Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Wednesday, October 14^th, 2009

 

            Today Maggie and I went for a run.  I had to stop half way because my knee hurt.  I can actually feel my busted hamstring pulling my knee in a weird direction.  Unfortunate.  One of my friends, the lovely Christina, is a physical therapist and she sent me some hamstring stretches so hopefully that helps some.  She said I can make a full recovery once I come back to the US and start a full-time rehab program.  Yay.

            I walked to the yogurt lady afterwards and told her her daughter, Sarah, was going to be invited back to the second round of interviews.  She was very happy.

            “I’m not gone yet, but when I go I want to make sure my kids are on the right path.”  Weird to think that she’s thinking of “going” at age 48.

            Came back and before I could even shower I had an hour long recap meeting with Emily.  She really keeps us on a short leash – its impressive.  She has a background in consulting and I’m always impressed with her management skills.  She dosn’t have an easy job.

            Emily told me she needed help with certain “administrative” tasks.  I didn’t necessarily want to assume these tasks, but they need to get done and in a start up environment no task is too small for anyone to handle.

            She told me I needed to handle MTN (phone ) bill payment, getting bank statements and paying taxes.  Yay.

            We took a boda boda into Kampala and she showed me how to pay the MTN bill.  Then we walked to Barclay’s bank to get a bank statement.  Then we took another boda boda to to the URA (Ugandan Revenue Authority) to get our tax bill.  The boda boda driver tried to rip us off – umm, he messed with the wrong person.  Emily didn’t budge.  He tried to charge us more than he should have and he didn’t get a cent of additional money.  After the URA I had to leave (I had a meeting with Sandrah) but but Emily went through the additional step of depositing the money owed to the URA into Diamond Trust Bank (DTB).  I was bewildered at all the steps required just to pay taxes!  Its something I’ll have to do on a monthly basis.

            I had a 1.5 hour meeting with Sandrah where we discussed how things were going at her schools…how the scholars re responding…etcetera.

            Afterwards I went to get a haircut and dinner with Baati.  She said she knew of a mzungu barber but when we got there it was closed.  Oh well.  I said it was a sign from God – so I decided the golden locks will continue to grow so long as I’m in Africa.  I might come home looking like Tarzan.