Right. Monday night found me drifting off to sleep (maybe "collapsing in a heap" would be more accurate), images of incompetent enumerators, grumpy respondents, frowning professors and pissed off donors dancing in my dreams.
Woooo. Hooo.
Monday night I'd actually slept at the flat of our auditor in Mbale, Dean, because all of my bags were still there from the morning and I couldn't bear the 15 minutes of sleep I would have lost by carrying my stuff back to the guesthouse I'd stayed at (where the team leaders were staying) the night before. By the time I woke up, Dean had already gone out, grabbed us some breakfast (a banana and a delightful variety of the many ways Ugandans have invented for frying dough) and brewed coffee. I considered proposing bestfriendship on the spot.
Bright and (painfully) early, Dean and I trudged to the team leaders' guest house, where the troops were rallying for Day Two.
Looking out behind the team leaders' room, where the cooks for the restaurant downstairs had an impressive chapati-production assembly line going: 
I started the day with Tony's again, with Dean accompanying Katamba's crew. After everyone arriving already a bit late (with me sitting in the matatu anxiously waving my hands at nipple level) , we finally started moving only to pull right into a gas station. I almost lost my mind - why the hell hadn't they just filled up yesterday? I put the query to Tony, who explained that he'd been warned that if we put in more fuel than we needed for that day, the drivers would siphon it. Terrrrrific.
On the road:
I decided to try some incentivization, so I told the enumerators that the first one done (with minimal mistakes/errors) would earn him/herself a "bonus". Yay for cash solving all problems! Mobilizing the 12 respondents took a bit of time, complicated by the fact that there was a funeral for a local person about 100 feet away. The wailing of local women just out of sight nicely echoed the panicked alarm bells going off in my head, and harmonized nicely with my constantly-ringing mobile phone. It also led to one of my favorite enumerator notes I've so far seen on a survey: "there was a dead body nearby, which made it difficult to concentrate". Charming.
Once Tony had mobilized all 12 respondents, I set off to photocopy some more surveys, since we were already running out and the next batch wouldn't be coming from Kampala for another day.
I had the matatu drive me to the main road, and on our way some local old ladies flagged us down, assuming we were a standard fare-taking matatu. The driver looked at me questioningly and I said "sure, why not". The ladies boarded and immediately started laughing when they realized the situation. Well, despite the doom I felt my survey was spiraling towards, at least running Daniel's Old Lady Muzungu-Taxi Service earned me a bit of good karma.
In town I found a lady running a print/copy shop and, even though her machine looked alarmingly decrepit, she charmed me into customership with witty banter and low prices. Maybe not my wisest decision, considering it wound up taking her damn near 3 hours to print the 70 copies I needed of the 25-page survey! I decided to make the best of it and give my brain a few minutes away from the constant panicked alarm bells that had been ringing in my head for a few days. I wandered around until I found a little cafe that had some of the best "spiced African tea" (black tea + a ton of milk + even more sugar + uh... spices ("tea masala") ) I've yet had, as well as a lovely, albeit semi-obscured, view of the plateau that is Kapchorwa (where I was the day before) and Sipi Falls:
For some reason I've been on a taking-pictures-of-what-I'm-eating kick lately, even when it's just tea and a mandazi (one of Uganda's many variants of fried dough):
With printing finally finished, I headed out to meet up with Katamba's team. We met with a club pretty deep "in the village" (far out of town) and I settled down on the roots of a big tree to review the surveys from the morning.
while the enumerators spread themselves out around the grounds and got interviewing:
As I alternately reviewed surveys (becoming increasingly frustrated by prevalent enumerator mistakes) and harping on the enumerators to operate more efficiently, I realized what a bizarrely dissonant and incongruous experience I'd been having the past couple days. Here I was, surrounded by some of the most pastorally idyllic landscape I've ever seen, and flipping out about efficiency, data quality and proper protocol-following. All around me were the green environ and calm inhabitants of a life measured by season and generality, and I was obsessing about seconds and minutiae.
I'd love to say that this ephiphanic moment led to a sea-change in the Daniel Approach to Life (Or At Least This Job), but it didn't. I'm pretty sure that immediately after this realization, I found two missed questions on the survey I was reviewing and barked at an enumerator for wasting time. Maybe next time.
Well. Lest you think I'm just giving unnecessary air to my (at this point, copious) anxieties by obsessing about efficiency and timeliness, I had (okay, most - the pterodactyl-sized mosquitoes that haunt my dreams stayed away) all of my fears confirmed on Tuesday evening: we wound up at this damn club surveying until 10:30pm. Mind you:
A) the sun goes down at 7:00 like clockwork here
B) we were deep in the village... no electricity.
When we realized the inevitable onset of darkness (and plodding slowness of still-inexperienced enumerators), I hopped in the taxi on a desperate search for anything that shed light. 20 minutes later I returned with one fist full of candles and the other with some delightfully charming dual-LED-light-plus-pen-but-shaped-to-look-like-a-pair-of-cigarettes keychain flashlights, all for a grand total of about $10. Using all sources of light we could think of we wound up with a delightful mix of:
1) Enumerators surveying outside by keychain-flashlight (see those blue specks? those are people. working):
2) Enumerators surveying in the church by candlelight:
and 3) Leading the group behavioral games (essentially another part of the survey exercise) by the headlights of the matatu:
And your fearless narrator decided to join in on the fun, reviewing surveys hot off the press by candlelight in the church
It was admittedly a bit romantic, and would maybe even have been enjoyable if we all hadn't been working for 14 hours by this point, and if I hadn't been finding SO MANY DAMN MISTAKES.
Okay, still kind of rad to be working by candlelight in a church in rural Eastern Uganda while in the distance the faint roar of a waterfall provided a soundtrack and distant lightning storms occasionally lit up endless green fields at the horizon.
And, on the bright side, Dean (the Mbale auditor) made further strides in securing best-friend-for-life-ship by talking the landlady of his building into renting IPA a 1-room apartment for the 3 weeks of the survey for... 140,000 shillings. That's $70. For an apartment! Clean, with a bed, table and dresser, a fully functional (and clean) bathroom (though no hot water, alas). Dean loaned me sheets and pillows for the night, and the next day I went out and bought the most uncomfortable sheets I have ever felt (they felt more like a net made of sandpaper than bed-sheets) for $7.
This is the apartment the next morning. Yes, I do have this impressive an ability for making a mess overnight:
Okay, I'll leave it at that for the moment. We just left a club (in Arua presently) and the bumpy road is making typing-whilst-moving difficult.
More to come!
Are you really drinking tea? And with milk? Will wonders never cease!
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