How much does it cost to buy a vote?

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.