Uganda Days 43 & 44: Greek Coffee
I would have written a blog yesterday, but, well, nothing much happened. So I took the night off instead! Seriously, I went to work and came home, made dinner, did some reading and went to bed. All of which felt a little strange at the time, and it took me a while to realize it was because there was no Monday-night Game of Thrones, for the first time since I've been here. Now we all have to wait another ten months. There's a certain torture attached to being a Game of Thrones fan, no? Forty-two weeks of waiting for ten episodes (or even less next year!), then repeat.
Yesterday at work we did start calling people to set up interviews for the report, so that's finally happening. We scheduled two each on Thursday and Friday, though the timing could hardly be more inconvenient. Four different locations, all across the city, and none are back-to-back. But at least I won't be in the office much!
Which brings me to today. Shortly after we got in this morning, we received a call from another person (who hadn't gotten back to us yesterday) saying they could meet at 11:30—today. So we spent the next couple of hours coming up with a questionnaire and otherwise preparing. A bit frenzied at first, but we had plenty of time. It was also a little bit stressful that our supervisor wasn't coming along, which meant Aliana and I would be conducting our first real, external interview on our own, with two hours' notice. I think we did alright though.
Anyway, we were soon on our way. There were no FHRI drivers around, so we had to take bodas. Our interviewee was a national coordinator at one of the governmental legal aid organizations. It was also quite exciting because this interviewee worked out of the High Court in Kampala. I've driven past it many times, but never had the chance to go in. Of course, we wouldn't be going into any actual courtrooms or anything today, but still, it was cool to be there. And if I had to guess, I'd say we'll probably be back at some point again in the future for more interviews.
Full disclosure...on the way in, I said, out loud, "I have to remember to take a picture here before we leave", and then proceeded to forget entirely until several hours later. You'd think after 44 days of blogging I'd be a little better at remembering to do these things.
Other than that, the interview went well, I think.
It was just about lunch time when we finished, so we hopped on a couple of bodas again and went straight to Patisserie instead of work. Lunch was the usual. Back at the office, I found myself once again on transcription duty. Thankfully, the interview today was shorter than the last one, and I managed to finish it just before quitting time at the end of the day.
Pretty sure I have carpal tunnel in my left hand, mind you, but at least I got it done.
After work, I came home, changed, and went straight back out the door to meet André for dinner. This week's instalment in our culinary world tour was Greece, at a restaurant called Mythos.
Like many of the other restaurants we've been to, this place was really nice, and the food was really good. We started with some pita and hummus and some other kind of dip with a Greek name I couldn't pronounce. Sufficiently full, we moved on to the next course. I had chicken souvlaki, mostly because I wanted tzatziki.
I capped it off with a "Greek coffee", which looked suspiciously like an espresso. Of course I ate WAY too much food. It was delicious, but my stomach isn't thrilled at the moment.
Tomorrow is Eid, which is actually a public holiday in Uganda, so no work for me! Well, I actually have to do a bit of work in preparation for our interviews on Thursday and Friday, but that won't be too strenuous. Other than that, my to-do list is basically limited to sleeping in and gratuitous coffee.
But for now—good night!