Progress

One of the hardest things to cope with here in Uganda is the pace at which things are done. Meetings usually start about an hour after they are supposed to. Getting places is a always a process and always involves a lot of walking. Everyone just seems to move in slow-motion. In a country where time is almost never of the essence, it is difficult to stay motivated and on task.

For Americans, making a schedule and sticking to it is a skill that has been ingrained in all of us since we were little. School starts at 8:30 a.m. SHARP. Each subject is given a time slot, and the next subject always begins precisely afterward. Lunch and recess are always at the same times, and the school buses leave at precisely 3:30 p.m. Swimming lessons are at 6:00 p.m. on Tuesdays, and piano lessons are at 7:15 p.m. on Wednesdays. Soccer practice is every Saturday morning at 10:30 a.m.

For Ugandans, schedules are more like guidelines. It's okay if you show up a half hour late for soccer training, because everyone else is still just getting there, too. It's okay if you didn't get a chance to go over the plans for the next Youth Center Workshop; there's always tomorrow. Even in school, if a teacher is still finishing a lecture for p. 7 (equivalent of 7th grade), p. 6 will just have to wait for him to finish before he can come teach their class. Even the governmental and administrative processes here seems to be filled with tedious busywork that could be made shorter for the sake of efficiency.

Coming from a society where time waits for no one, it's obviously how this gets frustrating. However, Courtney, Heather and I have been slowing coming to terms with the pace of progress here. Our adviser and the founder of Soccer Without Borders, Ben Gucciardi, probably put it best by saying "For every 1 step forward, it's a 3/4 step back in Ndejje." So, we have had to focus on just getting maybe one or two things done per day. Somehow though, just completely one task a day feels like a great accomplishment here. The past four days we have all set out to accomplish one thing each day, and we have made incredible progress: our best soccer training session yet, introduction letters for the Youth Center to local schools completed, youth center sign completed. The only thing we can do is keep looking for the next task and focusing on each one individually.