The change game

If you visit Uganda you need to very quickly learn how to play the change game to settle the balance on everyday transactions. Anyone who has visited a developing country will be familiar with it already. These are the rules:
1. Your change is more valuable than the money itself. Don’t let other people get their hands on it if you can possibly help it.
2. When making a purchase, give the largest denomination note you think you can get away with. Which denomination this is depends on a number of factors:
a) The value of the purchase (of course). Don’t try and buy a banana with a 50,000.
b) The wealth differential. Don’t present a high-value note if it would be enough to buy the whole shop – you’ll cause embarrassment.
c) The cheek factor. If the transactee values customer service, they will scour the building to find you the right change no matter what. If they do not, they will look at you like you are crazy.
d) The probability of the seller actually having change. If you misjudge this, you’ll be waiting around while they play the change game with other people so as to be able to settle the balance.
3. Don’t expect to be able to change a note without making a purchase. It is ludicrous that anyone would give up their change for no return.
4. Have a contingency plan for occasions when stalemate is reached. This may include providing some item as a retainer while the change game is played elsewhere. Motorcycle helmets are more useful for this than they are for actually protecting your head.

Office Hours

Thursday was supposed to be a rare treat: a quiet day at the office. Here’s what happened next:

• The District Chairman calls – he has got us a bulldozer for free but we have to make use of it immediately.
• We don’t even know what we’re supposed to be bulldozing yet. The architect is the other side of the country.
• We find an engineer instead but he’s charging an exorbitant rate.
• We spend an hour weighing up the cost of us simply guessing where to deploy the bulldozer and hoping for the best.
• Someone threatens to torch one of our schools. The School Director has gone to Kenya.
• The construction director comes in and turns my precious gannt chart upside down.
• The road outside turns to a river, partly due to the most torrential rain I’ve ever seen, and partly due to the tears I’m crying over the remains of my gannt chart.
• We call the Big Cheese in London about the engineer. He reckons I could do the work using pythagoras’ theorem. I recall from GCSE maths that this has something to do with triangles. He eventually lets us take the engineer on, but with a contract. We’ve never written a contract before.
• The guy who tried ripping us off with the last (unrelated) bulldozer job turns up to make amends. We get him to sign an agreement to finish the work in his own blood.
• We call the engineer, who gets shirty about the proposed terms of the contract.
• The Finance Director and I write the contract anyway in the engineer’s absence and pray that he’ll accept it when he sees it tomorrow. My brain starts to hurt. But the brain is a muscle – the more you use it, the bigger it gets.
• We finish at 9pm and I realise with horror that I am turning into my father. Jo the volunteer (still gleefully attracting weirdos) later reassures me that her father is the same.

Close Encounters of the African Kind

I came dangerously close to exposing my ignorance on Wednesday. We visited the (as yet untouched) site of one of our new schools, and I noticed one sort of bush seemed to dominate, so I asked what it was. This provoked torrents of laughter from my Ugandan colleagues: “you drink coffee every day, yet you have no idea what it looks like!”

Friendometer

The aforementioned site is in a rural area where Jo and I attracted a considerable entourage of local children. Much status was gained in the group by those who dared to come close to the Muzungus – when one came close enough to touch me he provoked considerable admiration amongst his peers. (Rumour has it that East African children are told that if they are naughty, a white person with a big rucksack will come and take them away to Europe).


And finally…

On Wednesday, we met the District Chairman. Given that a district in Uganda is the size of a UK county, and given that he’s in charge of one, he’s a pretty important guy. Strange, then, to have a meeting with him on a petrol station forecourt. However, when we called him to arrange a meeting, that’s where he was, and there’s no time like the present, eh?

…Competition time!
The alphabet was missing K, you silly people! My Mum got there first, so it’s a three-way tie:
Julia 1
Ben 1
Nigel’s Mum 1

There a conspicuous lack of participation from my brother, who I’m sure is just biding his time. Like a tactical marathon runner, he hasn’t forgotten that this is a year-long competition. Expect a late break.