Bloggy blog blog! Hello, beautiful people, oli-otya? How are you?
Sorry I haven't written in over week (I know you guys are REALLY crushed by this), but I moved from Fort Portal to Entebbe last Friday, made a two-day trip back to FP from Wed-Fri, and then came back to Entebbe yesterday. Sooooooooo much travelling. It was sad to say goodbye to FP, but it's not like I'm not ever going back there; on the contrary, I plan on going back at least twice before I leave Uganda. I came to Entebbe last Friday and met up with Ashley, UM PhD student, at the Central Inn in Entebbe. I have to say, it was really, really nice to meet up with a fellow American/UM student and just chat. Living and hanging out with Europeans and Africans has been really great, but home is just--home. The following morning, a wonderful local woman named Harriet--the friend of another soon-to-arrive UM PhD student, Anneeth--picked us up and drove us around all day to get groceries, cleaning supplies, and various other apartment set-up sundries. SUCH a luxury to have a car with which to do all these things!
We've been in the apartment for a week (which Harriet also helped us find), and it's very nice. Sort of like a self-contained apartment in a small little complex of about five buildings, each one containing one or two apartment-like townhouses, with a large wall topped with barbed wire. It's probably one of the best areas we could be in, as it's pretty safe (along with the barbed wire, we've also got a big old gate and around-the-clock security guards), and very quiet. NO MORE THROBBING AFRICAN DANCE MUSIC EVERY NIGHT!!!!
Work began on Monday at the Ugandan National Archive, and it's very different from Fort Portal, of course. There's only three employees other than Okello, who is the Director, two of whom have been trained in archives and/or records management. I won't exhaust myself going into all of the details of what we've been working on there; suffice to say it's been a study in patience, negotiation, and wording things delicately. There is an absolute abundance of fascinating materials there, but for now we're working on Series 'C' (yet another point of contention, as I believe the organizational structure needs to be totally revamped...), which consists of the government's Secretariat papers dating from 1893 to the late seventies. Ashley is loving it, as her dissertation research looks at the history of refugees in Uganda (particularly Rwandan) and she is finding plenty of relevant material.
Funny thing--we invited Justine, the archivist, Eva, the newly-graduated records mgt. trainee, and Roscoe (Mbalire), the key-holder/security man/jack of all trades, out to lunch and asked where they wanted to go. They got rather embarrassed about the place that they usually eat their lunch at, which turned out to be a small wooden hut built out of plants and bamboo which serves local fare to all the surrounding government employees. Ashley and I couldn't be happier and told them so! Just as in Fort Portal, they seemed surprised that mzungus would want to eat the local foodstuffs when other, more generic/international fare was available. Hey, man--I love me some g-nut sauce and omukaro (dried beef) and matooke and posho, just like the next person! And at Ugx2,500, you can't go wrong. (That's $0.98...)
I travelled to FP on Wednesday for a meeting with the CAO (pronounced "cow"), the Chief Administrative Officer of the Kabarole District. Evarist and I were too meet with him to discuss the status of the District's archives at MMU and try to convince him or the District Records Officer to go to the "Archives in Uganda" conference that UM is co-hosting at Makarere Social Research Institute in July. As it happens (and as Brede had warned me the night before), I arrived at Kabundaire on Thursday morning ready for the meeting, only to be informed by Evarist that the CAO had cancelled and tentatively postponed till next week. Gotta roll with the punches, man, roll with the punches... So, needless to say, I did not have the expected meeting but I DID have a lovely trip to FP. (Excepting my dinner on Thursday night at the Rwenzori Traveller's Inn, where I had tough pieces of steak wrapped in fatty Canadian bacon in gravy that looked/tasted like cat food, two cakes of white rice, lumpy pumpkin soup, and no vegetables--they were 'out'--all while reading Ivanhoe on my Kindle and half-listening to an old American Idol episode in the background.)
Ok, I'm splitting this blog post up into two so as not to overwhelm y'all. Read at your own pace. :)
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