Day 0 of AIESEC International Congress 2009

I’m currently in my room chilling with the national staff of AIESEC Bahrain.  It’s also the first day of Ramadan, and I’m glad that I will sharing the room with someone who can teach me more about its significance.

My other roommate is the national president of AIESEC Chile, who I randomly met in March 2008 when I visited Santiago.  He was then ex-LCP and hanging around as an alumni, I had no idea he had gotten back into AIESEC as national VP in 2008-09.  Small world.

 
members of AIESEC Uganda + AIESEC Venezuela at Global Village

The previous three days were spent in IC Pre-Meeting at a different hotel located in a suburban part of Kuala Lumpur.  I frequented the market across the street for soymilk and pickled mango/papaya snacks.  While I had an immense feeling of “wow, I’m not in Africa anymore,” it was nice to find familiar Asian staples to enjoy.

The Pre-Meeting was a chance for each regional network to work together on planning, collaborate on regional issues, and set the tone of their involvement in IC itself.

As a delegate from the national staff of AIESEC Uganda, I was participating in the Africa Growth Network meeting, along with AIESEC national leaders from the rest of East Africa, West Africa, and South Africa.  I practiced my French with @Togo and Gabon, connected with the president of @Nigeria who also studies chemistry, was inspired by a Science & Technology project that @Tanzania is organizing, and learned some awesome roll calls in Swahili from @Kenya…

I’m really taking AIESEC Africa’s issues to heart, now that I feel like we are the underdog coming into this International Congress.  There’s a lot we go through to be present here.  Among the 10 delegates from Uganda, I was the only one to have stepped onto a plane before.  Ultimately, the attendance at @Africa Pre-Meeting was very low … which was underscored by the Asia-Pacific delegation meeting on the same floor of the hotel with close to 10 times as many delegates…

The tone of pre-meeting finally gelled after the regional director screened a video from TED Talks about leadership in Africa.  It’s true that you need a very special type of leader to succeed amidst such challenges.  It’s also true that exemplary leaders are most needed in Africa now to drive progress in the coming decades.  The group that’s here is a representation of the immense hard work that’s done throughout the network – and here I see African AIESECers more committed to the meetings, staying up later to do work, and increasingly passionate about getting members of other regions to enter and understand the “cultural space” in which Africa resides. 

 

This conference is also an opportunity to re-live the various parts of my AIESEC experience from the last four years.  People are here from my first AIESEC trip to Egypt as a new member in 2006, from the cultural exchange trip I led to Peru, from my traumatic CEED in India, from the jubilant Anatolia Congress 2007, from the empowering Iberoamerica XPROS conference 2009… not to mention the countless people whom I’ve emailed day and night regarding matching around the world.  And most of all, I’ve appreciated re-connecting with Anjali, whom I met at my first AIESEC US conference … we’ve shared much of our development, and fought hard alongside each other for important issues in @US.  Now she’s on AIESEC Oman’s national staff.  As much as I am passionate about my current African identity, the chance to re-connect with a past (and still-existing) identity has truly strengthened my internal reflections.

This Is Africa :-)

while T.I.A. is no excuse for not regularly blogging, let me provide some (hopefully) entertaining stories about what’s been occupying me the last two and a half weeks.

Just after my last post, my laptop succumbed to a virus.  The service center decided to completely reformat my hard drive and reinstall windows, which means I’ve been working hard to reinstall software & reconfigure settings.  At last, my blogging software (Windows Life Writer – a rare high-quality program bundled with Windows) is back up and running, and I can keep you posted once again :-)

Closing Event for the Young EntrepreneurS (YES) and AfriTour Projects at AIESEC MUBS 

Now all 7 of AIESEC Uganda’s projects have closed.  Now, we’re standing on the shoulders of giants as we plan for 2010 realizations.  We have a terrific talent retained within AIESEC that will provide leadership for a new year of innovative projects.  And we have partners who are aligned with the AIESEC Way and dedicated to supporting the success of our projects :-)

By the way, we were also covered in Uganda’s Daily Monitor newspaper on 5th August and 12th August issues.  We also had a news feature that aired twice on WBS TV on Saturday, 1st August.  Contact me if you’d like to see any of these media appearances!  (I don’t want to interfere with copyright issues by posting online)

Yet another cooking adventure with AIESECers 

Now most of the trainees have left, and AIESEC Uganda is planning hard for a spectacular recruitment season.  But for a lucky special few, International Congress in Malaysia is coming up next week!!

Follow me on twitter to hear about my own preparations for IC 2009 in Malaysia.  But don’t worry, I still emphatically prefer blogging to tweeting ;-)

Just wanted to share with you one email that I got this morning from a colleague in AIESEC Uganda:

Dear all,

I would like to invite you to Makerere University Business School for a Press Conference  tomorrow Friday 8:00am to 10:00 am at the national office. It will take one hour at most.

Now at first, it would seem discordant – to say a two-hour time slot, and say that the event will take one hour at most.  Yet this is a perfect example of T.I.A. in practice.  For all morning events, people will inevitably arrive at least one hour late.  This message is a polite way of saying “come from 9:30am to 10:30am,” which is the actual time that we are intending to hold the Press Conference.  This all seems perfectly normal to me now…

general update

Again, it’s been long since I’ve posted.  Life here has been good, and here are some scattered anecdotes & updates.

I’ve completely recovered from my cold from last week.  Unfortunately, it’s now my laptop that has a virus.  All the swapping of USB flash drives puts the system at high risk, even though I’ve been careful with performing regular system scans.  I’m now moving toward giving people files by burning a CD (since email attachments take ridiculously long, and USB drives pose a virus threat).  The virus cripples my laptop when I’m trying to access internet, which is frustrating as I’m trying to catch up with online communication.  I’m seeing API’s computer specialist soon, and hope to get it resolved.

The opportunity to cook last weekend was amazing.  9 of us went to my friend’s aunt’s house on the outskirts of town, and we cooked up a feast.  The centerpiece was the esteemed Ugandan “rolex,” which is a chapatti + an omelet all rolled up.  This is the typical anytime meal-on-the-run of university students in Uganda, especially after a night of dancing.  But we spruced it up and produced these from scratch (the dough is only flour, water, and salt).  Now don’t you want to come to Uganda?

Only in Uganda:  the ever-satisfying rolex.

In other cooking news, I had the chance to make couscous that I brought from the U.S. for my friends around the hostel.  Although it’s the staple in Morocco and other North African countries, couscous is unheard of in Uganda … except I did find a 500 g box for $7 in the most posh supermarket – and this price is shocking considering that I get a full plate of food for $0.50.  Anyway, it was another fun occasion to gather around for good times.

Couscous dinner at the hostel.

I’ve been able to receive new interns from China and Nigeria in the last week, which has been especially rewarding.  They’re both fantastic people, and it’s fun to be able to play host in Uganda … makes me feel as though I’ve come a long way since last year.

I’ve also started some classes on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy at the API office. 

The days as a T.A. for freshman orgo are really being put to good use.

On Friday morning, I got a phone call from the Uganda National Minister for Micro-Finance, which was a nice shock.  She was RSVP’ing for the closing event of the AIESEC project I’ve been helping to organize.  It’s nice to be working in a market where students’ efforts can be recognized by top authorities.

Yesterday, I wrote a letter to the First Lady of Uganda, Janet Museveni.  She’s the latest in a long list of meetings I’m trying to set up to build AIESEC partnerships.

More on that later.  Actually, I was out-of-commission for most of last weekend, since I picked up a cold.  I got the cough and fever checked out, but nothing serious.  I think I had weakened my immune system the day I sprayed my room with permethrin (a long-term mosquito repellant).  I managed to disband the throng of mosquitoes that had taken up residence in the dark corners of my closet.  It’s astounding how many of these micro-vampires are constantly around … but they’re no match for my mosquito net and newly permethrin-treated pajamas :)

     

Some shots of my side of the room … decorations coming soon.

I’ve found it hard to blog recently, because I have actually been socially over-stimulated.  It’s the Ugandan way to always have a long chat around “how are you? … how’s everything going?”  As such, I have ample time to reflect and process nearly everything that comes my way during conversations with friends.  So at least today, my blog is turning from being reflective to more anecdotal.

I’ve found a great alternative to the herbal tea I would take in the evenings while in the US.  Here I can buy 10 passion fruits for $0.50.  I simply cut one open, scoop out the juicy flesh & seeds, and pour hot water over.  Simply amazing.

I’ve finally gotten connected with a 3G internet modem for my laptop, so I theoretically have access anytime/anywhere.  My challenge is now to find time to use it, since my days have been packed with moving around town and having meetings from morning until 9pm.  Then to maintain balance between working and personal relationships with AIESECers, we take dinner together and chat.  Evenings are a time to visit each other in the hostels, and visits often come unannounced.  Eventually I will find a way to schedule time for my own work and online socializing.  But for now, I love the opportunity to find community here, rapidly improve my cultural literacy, and embrace the spontaneity of events.

AIESEC Uganda- Member Committee 2009-2010
From left: Eunice, Wakib, Irene, Vicky, Kish, Frank, Drew, Bella

As for AIESEC stuff, I’ll leave it for another post.

My mandatory meeting at the U.S. Embassy was surprisingly enjoyable, completely due to the Ugandan woman who oversees the Fulbrighters. While I don’t foresee myself having close friends among the Americans working there, at least she’s a wonderful contact. She taught me that my favorite food (katunkuma, or bitter peas) is stereotyped as “grandma’s food,” which gave us a good laugh. We covered so much ground on cultural sensitivity and streets-smarts, my head is still spinning. And I plan to volunteer by interviewing Ugandan students who apply for scholarships to study in the U.S. …this would also involve counseling about formatting the CV and application essays – putting those years working at the Admissions Office to good use :)

One frivolous & extravagant activity, though – I went out for the premier of the new Harry Potter movie in Kampala at 11:30pm.  I was shocked to run into Sarah (Yale ’08), who I learned has been working for a year in Kampala!  Then I also bumped into a businessman from Congo to whom my boss had introduced me the week before.  I generally avoid activities as exclusive as a movie theater, but this occasion turned out to be great (not to mention I liked the film).

I was at API for three days last week, catching up with my co-workers from last summer. I’m especially proud that the researchers whom I recruited is still there, and the laboratory is being utilized for experiments. This Friday, I’ll be there to begin teaching them the theory behind Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy.  We’ve got labs at Yale that run the samples, and my goal is for them to be proficient in interpreting the spectra by the end of the summer.

it’s great to be back

My flight got in to Entebbe at 8:10pm.  Apparently another flight had just arrived, because the immigration hall was packed.  I learned that within the last week, a case of swine flu was identified in East Africa, so there was a Health Control station set up before you pass to get your visa.  It involved waiting in a long line just to tell some mask-wearing health officials that you had no signs of fever, sore throat, or cough.

I passed through getting my visa with no problem, although I will have to extend mine from a 3-month single entry to a 12-month multiple entry, with the help of the American Embassy.  I got all of my checked bags, made it through customs after a brief, perfunctory search of two of my three bags, and walked out to meet my friends at last.

I immediately spotted Paul from API, and Irene from AIESEC was soon to follow after she got back from a “short call” (Ugandan for bathroom break).  Meeting each of them in quick succession was such an exhilaration!  Everything felt natural, at peace, like I had really reached another home.

We took my huge bags to the parking lot, where me met Baker, a driver from API.  By now it was around 9:30pm, and we loaded everything into the trunk.  The car was having problems starting, so Paul, Irene, and I got behind it and started pushing.  It got going after about a block, and we jumped in … but the lights still weren’t working.  So we pulled into a gas station just outside the airport to sort out the situation.

A mechanic was around that night, but I think we were disturbing him from his rest.  They couldn’t sort out the car problems on the spot, so we called for another car.  It had to come all the way from Kampala, which is about a 45 minute drive.  It didn’t feel that long, through, as Paul, Irene, and I sat on the curb of the gas station chatting like mad with 9-months of catch-up.

During drive back to Kampala, we had SANU FM, the Top 40 popular music station, blasting in the back.  They spin a good mix of American hip-hop as well as current Ugandan dance-hall hits.  I almost never listen to hip-hop in the U.S., but somehow my musical tastes do an about-face once I step abroad.  Strangely enough, recognizing radio commercials that debuted last summer gave me a strong sense of coming back to familiar ground.  In particular, the coca-cola “Brrrrrrrrrrr!!” commercial was stuck in my head … the coke distribution logistics are quite amazing in East Africa, where you’re sure to find several sodas in a cooler, no matter how far out into the rural villages you get.  So much that the Health Ministry was thinking of partnering with distributing coca-cola to distribute medications to rural communities.  As much as I have problems with how foreign corporations exploit local markets, I must admit some guarded awe for the efficiency of their operations.

Somehow it got to be after 12:15am before we reached the hostel … I have no idea where the time went.  I met Frankie, my roommate and president of AIESEC Uganda for 2009-10, as well as Haruna, another AIESECer, and we carried my bags up to the room.  The dorm room is clean and comfortable, even if it is modest space.  But I didn’t stay long before they took me down the hall to another AIESECer’s dorm room.

      
(look, Mom, there’s a mosquito net!)

There I found the entire national staff of AIESEC Uganda (minus Bella) as well as several other local AIESECers chilling out, having waited hours for me to finally arrive from the airport.  Kish promptly started cooking on the balcony with ingredients that they had all brought, and soon we were midnight-feasting on delicious local food.  They had chapati (flat bread) and katogo (a mix of vegetables, sauce, and staple foods like green banana), and rice spiced with ginger.

The conversation was loud and lively … I hate to think what other students in the hostel must have thought last night.  Between morsels that were shoveled into the mouth using the right hand (they did offer me a fork, but I didn’t want to use it), we shared stories of AIESEC conferences and other gossip.  It was irrelevant that I had been traveling for 32 hours since I left home in Iowa – it was simply amazing to be thrown into the company of such good friends.  The number of students truly dedicated to AIESEC has increased dramatically since I left last summer – in large part due to AIESEC Uganda hosting AfroXLDS back in March, the largest conference in the region.  Most of the conference organizing committee was there, and it was great to hear from the creators how much a success it was.

Things finally were winding down around 2:30am, and people started walking back to their hostels – we’re all within a few minutes walk of each other.  Frankie and I chatted a bit before we passed out.  It will be a busy weekend.  I snagged a few hours sleep before waking up at sunrise this morning … jetlag with a vengeance.  I’m writing this post as the first rays are streaming through the window.  Once Frankie is awake, I’ll do a bit of unpacking before we’re off to the ASK Project Launch at one of the local AIESEC committees.  This is my first introduction as MC-VP-Projects, so I’m looking forward to asking a lot of questions and teaching/participating in a slew of AIESEC roll calls.  Lunch and dinner are provided by sponsors, which is sweet (hopefully it’s traditional food). 

Later tonight, there’s a AIESEC Uganda Global Village, where the ticket for entrance is drinks from your home country.  It’s sponsored by an alum who wanted to congratulate AIESEC Uganda on doing so many incoming exchanges this year.  I’ll finally get to see the Yale trainees there, and I’ll also meet a bunch of other AIESECers and international trainees.  We’re wasting no time with full social & cultural integration :-)

 

Sidenote- I still need to sort out my internet situation here.  I’m hoping to post this using the free wi-fi at the faculty later.  But within the week, I want to get my laptop hooked up with a 3G internet card to have more consistent access.  Keep in touch!

strategic planning from afar

Brief but necessary catch-up, 11 months since my last post: I’ve graduated! I’ve leaving on July 2 for one year in Uganda! I’m continuing my Green Chemistry research in Uganda on a fellowship. I’ll be a Masters student in Chemistry at Makerere University. and I’ll be MC-VP-Projects of AIESEC Uganda (i.e. I’m coordinating Issue-Based Projects at the national level). Life is wild and amazing now.

AIESEC Uganda National Planning Conference is this weekend, and I'm really disappointed that I won't be there to attend and facilitate. I was just reviewing the agenda outline that Frankie (MCP) just sent out. It's brilliantly based on training materials passed down from IPM, the highest-level AIESEC conference each year.

Then on the third day, the agenda starts out with "bonking game." I burst out laughing and got a surge of nostalgia and gratification. If I'm not mistaken, this is the game I made up spontaneously last year when running a transition workshop for the new @MUK executive board. I based on the favorite word of the local tabloid Red Pepper as a tongue-in-cheek adaptation to Ugandan culture. I'm thrilled to see it stuck as a way to learn AIESEC terminology.

As I'm planning for my year in Uganda, it's overwhelming to think about the impact I'd like to make with such limited time. But moments like this remind me that spontaneous creativity can sometimes trump meticulous planning.

AIESECing in Kampala

Attention: this may be the most intelligent post ever, since I've just come from a weekend of eating so many fish brains that my coworkers say I'll be a genius.

Or at least this post will serve as a long-delayed "hello" from Uganda, where I've been for the last 17 days getting into my AIESEC traineeship with a renewable energy company that has overtones of social entrepreneurship. Internet has been exceedingly scarce here -- they're in the process of laying cables underground so it will be harder for people to illegally tap into the internet ... and let's just say certain things take their time here. The upshot is I get to walk up to the second-highest hill in Kampala a couple of times per week to use the wireless at a charming hotel. See my blog for some of the pictures.

AIESEC Makerere University (Kampala) has just rounded out a tremendous year, beating out AIESEC Nairobi for the top spot in the Africa GN. It's been exhilarating to be involved -- as their only trainee with more than 3 months AIESEC experience, they've been receptive about including me in their activities.

For one, I got to go on a sales call with three AIESECers to speak with the Vice-President of the ruling political party, whom we met at his PALACE (he's been involved in stealing over $2 million in HIV/AIDS development funds, but remains in high esteem with the people despite his extravagance). Eunice, current OCP of the AfriTour PBOX and VP-TM-elect, managed to get the meeting by meeting the guy's secretary at a nightclub the previous weekend :-p . Anyway, Eunice pitched this program to empower youth entrepreneurship in Uganda's tourism sector. It was a success, and AIESEC MUK seems poised to be the first to realize this new PBOX. woot!

I've spent a couple of evenings sharing Ugandan beer with the CEO of the company I'm working for -- he was involved in AIESEC Kenya's leadership and a former AIESEC trainee to Portugal. He's asking for another three AIESEC trainees next year, with a preference that they specialize in business, medicine, and chemistry, and that they come from Yale. It would be one hell of an opportunity, and we'll see where we can take it.

This Tuesday I'll be running a session to transition the new LC EB into their roles. It'll be a challenge, since I'm only inching up the steep learning curve of their local reality. Frank, the current LCP and MC-VP-ICX-elect, had drafted a two-page chart of key transition areas, for which he budgeted a total of 27 hours of sessions (imagine: three 9-hour days). He had noted about 8 people who he hoped would facilitate, drawn from the outgoing EB and MC members. However, the only facilitators who showed up to the Transition Prep Meeting were me and Frank himself. It's a pity that the outgoing EB seems to have drifted (despite the strong year), and the MC are all full-time students or employed. And in response to the pleading from the incoming EB, we shortened the 27 hours down to about 8. I can tell they're nervous -- there are so few student organizations at Makerere that this will set them apart from many of their friends. But I'm excited about the chance to cultivate some AIESEC spirit among them ... they're already pros at Bebot!

Finally, I've got the green light to go to the Safari East Africa Leadership Development Seminar in Kenya during my last week! Get ready for some wacky roll calls and dances back on campus this fall ;-)

Shout-outs to all who have posted so far on the AIESEC Yale blog -- missing you, and looking forward to seeing more updates on this blog!