To begin with: the hotel was pleasant enough, but a meal at the restaurant involved waiting for hours, barely edible food, and paying nearly as much as we paid for spending the night. Also, doing business in Uganda seems to involve collecting an extraordinarily large number of people together, whereupon they all sit around and wait.
The second day that we were here, we went on a long expidition to procure a cell phone and look at apartments. We had a driver and a translator (a teacher from the orphanage), and picked up various other people as we went along. All these people managed to find us two apartments, the second one of which seemed promising and was immediately available. While waiting (two hours) for our dinner, I decided that we might as well move in the next day. Here is the story of that quite spectacular day.
First of all, we (meaning Emerson) are waking up very early, before 6. With all the ordinary (extraordinary?) dallying over morning getting-ready routine, we still arrived at the breakfast buffet as it was arriving gradually, in pieces. I suggested to the hotel clerk that we might check out today, packed up our bags, and headed up to the orphanage. The day before, our morning request had turned into a vague "after lunch" meeting with the driver, who arrived 30 minutes after the named hour, so I was quite surprised when the driver arrived within minutes and everyone was prepared to move us out. "Everyone" -- remember the part about collecting extra people? Today, the guard at the orphanage thought we ought to look at a different apartment and stay there instead, so after quite a bit of discussion Simon came along too, and we would check out another place.
First, we had to get our bags from the hotel -- which seemed to actually have a check-out time, which surely must be the only "time" in Kampala. Our bags did not all fit in the little car, so we put the others behind the desk -- so remember, this entire story takes place with half our worldly possesions in the car with us, but whatever it was that I particularly needed, it was sure to be in the other suitcases. I went to pay my bill, which took tens of thousands of shillings. There are about 2500 Uganda shillings to the dollar, which means it's one of those currencies that gets very confusing as one gets to larger amounts. It is not particularly relevant, but very typical, that the hotel desk did not have the last couple thousand shillings in change for me, so three hotel clerks, the driver, the guide, Emerson and I, sat around for probably 10 or 15 minutes while another clerk and a manager looked in all the other possible places for change.
The other apartment is off the end of Gaba Road (where we had been), and is within walking distance of a market area, the orphanage, AND Lake Victoria. It is surrounded by trees and grass and quite quiet and peaceful, and spacious and open inside, so I decided that I liked it better than the place the day before (especially because of the walking distance). Now there is no upfront declaration of logistics when apartment-hunting in Uganda; you have to look at everything and ask questions and the apartment-shower has to find other people who then call other people to answer your questions, and after everyone sits around gazing into space together for a while (except Emerson; he's bad at the gazing-into-space part), THEN they might tell you what the price is, or any other conditions.
So this apartment was not currently furnished, but it COULD be furnished, but what did we want, and we'd have to see about that. I was glad I had Simon to negotiate for me; I know enough about negotiating to know the right balance of doubtfulness and demandingness, and I could recognize that Simon was striking that balance and that I would not have been able to exude the right kind of confidence. The ridiculous thing at this point, was that they needed some time to collect the furniture and things, which I wouldn't have minded giving them, but I had JUST checked out of the hotel, so I actually couldn't. Then the tricky part was that they didn't want to collect the furniture until they got payment, but we didn't want to pay them until we saw that they were actually going to collect the furniture. That took a while of sitting around, during which the guy showing us the apartment collected another guy, and called his boss multiple times. Also, Apartment Guy and Simon compared notes, and realized that they were from the North and the East of Uganda, and therefore they were "the same," and both very different from the way people are around here, so they could trust each other like brothers. Once we were away, Simon told me that he didn't trust the guy with much of anything whatsoever, but it seemed to help at the time. Then there was negotiating the price, and how much was going to be paid when and in what kind of currency. All of this took a great deal of waiting for the boss to call back, during which my bored child inspired us to play Go Fish with the driver and Simon, which was quite charming.
We figured out the price, and then I had to go and get the money. I had brought lots of cash with me, but not enough to plan on paying for a whole months' apartment rent on the third day. So I searched through the suitcases to see how much I had; apparently still $360 in American dollars, and some shillings -- that is, a few hundred thousand. He wanted $700 in dollars for the month; actually, he wanted two months up front, but I vetoed that. So we headed back in towards town to find an ATM. It was noon by this point, and Emerson and I were both getting starving and grumpy. Remember the above part where I was surprised when the driver came so quickly? That meant I had packed a couple hours' worth of snacks and water, not the whole day, so I had just enough snacks to take the edge off, and we finished our bottle of water.
The first ATM took my bank card, has us wait for a long time, spit the card back out, and froze. It took a while to get someone from the bank to figure out that the network had failed and it wasn't just my card -- which had me worried!
So we went to another ATM down the street. This one took my bank card, and allowed me to take out 700,000 shillings, which was not enough for the rent. So I tried the credit cards I had brought, but they either didn't have a PIN or I didn't know it. This ATM had no bank attached. The first card wouldn't allow me to take out any more.
There followed a large amount of confusion about how much money I had, in the different currencies, and whether it was more or less than the rent amount. It was made much more difficult by my hunger and the large number of zeroes involved. Normally, I can multiply a hundred thousand by ten, but at the time I just couldn't imagine that we were actually up to a million, and still not getting very far. Then, when we got back to the apartment, we were further confused by waiting for the Apartment Guy to call someone else to figure out what the exact exchange rate was, since the price had been quoted in dollars. Meanwhile, Apartment Guy #2 arrived, carrying an official looking notebook which apparently didn't contain any official papers. He helped us sit around and wait.
After a while we went downstairs to the apartment and sat around and waited while the Apartment Guys brought in a couch, which absolutely fascinated Emerson. Then he brought in a box of dishes, and asked how many plates I wanted. I said six. He stared at his box for a while, and I realized it was only a set of four. He said perhaps he would leave some bowls instead, and piled (very carefully, one at at time) four plates and two bowls. I said I actually wanted bowls too. Really, bowls? So the bowls are carefully added to the pile. Any small plates? Yes, I want those too. One? No, another one? .... Another one? .... And thus was the entire box of four place settings unloaded very gradually.
After a while, Simon suggested that I stay there to direct the possibility of furniture entering, while he and the driver went to get lunch. I managed to not start crying before I said that Emerson and I wanted to get lunch as well. Then there was a discussion about not leaving our bags with the Apartment Guys, whom Simon did not trust and Yassim apparently thought were swindlers of the worst nature. Us, all our bags, and all my money headed off for lunch, and agreed to come back and meet the apartment owner at 5:00.
At this point, I had figured out that I had just a little bit left over after I would have paid the rent, with which I needed to feed Emerson and myself for the next 24 hours until I could use my bank card again. So I was in that odd position of having enough money, but not nearly enough money actually available.
Fortunately, Simon took us to a different restaurant, where the meals were 2000-6000 apeice, instead of 22,000. I decided to get rice, and beans, and that Emerson and I would share (which we had been doing all along), and then I would have enough left over for groceries that evening.
We had water, and tea, and waited and waited and waited for the waitress to come take our orders. Eventually she meandered by, and I asked for rice: "no have." Okay, we'll have the chips. And an order of beans: "no have." This was an even bigger disappointment; I just wanted something nice and plain after too much odd and greasy food. I settled on chicken, which also cost three times as much. She asked "two plates," which I took to mean that she would bring the food with two plates, and so I agreed. The men had sat down with us, but after we had waited a while longer for the food, they announced that this place didn't have any food they liked, and they were going to walk somewhere else and be back before we finished.
After another eternity or so, our food came: TWO plates of chips and chicken. I was so disappointed to see our food tab double, when it had already doubled! I was also disappointed to see the two giant piles of chips, which was not the healthful kind of food we needed to make our tummies feel good.
Luckily, the chicken was actually pretty good. We managed to eat almost everything, and I just figured that would have to be our main meal of the day (which turned out to be just as well). The men were not yet back, but I was NOT going to sit around and wait for them any longer, so we went for a little walk; I figured they would see us going by, which they did, and of course I got a little scolding.
We all went up to the orphanage for a while, to wait for 5:00 and the apartment owne
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