Learning Experiences

I like people, but sometimes when you have to work with them it's a different story. I wonder if my decision to be a mechanical engineer was made in part with the expectation that I'd spend most of my time interacting with machines and computers. I know that's obviously false, but hey, as a high school senior, I was pretty clueless.
Equipment. Dependable, predictable, unemotional, and cooperative, just like this transit. (Well, except for that Total Station I told you about a few weeks ago.)

Ok, so I'm exaggerating a bit, but to be honest, this week was a human resource management nightmare. A week ago Saturday, I returned to Jinja with the understanding that all the disputes over contract amounts with the laborers for the Bukaleba project were settled. (I guess I didn't mention anything about this drama in my last post, but suffice it to say that the laborers weren't pleased with the terms of the original contract.) Here again was a first-hand lesson on cultural differences. As I found out first thing Tuesday morning, the laborers were not at all satisfied with the new "agreement" which had been worked out on Saturday. One of the teams had completely disbanded (evidently going on strike) while the other continued working only because they were a group of students from Arise Africa's Bible Training School working over their break, and they were sort of compelled by their pastor to at least continue working until they were able to work things out with John when he returned. They, however, were assuming that he was going to show up on Wednesday, but actually he didn't come out till Friday. As it turned out, the teams had a pretty legitimate complaint about the amount of compensation. The difficulty was that I had to convince them that we were going to treat them fairly, even if the situation seemed really unfair at the time.
Proud owners of brand-new 8000 series John Deere replicas.

African Children. They come in threes. They come saying, "Muzungu, give me my car." I didn't give them a car, but they seemed to settle for some toy tractors my nephew's wanted me to pass along. Their rude greeting made me initially reluctant to give them anything, but the fact that their clothes didn't even cover their bodies instead covered for their disrespect which I decided was not intentional. This guy on the right looks a little upset about not getting a toy. Actually, I gave him the wagon expecting the three to cooperate with their new equipment.

It's a really long story, so I'll spare you the details. The good news is that by the end of the day on Friday, everyone seemed content with the new agreement (I thought that's where we were last Saturday?). In the process, I learned a lot about facing confrontation, cultural differences, and applications for calculus in construction management (you have no idea how pumped I was when I remembered how to integrate over an area to estimate the volume of soil the laborers would actually be removing). It was also really rewarding to get to know the workers (at least the team from the Bible School) more personally. Ironically, I think this situation has been an answer to prayer for making new friends. Praise the Lord, and thanks for your prayers!
From the left, Pastor Kasanga, me, Joshua, Wilbur, Emanuel, and Joseph. The four to the right are some of the Bible student laborers. We're in front of a partially excavated ant hill, one of which contained a fat, juice queen like the one pictured in my last post.

I came back to Jinja Friday night, only to leave for Soroti early the next morning to attend an introduction ceremony of a friend of mine from church. You probably don't know anything about introductions. They don't really have a western equivalent. I guess you could say it's sort of like an engagement celebration. It's when the husband-to-be visits the family of the wife-to-be to take away his bride.

Fourteen of us (friends and family) loaded up in a church van and took off at 6am. Before we were even out of the gate of the church compound, I realized my position in the very back seat was going to be a problem. It became obvious that some idiot was involved in the engineering of this van. The back row seat sat about two inches higher than the other seat. By itself, no big deal, but the situation wasn't helped by the fact that the roof of the van was reinforced with a piece of steel running directly above the back seat, and that the roof itself began to curve downward to form the rear of the vehicle. There are times I wish I were taller. Saturday was not one of them. The back seat was not suitable for even short adults. I was hunched over for the entire 6.5 hour journey to Soroti and back. (Oh yeah, does Soroti ring a bell? Soroti is on the way to Lira, that place we visited to see the compressed earth blocks, with the bumpy roads and ambushes set up along the way.) I winced at each approaching pothole anticipating another blow to the head from the unforgiving piece of steel directly above my noggin. Well, miraculously, I only had a minor headache when we arrived at the village.

That's when the fun began. We were greeted by young women screaming (the way African's scream in excitement, hopefully you know what I'm talking about. Something like, Eyieyieyieyieyieyieyieyieeee!) and waving banana leaves and white flags. We marched into the village two by two following the strict instructions of our clan's "leader." (Before I go on, I'm not sure how these traditions got established, but now days, introductions are pretty much all drama. Everything is just role-played, I guess for the sake of entertainment and tradition.) There was a big "argument" about whether we were actually the guests they were expecting. This was then settled (in a drawn out fashion) by a team from our group selecting the bride out groups of girls who were presented to us. If our team picked the right girl, then the party could continue and we would be allowed to stay. After a bunch of dialog, three sequential groups of could-be brides, more dialog, our "team" selected the real bride and we were finally welcomed as the "real" guests. Phew, thought we were gonna get chased away. The remainder of the event consisted of the dowry negotiation (which is actually taken seriously and happens between the elders of the clans so I didn't get to witness it) and delicious African food.

Could she be the one?

After at least an hour of negotiation, the dowry was agreed to be 6 head of cattle, 6 goats, and an unnamed sum of money. Dang, I hope my wife isn't gonna be that expensive.


It was a cool and fascinating experience and I'm really glad I got to go, but it's probably not something I need to see again. From what I've heard though, each tribe had slightly different spins, and some take the whole drama thing to the extreme. I guess this one was pretty mild. With the bride in our possession, we reloaded the van, and I resumed my position in the rear, uggh. My back's still a bit sore, but I'll recover.