Where to start? How about Kampala. Jen and I headed out on Thursday morning with a pretty simple agenda. I had to get a filling, pick up some paperwork for the filing of our business in Uganda, we had to check on the cafe furniture and we had to shop for a few more various items for the cafe. The ride in was uneventful, as was the filling. This, of course, is saying a lot, especially considering my past experiences with Ugandan dentistry. I dropped Jen off at Nakumatt to  start scoping out prices for all sorts of kitchen minutiae while I took a boda (motorcycle) to the lawyer’s. After months of paperwork, the lawyer delivered a small victory.

This marks the founding of Hackers For Charity, Ltd, the official business operating name of HFC-Uganda. This means we can run businesses in Uganda including the Training Center and Cafe and I can apply for a work permit which allows us to stay in country longer. I have accepted the role of Chief Executive within the company and Isaac (our lawyer) is the secretary. That felt weird because Isaac drafted a letter offering me the position and I wrote a letter accepting the job. Strange, but official. Next, I’ll open a business account and then we can apply for a work permit. Interestingly enough, the business account requires MUCH more paperwork than a US account. It requires a (Certified) company resolution as well as the original filing documents for the company.

Back at Nakumatt, Jen found amazing lights for the cafe and we picked up quite a few items (meat grinders, carpets, salt shakers, etc) that we needed as well. We also met briefly with James, a young barista working in Kampala who we’re courting for the cafe. (We hired him yesterday, so that’s a huge relief. We didn’t have the coffee staff worked out yet.)

We ate a bit of lunch, then headed to the carpenter who was making the cafe furniture.  I should have known better than to trust this guy. Moses had short, nappy dreads, a ripped shirt and bad teeth. But these are cosmetic things which I can hardly hold against him, but the guy was just shifty. He was either high or drunk or both and he was three months late on our furniture. We called him and he told us the furniture was finished. When we showed up, we found the furniture unfinished and the tables all wrong. Our “dining room” tables were 15″ wide and easily 6″ too high. The chairs were not sanded and mostly unfinished, and the cushions weren’t even started. It was a bad situation. We walked two stalls down to find Ivan, a clean-cut young carpenter and placed an order with him. He promised to have the furniture delivered within a week, he called a delivery truck to help us get our unfinished furniture back to Jinja, he talked to the tailor to schedule delivery of our cushions, and he even offered to come to Jinja to finish the work that Moses started. Now it’s quite possible that Ivan’s lying to us too, but at least we have the majority of our furniture in Jinja and we have access to Ivan and other local carpenters to help finish the work.

We rolled into Jinja just as it was getting dark and unloaded our nearly full truck.

We spent a small fortune on cafe stuff in Kampala on Tuesday. Our money situation is rather dubious for a lot of reasons. The biggest reason is that I tend to shy away from using HFC funds for the cafe and we end up using our personal funds from gigs that I work. Even though the cafe is meant to be the primary funding source for HFC’s operations here in Uganda, I still feel odd spending the money on a restaurant because I’m afraid it may not be true to the spirit of how donors would like to see the money spent. It’s not computer stuff. But until the Computer Training Center is profitable, somebody has to pay rent and power and water in the center, even if it’s not exciting. It’s the same with the cafe. The profits from the center will fund the center and all our other projects here in the country, so I’m going to have to use more HFC funds to get the cafe off the ground. But things are moving along. The money from our monthly supporters keeps us running as a family, and with some HFC funds and gig money floating the cafe, we hope to be self-supporting as an organization and as a family before the end of the year. It’s an aggressive timetable.

So that was Kampala… A long day, as always, but pretty productive. More later.