the rooster crows at seven

Greetings from Jinja. I missed my Monday night deadline, so here is a tasty Tuesday blog. I am currently sitting at the dining room table watching Andrea and Jenny pack for their shop-fest in Kampala. We are in the process of designing and producing many new styles of necklaces and bags, so we need lots of orange paper and stretchy plastic line and fabric lining and more scraps. I'm happy that Andrea is here and likes to do this stuff. Kampala is quite overwhelming. Today I'm going to drop off the van at the mechanic's house so he can fix the brakes (yay for stopping!) and research some more cell phone plans. Then I get to go find the landlord for the tailoring compound and put down a deposit on another garage. Then I'll go to FINCA bank, the best poor-people's bank ever, and deposit some dough for some SUUBI ladies. Then, if it's not to hot and I'm not too tired, I might varnish some beads. I should at least buy some methylated spirits to prep the varnish. Then in the evening maybe to the market to do some food shopping.

The past week was mostly fun. We decided to take the plunge and divide the SUUBI group into three subgroups. We got colored stickers, labled them A, B, C, and wrote up a summary to announce at the beginning of the Saturday meeting. We had a hard time deciding what to order from the ladies for the following week. We need black box-shaped beads for bracelets. We also need orange beads, but didn't yet get the paper printed in the proper color. We need giant red, yellow, brown, and orange beads with giant holes and a new (can I say complicated?) flavour. We also promised the ladies that we would purchase the same amount from them each week. So if group A was doing black box beads, how many giant-hole beads from group B does that equal? We did our best job with the math, but there was a lot of guessing involved.

One of the funnest parts of my job is getting to pray at the beginning of the meetings. Now, the ladies are pretty conservative about their prayers, but I'm not one to limit myself to just one deity. We need all the help we can get. I have a great time invoking the assistance of the muses of patience and helpfulness and creativity as well as the higher powers of love and understanding. I like to pray for thankfulness and thank everyone for their prayers. Sometimes we pray for the American stock market and sometimes for the health of sick children. I've never enjoyed praying so much.

So after the prayer, I started introducing the concept of three groups. I already did some pre-teaching at English class on the previous Wednesday, so I didn't have 94 Acholi women looking at me like I was crazy. (It was more like 65) I get to stand up and make a few statements which are translated by Santa into Luo (the language of the Acholi people) For some reason, as I'm being translated, my phrases get shorter and shorter. I'll start out saying "We're going to split the SUUBI group into three smaller groups. We will all still meet together on Saturdays and be paid the same, but each group will make different necklaces." and Santa will say "Luo. Luo. Luo. Acholi. Acholi. Acholi." And then the ladies will start talking amongst themselves and firing questions in Luo back in my direction. So after a few exchanges like this, my speech gets a lot shorter. I'll say "Group A will make..." and look at Santa and she'll say "Group A. Luo. Luo. Luo." "...80 giant red, yellow, orange, and brown beads." and look at Santa to translate again. I don't think it makes anything easier, but I retain control of the conversation.

This time I drew a three by three chart on the blackboard. Across each row I wrote the Group name and what we were ordering for the 30th of Jan and the 6th of Feb. I even color coded it. As it turns out, this may not be the best way to organize and communicate information to unschooled, mostly illiterate African women, but I don't think it was the worst way. We spent the next 30 minutes clarifying and explaining. Different ladies got up and stood in front of the board and pointed to the squares that made up the chart and explained each one. Some ladies chastised others for talking in the middle of the explanation. And others just appeared to sit and nod and (hopefully) understand.

As each lady came up to sell their necklaces, we put a sticker on their name badge, or on their money if they didn't have one and explained to each of them individually what their order was for the following week. Each lady is supposed to move from left to right in front of our coffee table (our sign of power and authority) first handing her necklaces to Jenny, who checks for tension and length and passes them to Andrea, who checks the clasps. If the necklaces pass, Marayah asks the woman for her name badge and asks her to sign the buying sheet and I hand out the right amount of money. Easy enough. Some ladies don't like this left to right business and will sit themselves down right in the middle of the process and thrust their necklaces into the mix. Some ladies bring necklaces for other ladies and will have piles of necklaces. Some bring necklaces from the previous week that they had to take home and fix. Greetings are very important, culturally speaking, so each lady greets each one of us as she enters the building and again as she sells her necklaces to us.

Approximately two and a half hours later, we have paid approximately 1.7 million shillings to 94 women and collected just under 400 necklaces. All in a day's work.