I am the kind of person who
has had to deal with people older, wiser, successful…and way more educated that
myself…. my time is Uganda was the same way…. Dealing with mostly people that
are way older than me…. Some that probably understood the system better than me
….the only way I could survive such an ordeal was the fact that on October 22
last year I turned 28 years old while I was in Uganda.
So what that means is that
this year I will be 29 years old and I will begin to live my last year as a
twenty something year old. Now that does not means that the child in me would
go away or anything! No, it simply means that I am going to understand more of
what I want and what I am capable of accomplishing.
Personally, I am an
extrovert, a right brained kind of a fellow…my personality is just that, if I
was a dog I would be a Shepard, a German Shepard that is…and being that my
brain allows me to look at things more at whole; for example, if I sit at your
desk at your job…I am learning so much more about you with what I am seeing
than what you are telling me about you…I feel the say way about how people feel
about me; I am an open book/person and it is easy for me to share my
experiences and being with others.
That being said, I find
myself constantly in front of people that do not know me; don’t care for me; or
view me negatively sometimes; at times it was because of my long hair…other
times it was my American Swagger;
I explained to so many people
about my intentions of being founder and president of a TRUEINITIATIVE; I found
myself drafting documentations, such as by-laws, work plans, I had to find
board members and volunteers. Yes human beings that can work for free. I have
had to find donors. Yes human beings that are willing to hand me one-hundred or
one-thousand bucks..trusting me to put it to good use…
Being that I will be 30 soon
and I have been a teacher most of my twenties, I have learnt how to put up with
“the should-of” in my life, I have learnt to put off societal pressures; yes,
people ask when I am getting married, I don’t have kids, most people in Uganda
can’t understand how an almost thirty year old can be there unmarried and with
no kids…nobody, I mean, nobody wants to trust a person like that down here…but
two years before I turn thirty I know, I am not going to care too much about
what others think about me; and honestly I cannot spend one second of my life
on negativity.
I FACED A LOT OF NEGATIVITY
while seeking the paperwork of TRUEINITIATIVE; I don’t even know why they call
it an NGO (Non-Governmental Organization or a Non-Profit …because A.) you have
to get approval from the government to run an NGO, which means the government
is giving you authorization to run an organization B.) The fact that a
successful NGO has to be ran like a business I have to argue that a non profit is
a business that brings in profits for the economy in which it operates and its
benefiting populations….
The fact is running a
non-profit cost money; and that’s why I choose to call what I do (social
entrepreneurship); non-profits have to hire contractors of all sorts, website
designer, graphic designers, etcs…some places it is hard to find a legal
consultant that would do work pro-bono. Let’s not mention the money spent on
fieldwork, paperwork, travel, air and land, hotels, events and such things. I
would call that a business, period!
There’s no business venture
that has grantee success; and most business success is dependent on its owners
and those that run it. Nothing can be firmer than that when it comes to running
an NGO.
It is mid November 2013 here
in Uganda and it is a rainy season; it rains everywhere; it is 10AM and it has
rained on me most of the morning as I made my way to the internal affairs ministry
office to register for NGO status, I couple of days ago I had come to the same
office and picked a pamphlet that had all the recommendations; I have them all
or I thought I did.
A bunch of us are waiting
outside in a green tent; people are here for different reasons, from passports
to work permits to what have you… 10AM became 11:30AM it became 12:30PM it
became 1PM and now it was 2PM…the person I am waiting on is no where to be
seen.
After all these hours, I have
went from being wet, to feeling hungry to being pissed off, to having my phone
calls not answered or being hung up on.. I am holding five folders full of wet
paper, I am ready to go back to the village …at about 2:30 PM I got up and
walked through the gates of internal affairs ministry.
I took a long walk from Jinja
Road without looking back to the old taxi park where I would board a taxi
heading back to the village…I could not get over the fact the my time was
wasted and I was treated like a second grader in a bathroom line by someone in
a position of power, someone way older than me.
That moment I realized that
what I had got myself into wasn’t easy and that I wasn’t going to quit because
I had invested so much time in this and I had flown about 9000 miles to be
treated like crap a few weeks ago. And if it was not me; someone else would be
doing this and there is a reason why it is me, because I can handle this … “I
have got to keep on moving,” I said to myself!
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