Cultural Differences and More Pictures
So in the past 2 days, I've had a crash course in differences between US and Ugandan culture.
2 days ago, we had a meeting with the Infectious Disease Institute, which is one of the groups who helps out with funding and is really interested in training and surveillance. Now at this meeting, the goal was to have all the surveillance data analyzed (the past few weeks have been full of work getting the data entered) and gotten to the point where it could be presented well, and thus Shereen, Grant, and I worked really hard on the presentation of the data (graphs, tables, all sorts of stuff).
I had gotten a call from Hasifa the day before, and she was concerned about who would be presenting the data, because she hadn't seen the coding or the output of the coding yet, and she asked if Shereen and I would present, and so I just said, "errrr sure, we can do that." I figured it would be a small meeting, and it'd be no big deal, especially since we had done pretty much the same presentation before, just without the graphs.
The coding was pretty intense, and we only got finished about 10 minutes before the meeting, and ran around printing out copies. When we got to the meeting, I was surprised to see how senior these people were- I was expecting a small office meeting like the sort we have in the UCSF-Makerere University surveillance meetings. After a few introductions, and a presentation, the surveillance group called to present. There was a big awkward pause, and I was thinking that Grant would just start presenting, but when he didn't say anything, I just started talking to break the silence- we just started going over what was on the paper, pretty straightforward, or at least so I thought.
After the meeting, later that night, I got an angry call from Hasifa, covering topics ranging from trying to steal the project for myself, to hoarding the data, and basically being a very bad person. I was pretty stunned the entire conversation- all I could say was sorry and I didn't realize and that wasn't my intentions...
After sitting down and thinking it through, and also talking about it with Grant (who also got a call from Hasifa) I could definitely see why she was so upset. In Uganda, it seems to be tradition or custom that you acknowledge everyone that contributed to the project before you talk about what work has been done, so that was my first mistake. Second mistake was sitting holed up in an office with Shereen coding away, without giving updates to Hasifa regularly (we were regularly updating Allen, who is the main data entry person for the surveillance project, and who also deserves a lot of credit). By sitting in the office all day and coding and also sitting on a lot of photos of log books, it made it look like we (but mainly I) were hording data and results. Third big mistake was missing a meeting that would have set everything straight- it was supposed to be the day before the presentation, but Shereen and I didn't know that there even was a meeting, and Grant had forgotten about it, and so even though there was no set time for the meeting, we ended up not having it- this exacerbated the lack of transparancy problem, and if the meeting had happened, we probably could have avoided the entire situation.
The next day (yesterday) I came in with Shereen, found Hasifa, apologized profusely, and Hasifa told me that the slate was clean, and that we were starting over from scratch, with no ill will. We gave Allen all the files and all the data and all the photos we had, and asked if she was mad at us too, but apparently she didn't even know that anyone was mad in the first place and hadn't felt left out at all (probably because we kept in touch with her almost every day, if not multiple times a day).
With everything settled, Shereen and I took the rest of the day off- we walked to Garden City so that Shereen could get the ingredients needed for a fancy dinner she was going to cook, took a taxi back, and then Shereen went to the pool at the Blue Mango, and I went downtown to wander around and check out this craft market that I had heard was at the National Theater.
Later that night, we got invited by a UC Berkeley/UCSF prof named George Rutherford to the fanciest place in town- a restaurant named Fez. We all had interesting things to eat, but my dish (a potroast with apple) ended up being what appeared to be half a pig, and was pretty difficult to eat. Nevertheless, it was at least entertaining to everyone at the table to see this monstrosity in front of me. I joked it was like doing surgery, but then someone commented that the difference was that I was eating my patient, and then everyone agreed that we shouldn't take the analogy any further.
And now, pictures:
Construction around downtown Kampala:
Parliament:
Random inspirational phrases put up on billboards throughout the city:
Sam said that he saw one posting that was of a front page of a newspaper, with the heading "Soldier shoots off boy's testicles." Not quite so inspirational.
Shereen and I working hard:
Aliza's brother's knit hat (hope he likes it).
In other exciting news from home, Harry (the horse that Paula and I own) is doing fantastically- he's enjoying his new home at Mt. Diablo, and he's doing a ton of trail riding and bareback riding in his 90 acre pasture. He's making friends with the other horses, and when I get back, I'm looking forward to doing at least 2 trail rides a week. If I ever figure out the logistics, I'm really excited to be able to do a few overnight rides out into the hundreds of miles of trails that are supposed to be available... Paula's doing a great job training him and getting him in shape. In the short week or two that we have when I get back from Uganda, we'll hopefully be going out a lot to ride and relax before she has to go back to TN for veterinary school. Here's a pic of the two- unfortunately, I don't have any pictures from Harry's new home.
2 days ago, we had a meeting with the Infectious Disease Institute, which is one of the groups who helps out with funding and is really interested in training and surveillance. Now at this meeting, the goal was to have all the surveillance data analyzed (the past few weeks have been full of work getting the data entered) and gotten to the point where it could be presented well, and thus Shereen, Grant, and I worked really hard on the presentation of the data (graphs, tables, all sorts of stuff).
I had gotten a call from Hasifa the day before, and she was concerned about who would be presenting the data, because she hadn't seen the coding or the output of the coding yet, and she asked if Shereen and I would present, and so I just said, "errrr sure, we can do that." I figured it would be a small meeting, and it'd be no big deal, especially since we had done pretty much the same presentation before, just without the graphs.
The coding was pretty intense, and we only got finished about 10 minutes before the meeting, and ran around printing out copies. When we got to the meeting, I was surprised to see how senior these people were- I was expecting a small office meeting like the sort we have in the UCSF-Makerere University surveillance meetings. After a few introductions, and a presentation, the surveillance group called to present. There was a big awkward pause, and I was thinking that Grant would just start presenting, but when he didn't say anything, I just started talking to break the silence- we just started going over what was on the paper, pretty straightforward, or at least so I thought.
After the meeting, later that night, I got an angry call from Hasifa, covering topics ranging from trying to steal the project for myself, to hoarding the data, and basically being a very bad person. I was pretty stunned the entire conversation- all I could say was sorry and I didn't realize and that wasn't my intentions...
After sitting down and thinking it through, and also talking about it with Grant (who also got a call from Hasifa) I could definitely see why she was so upset. In Uganda, it seems to be tradition or custom that you acknowledge everyone that contributed to the project before you talk about what work has been done, so that was my first mistake. Second mistake was sitting holed up in an office with Shereen coding away, without giving updates to Hasifa regularly (we were regularly updating Allen, who is the main data entry person for the surveillance project, and who also deserves a lot of credit). By sitting in the office all day and coding and also sitting on a lot of photos of log books, it made it look like we (but mainly I) were hording data and results. Third big mistake was missing a meeting that would have set everything straight- it was supposed to be the day before the presentation, but Shereen and I didn't know that there even was a meeting, and Grant had forgotten about it, and so even though there was no set time for the meeting, we ended up not having it- this exacerbated the lack of transparancy problem, and if the meeting had happened, we probably could have avoided the entire situation.
The next day (yesterday) I came in with Shereen, found Hasifa, apologized profusely, and Hasifa told me that the slate was clean, and that we were starting over from scratch, with no ill will. We gave Allen all the files and all the data and all the photos we had, and asked if she was mad at us too, but apparently she didn't even know that anyone was mad in the first place and hadn't felt left out at all (probably because we kept in touch with her almost every day, if not multiple times a day).
With everything settled, Shereen and I took the rest of the day off- we walked to Garden City so that Shereen could get the ingredients needed for a fancy dinner she was going to cook, took a taxi back, and then Shereen went to the pool at the Blue Mango, and I went downtown to wander around and check out this craft market that I had heard was at the National Theater.
Later that night, we got invited by a UC Berkeley/UCSF prof named George Rutherford to the fanciest place in town- a restaurant named Fez. We all had interesting things to eat, but my dish (a potroast with apple) ended up being what appeared to be half a pig, and was pretty difficult to eat. Nevertheless, it was at least entertaining to everyone at the table to see this monstrosity in front of me. I joked it was like doing surgery, but then someone commented that the difference was that I was eating my patient, and then everyone agreed that we shouldn't take the analogy any further.
And now, pictures:
Construction around downtown Kampala:
Parliament:
Random inspirational phrases put up on billboards throughout the city:
Sam said that he saw one posting that was of a front page of a newspaper, with the heading "Soldier shoots off boy's testicles." Not quite so inspirational.
Shereen and I working hard:
Aliza's brother's knit hat (hope he likes it).
In other exciting news from home, Harry (the horse that Paula and I own) is doing fantastically- he's enjoying his new home at Mt. Diablo, and he's doing a ton of trail riding and bareback riding in his 90 acre pasture. He's making friends with the other horses, and when I get back, I'm looking forward to doing at least 2 trail rides a week. If I ever figure out the logistics, I'm really excited to be able to do a few overnight rides out into the hundreds of miles of trails that are supposed to be available... Paula's doing a great job training him and getting him in shape. In the short week or two that we have when I get back from Uganda, we'll hopefully be going out a lot to ride and relax before she has to go back to TN for veterinary school. Here's a pic of the two- unfortunately, I don't have any pictures from Harry's new home.
posted by Vince at 9:37 PM
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