EMI Videos

Here are some likes to some videos done by other organizations featuring eMi.  This will give you a great feel for the projects that eMi does.

Kenya Relief - eMi video

eMi - East Africa - Construction Management

Living like a Ugandan

I write that title to try and get you a feel for ‘poor living’, but in all reality we were living like kings in comparison to even the wealthy Ugandans. 

                Sleeping:  Nine men in one room never makes for a good night of sleep.  My bed is a normal steel frame with a wood plank and 3 inches of foam on top.  Every time I flip over I’m sure to wake everyone with a loud screech. Two nights of rain on the tin roof, and to put it as Jeff would (a missionary and our main contact for the project) when it rains, it’s like a fire hose. And, on the opening morning I was privileged to wake up with a friendly and rather large spider inside my mosquito net (a little ironic… I thought it was supposed to keep bugs out).

                Food: Rolex (rolled eggs) every morning (with that African instant coffee that I just seem to love).  Rice, beans, potatoes (they called them irish), metoke’ (like cooked plantains), poshoe (like grits), one bite size chunk of gristly meat, and g-nut sauce (… oh, the g-nut sauce…) everyday for lunch and dinner.  G-nuts are ground nuts (basically peanuts).  I have no idea why this soupy purple sauce was called g-nut sauce. I believe that it was largely eggplant based.  About half of us, along with half of the Ugandan staff, were sick one day.  All of the Ugandan guards said it must have been the g-nut sauce the night before.  I choose to stay away from the g-nut sauce after that.  My face about sums it up it the picture above, and I think that may have even been the g-nut sauce night.

The Kitchen

                Bathing: 1. Find a jug, soap, and bucket.

                                2. Fill jug at water storage tank (the only source of water)

                                3. Haul jug down to shower stalls

                                4. Now that you’re hot and sweaty, strip down and splash yourself.

                                5. Apply soap

                                6. Splash yourself again.

                This sounds like a lot of complaining, but I actually didn’t mind it. Simple living, refreshing outdoor baths, and most of our team really dreaded the meals, but I found them to be not half bad.  I was actually really thankful to live (a little bit) more like a Ugandan.  Humbling. And it allows for a better experience of what living is like for probably half of the world.

                Even with all of that, I will mention again that we lived like kings, in comparison to everyone else.  It seemed we drank more water in a day than the average Ugandan does in a week.  We had our emergency trail mix and beef jerky to snack on.  Our work was sitting in the office while Ugandans carried lumber up the steep embankment on their heads.  All of our meals where cooked for us (thanks Sam; the majority of a Ugandan’s time is spent preparing meals).  And a lot of the Ugandan workers were working separated from their families in order to provide and send money home (at a rate of 2 dollars a day, which was pretty good in relation to the majority).