Another highlight of the Sipi trip was brewing our own coffee. While I’m not a coffee drinker, I was excited to see the local coffee production process and the end product was actually really good! I drank the whole cup, Zea would’ve been proud. :)
 
We started in Mangusho’s garden where he grows coffee beans. They’re Arabica which means they have 2 beans per berry (is it a berry?) instead of 3 beans, which would be Robusta and apparently not as good. Once the plants grow in his garden, he replants the seedlings in little bags for each to grow on their own. They grow in the shade of banana trees which is perfect for them because it keeps them out of direct sunlight. The elevation at Sipi is also ideal for good coffee plants. Melissa may have to help jog my memory on this, but I think they then grow for another 9 months before they’re ready to be planted in the soil to grown into larger trees. Mangusho showed us a coffee tree that his grandfather planted years ago – he’s carrying on a family tradition. Legend goes that that was the first coffee tree in Sipi!

​It takes 4 weeks to dry the beans, so we jumped over that part of the process. Once you have the dry beans, you need to remove the husk. While you can do this by hand, as you can imagine, that is very tedious and time consuming.  So we used a wooden mortar and pestle. It’s important that the mortar is really deep so the beans don’t escape. Once our arms were too tired to continue, Mangusho took a plate and artfully separated the beans from the husks. 

​We’re now ready to roast the beans! I had no idea that the difference between light, medium, and dark roast is simply how long you roast them for…so self-explanatory haha. At Mangusho’s suggestion, we decided on a medium roast. The beans crackle a little kind of like the early stages of cooking popcorn on the stove. It smelled great! Once they were ready, we let the beans cool on a banana leaf. Mangusho had us try the beans – they were pretty tasty. Definitely really flavorful. I feel like describing the taste of coffee is similar to describing the taste of wine, so I’ll continue to steer clear of both. 

The 2016 Ugandan presidential elections are in just over two weeks and we’ve somehow timed our site visits perfectly with some presidential rallies happening in a few small towns in Central Uganda. After a long day at the field, we returned to our hotel to see a campaign handing out cold hard cash for votes.

How much do you think it costs to buy a vote? Let’s play! Price is right rules. Answer to come in my next post! Bonus points to those who want to comment about how much it costs to buy an American vote these days…
 
In the meantime, I thought I’d share some other cost of living snippets of life so far here in Uganda.
 
Rent: $100-500 per bedroom per month

• My apartment is definitely a steal at only $200 USD for a 2 bedroom place. I would say most expats pay around $200-$350
• For a nicer house in a more residential neighborhood, I found some places at around $500 but I think after you cross $300, you’re paying more for location than quality of the actual room / apt / house
• The high end can get up there with other big cities at home. Developers are building modern furnished apartments that will go for $1k and up

Electricity: $20 a month

• I pay a little under $20 a month for electricity (note that my place is pretty small and my roommate isn’t home most of the month). While it’s not a lot, this is a disproportionately high cost for most Ugandans
• My friend with a 3 bedroom / 2 bath place pays about $45 a month – they also have a washing machine which uses a good amount of power
• Costs here aren’t that much cheaper that what I was paying in Chicago, but there are frequent power outages and it’s not always reliable. Luckily my neighborhood is better than most it seems

House cleaning: $45

• Christine comes twice a week to clean and do laundry…this is a luxury I’m sure going to miss when I head home

Local beer: $0.75-2

• Popular and cheap brands: Nile Special, Tusker, Club. I don’t think I’ve actually had a Club, but I would say both the Nile Special and Tusker taste somewhere between a Nicaraguan Tona and a Heineken
• At the grocery store, you can get a 500ml bottle as cheap as 75 cents a pop. You’ll pay a bottle deposit which you can get back when you return the empties
• Most of the local beers come in a 500ml size. In the states, our beer cans are 355ml

Mango: 15-60 cents

• In the city, it’s usually 2000 shillings (about 60 cents) for a mango but if you can find a roadside stall on the way back from a weekend road trip or field visit, you can get even better quality mangoes for cheaper

Avocado: 15 cents

• Yeah…you read that right. And they’re huge and so tasty. The texture is a little more watery than what I’m used to so at first I was convinced I kept buying bad avocados, but they’re just a little different here

Hotel we tried to stay at: $132

• Accommodations can be weirdly expensive throughout Uganda. We were in a small town about 2 hours outside Kampala and were looking for a place to stay during our field visits. The hotel grounds were nice with an open garden and a pool, but I would say the rooms only looked a little better than a motel. So for that…$132 seemed crazy for one night. Most of my M-Th consulting homes have been cheaper than that!
• As I’ve been looking into travel throughout the country, the range of prices goes from $5-15 at a hostel for shared dorms or campground space to around $40 for midrange stuff. The high end though, has been way higher than I would expect from a country that doesn’t seem to have all the tourism infrastructure in place. Compared to Southeast Asia, for the same quality, you’ll spend much more here on travel accommodations

Gas: $4 per gallon

• I’ve been advised to only fill my tank at Shell and Total stations because local stations (which are a bit cheaper) sometimes dilute their petrol

1GB data: $10

• Data is really expensive here and unlimited home internet isn’t widespread (compare this to Kenya where data is cheap and wifi is easily accessible)
• CHAI pays for mobile internet dongles which plug into the USB port of our laptops which is nice. We get a monthly data allowance that I’m learning to ration

WTF mobile data package: 60 cents each week

• This is an awesome package that includes unlimited W(hatsapp)T(witter)F(acebook) on my Ugandan phone
• I can make calls through Whatsapp and Facebook so it allows me to use less of my airtime
• I’ve been able to survive almost exclusively off this and then I just buy 100mb of data here and there if I really need to look something up. This means I scroll a lot of news headlines / shared articles but can never click on them when browsing haha

Usual dinner entrée: $10

• There are a lot of restaurants in Uganda that cater towards expats. Even at these, I average just $10 for my dinners pretty consistently

Coffee: $2

• I still don’t drink coffee

Glass soda bottle: 30 cents (excluding bottle deposit)
Plastic soda bottle: 60 cents

• The plastic costs are incurred by the consumer
  

Tupperware: $5+ each

• I’m glad I bought a bunch at Costco and brought them with me because this is one of the strangest high cost kitchen items

Electric water kettle: $22

• I bought a small, cheap one so that's just the low end

Laundry drying rack: $23-45

• Costs are driven up by quality of the metal, these were surprisingly pricey 

 
Curious about other costs? Let me know!
 
My general observations is that “stuff” isn’t as cheap as you might think, probably because most of it is imported. However, food and then time / labor costs are pretty low. An example of this is that taxis and private hires all charge only on distance and not time. Given the Kampala traffic, this was surprising to me. A short, cheap ride could last 5 minutes or 20 minutes depending on the time of day, but it’d cost you the same amount. The culture here is very relaxed when it comes to time. Meetings unapologetically start or end late…or just get cancelled after you’ve already arrived. We once told data collectors to come pick up their money and materials for field visits and then due to some bank delays made them wait around THREE hours before we starting handing things out. While I was anxious and embarrassed leaving them to sit around the office waiting, I don’t think we got one complaint or question about when things would get started. That was insane to me and I’ve realized I place such a high value on time – both my own but also respecting others’ time. This probably stems from all the hours I “wasted” sitting alone waiting at the Millbrae BART station…just kidding Mom. 

It's been over a week now since I arrived in Kampala and I'm starting to feel settled in - of course, a lot of that has to do with how much great food there is here. While a Ugandan colleague described the food as "bland," I would say that at least there is a lot of variety and we have hot sauce stocked in the office kitchen. Maybe I'll start to get bored in a few months, but for now, I'm more than happy spending my time outdoors rather than in the kitchen :)

"YOU HAVE TO TRY ROLEX!" was probably the most consistent reaction when I spoke with people who had spent time in Uganda. So last night, when my boda driver offered to take me to get some rolex on the way to my apartment, I happily obliged. Key ingredients: egg and chapati. What you see in the picture to the right is essentially an omelette cooking on a rounded metal hotplate over a charcoal cook stove. Before the eggs cooked too thoroughly, he threw a chapati on top. 

Chapati is like a mix between a tortilla, Indian roti, and Malaysia roti prata. I have to imagine its prevalence in Ugandan cuisine is a result of the large Indian population in Uganda. It’s not as dry as roti, but not as flakey or thick as roti prata. Anyway, once the chapati is added, he presses it to the eggs to get them to stick together. Then, he flips it over and adds a few final ingredients before rolling everything up. This particular stand had fresh tomatoes and cabbage. It seems like there may be more variety and it just depends where you go. Once it’s rolled, it gets put into a plastic bag (think newspaper bag) which then gets put into a paper bag to help with the heat as well as the excessive amount of grease haha.   

Why is it called rolex? Apparently the name came about from Ugandans saying "rolled eggs" or "roll of eggs" in an Lugandan accent. It seems like the farther you are from the center of town, the better the rolexes are...I'll be sure to taste test my way around and report back soon!

With the recently released Hello Food, food delivery app (think Grubhub / Seamless without an integrated payment system), I can access a huge variety of cuisines without even leaving my office / apartment. Within a delivery radius of my office, I can order Thai, Chinese, Italian, American (burgers, salads, wraps, etc.)...you get the idea. That said, it's apparently and understandably not all that great. At dinner last week, a German colleague said that the two types of food that are better in Uganda compared to home are Ethiopian and Indian. From the little of both I've tried, so far, I'd agree. 
 
Left: mysore dosa from Chaat House, which was amazing. @Mia Divecha, I think you'd approve :)
​Center: tiffin delivery we ordered to the office last week. Just found out that the non-veg option which I chose was goat liver (and potentially chicken hearts?)...we're specifying a chicken meat preference next time we order haha
Right: this "American Garden" brand has been in most of the grocery stores I've been to. I checked the labels and all the products are actually made in the states, it's not just a branding thing. Regardless, besides the peanut butter, their stuff leaves a lot to be desired.

Greetings from Kampala! It's officially my third day in Uganda and I'm loving it already. Even though I'm not gone for good, last week in Chicago was full of lots of "lasts" - the last time I'd get to see the sunset from my favorite spot on the couch, the last time I'd grab dinner with the Chicago crew, hopefully my last Malort shot and trip to The Apartment, etc. But, what's exciting about being here, is that it's full of "firsts!"

• ​My first time living alone
  • I'm staying in a one bedroom apartment until I can figure out longer term housing towards the end of the year. It's a really nice place, but makes it more of an effort to to social and make friends. I think that the closest I've come to living alone is my hotel room each week while traveling for client work! Not sure I'm a fan...jury's still out
• My first time eating grasshopper
  • This earned me some serious street cred when introducing myself around the office on Monday. Apparently a local delicacy, I was happily greeted with some fried (?) grasshopper on Sunday afternoon. Like the crickets they sell in Thai markets, if you just don't really look or think about what you're eating, they kind of taste like chips...? 
• My first time having a local sim card enabled smart phone
  • I've never had data on a smart phone while traveling or living abroad. This makes it easier to plan on the go and find myself on google maps. Plus, Ugandans love WhatsApp, so it's a cheap and easy way to stay in touch with new friends
    • 3GB of data and 1hr of airtime cost me ~$22.5 USD
    • A sim card cost 0.65 cents
• My first time attending a breakdance showcase (see photos below)
  • I spent Sunday afternoon at Break Fast Jam 2015 which was at a local YMCA. It was an event put on by Breakdance Project Uganda which believes that dance can be a channel for social change. It seems to be a pretty commonly understood notion that providing children and adolescents after-school programs reduces their risk of getting in other trouble. From what I saw this past weekend, it seems like this organization is doing an incredible job of not only building a strong community dedicated to social responsibility but is also supporting the growth of a strong hip hop / breakdancing culture in Uganda and East Africa

While all these new experiences have been great, I'm looking forward to settling into a routine. So far, the options seem endless. Breakdance / modern dance classes, frisbee leagues, salsa dancing lessons, etc.

@Bennett and Brady - my biggest risk of getting sick is probably from eating or drinking contaminated food or water. That means that I have to remember to brush my teeth with bottled water! There were a few cases of Ebola in 2012 in Uganda, but what you heard about in the news was mainly about an epidemic outbreak in West Africa. In addition to using a mosquito net and lots of bug spray, I am also taking pills each day to try to prevent malaria, which I could get from a mosquito bite. Luckily, I haven't had any side effects from the medication - some people get hallucinations! If you go to the CDC website, you guys can read health information for travelers going anywhere in the world. Next time you guys go on vacation, you should check it out!

@Elaine Kaima - if you're offering me a North Face sponsorship, I'm all ears :)