Arrival, and being Sanga Moses

This is only my second time meeting Sanga in person, and upon my arrival in Entebbe airport he already embraces me like a brother.  He looks as exhausted and red-eyed as I feel after my 25 hour journey.  I can barely imagine how hectic this man's life has been in the past months; he's newly married as of a month ago, his grandmother died last week, and he recently picked up and moved from his home village to the site of EFA's new facility in Lugazi.  Not to mention the massive organizational flux brought on by founding a new business in the developing world.  People told him he was insane to leave his steady, well-paying job as a corporate accountant, but he refused to conform.  On top of all this, he tells me that he was diagnosed with malaria yesterday (no big deal right? here its as common as flu).  Doctors said he should be in a hospital bed, but amidst all of this craziness, Sanga made it to the airport in time to wait 3 hours for my delayed flight to arrive.  And he has the humility to thank me for coming!  What a guy.

On our way from the airport to the EFA facility in the Kampala slums, we stop for a bite to eat.  Though it is past 1 am on a Monday, the Kampala nightlife seems to be in full swing.  Harsh, throbbing music blares from surrounding bars and night clubs.  Disembodied headlights seem to drive straight towards us and veer to the side at the last possible second.  Scantily clad girls giggle and give me eyes; I'm flattered until he tells me that they are definitely prostitutes.  In fact, just about everyone we pass stares me down, but I'm too tired and hazy to be overwhelmed by anything.  We finally settle on a restaurant where it turns out everything on the menu is fried and breaded (not my cup of tea haha).  Thankfully they had eggs, so I order an omelet, douse it in hot sauce, and we continue on our way.

We drive towards the outskirts of Kampala in Sanga's first car, a refurbished Toyota that was given to him as a wedding gift.  The roads become increasingly riddled with bone-jarring potholes until the tarmac finally disappears in favor of a rutted, cratered moonscape.  I would have been skeptical of approaching these roads in anything less than a Humvee, but Sanga carefully navigates the hatchback around the worst of it.  There are no streetlights and all the buildings are dark, so I can't yet make much of the surrounding slums.  We finally arrive at the EFA "Kampala office," which consists of a small, concrete-floored building with nothing but a desk, a chair, and a couple of bedrooms.

Upon entering one of the bedrooms, I'm surprised to find an EFA employee already occupying one of the two mattresses.  He awakens to help Sanga and I make up the other mattress by the light of a lone, flickering candle.  As I lay down to sleep (at long last), I inquire as to where Sanga was going to spend the night.  "With Moses," he replies.  "Isn't that your name?" I ask, perplexed.  Turns out that Moses was the first name of the guy on the other mattress.  You heard right- the founder and CEO of Eco-Fuel Africa, Limited has no qualms about sharing a bed with his employees.  A wave of rich, American guilt washes over me before I finally succumb to the jet lag.  Culture shock can wait till tomorrow.

 Eco Fuel Africa's Kampala Facility