Back to My Roots: On Returning to a Village
April 27, 2013 § 1 Comment
Most of the women we work with at Nakate are mothers, if not grandmothers.
We tell the story of their lives alongside our own.
In 2010, we launched out of Kakooge with Agnes Kabugo, a mother of three, and around 30 grandmothers and mothers making handmade pieces to test out in an American market.
As Mother’s Day approaches, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the mothers in my life – not only my own, but these women I work with, and that stand with me at Nakate.
This mother’s day, I choose to honor the women that first stood with me.
The Kakooge Collection – a Journey Back to our Roots, is my way of taking you back to the stories that Nakate began with.
Designer Amira Mednick has partnered with me to create a line that re-purposes beads from my first ever buying trip to Uganda. Together with South American knotting techniques and sterling silver, 14k gold or brass, these beads celebrate Nakate’s Kuzua, or beginning, in Uganda.
We invite you to celebrate your own mother through returning to our roots with us – to travel back to the place where it all began, here at Nakate. Honor her through purchasing a piece supporting the kind women that make not only our businesses, but our very lives, the beautiful journeys we experience them to be.
Where Will She Take Africa?
Picking Me for Me: On the Decision to Be my Boss at 21
April 7, 2013 § 1 Comment
I loved Tory Johnson‘s recent tweet on picking her career as a female entrepreneur. It was both gut level honest and powerful – a combo I’ve come to expect from successful female entrepreneurs.
She said that she couldn’t have felt confident in her career if she didn’t work as her own boss.
As in,
“The only way I’d ever feel confident and comfortable in my career is to be my own boss.”
I was sending out late night invites for an event, killing a bottle of pinot, making dinner after 10 PM and feeling particularly excited about a new designer I have lined up for 2014.
Johnson made me pause. She was blowing something wide open that I hadn’t really admitted to myself yet.
I picked me for me.
I’ve been hung up on it ever since: trying, for a few days now, to figure out why I did that, at 21 – hungover on tequila shots outside of Long Beach with a new business license, more than my fair share of ignorance and a cancelled ticket to Washington DC.
After careful consideration, I’m convinced that I picked me, partly, because I had no idea what the fuck was up. I was idealistic, a little cocky and definitely felt that a few trips through Dubai made me the shit. I probably also picked me because I had no damn clue that I was picking up arms for John Mayer might aptly describe as the, “war of my life” – a battle to explain me for me to everyone I knew, including myself. I had no idea how lonely that would feel, or how insecure I could get without a boss.
I had to shake my head at myself a little, the more I thought about it. If Shanley 1.5 had been any less cocky, idealistically emotional and/or blissfully ignorant she may not have picked me.
But I’m sure as hell glad she did.
A little over two years later, I’ve learned that you don’t pick yourself once. I had to pick me all over again at 22, when I almost walked out on me for a journalism job. Me and me went at it again at 23, when I almost quit on me to go back to business school. At 24, my secret fantasy is joining a hidden hippie commune somewhere in Nevada City, CA where nobody can give me any responsibility (or force me to wear pants) again in my life.
Yes, that’s still a thing.
I’ve learned, in these times, that I picked me for me at 21 because I knew I wouldn’t let me quit.
I knew I’d push until I cried, and hurt, felt totally out on a limb insecure and wanted to walk away because I was in over my head. Then, I’d push me just a little further. I picked me because I knew I’d demand that I would fix my mistakes, answer my phone on weekends, get up early and stay up late, do the work and show up, over and over and over again before I’d ever get paid. I picked me because I knew I would push myself to learn and do things that no one else would hire me for just yet.
At 22, I picked me again because I knew I was too deep in to quit – that I was learning things I couldn’t learn as quickly any other way. And, I had some crazy sense that I was born to be in charge. I would learn leadership because I was choosing to lead. I’d get the business education I was lacking because I was jumping into business. I would meet and network with incredible people that would help me because, well, I’ve worked with me before. And I know that networking is one of my strengths.
23 was the year I picked me because I needed a win, and I knew I was the only person that could get one for me. I picked me that year because I knew that if I didn’t, nobody else would. I called on my own raised hand, packed my own bags, got myself out of my own rut and pushed past my own self doubt.
At 24, I picked me for me because I loved my work too much not to.
At the end of a long day, when the new line comes together, the event space is full, the quality control problems are fixed or the impossible hurdle is finally knocked down, I’m aware that what I knew, when I picked me for me, was that I needed to know that I was good enough for myself.
Like Johnson, I knew, at 21, that that was the only way I’d be confident – was the only way I’d be comfortable. And, when I say comfortable, I mean in a deep (sometimes dark and barely reachable) place in my soul and my psyche. Because my job is the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever done.
I picked me because I had no idea how excruciatingly difficult it would be to pick me. I didn’t know I’d pay in 60 hour weeks and part time jobs, weeks with beans and rice and tight, tight budgets and mornings wrestling with self doubt.
But, I’d pick me again, without blinking. I know, now, that all that difficulty is part of building a story.
Any entrepreneur worth her shit will tell you that, after she’s picked her for her for a while.
Now, let’s be honest, I have to admit, at long last, that I picked me because I was all I had.
I picked me because I thought I could.
But I pick me again when I wake up each day because I’ve proved I can.
Death, Cultural Customs and the Interaction between a Mourning Period and Social Entrepreneurship
December 10, 2012 § 1 Comment
In 1997, a Makerere University study reported that for a widow to be socially integrated into local support systems, she needs four factors in her favor. The first factor is the composition and culture of her society. Second is her community, and how it can help her overcome her sadness. Third the widow’s recovery from her problems depends on the support she gets from the family of her late husband. Fourth is a favorable neighborhood and working environment.
I was in Uganda three days after the World Cup bombings. An explosive ripped through a city restaurant and sports club in Kampala. 74 people were dead. Yoweri Museveni declared a one week mourning period.
There are ways to be born, there are ways to celebrate love between two people, and there are ways to die. Our cultures and our families collectively dictate the way we do these things, and I believe we can learn more than we often realize from the way someone else does any one of them.
I remember sitting on a stoop in a compound, listening to seven women talk about their favorable conditions after their husband died. He left a long, U shaped building, with single apartments each owned by a single wife.
“Thank God he provided for us,” one told me. “He was a good man.”
I never thought more about the legacy a person leaves behind than I did in Uganda, that year. It showed itself in the material provision that individuals left behind, in the way communities mourned and in the manner in which the deceased’s family treated any relatives joined to them through marriage. We have elements of this in my culture too. But the societal expectation behind customs of mourning in Uganda seemed to put color and honor to death.
Here, you know, we “need to start moving again.” We know that, “life goes on.” The emotional expectation is that grieving will change the way we perceive our lives, but we laud pushing through as normally as possible. Society does not provide a widow or grieving mother protection from work, from the ripping feeling of time moving forward, from responsibilities. But, in Uganda, they demand that it all come to a grinding halt.
Ugandan surgeon and politician Speciosa Kazibwe wrote in 2008 that, “Most of us spend [more of] our time doing burials than any other thing, especially because of HIV/AIDS and malaria which is very prevalent in Uganda.”
Doing business in a culture takes customs from the classroom to life, so to speak. And, I believe that one of the benefits of “trade versus aid” is that business forces you to engage customs, while aid often provides an excuse for dismissing them as unimportant.
Mourning periods provided scattered timetables in my life this winter, pouring in and taking over weeks at a time. It’s been four this season: three artisans and our lead artisan’s son, three weeks ago.
“This will change things, this week,” my manager’s voice was apologetic, while we discussed our lead artisan. “We can’t reach her during mourning.”
How many days? I ask.
Five.
“You didn’t expect that, working in Africa?” someone said to me recently. Like I should have expected death to come climbing in and hunker down on my desk while I run my business.
No. I didn’t. With ARVs and money in my partner’s pockets for treatment, I thought we’d avoid so many deaths. Somehow I ended up blaming myself – like I should have started my business sooner, grown it faster – done something. As if my business could act as some kind of Messiah, saving a community through the sales of accessories. And, that’s never what this was about. This was about a mutual celebration of the beauty of a culture’s craftsmanship, and sustainable development through it.
“This isn’t just fucking normal just because its East Africa,” I threw out. “It’s not normal. Death never becomes normal.”
And, so, I came to an impasse. Either I pushed to have women work through mourning periods, or I created a plan around them. And I came to the conclusion that traditional practices are higher dictators than the business practices a social entrepreneur like myself is attempting to implement – its not my job to change that.
There are local minds working on issues like these already – minds that understand their importance, and what their erosion might give or take to a culture and its economy. In 2003, BBC Africa discussed the pros and cons of ending costly funerals. Ms Kazibwe suggested, in her piece, that funeral practices are moved to Saturdays, and that each constituency within Uganda should have a mortuary with a fridge that could preserve corpses. Burials take up lots of time as well as productive vehicles, she noted.
“The idea sounds good if more time is to be saved for the sake of work. However, given the strong cultural rituals attached to death and burial of a relative, it is practically impossible to keep the body,” George, a gentleman from Musaka, argued in the comments below Kazibwe’s piece. “I know, for example, from the traditions of Buganda that it is unacceptable in society to go to work when someone has passed away in the same village until the body is buried. It is a strong belief that has existed for ages. So to change the status quo requires a lot of effort. Remember that traditional practices are not easily eroded in society!”
I think its rude to act like death is more acceptable at a certain latitude and longitude, bit of my friend’s head for insinuating it – and yet I caught myself doing the same thing – wondering why our lead artisan wasn’t on her game as usual, and then remembering her son just died. As if five days, in any case, could possibly be enough to be back upright.
I read and I struggled and I oscillated on these issues. And I landed on the truth that they have nothing to do with me. I can debate the economic effects, but I am not in the midst of the affected economy. I can wonder about funeral rituals, but I will never bury a family member of mine in a similar way. And, so, I’m learning that what matters is my cultural respect – my smart movement around these things, out of an acknowledgement that I have chosen to run a business in a society unlike my own.
We decided that, for us, its important to allow customs room to breathe, until they prove harmful. And, what I mean by that is causing immediate physical harm. Like the time I helped name my cook’s baby, and noticed a thin, white film of amniotic fluid that was never washed off his body. My village partner, Agnes, explained to me later that this was because of his mother’s family, and their superstition surrounding a newborn child being touched by water. That week, a friend of mine bought the family a baby kit as a gift, and Agnes took it to them and explained the health concerns surrounding following the custom.
I was pleased to find out how successful she’d been in explaining the risks, and how receptive my cook’s girlfriend had been in accepting a new way of doing things – one that was best for her child. But this line is a tight rope – you get that? It’s not my place to question traditions surrounding death, and its not my place to challenge the Shaman or to debate the way that a bride price might affect a family’s well being. And, it was Agnes’ place – a woman in her own community – to explain to her someone how she might be harming her kid. This is why I partner equally with locals. This is why I am not the one always on the ground.
It’s my place to give due honor to – show respect within – a culture that has different ways of giving birth and celebrating love and giving life over to death – and to allow that culture room to figure out these things on its own.
And, perhaps these rituals, in themselves, are teaching me something. These ways of being run like deep rivers beneath the women who work with me, carrying them along. I picture the erosion, like the caving in of deep banks of Ugandan red dirt, taking a culture with them. And I want to tread ever so lightly when it comes to inadvertently stealing tradition from a place – from a life running beneath a people who teach me how to stop, pay attention and appreciate all the new things I never knew about the world outside my own culture’s way of being.
And, so, we factored an extra week into our lead time, after this season – allowing for death, should it creep up, steal from my partners and sending them from their work for a week to honor the way that their traditions ask them to celebrate and honor the passing of life.
(Photo: Edward Echwalu for Nakate Project).
Looking Back on #Kony2012: Empathy Changes Everything
November 12, 2012 § Leave a Comment
There are moments of deep empathy in New York. Perhaps you don’t catch them if you’re not living here. Perhaps that’s where New Yorkers get their reputation from – 50 million tourists running around trying to learn the subway system, which direction to walk on the sidewalk, how to order coffee and a bagel and what direction, exactly, the Central Park reservoir is? 50 million people, on top of 8 million people, all trying to go about their daily lives.
At first you think its just you. An old woman off 14th street hit me in the knees with her cane during my third month here, and I wondered what I’d ever done to her until I saw her swinging at some other dirty rotten bastard fool yesterday. “You’re the fucking problem with this city!” she yelled as she chased him. And, in that moment, I knew it wasn’t me, it was her.
Then there’s the overweight homeless man who rides the F. He’s mute, or at least pretends to be. He’ll point at whatever you’re eating, then back at his mouth, over and over and over again until someone else caves and passes him some food, or he’s ignored by everyone all together. Either way, you’ll have him and his monstrous ass crack for about four stops, if you keep riding. A note to the new? He’s not a strawberry yoplait fan.
Neither is the girl who stepped in the yogurt he threw on the subway floor two weeks ago.
There’s all this pressure in New York just getting somewhere, you know? You’re here seeing the city and la-tee-da! You’d like to get to a tour on time, or to see a building before 5 pm. But that man running past you just might know he only has 30 seconds left to catch a train to an important meeting and way you’re walking could have made him 15 minutes late if he’s catching the C from Port Authority midday. In New York, 15 minutes late can mean that he missed the whole god damn thing.
But, if you live here, you know that comradery passes through when you least expect it – that second in passing when you finally make eye contact with the gentlemen you ride the 6 uptown with every morning, or the violinist who stands in the afternoons through the Children’s Gate on West 79th under a red painted arch on your way to Belvedere Castle. It doesn’t matter what kind of day I’ve been having, the violinist’s melody always calls to me to stop, and to take a moment to give my full attention to the sound of his rising, trembling note.
A few weeks ago, I watched my homeless mute man hassle another subway rider who shook his head at him repeatedly just as I had done a few weeks before.
“Jesus Christ,” I finally said. “He just doesn’t let up does he?” Suddenly we were exploding in laughter – the quiet, tense subway filled with the cackling of a tense moment gone goofy.
You’ve got to know that the development world is the same way. There’s people up to their necks in legal jargon and ICC technicalities, UN regulations and academic research on how best to solve problems of inequality, hunger and violence. And, then there’s a hell of a lot of volunteers, missionaries and do-gooders all flooding the same world. It’s emotional. It’s political. It’s charged. And, it can get real ugly real fast.
That’s what happened back in the spring, when KONY2012 was first released, and a million people were suddenly in a charged social media battle over the plight of Central Africa.
There was a large group of diaspora, international experts, aid workers and development specialists alike who said that the campaign carried 1. a white savior complex, 2. focused on one issue while ignoring relevant issues and 3. could have dangerous results. They were the minority – so to speak – an 8 million among 50 million, trying to make the day in and day out work of development work in the midst of a sudden influx of emotionally charged opinions.
They were criticized for being narrow minded, mean – unfeeling. Lines were drawn. Insults were thrown around.
The debates that took place that month were high octane, and they kept going for weeks on end. Until, that is, most of the sticker placers got tired of it, and wondered why anyone was still talking about Invisible Children or Uganda anymore. “Aren’t you all sick of it yet?” and so the circle emptied out – and it felt a little more like New York city on a Sunday afternoon in July when everyone’s left for their weekend homes, and you’ve got some room to breathe.
In that space – those that were committed to this for the long haul kept right on working.
I was lucky enough to hear several of them in person a few weeks ago at a panel on the Upper West Side moderated by Elliot Ross of Africa is a Country. The panel included Milton Allimadi, editor-in-chief of Black Star News, Amanda Taub, professor at Fordham University and blogger at Wronging Rights, Kate Cronin-Furman, lawyer, PhD candidate, and blogger at Wronging Rights, Laura Seay, professor at Morehouse College and blogger at Texas in Africa, Richard Mark Ochaka, mentor at Invisible Children, Michael Poffenberger, executive director of Resolve and Bukeni Waruzi, program manager for the Middle East and Africa, WITNESS.
The discussion was candid, and the mood was kind. That’s the best word to describe it: kind. After all that angry debating back in the day when activists and sudden Africa lovers criticized development professionals and specialists for being “mean” or “narrow,” the mood was one of commonality – everyone was there for the Congo, that day. And, what they wanted most was not to be right, but to find solutions.
I don’t remember which Wrongs Righter it was, but either Kate or Amanda said something I’ve often returned to since that night. She said that she had been criticized for being too critical, that she had been accused of being narrow, or unfeeling. And, she said it had been hard. But she followed that up with her commitment to seeing international justice – not just for the Congo, but for those partnering with Joseph Kony in other areas, and for people all over the continent that are being persecuted due to their color, sex or age. She brought up the importance of calling the ICC to the right course of action, or handling military intervention carefully – and of reviewing the history behind a conflict with careful, careful attention.
It was clear that, to her, the criticism was just part of the job. Her job. And, she wasn’t about to back down.
She reminded all of us sitting there why we’d debated this topic for so many months – it wasn’t that we were mean, or bitter or jaded. It was that it matters. Significantly. It’s not simply a “cause” or a “campaign” – it’s a journey, year after year, toward finding better solutions to global problems that are intensely complicated on a good day.
You can (and should) read a transcript of the debate on my friend Scott’s blog.
Scott also has also written a great piece on Invisible Children’s call for ICC involvement, and why that is such a highly charged issue.
I would get into the technicalities of the panel, except that I think that Scott said it better than I could. And, after debating it in my head for a few weeks on end – I’m not sure that’s what I need to share, here.
The moment I keep going back to from that night actually happened after the panel – out on the street.
After the panel I walked out into the cold and was waiting for a cab when Poffenberger passed me on his way to catch a flight out of the city. He was in a hurry, but I needed to talk to him – so I grabbed his arm real fast, and introduced myself.
I told Michael that he had been an example, that crazy month, of someone with grace and dignity – a person who was willing to hear the opposing side, and to pay attention to where he might have gone wrong – and how to do it better in the future. We had gone head to head a few times on twitter, and I had taken criticism for that from a lot of folks. But Poffenberger never criticized me for it. Instead, he explained. He responded. He sought to find better answers.
In the dim glow of the New York street lights, Poffenberger stopped rushing to his flight, and he looked me in the eye and thanked me. I could tell he was exhausted – that it had been one hell of a year. But, deeper than that – I could tell he was committed: not just to Invisible Children, or his creation of the crisis tracker – but to solutions. And, that he appreciated my commitment as well.
It hit me that Poffenberger wasn’t looking for comfortable situations, or a “great campaign.” His was and is a journey, year after year, toward finding better solutions to global problems that are intensely complicated on a good day.
It was in that quick shared moment with him that I realized my worlds were colliding. I was experiencing a New York moment – the kind of empathy you only get when you’ve slowed down and stopped for a moment to pay attention to the person in front of you. And, I was experiencing the comradery involved in staying passionate about and committed to something you believe in, regardless of the consequences or criticism involved in doing so.
There it was again: that reminder that, no matter how quick the world is spinning or how difficult it feels – a moment of empathy changes everything.
(Photo: Sandi Elle).
How Do You Hire on The Ground? My Journey Toward Business Partnerships in Africa
October 8, 2012 § 1 Comment
I often find it necessary to remind myself that the majority of us begin working in Africa because of the ignorant idealism that flows from the infatuation behind a dream.
Maya Angelou writes, “now that I know better, I do better,” and I don’t struggle with ignorant idealism, as such. It’s just that kind of ignorant idealism that drove me to begin a social enterprise, never knowing the money, sweat and tears I was going to lose in the process. By the time it all hit me, I was too in love with my work to turn back.
I struggle with the individuals I meet that have spent years in the field and continue to hang onto old ideals – this kind of christianeze colonialism, that you shouldn’t share your email with the wait staff, or talk in a normal American accent to their children. The first time I spent a summer in Haiti I flew in with a medical team, and the woman in charge yelled at anyone who wandered out to discover nearby Port au Prince on their own. I still remember her wide open mouth yelling at a group of grown medical professionals – “DO I NEED TO SEND YOU HOME?”
And I can safely say that no one learned much of anything about Haitian culture on that trip.
I’ve been criticizing Americans in the international community for hanging on to their cultural paradigms within foreign settings for a while, now. But what I think that many of us from my vantage point have failed to do is say that we are such strong advocates for new ways of being because breaking through a closed paradigm into international partnerships is perhaps the most rewarding change we have ever made.
Change is a two step mental process. First – give up an old paradigm. Two – adopt a new one. In the field of social enterprise, I believe we often struggle with the former because we have no idea where to begin on the latter. You can let go of an old way of being, but no one likes to live in free fall.
After I switched over from a “White Savior” way of thinking, I was, most certainly, in free fall. I didn’t have the first clue about how to find talented locals, who to hire or how to join the community of professionals in a country where I was familiar with only the impoverished and uneducated.
A community of brilliant diaspora, two Ugandan managers and a few key Nigerian fashion partnerships later, I know an entirely different reality. And, I have found my network to be invaluable.
Contrary to popular opinion, you do not have to be on the ground for things to be, “done right.” Nor do you have to carry all the work on your own shoulders, or send an intern into a new culture and expect them to run quality control for you.
Below is a general road map to begin you on the journey of connecting your enterprise or nonprofit to professionals in the African community. I hope that it will transform your business practices the way it has mine.
- Join the online community
There is a large conversation on twitter led by diaspora and professional leaders in the African community, particularly on twitter. They’re more than willing to provide you with resources, explain growing trends and movements and introduce you to African professionals experienced in the areas you need help with. Engage with their conversations, follow their hashtags. Read their work.
Some accounts to get you started: @Calestous @TMSruge @Semhar @InnovateAfrica @afrolicious @enamara @spectrapeaks @adiatdisu
Introduce yourself! (and tell them my blog sent you – @shanleyknox).
- Decipher the discussion
Figure out what it is your seeing – who is displaying photographic talent? Who is an authority on business, politics, women’s issues? Who are these people connected to? Who is providing the content that drives the discussion? Who shows the skills of a community manager, blogger, innovator?
I found our most recent Ugandan photographer, Edward, through watching whose photos Ugandans were tweeting during crisis stories or cultural events.
- Ask for meetings
Virtual networking is just like networking in person (except with less alcohol). I started asking for Skype meetings with just about everyone, and found our most recent manager in Kampala through openly asking for his opinion on my business model. We met several times over Skype for him to explain cultural trends and methods of business within Uganda. After about four sessions, we began to discuss the possibility of us taking him on as an intern, and eventually hiring him as our manager.
- Engage with the criticism
Opening yourself up to the diaspora and African community means being held accountable – that when you revert back into branding that puts yourself as a “white savior” or misrepresenting the culture you’re working within, you will be criticized for it. I had this happen with Teddy, a Ugandan friend of mine, after I tweeted that I was looking for clothing donations for the artisans I work with. He criticized me quickly, but after I responded with questions, he came to my rescue just as quickly, providing educational materials and alternative ways of thinking.
Don’t fight it. Ask more questions. Get email addresses. Engage in the discussion. Once you swallow your pride and engage with criticism, you might find your loudest critic to be an invaluable resource, not to mention your biggest advocate.
- Ask to be involved
When I was first planning to move to New York City, I asked to be part of Africa Fashion Week New York. Founder Adiat Disu is a Nigerian socially conscious & culturally-driven PR entrepreneur for Fashion, Home Decor & Art. She not only welcomed me into the week, but introduced me to other valuable connections. Other examples include my requests to be featured in African publications and to join meet ups. The more I ask to be involved, the more the community welcomes me, and explains the ropes.
I suggest you do the same. Not only will you discover a professional network, but, quite possibly, a new group of dear friends.
Two years in to running my enterprise, I source quality control, product photos, promotional material, business development ideas and product development all from partnerships and collaborations with Ugandan professionals.
Follow my business: @nakateproject
What are some of your cross cultural networking and hiring stories?
I’d love for you to share them in the comments!
5 Ways Uganda Taught me to Simplify
October 2, 2012 § 69 Comments
I moved to Brooklyn October first. With a lease on a new (old) apartment, less work hours and more freedom to pursue my entrepreneurial endeavors, I discovered once again that New York is nothing if not a series of choices – most of them small: like a thousand raindrops for your life storm.
I took the wrong bus up Madison today, and ended up in Queens. $15 later, I thanked my cabbie and made it to a meeting on Upper West just in time.
That was a 5 second, 30 foot long, $15 mistake, starting at the right stop on 54th and Madison Ave, and ending at escaping the rain, and catching the wrong transit out of the city instead of my familiar territory on 79th to catch the crosstown. And, that’s how New York works – a bajillion baby decisions you make without paying attention that can throw off your whole afternoon (day? week?) and drain your entrepreneurial bank account, if you don’t watch it. And yes, my entrepreneurial bank account is that small.
I settled in Bushwick because I love the diversity here. The bodegas and the graffiti, the hip hop on the street on my way to Manhattan and the colorful home hair dye jobs waiting for the M train.
Somewhere along the way I got used to rubbing shoulders with people different from me. And, I missed that before I landed here. I wanted that back.
On a budget, in a new place, with a full plate, I’m reminded of all the things that have grounded me before when I was in this predicament. And, oddly enough, it’s the lessons I learned in Uganda that have been most relevant for me, in Bushwick – starting with leaving my comfort zone.
1. Move out of your comfort zone, and make a home there.
The first few weeks (months?) in any new city, country, place, you find yourself walking around wondering what the hell you just did. But it was in a village off the Kampala to Gulu highway that I first discovered that moving outside your comfort zone is the place where you begin learning about yourself. Once you get past feeling strange that everybody doesn’t look and feel like you, your own weirdness gets a whole lot clearer, and you’re free to let your freak flag fly.
2. Enjoy what you have.
Agnes wears mostly the same three outfits when I stay with her in Uganda, but she’s got a few crazy little numbers tucked away that she pulls out for special occasions. I’ll never forget the look on her face when she first walked out and showed me her red, floor length dress. Re-living an old favorite, in front of a new audience, is just the best.
Moral of the story being, budgets suck. And, I’m pretty sick of mine already. But it’s just when I’m tempted to die over looks 1 straight through 42 in Prada’s F2012RTW, I remember I really love my Frye boots, and my Jeffreys, and the Gap vintage patched jean jacket that I was dying to wear all summer. By the way? Happy fall, Manhattan.
3. Refry, reheat and repurpose.
I learned in Uganda that the way you eat is relative, and the perception that you can’t eat the same thing for a week is, in fact, a little silly. I’ve seen a single chicken re-heated and remade seven different ways – and enjoyed it 7 (okay, five), different times.
Lesson learned. I wanted to make brunch for friends this weekend, after a late show in Williamsburg. So, I bought groceries to feed five. Huzzah! I have been able to re-create brunch for every single meal this week, and haven’t gone grocery shopping since.
PS – thanks for all the left over beer, Kyle.
4. Can you make that at home?
I loved the way that food brought us together, when I lived in Kakooge and Wobulenzi. We laughed a lot more. We sat a lot more. We conversed longer.
There was this whole pounding in my chest panic attack thing the first day I realized how many things I was missing from my routine that I thought I “needed,” but about week four? I found a lot of things weren’t so necessary anymore. I’m finding it here too: with things like like going to Starbucks, when I could brew in my french press at home, or drinking a beer on my back porch in the crisp fall evening air, instead of buying gin and tonic out on the town. That whole happy simplicity part of me is waking back up, and I’m finding that I notice the little things more than I did when I was running through the line for my double breve Americano, and grabbing lunch to go every day. Not to mention, I’m finding that I enjoy my home – and the people in it.
5. Get some perspective.
Paring down, eliminating, going without are all things I think we get used to looking at negatively, but I’ve begun to realize that simplifying your life can actually be much more grounding, and help you keep your priorities in line. I’m looking forward to talking to people more. I’m noticing nature. I’m noticing ideas. I’m feeling creative. Isn’t that why we chose to be entrepreneurs? We wanted to put ideas and passions first, and stick it to the man, every now and then? I budgeted out shampoo and body wash, and I’m enjoying Castille soap again. It’s good for your hair. It’s good for your body. It’s good for your small shower. Not to mention, I love me some almond vanilla goodness. After that, I switched to straight coffee, on my Starbucks run through. And, boy oh boy do those .50 refills make me a happy camper on Monday (and Tuesday, and Wednesday and…shit. Let’s not talk about it).
Get yourselves some Oktoberfest six packs. Open your windows. Go without a few lattes, and buy a potted plant.
Happy simplifying, Brooklyn. I’m off to shower with some Vanilla Castille goodness, and fall asleep under the M train.
#dignity2012 – On the way Agnes Changed my View of East Africa and, with it, the World
April 14, 2012 § 5 Comments
I took Agnes to the pacific last week. We’ve been business partners for over a year now – her running the Ugandan side of our business, myself working stateside. We’ve worked together in East Africa. But, now it was her turn to enter my world.
We spent time in Beverly Hills, Hollywood and Santa Monica, introducing Agnes to shop owners and re-stocking locations with our new spring line. We found out she loves mango smoothies the way I love matooke. She loves coffee the way…I love coffee. She loves sandwiches the way I love chapati. In my world, we talked about my childhood the way we’d talked about hers during my last visit. We discussed my breakups the way we’d talked about her relationship with Patrick after she’d met him in grade school. We talked about the way I was born in San Diego and grew up in the Sierra Nevadas the way she’d talked about growing up in Kampala. And, after she met the head of the journalism department at my alma mater, we discussed our degrees – mine in journalism, hers in business.
She laughed through my dating stories. She told me she’d waited to get married on purpose to finish her education. We discussed Patrick’s views on women – his support of her. I nodded. I’d seen it – him waving goodbye from the veranda, watching their three children while we worked on our company. We traded stories about our cultures on the way into boutiques – the way Ugandans say Americans make love in the streets, the way Americans claim Uganda – and all of Africa, at that – is full of people defecating in the streets.
At the stop light on Broadway, we laughed so hard it hurt.
It was 3:30 pm when we were done – prime traffic time in LA, and I warned her we’d be late home. But Agnes had been smelling the ocean air for just about as long as she could stand without being properly introduced, and I caught the desperation in her eye.
“I’ve never seen it!” she pleaded.
I thought of myself asking to visit the Nile, and nodded, putting the truck in drive.
I’ve never introduced anyone to the pacific for the first time – let alone the ocean itself. The practice felt sacred to me, taking off our shoes on the edge of the boulevard and walking across the sand in our bare feet. I pointed out ships and surfers as we walked.
Agnes hesitated at the edge of the water, the way I’d hesitated when I’d first shared a pathway with a herd of Ankole cattle on my way through Wobulenzi. I laughed at her hesitancy the way the cattle herder had laughed at me, crouched at the edge of a herd of long horn cattle. I waved my arms – “come on!”
She did.
I watched Agnes and the ocean feeling each other out for the first time, and I thought about how many things this woman has introduced me to.
I met her when I was 21. It was my first day in Kakooge. Agnes greeted me with a loud voice and open arms. She gave me a hug and three kisses – left, right, left. She waved her arms around – “welcome to our home! You are so welcome.” By “home,” I soon learned Agnes was referring to the entire village – not just her half acre plot in the midst of it.
Skirt wrapped around her waist and an arm of bracelets, Agnes walked me through every part of town, little blonde NGO reporter that I was. We went to the outskirts of Kakooge, to the main street of Kakooge, to the village’s only indoor restaurant, to the east, where most of the children gather to play and, finally, to the bars, where drunken men recognized Agnes, and exclaimed over the Mzungu. I watched them, sitting on a wooden bench offered to the white girl, and I thought about the woman I’d just met.
She spoke about Jesus and women’s rights in the same sentence – often in church. With a booming voice and an out-streched arm, she regularly preached alongside her husband to a local congregation on wooden benches. And yet, here she was, a public figure in her village and a respected woman in her culture, laughing with the men in the bars and, later, I’d learn, with the prostitutes. Turns out, Agnes is not only progressive, she’s a bit controversial.
By controversial, I mean Agnes swims against the ancient wave carrying respected society away from anyone engaged in less than admirable activity, and pulling the religious and dignified away from issues like birth control, safe sex, AIDS, family planning and a woman’s right to express herself freely in every room in her home. Jesus doesn’t talk about condoms, does he?
Agnes seems to think he does.
After my 22nd birthday, she threw in her livelihood with me, and hired 40 women she handpicked to partner with us after meeting me once. That same year, she began to change my view of Uganda. She brought me into East Africa as a part of the woodwork, insisting that I wasn’t a visitor anymore. I had a place carved out in her home along the Kampala to Gulu highway, where the trucks run through to the West of my bedroom wall in the night, and the roosters crow on the half hour just before dawn.
Agnes must have known that any person transitioning into a culture needs to be taken in with their background, and taught new ways, instead of expected to know them, because she told me she saw me the third time I returned to Uganda. I was deep in a half eaten plate of matooke when she said it. I was struggling with a culture that I didn’t fit into – checking my iphone in between meetings running an hour behind schedule, and lying awake trying to teach myself to slow down. I was embarrassed by my white legs, and the way I kept cutting myself shaving in my bucket shower.
I stopped eating and stared. “Yes,” she nodded. “I see you. I see your heart. I get you. And, I believe in you.”
Her words, in the midst of a sea of misunderstanding, became my lifeline.
Later that week, it was Agnes, again, that gave me permission to have a large vision for my work in East Africa. She walked into a room she’d transitioned into mine for the two weeks I stayed with her. “I want you to open your heart,” she told me. “We’re going to be big. Big beyond Uganda. I have plans for Kenya, Rwanda, and the Congo. So, you let me know when you’re ready, and we’ll go.”
During that visit, I discovered that Agnes’ willingness to be controversial – to speak up, to speak out, and to go places where other women were not willing to go – had taken me to those places with her. She’d silently understood my desire for integration into her village, my desire to do business directly with the women in at, and with it – quietly been creating a place for me in Uganda – in the way she spoke about me, the way she helped me understand her culture and, now, the way she brought the two together.
She’d created a profile of my work, and my character. She’d been prepping the women working for me to meet me again. The woman she once went to visit in the bad parts of time were coming to greet her – and to greet me. Women that we’d gone to take pictures of in huts were walking across town to kiss me three times – left, right, left – and talk about our work. The prostitutes that had once pursed their lips at me were greeting me in English.
Six months later, at the age of 23, it was Agnes that gave me the grace to allow our plan take longer than expected, and for funds to come through more slowly than I wanted them to. After sales tax stripped our January bank account, I got an email from her quoting a scripture passage from the book of Zechariah. “Don’t despise the day of small beginnings,” it said.
More than matoke or Ankole cows, Agnes has taught me about the way a relationship with a person can change everything, as she’s staked her reputation on my ability to come through for her and the women she’s hired to work for us – taking months to explain cultural customs, work out our accounting on the ground, gather items and, now, to come and learn my culture so she could better integrate the needs of our customer base into hers.
As we walked on the wet sand, I pointed out kelp and washed up shells and explained crustaceans. I picked up different size shells. I pointed out the way the tide moves. But Agnes wasn’t interested in that. She was interested in the way children interacted the way with the water, and kept pulling on my arm to laugh and point them out.
I’d never seen the ocean that way – through children. One ran away from the ocean – terrified – and made a muscle, smiling at us, once he’d safely escaped the surf. Another was rolling himself in the sand and grinning underneath his gritty, gray hair. A third ran into the surf squealing with delight over waves that were too cold for me.
“I love the way they love it,” Agnes said. And, it was in that moment, watching a little girl dance the sand out of her polka dotted suit, that I realized Agnes had done it again – she’d changed my perspective on the world and, with it, the way I view the people around me, and my place in it, alongside them.
On Work in Africa as a Career, Rather than a Religious Crusade, Campaign or a Movement
March 19, 2012 § 2 Comments
There has been loads of interaction regarding Uganda in my life these past two weeks. I work in Uganda, so that shouldn’t be surprising. But, after #KONY2012, my life feels a bit like a viral discussion. Phone calls, emails, facebook posts – messages…it goes on. And, I couldn’t be more grateful to IC for sparking such a valuable conversation.
It was, however, a very small interaction that caught my interest last week – one that could have easily been overlooked. And, one I did overlook at first.
It was when I posted the Kony 2012 Drinking Game to my friend Sheila’s facebook wall, and she replied with this:
“Nice. I say, bring it on. One day we will get this whole thing right. Right??”
What has me coming back to this post was her use of the vernacular – “we.”
After living in Bots as an expat for more than a year, if Sheila knows one thing – it’s that none of us have figured it out yet, and no one Mzungu can stand up in front of all the others and announce that they have the answer to how to do this dance just right.
“We” are all trying to figure out how, exactly, is the best way to weigh in on our little piece of global issues that people have been trying to solve for generations. “We” have all signed up for jobs outside of our comfort zones, our cultures – our usual frame of reference. “We” all have the propensity to get carried away in our desire to help, and misstep.
“We” all like our alcohol/marijuana/cigarettes/insert-your-crutch-here when the going gets tough. “We” have all had moments of public embarrassment – my friends are still teasing me for drunkenly burning my lip a month ago trying to smoke the wrong end of a cigarette.
But the point is that we’re all trying.
I had a long conversation with a shop owner I have an account with this week. He smiled when I walked into his office – “I’ve been wanting to you about this whole Invisible Children thing,” he said. “Tell me what you think.”
But, before we got there, he said something else. He said – “You know, personally, I get the criticism, but then, I think. ‘Hey, so, they got the story wrong, they didn’t do it just so. Regardless, there’s an army of informed people standing around telling people the real story. And, at least Invisible Children got everyone lookin’ east. At least we’re paying more attention, now.’ And, come on, that in and of itself is valuable right? Those guys could have careers marketing all kinds of things. And, they picked something they’re passionate about in Uganda. So, you know – there’s some good in this, right? At least in the dialogue? I mean, they could have been telling us all about phones, or Nikes…but they picked Uganda.”
Once he finished, I really didn’t need to tell him what I thought. He had covered it. And, as I walked out of his shop, I felt like he had been the one educating me.
I walked out of his shop feeling humbled, again, by the truth that I’ve picked a career that puts a target on my back. We all have, and we’ve done it willingly – because we’re people that wanted to help.
And, it’s exactly because of that glaring, damned target that all need the rest of us to remember that we’re human when we fall – particularly when we may have set ourselves up for a little too far of a tumble. And, let’s be real – we all do it.
Not to mention, we all tend to forget that, regardless of how we feel, this desire to help has become a career – and it does not equal the sum total of who we are as people. And, when it does, we’ve made a grave mistake.
I ended up sitting on my bed – crying – after a Skype meeting last night. It wasn’t anything that was said. It was just the realization that I crossed a line – somewhere – and I keep teetering back and forth on it, this reality that my personal investment in Uganda is so huge that when things don’t go like I hope, it affects more than my company – it affects me. When we struggle financially, when lines don’t release the way I hoped, deadlines get pushed, or confusion sets in – I think about it on a personal level, and it takes everything I’ve got to learn to make that separation.
But make that separation I must. It is absolutely necessary to know that my work in Uganda is not the sum total of who I am – and that our failure or success is, quite simply, not about me.
In this profession, the personal and the professional mix in a big jumble of emotions that crux somewhere between wanting to make a career out of providing help, and wanting the way you help to make you a career.
The reality is that it’s a career – not a religious crusade, a campaign or a movement. And, at the end of the day, the people behind these careers gone religious crusading campaigns and movements are only human.
And, you can be certain that the little scar on my bottom lip is a quiet reminder that, no matter how good we get at separating the personal and professional – we are all, indeed, still working on getting it right.
(Pictured above: Sheila, playing with some of the children in Kakooge on her last trip with me).
I like Jimmy Choos, and I Hate Cheap Beer. Otherwise Known as The Reasons Why #Kony2012 is Being Criticized.
March 7, 2012 § 13 Comments
A month or so ago, I posted a blog about a mistake I made in my work in Uganda. It was @tmsruge who caught me. I have a tremendous amount of respect for his opinion and so, when he came down on me, I listened – and I learned.
He is in a kind of twitter “trifecta council” made up of himself, @DAWNInc founder & exec director @Semhar and @InnovateAfrica – a woman whose views on philanthropy, diaspora, social justice and gender continue to challenge and educate me on almost a daily basis. I recommend following all three of them, and keeping up on their work.
In my friendships in Uganda, I have learned something huge about myself. Namely, I will always be an outsider. I will always be 1/2 of a transnational business. I will always be a white woman. I will always be different. And, as much as we tried to combine our cultures, we often come to an impasse – we are called to different realities and, with it, different lives.
Let’s be real.
I like Jimmy Choos, and I hate cheap beer.
Oh, oh! And I’ll take the $8.00 chalice of Three Philosophers please. Oh, and that’s a chalice, not a glass. Right?
(PS – I don’t currently own Jimmy Choos. And, I just paid my phone bill, so I’m not drinking any expensive beer this week, don’t worry).
People criticize me for spending any kind of money while working in “aid.” But, here’s the reality I’ve had to learn about myself. I’m an American woman who partners with Ugandan artisans for the purpose of making money for both of us. And, we’re running a business, not a charity project. They benefit. I benefit. And, I don’t think any other kind of model is realistic.
However, I struggled with my identity in regards to Uganda for a long time. I began with feeling like I could never spend any money on myself, even selling my own things to pay bills and giving up a lot of my hopes and dreams in order to work in Africa.
Let’s be clear.
I chose to do that. No one in Uganda asked me to.
And, along the way, I realized that it just wasn’t sustainable. Beyond that, it wasn’t respectful.
I was not that way because I truly valued the powerful women I work with in Uganda. I did that because I was confused about my identity as a white girl working in central Uganda. I felt critical of myself for liking expensive things, handling things like a white girl would and for feeling the irresistible urge to kiss my porcelain toilet back in CA on more than one occasion.
I tried to change myself so that I would fit in better, tried to make my white a little less obvious. But, that’s not really very possible, and I have never been more aware of it than a certain day when I plopped myself down with a Nile Brew and a wireless orange connection at the airport. I’m not timid, so I sat in the middle of a group of men to watch the soccer game blaring from a small tv descending from a florescently lit airport ceiling.
I felt real cool with my Nile brew and soccer knowledge, until I realized everyone had stopped watching the game, and started staring at me instead.
Well, shit.
I returned home from that trip, in particular, with a deep need to re-define my role in Uganda. I had been criticized for the way I handled several situations like a Mzungu (white), and I felt angry – angry at Ugandan culture, angry at American culture – angry with myself, angry with the people criticizing me.
I spent about three months really delving into the heart of the issue, and it came back to identity, for me.
My mom helped. Over coffee, I poured out the tale of my African failures, ending with, “you know, I really handled things like a white girl, and I’ve got to stop DOING THAT!”
She stared at me. “You are a white girl,” she said. “Of course you handle things that way.”
She’s genius.
You wouldn’t think I needed to be reminded of that, but I did. I needed to remember that I’m white, that I was born in America and that the fact of the matter is that I run a transnational business in Uganda. So, here’s how that works – I have Ugandans that run my company in Uganda, and I run it here. Hence, the need for two cultures, two colors – two perspectives, two different people groups.
In my acceptance of myself, I was able to realize that, in a lot of ways, I had been incredibly prideful. I had come into Uganda with the belief that I had better solutions for issues on the ground, that the weight of saving a village was on my shoulders and that knew better how to handle emergency situations, village conflicts and the establishment of organized business in a country I’ve been traveling to for three years.
Imagine if my Ugandan partner walked into a shop on Melrose and whispered, before entering – “Don’t worry Shan, I’ve got this one covered, you just watch and learn while I take on LA.”
Crazy, right?
So, I’ve begun to learn that I have a lot to learn. And, within that paradigm, I’ve been able to embrace my place as a white girl, apologize for my shortcomings, ask for help and advice and begin to better understand a place that my Ugandan friends are just as anxious to help me understand as I am to help them understand my culture.
I’ve learned to be quiet more often, and to assume, walking into situation, that I there are cultural factors I’m ignorant of, and will be brought up to speed about later.
Here’s some full disclosure. Just this week, I had to work through a myriad of emails regarding management on the ground, and how best to run it from a Ugandan perspective. I went to bed exhausted, humbled and yet feeling more comfortable than ever in my new shoes as a white girl partnering with a fantastic group of educated, powerful Ugandan leaders and artisans.
Imagine my lack of surprise, then, when I discovered #KONY2012, and, with it, criticism coming from the likes of @tmsruge @Semhar and @InnovateAfrica.
While Invisible Children has done great work educating “the rest of us” about a conflict in Africa, you could perhaps say they have failed to take their place in African culture as a group of whites seeking to partner with powerful, educated Ugandans, rather than spreading the idealism that Ugandans need a young American Dad with a pre-schooler to save their sorry asses.
Then again, I’m an American woman.
You would do much better reading what Rosebell Kagumire , Maureen Agena, and Echwalu Edward have to say, for starters.
These people are just three of hundreds of activists, journalists and experts in Uganda that are speaking about their views in Invisible Children’s campaign that shows co-founder Jason as someone taking on the bad guys in Uganda, and saving the day in the pearl of Africa.
Turns out, Uganda’s been working to save itself for a long time now.
PS – here’s a fantastic drinking game to go along with the #KONY2012 campaign video.
It Doesn’t Take a Day – on Change in Africa, and Change in Me
March 6, 2012 § 2 Comments
Morris has a favorite phrase he uses – mostly with me.
He says, “you know, it doesn’t take a day!”
I think he mostly uses it with me because I’m the American woman in his life – the pusher, the watch checker, the “have you emailed it yet?”-er.
We’ve found some balance in working together – sometimes, after a loud argument. “Let me speak please!” He’ll shout, and I stop trying to explain the ins and outs of business, and how quickly we need to get something done.
“We’re losing money here,” I’ll throw out, before I let him speak. Then, he almost always begins with, “I know this is important to you. But it doesn’t take a day.”
We’ve gone ’round about this more-than-a-day business more than once.
- Shifting thought – the art of changing how one thinks about things – doesn’t take a day
- Shifting behavior – the art of acting differently based on a newly developed paradigm – doesn’t take a day
- Shifting history – the art of the great clean-up after a certain way of living, doing business or believing in a certain thing has been shifted in thought and in behavior – doesn’t take a day. There are repercussions that Morris has taught me must be expected, and taken in stride. When I yell over repercussions he expected, he reminds me: “It doesn’t take a day.”
Beyond that, change I wished would hit like lightning the first time I committed to make a difference in a village doesn’t take a day either.
But Morris expected that as well. “These women know it doesn’t take a day,” he’ll tell me.
For several months running, I’ve compartmentalized my conversations with Morris. “It doesn’t take a day” pertained to Africa, where spotty internet can move an urgent message needing response within three hours to an urgent message that will be responded to three weeks later. I know this, just like I know the way a parasite can hit the stomach and replace a day meant to be spent visiting huts with a day camping-out at the outdoor latrine. But both have continued to take me by surprise, and I’ve often been frustrated with myself at how slowly I seem to learn a culture I used to think I knew.
I have learned to expect a cycle when I hit the ground in Africa. First, there is panic. I’m not getting things done as quickly. Business is being let go. The twitter isn’t being updated like it should. In my first few days, I often find myself standing in the middle of red dirt, lap top held over my head, yelling “I think I have a wifi signal here!”
The cook always laughs.
Day four the panic fades into a quiet resolution and, with it, sudden bursts of anger of situations I simply can’t stand they seem so ridiculously slow.
Three years in, and I’m still a cultural newborn, barely blinking in the light of a new way of thinking, doing, living.
But, when I’m most tempted to be frustrated with the culture, and with myself, I hear Morris – “It doesn’t take a day.”
Beyond Africa, I’ve found that there is truth in the necessity of time, and that this great shifting of thought, behavior and, with it, the shifting of how history affects the present, doesn’t take a day.
It doesn’t take a day to get much of anything done in Africa, and it doesn’t take a day to get much of anything done in me.
Monica Berg writes that,
Once we become more aware, it’s then important to set a mandate by which we can live, a certain line that we draw, a set of rules to place for ourselves. This means creating a personal credo that speaks to our soul aspect.
Berg didn’t warn me that after a person sets a personal credo that speaks to their soul aspect, it can take a terribly long time to establish lines, boundaries – a set of rules in which to place his or herself.
Too long, I thought.
But, with a little progress and a few lines – FINALLY – established, I am reminded not to spend my life figuratively balancing in the middle of a dirt pile in Uganda, shouting about my wifi signal, and dancing against the rhythm of a schedule gone haywire.
Turns out, learning to be patient with my own process of change doesn’t take a day either.
