Well, today is the day that I can officially say that I have been woken up by a rooster. I pulled the curtains to my bedroom balcony closed prior to closing my eyes last night, and when I pulled them open again after hearing the rooster, I couldn’t help but feel like I had already slept away half the day even though it was exactly 7:00 AM local time. The streets here are busy day and night. Lines of small cars, motorcycles, and people walking fill both sides of the street, and you can hear the low purring of motorcycles throughout the night — which is nice for me, since living in downtown Vancouver for so long has caused me to develop a need for some kind of background noise just so I can fall asleep.
Have you ever been a friends house and tried to take a shower in the morning and it’s taken you so long just to figure out how to turn on the shower head that you feel like an idiot because it’s been probably 10-15 minutes when the shower alone would’ve taken that long? Yeah, that was me this morning. There are 4-5 different levers (WHY!?) on this shower in my bedroom here, which are in addition to the main water lever. And then there’s another one (WHY!?) for spraying down the bathroom, which is apparently a common thing here. Thankfully, I only need the one.
I’m really not even sure how to feel about taking a shower here. So many people have warned me not to drink the water — not even to brush my teeth with the tap water! — so you can imagine my concern when I’m literally bathing myself with it. I sometimes feel like I need to wash my hands, even after I’ve just finished washing my hands… If I end up coming back to Canada alive, keep a note that it’s ok to shower in Uganda.
Speaking of things-that-are-usually-mundane-but-are-dangerous-in-Africa, I finished the first round of pills that I’m supposed to take when traveling to Northern Africa… Which is good because after one week I should be immune to a number of different life threatening diseases… but it’s also bad because I was supposed to have finished them at least one week prior to traveling to Northern Africa. Unfortunately, the timeline we were on simply to get here was unbelievably tight — to the point that we weren’t sure we were going to make it, even when we were leaving from Amsterdam to Kigali. You could probably make some kind of movie about the stuff that we had to do just to be here today.
The last of those things I was told about at about 2:00 AM the day (morning) of my flight. Keep in mind, I had to be at the airport at about 9:30 AM to catch the flight at 11:30. Well, 2:00 AM is when I got an e-mail (and a frantic call, shortly after) from Ed (who was in Uganda at the time) stating that I had to go to the police station and get a background check done ASAP. This was the cherry on top, so to speak, because we had basically been doing this type of running around for the past 2 weeks or so. This wouldn’t be so bad except that the background check was required so that I could cross the border and enter the country. Well, the police station opened at 8 AM. I was there. It took them, for whatever reason, about 40 mins to process a single person. Despite arriving early, there were two individuals before me in the line. Luckily, I somehow (thank you, George!) ended up at the airport at 9:40 AM (even after having to speed home to pick up the last Vivotif that I forgot in my refrigerator… I know…) just a minute or two later than Corey — who had his own last minute errands to run.
Corey’s errands were equally as threatening to this project as my own, as the completion of those errands also dictated whether or not we would be able to cross the border into Uganda. Corey had to go pick up our vaccination records in downtown Vancouver because somehow (I still don’t even know how this is possible…), the consulate in Ottawa shipped both of our immunization records to the United States — despite shipping our passports back to Vancouver? This means that someone went out of their way to separate our documents and ship them to different locations. Wtf? Great move, right before our flight. As if we had nothing else to worry about! Not to mention the things we had to do just to get those documents in the timeframe that we did… Well, somehow, it all worked out. Corey and I made it to our 11:30 flight, and we flew for give or take 8-9 hours to Amsterdam and then another 8 or so to Kigali. The flight wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. The food was not terrible. I have definitely watched more movies in the past 24 hours than I have in the past 6 months. I suppose the unlimited free wine helped us get through it (Corey more so than myself, as at least he got to sleep).
After my morning shower, I started the day off by heading out with Corey and Ed (the president of the company I am currently working for) for some breakfast and coffee. We were told prior to leaving Canada that people stop wearing shorts in Uganda after about 5 years old… Something about professionalism? Well, I understand the need to be perceived as a professional, but dear god, why does the whole country wear only pants where it’s consistently 30+ degrees celsius outside!? I joked that we ought to tell everyone here that Canadians stop wearing pants at 5 so we can justify wearing shorts every day. To the point that we thought we should act surprised whenever we see people wearing pants — like: “I didn’t know they made pants that long!”
Breakfast was good. Better than expected in some regards. The cafe, Endiro’s, was tucked away out of sight behind some tall bushes/trees not too far away from our apartment, and it was filled with mostly Westerners (i.e., Caucasians). Our waiter was a guy by the name of Nathan who was, surprisingly, studying computer science while working part time at the Cafe. He had a lot of questions for myself and for Corey. Apparently he knew Ed quite well as Ed frequents the cafe whenever he’s in Uganda. Honestly, the cafe felt like it could have been some kind of craft cafe in Vancouver; the people there were unusually comfortable, some sitting with open MacBooks doing whatever it was they were doing.
After breakfast, Ed took us to our new office. Needless to say, it is quite a change from the office we were working in at the Harbour Centre back home. I can sincerely say that I’m quite impressed the people at Ensibuuko could be so productive and build what they built given the circumstances. I’ll have to keep that in mind whenever I’m procrastinating, trying to justify putting off work because my 100 MBit internet is only downloading at less than 10MBit speeds. We’re lucky to even have 10Mbit here. We’re finding clever ways to do whatever it is that we need to do to make sure we’re as productive as possible.
The team we’re working with has been incredibly perceptive to us (Corey and I) given that we’re here basically to teach them how to write better code, and to re-write their app. I still think it sounds kind of silly that I will be teaching a team of developers (who have been working on this project for 3+ years, no less) given that Corey was my mentor back home teaching me that exact thing. I’ve done what I can prior to leaving Canada to ensure that I can be an asset rather than a liability at any point during this project. Still, I can’t drop the sense that I might eventually let some people down… a feeling I’m all too familiar with, though, it is often that very feeling that drives me to do better in whatever it is I’m doing.
I actually felt quite proud today during our team discussion when people were asking me questions and I was able to answer them confidently despite still feeling that I have no idea what I’m doing. It reminded me of when Ed (a software developer for 30+ years), during his interview with me, told me that he “has never heard another Canadian speak with the confidence” that I do… if only he had any idea of how I was feeling at the time, I’m sure he’d be quite surprised. He laughed when I told him that, though I was born a Canadian, my father is from the middle east — so I had to perform well and confidently so, otherwise I was more than just spanked.
For the rest of the working day (only a few hours), we wrote code. I basically continued where I left off in Vancouver: writing tests for our app and writing clear and concise documentation for how and why I’m doing what I’m doing. It’s a tedious process; one that I’ve heard most junior developers dread simply because of the fact that there is no real product (I mean, besides the tests and the fact that you can code more confidently moving forward) until much, much later. Nonetheless, I feel like writing the tests for an app that isn’t working yet (at least not the new version) gives me significantly more confidence in that I understand what it is our app needs to do, and a more thorough understanding of the frameworks we’re using (Laravel/Vue/SQL) in the long run.
I was actually quite surprised today when the proposed solutions to a number of the problems with the current app were actually the stack that I taught myself during my time at Lighthouse Labs (Vue/Firebase). If we end up using that stack (doubtful, but fun to think about), it would mean that I actually have the most experience out of the entire team with using any one of those frameworks! Wtf. What’s more is that I only used those frameworks for my final project simply because I wanted to learn something new. What a coincidence! (though, I suppose the reason(s) that I’m here in Africa in the first place is due to a series of remarkably unusual coincidences… isn’t that the title of a movie or something?).
The rest of the day was not quite as eventful. I took care of some other errands. Corey and I went to the mall. The security they have here in the malls is strange… almost the same that you would find in the airports in Canada. The guards check your bags and make sure you walk through the scanners. Later, we went out for dinner to a place called Cafe Javas, which is one of the more upscale restaurants here in Kampala. On the way home, I kept seeing locals carrying their groceries and other items on their heads — which is definitely a skill I want to perfect before coming home (that, and writing good code in Laravel — though I suspect the former may be a little easier to master).
That’s about it for day one. All in all, it’s been a pretty overwhelming day. I think it’s because of the fact that I couldn’t sleep on the way here that I’m not jet lagged. Corey, on the other hand, has been in bed since 9.
Anyways, thanks for reading. I should have more to write about in the coming days. Talk to you soon!
Jamal
