Market and Need in Uganda

Posted: 1st Oktober 2010 by Bellusci in Economy
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In Uganda, it is said, there are no niches in the market, but great big gaping holes.

You’ll find an unbelievable number of churches for cleansing of the soul, but not a single laundry for cleaning of clothes, neither in Kampala nor anywhere in the whole country (there are dry cleaners but these are the domain of the rich, for it costs an average of UGX 10,000 to have a two piece suit dry-cleaned). 30 million people wash their clothes by hand; even though there is countrywide (at least in the larger towns) electricity supply and running water. Only a few expatriate and richer Ugandan households own a washing machine. Read the rest of this entry »

Markt und Bedarf in Uganda

Posted: 1st Oktober 2010 by Bellusci in Economy/ Wirtschaft
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In Uganda, so wird gesagt, gaebe es keine Marktnichen, sondern nur Marktloecher! Hier sind mal einige Gedanken dazu aufgeschrieben.

Es gibt eine schier unueberschaubare Zahl an Kirchen fuer die Reinigung der Seele, aber keinen einzigen Waschsalon fuer die Reinigung von Kleidung, weder in Kampala noch irgendwo im ganzen Land, wo man seine Sachen zum Waschen bringen kann. 30 Millionen Menschen im gesamten Land waschen ihre Kleidung per Handwaesche, obwohl es landesweit (zumindest in den groesseren Staedten) Elektrizitaet und Wasser gibt. Nur in Expat-Haushalten findet sich hin und wieder mal eine Waschmaschine. Read the rest of this entry »

Two weeks later

Posted: 29th September 2010 by Bellusci in Arrival
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The Internet is enormously weak and we are glad if it goes at all. We were nearly one week offline in the office, but this may also be the poor IT service provider, or the fact that in the office nobody felt responsible for sorting it out.

I saw restaurants which offer wireless Broadband, where you can come along with your laptop, but since I still wait for my firm laptop I have not tried that out yet. Thus more patience is announced.

Yesterday it finally rained, the heat over the last few days has become unbearable. During days around 30 degrees and at night around 26. For approx. half an hour it poured as if buckets of water were thrown out and now the air is somewhat fresher.

Otherwise everything is very normally here, too often nearly too European. Meals are quite nice and it is the first time in my life that I pay less for beef than for chicken meat. A kilogram finest beef filet, absolutely fresh, costs no more than around 3 EUR! Altogether food is very good… We’ve got a Pizzaria around the corner with an open stone oven, and I must admit that I never ate a Pizza as good as here … one must travel to Uganda to get a decent pica 🙂

Translation of an email to friends, dated 25.3.2010

Arrival

Posted: 29th September 2010 by Bellusci in Arrival
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Monkey in the garden

We arrived in Uganda in March 2009; I with a working contract as a development worker and my husband as “following” partner. Following an excerpt from an email an to friends dated 17.3.2009:

We didn’t have any Internet reception for two days and now I’m sitting on a private laptop of a colleague with satellite Internet, but have to wait nearly one minute or longer until a side is loaded…

Thus our very first impressions:
– Instead of cats we have monkeys in the office
– The windows do not have glass, only mosquito mash
– There are awfully many cars in the roads and they look almost brand-new (until now I haven’t seen any scrappy cars)
– Birds start singing at exact 6 o’clock; it is still dark by this time but 30 min later it’s full daylight
– The behaviour towards us Europeans is very “normal”, no special treatment
– In the quarry (approximate 20 min away from us) I saw a few children working
– Rich and poor live direct next to each other – there is a 5 star restaurant and across the road slums
– Most expatriate houses are guarded with armed guards
– Up to now we only had rain at night, and during the day around 35 degrees and sunny
– People are very open, speak about their families, their training, and dreams…
– Many, many building sites with sometimes exquisite houses
– Influence of the English clearly noticeably, as for example that in the pubs all English games will be shown as well as the architectural style of the houses
– Quality of own Ugandan production is very bad (e.g. furniture)
– People eat with fingers

Original text – email to friends to 17.3.2009

Multilingual Blog

Posted: 29th September 2010 by Bellusci in Miscellaneous
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From today this blog will finally be in two languages: German and English. It took me quite a while to fathom how to operate the program and find/install the necessary plugins and therefore I feel it may be helpful to share this precious knowledge with the web community… How to upgrade WordPress to a multilingual blog?!

I warmly recommend the following link: 5 Plugins To Build A Multilingual Website. The author of this article excellently describes which plugins are available for multilingual blogs and how they work with WordPress. After I read this article plus its comments I decided to go with WPML. The installation was quite straight forward, and it seems to work perfectly.

One thing I had to compromise was the fact I had no choice but to abandon the free service of WordPress.com and find a server from which I could operate WordPress.org. For this necessary change I checked WordPress’s support site Hosting and found various hosts listed there. It didn’t take long to decide to sign up with DreamHost, since they offered in my opinion the best value for money (3,95 US$ per month), and the new domain is also inclusive.

The whole process didn’t take longer than 2 hours, and soon I had my new web address online and everything was up and running. However, I selected a new theme so that my regular readers can decide whether they read on the old site format or the new, but I would believe that this multilingual plugin would have worked just as well with the old theme.

Actually there is not much more to explain, since everyone who has just a little experience with blogging programs, should, after reading the provided links, be able to get a multilingual blog running under WordPress.org. Nevertheless let me give you the individual steps in order to make it even easier to change from a non-language-supported blog to a multilingual WordPress blog in just two hours.

1. Hosting – Read WordPress’ support site with links for various hosts (if you are not already running your own WordPress.org blog)

2. Sign up with one of the hosting providers as for example with DreamHost – who is the Web host I decided to sign up with

3. Go through the sign up procedure, chose a domain name, pay for the service and then wait patiently until the host has processed your application

4. After receiving the confirmation email log-in into the hosting provider’s web site and install WordPress.org on the server (One Click installation) and follow the steps as described

5. Visit following website which describes various plugins for multilingual WordPress blogs 5 Plugins To Build A Multilingual Website

6. Install you chosen plugin as for example WPML which I chose.

FINISHED!

Now the less exciting part follows as there will be obviously the need to translate all your articles into the new language and update the database accordingly. This is what I’ll be doing for the next few days (or even weeks!) as I have 71 articles to translate from German into English 🙁

I wish you the best of luck!

Mehrsprachiger Blog

Posted: 29th September 2010 by Bellusci in Verschiedenes
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Der Blog wird jetzt zweisprachig – Deutsch und Englisch. Wie richtet man denn einen mehrsprachigen Blog ein? Read the rest of this entry »

Leben als Expatriat (2)

Posted: 26th September 2010 by Bellusci in Ignorance / Ignoranz, TOP 10
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Muyenga 800 US$ p.m.

Man kann in Uganda eigentlich ganz gut leben, falls man es schafft, irgendwie mit seinem Gewissen ins Reine zu kommen. Das heisst, man muss die Augen vor Korruption an jeder Ecke zudruecken.

„Entwicklungsdienste seien hier nicht zur Korruptionsbekaempfung“ (O-Ton einer Fuehrungskraft einer deutschen EZ Organisation) – und falls man dann doch als kleiner Mitarbeiter den Fehler macht, und daran etwas aendern moechte, ist man seinen Job innerhalb von wenigen Wochen los. Read the rest of this entry »

Fataler Neid…

Posted: 5th September 2010 by Bellusci in Challenges / Herausforderungen
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Fuehrt Neid zu mehr Gerechtigkeit bzw.gerechterer Verteilung oder fuehrt Neid eher zu Selbstzerstoerung? Ist Neid ein universelles Gefuehl und ist folgende Studie der englischen Wissenschaftler daher auch relevant fuer Uganda / Afrika? Read the rest of this entry »

Entwicklungshilfe oder Neokolonialismus?

Posted: 11th August 2010 by Bellusci in Development / Entwicklung, TOP 10
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Darf man das Wort Neokolonialismus im Zusammenhang mit Entwicklungshilfe ueberhaupt in den Mund nehmen? Ist das erlaubt? Was ist der richtige, politisch korrekte Begriff, um den Machtkampf der entwickelten Laender um Ressourcen zu beschreiben? Friedenssicherung? Armutsbekaempfung? Read the rest of this entry »

Keine Zeit…

Posted: 4th August 2010 by Bellusci in Daily Life/ Alltag
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Taeglich nehme ich mir vor, einen neuen Artikel zu schreiben. Themen habe ich tausende: Polizisten in Uganda; Unser Hausmeister und die finanziellen Erwartungen seiner Grossfamilie; Beerdigung und Totentransport; Unsere hochgeschaetze Deutsche Kooperation und Korruption – oops, passt denn das? (aber da gab es sogar kuerzlich einen netten Artikel im Spiegel [30/2010] ueber unseren Deutschen Botschafter und seine erfolgreichen Bemuehungen um einen 64 Mio. EUR IT Deal); u.v.m..

Aber irgendwie fehlt mir die Zeit. Read the rest of this entry »

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