Kuhandel
Perhaps the greatest obstacle to us becoming real “scientists” as we’d like to think we are, is that our object of study often gets in the way of our study. Maybe that’s why political science can never really be a science. If you want to study corruption, it – in and of itself – is bound to get in the way of your analysis. If you want to study poverty and development, you’re heading off to places where potholes and power outages are bound to get in the way of your “scientific” process. So when your entire dataset happens to reside in one big room in a mansion outside Kampala, and when the landlord’s wife stops by one morning to announce that we have to move out of the house immediately for “political reasons”, you are quickly reminded how fragile of a scientific process your project really is.
We are all still trying to parse out truth from storytelling in an effort to understand what actually happened to our mansion overlooking Lake Victoria. Between political reasons and blatant dishonesty – an alternative which became much more salient the morning a Belgian businessman stopped by our house with a truck full of furniture to move into the place he had rented out from our landlord a couple months ago – it remains unclear where sincere misunderstandings end and bullshit begins; nor does it really matter anymore when we are given two days to evacuate the premises. In the meantime, small but increasingly apparent and inconvenient changes began to take place this week. Daniel our gate-keeper disappeared and young armed patrol guards took over the compound; furniture began to vanish sporadically and we ended up eating our very last meal on newspaper table mats; a random collection of young men entered the house several times in an effort to grab the living room carpet on which our data-sorting activities took place. They even tried to take our cable TV – we adamantly resisted, holding on fast to our best data-sorting companion.
We celebrated our last night in the mansion with a game of Kuhandel. Macartan played some of his Cape Verde music – the melancholy of fado tunes quite becoming of our departure. I went off to my room to pack and smiled at how inconvenient this entire situation seemed to be, yet how perfect it all really was. I have been in Kampala one month. The project is going well and moving from one phase of experimental games to another. We have now found a couple apartments closer to the center of town. It seems like a whole new experience is ready to unfold.
Kuhandel - a german game that involves auctioning off and trading farm animals in an attempt to gather both as many farm animal families as possible, and the most valuable farm animal families possible. Take “Go Fish”, add cash, barter and bluffing, and you soon find yourself talking smack to your dissertation advisor. I looked around the room, each of us with our glass of whiskey or brandy, strategizing about the value of a pig or a horse, sweating with excitement and anxiety, and I thought to myself… so this is what academics do for fun. In the end it was Macartan who beat us all when he successfully bought off my horse, and the entire experience made for quite the perfect way to seal off our stay in the mansion.
We moved into two new apartments this weekend and left the mansion to the Belgian businessman and our sketchy landlords. My natural anxiety soon gave way to silly giddiness when I realized that we were moving 10 minutes away from the office, 15 minutes away from bars and restaurants, and 7 minutes away from complementary access to the biggest, most ridiculously equipped health club I have ever been to. They even have vibration chairs for post-workout relief. The gap between extreme poverty and extreme luxury, a developing country trait that Uganda seemingly has not escaped, could not be more conspicuous now: our new apartment is equidistant from the slums of our Mulago/Kyebando study and the ostentation of the Kabira Health Club.
We’ve got not more barking dogs, no more view of Lake Victoria, no more Daniel to open up the gate with a smile, no more ping-pong table, and I spent my Sunday moving hundreds of envelopes from one end of Kampala to another. But somehow, and this may just be one of those small miracles you can’t help but marvel at – like getting to work on time amidst traffic jams and potholes, holding onto my boda-boda driver for dear life as we zigzag through trucks and matatus and cows on Kampala’s ridiculous roundabouts, or finding my way to my various interviews when directions go something like “find the red container building by the catholic church at the junction… make a left at the tallest tree… ask for my place when you get to the primary school” – yes, somehow, the project continues.
We are all still trying to parse out truth from storytelling in an effort to understand what actually happened to our mansion overlooking Lake Victoria. Between political reasons and blatant dishonesty – an alternative which became much more salient the morning a Belgian businessman stopped by our house with a truck full of furniture to move into the place he had rented out from our landlord a couple months ago – it remains unclear where sincere misunderstandings end and bullshit begins; nor does it really matter anymore when we are given two days to evacuate the premises. In the meantime, small but increasingly apparent and inconvenient changes began to take place this week. Daniel our gate-keeper disappeared and young armed patrol guards took over the compound; furniture began to vanish sporadically and we ended up eating our very last meal on newspaper table mats; a random collection of young men entered the house several times in an effort to grab the living room carpet on which our data-sorting activities took place. They even tried to take our cable TV – we adamantly resisted, holding on fast to our best data-sorting companion.
We celebrated our last night in the mansion with a game of Kuhandel. Macartan played some of his Cape Verde music – the melancholy of fado tunes quite becoming of our departure. I went off to my room to pack and smiled at how inconvenient this entire situation seemed to be, yet how perfect it all really was. I have been in Kampala one month. The project is going well and moving from one phase of experimental games to another. We have now found a couple apartments closer to the center of town. It seems like a whole new experience is ready to unfold.
Kuhandel - a german game that involves auctioning off and trading farm animals in an attempt to gather both as many farm animal families as possible, and the most valuable farm animal families possible. Take “Go Fish”, add cash, barter and bluffing, and you soon find yourself talking smack to your dissertation advisor. I looked around the room, each of us with our glass of whiskey or brandy, strategizing about the value of a pig or a horse, sweating with excitement and anxiety, and I thought to myself… so this is what academics do for fun. In the end it was Macartan who beat us all when he successfully bought off my horse, and the entire experience made for quite the perfect way to seal off our stay in the mansion.
We moved into two new apartments this weekend and left the mansion to the Belgian businessman and our sketchy landlords. My natural anxiety soon gave way to silly giddiness when I realized that we were moving 10 minutes away from the office, 15 minutes away from bars and restaurants, and 7 minutes away from complementary access to the biggest, most ridiculously equipped health club I have ever been to. They even have vibration chairs for post-workout relief. The gap between extreme poverty and extreme luxury, a developing country trait that Uganda seemingly has not escaped, could not be more conspicuous now: our new apartment is equidistant from the slums of our Mulago/Kyebando study and the ostentation of the Kabira Health Club.
We’ve got not more barking dogs, no more view of Lake Victoria, no more Daniel to open up the gate with a smile, no more ping-pong table, and I spent my Sunday moving hundreds of envelopes from one end of Kampala to another. But somehow, and this may just be one of those small miracles you can’t help but marvel at – like getting to work on time amidst traffic jams and potholes, holding onto my boda-boda driver for dear life as we zigzag through trucks and matatus and cows on Kampala’s ridiculous roundabouts, or finding my way to my various interviews when directions go something like “find the red container building by the catholic church at the junction… make a left at the tallest tree… ask for my place when you get to the primary school” – yes, somehow, the project continues.
posted by cla at 6:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home