26 March 2009
Post date: Apr 7, 2009 6:31:39 AM
March 26th (Thursday) – Late Night
Yeah it was a late night last night all right. Kate, Naashom, Cory, and I left the Protea Hotel around 7PM and went back to La Fontaine – my guest house. We had some dinner and Cory and I got into a Poker game with three locals. It was a complete riot. Poker is such a funny game and really brings out people’s personalities. It was just 10,000 UGX ($5.00) buy in with 1000/500 UGX (50/25 cents) big and little blind. Cory was definitely there to win some money. I imagine he might have taken home $10 of mine by the time the night was over – since I was out about 20,000 UGX at the end of the night --- or should I say morning --- I didn’t get to bed until 4AM and I talked to Deb for 35 minutes until all of my mobile phone time was used up – about another $10.
A little about Cory – he’s in his mid twenties, Asian-American, about 5’5” and an Electrical Engineer. He’s been working in the technical field for a non-profit Micro Business Development firm for some time. This is his first trip out of the US and he’s a little, no a lot, frustrated with the inefficiencies of working in a third world country. He’s been here about two months and has another month to go. So he’s seen a lot. I’d like to work more in the micro finance arena. I’ve seen a lot of mishaps and inefficiencies myself when I volunteered at Micro Business Development in Denver for a month back in Summer 2007. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to talk with Cory more – and possibly one of the women he works with that I met briefly. He’s definitely interested in the process improvement work I’m doing, and knows Jack Welsh’s writings well enough to here how my experiences are similar to what Jack writes about creating change at General Electric.
On the way to bed last night I found Ryan up writing an article for one of the local papers. He’s actually the one that told me what time I went to bed --- umm --- cause I actually didn’t know. Speaking of bed --- I’ve noticed I have a bunch of mosquito bites. I haven’t been using my mosquito net – makes it just all that hotter at night. Ryan and Cory have both had malaria multiple times ------ so I guess I’ll use the mosquito night tonight. I’ve seen quite a few of the little buggers flying around this evening as I typing this. Who knows I may have malaria already. I believe it takes a week to incubate. Buggers --- don’t really have time or desire to be getting sick and all that. Hopefully the wormwood herb I’m taking will keep the whole deal away.
Back to Mango Tree happenings ---- Nathan and I just about finished our spot check of the inventory earlier today. It’s been quite an interesting and revealing task. We’ve been focusing on just the grain sacks. It’s their most important item and they have about 200 grain sack products. These are the same type of grain sacks that we’ve been making peace banners on for CGPP. So lets see – we found about 60 grain sacks of an outdated map of Northern Uganda districts that need to be given away. Schools can use marker to make the changes on the map – but we can’t sell them that way. We found about 30 of some items where the inventory list said we 2 and 2 of some items where the inventory list said we 30. We’ve found several items missing from the store display room where customers come to shop. Kinda difficult to sell things when people can’t see them. We’ve found items waiting to be quality checked so they’re just kinda in limbo – not listed in the inventory and not displayed in the store. We’ve found several items that sell in pairs but their only one of the pair and there’s no note that they exist. We found several new items that have been created in the past year - - but they’re not being tracked on the inventory list. And I must admit I’m writing all this so I have a start on a list of the processes that are broken that need some repairs. Oh – again – I left work and a matatu pulled up to take me home. Honestly – they only drive by Mango Tree about every 20 or 30 min. Night all --- tomorrow morning I meet Edith and we head to her two schools. I get to try to sleep now with loud pub music playing.