General sketchiness

My time in Uganda is just flying by. As of today, I have just 10 days left here before I jet off to Senegal… kiiiind of crazy.

The past week has been kind of surreal. There’s just been crazy stuff happening all over the place. We found out a few days ago that the older brother of one of our youth leaders, Brian aka B-Start, had been murdered. B-Start is in high school and helps out at the youth center teaching hip hop and music to the kids (B-Start is his rap name. Nicknames are big here, and I actually don’t even know a bunch of the leaders’ real names.) B-Start’s spent a lot of time with us and we all really love him, as he’s a really sweet kid with a HUGE smile. Anyway, come to find out his older brother was a really big boxer here in Uganda, and some horrible person decided out of jealously to stab him in his own home. It was actually a really big deal since he was a well-known boxer, and it made the front page of the local newspaper. B-Start and the other youth leaders who were friends of his brother were understandably devastated. Grief in Africa though is very interesting — people are very intent to push on with life after a loss. In Africa, death is part of day-to-day reality. B-Start has still been at the center everyday since his brother passed away, and the other kids have kept pretty quiet about everything since the burial. It’s a sad situation, but the African way is to recognize that life must go on. And luckily, they caught the murderer and are now going to trial.

In other equally bizarre but slightly less depressing news, the youth center is MOVING within the next week. In the 7 months since Ibra and Divinity (the co-directors) founded the organization, its grown exponentially. Every Sunday, they have community meetings, and the attendants are literally almost spilling out of the yard now. So, Ibra and Divinity were THRILLED when they discovered this HUGE property about 10 min up the road, which is about 4 times bigger but only $100 USD more for monthly rent. They were really excited at first, but the landlord wanted 6 mo rent upfront, which they realized they couldn’t pay, and understandably went from being really excited to really depressed. However, the 9 of us American students here decided together to contribute as much money from our own pockets as we could and surprise Ibra and Divinity with the gift. Between our contribution and the money they already had, we were able to come up with 3M Ugandan shillings needed to pay 6 mo of rent on the new house.

BUT, of course the story doesn’t quite end that happily. We surprised them with the money, Ibra and Divinity were ecstatic, and they went back to the landlord the next day with the cash (and all of us in tow for moral support — ie, muzungu influence. Post-colonialism is SKETCH). Now, in Uganda, renter’s rights and real estate law are sketchy at best. When a property is up for rent like that, basically whoever shows up with the cash first gets it. So Ibra and Divinity show up with their money only to find out some woman had come the DAY BEFORE with cash and claimed it. However, Ibra and Divinity were willing to pay 100 Ugandan shillings more a month, so the landlord, being kind of a sketchball, was like, okay, you can have it, BUT we have to get rid of this lady somehow. At the time, he made it sound like all he had to do was refund her money, so he concocted this elaborate story that Ibra was he son, who SURPRISED him in the middle of night by coming back from abroad with his wife (Divinity) and nine foreigner friends (us) who needed the house to live in for the summer. WTF, I know. At the time we were kind of confused as to why he couldn’t just say “they have more money, SORRY”, but this question was answered the next day when we had to show up at 7 in the morning (!!) and pretend we had spent the night.

So the lady shows up to discover all of us in the landlord’s living room watching TV (landlord and his family live upstairs, the youth center is renting the downstairs). The landlord and Ibra sit down with her and really dramatically explain their story about Ibra’s surprise “homecoming”. The lady is clearly pissed, but tells Ibra she understands, she just thought it was very unprofessional on his “father’s” part. So, that’s when they whip out the CONTRACTS to terminate them. So yeah, what we thought was going to be a simple cash refund was actually a whole legal process of terminating WRITTEN AGREEMENTS. Divinity works for a law firm, so she was reading them over and kind of like “uhhh this is really sketchy”… the contracts had already been signed by both the landlord and the lady, and it explicitly said in them landlord couldn’t terminate the contracts without a month’s notice, etc etc. So yes, we all got a very profound lesson in the greyness of African legal agreements and an ethics lesson to boot. Everyone is really happy we got the place, but understandably we all feel badly for the lady and kind of shady. We’re all just hoping any negative energy from her will be directed at the ladlord and not the youth center, though hopefully she won’t ever find out about the center and realize she was played…… uggggh so sketchy!! But I mean, there you have it. Welcome to Africa. (As a sidenote: Divinity wrote up the new agreement and made it SUPER tight… ie, they have to refund them the full deposit plus 15% if they terminate the agreement. They also brought it to the local chief, kind of like a magistrate, right away to get it officially recognized. SO hopefully the landlord won’t pull the same shady biz on the youth center).

So yes, weirdness of that story aside, on June 15th we’re moving everything from the current house to the new house. The manual labor should be fun!! (lolzz)