"
Nuns in Landcruisers!
Oil drum-cum-drum drum
Arua town
My life: reviewing surveys.
Upon reviewing surveys from the couple days before I arrived, I discovered that they were, in a word, abysmal. I mean, after a week of enumeration, I was still finding absolutely unacceptable errors - copious missed questions, totally incorrectly-coded responses, and all sorts of creative eff-ups that I hadn't even considered as possible.
We needed to send the completed surveys back to Kampala the next day, but sending down erroneous surveys would be... dumb. So, upon finishing the day's surveying at 4pm, I surprised the enumerators with the news that we'd be spending as long as necessary reviewing and correcting all mistakes in their surveys. They were... less than pleased.
Six hours. It took six hours for me to review every single one of the surveys' they'd completed up to that point. Because, as I started reviewing, I discovered that their surveys were so tragically and epically terrible that I needed to review EVERY SINGLE one. So we set up a little factory - me reviewing surveys, the team leaders and auditor arranging logistics, and the enumerators calling back damn near every one of their respondents to get clarification. Not the most fun evening I've had. Also not the most fun evening any of them have had. Let's call it "motivational" or "character building".
The evening also led to the first step in Daniel's growing reputation amongst Arua enumerators as quite the task-master.
Dickens leads the group behavioral games
Voter registration is currently on-going
Back towards town
No comment
On the rooooad agaaaain
Back to town in the middle of the day, I finally got a chance to have a run for the first time in weeks. Painful, but so good. Afterwards, had some millet, beef stew and bo (bitter greens in a kinda glop) with some passion fruit juice.
Amusingly, the TV in the lunch place was tuned to National Geographic, playing some American Cops-type show. It took me a few minutes to figure out what seemed weird about it, then I realized that I'm in the kind of place that Nat Geo usually features, watching a Nat Geo special on where I'm from. The irony!
Off to another church
While on the phone, checking in with teams in other districts, I went for a bit of a wander from the church we were at. Pretty amazing surroundings
Found a big rock overlooking some pretty amazing plains, and decided it would due as my office for the afternoon:
A funny trend: clubs we visited to survey giving us sodas. Could you imagine someone asking you to take 3 hours of your day to do a survey (with no compensation), and then you feeling so grateful that you offer them a refreshment? Hooray for cultural differences!
Sooo me and my Coke had a sit in a nice spot and spent entirely too much time on the phone.
I'm thinking about selling this picture to Coke
Walked back to check on the team. Set up my office on a fallen tree.
Okay, that's enough for now. Coming next time: Daniel faces a near strike and learns that being a disciplinarian sucks.
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