It’s just one of those weeks. Already.

Yesterday we had a dozen council (Local Government) guys in our cafe. Normally that would be a good thing. But these were the guys that like padlocking businesses who don’t have their paperwork in order.

If you’re asking “what paperwork” then you and I have something in common. Seems businesses here need a trade license. To get that, you have to be a registered business. Thanks to the same lawyer that bungled our family’s visa paperwork (and had us looking down the barrel of a $20,000 fine) our business registration’s not done. Fred tells me the council guys started yelling and pointing and threatening and then they pinned him down about this “Hacker” thing. That’s when he put them on the phone with me.

So today we paid a visit to the council office. Nice folks. No yelling. No pointing. I just told them what we were doing, and it seems they’re going to try to cut us a break because we’re doing community work in the training center. But the problem is, it’s not really community work by any standard. Yes, we charge next to nothing, but if we do OK, we will make a little something.

(What’s the rule to forecast profit? If we fill each of our 24 seats every hour of every day we’re open, we’ll make $4,500 a month. Subtract our expenses of around $1,500, and we’re at $3,000 in profit. So do we cut that in half? ($1500) or by two thirds ($1000)? What’s “the” formula?)

So it’s not a pure community project. Yes, police officers train free, as do Local Council members, UTL employees (partnered for bandwidth discount), certain NGOs and kids we are putting through our scholarship program. But if the cafe takes off, and we are able to swing it, things will start to really take off. We’ll be able to afford to get more creative with pricing, more lenient with discounts / scholarships, we’ll be able to open our rec / training center for kids, and we’ll be able to start more programs in the villages.

I spent several hours doing the necessary paperwork and talking to the local officials, but thanks to a printer problem, they can’t print the papers we need. I spent  two hours trying to find a recommended mechanic in Jinja, only to find out he was in Kampala. I did this because we’re trying to go to Kenya Wed-Sat to visit the food program there and go North to see the Pokots and do some HFC-funded relief work. It’s a long drive and since the whole family is going, I wanted the car to be in good shape.  Guess we’ll have to say an extra prayer for the car. But it turns out the AOET Kenya program is hurting because an HFC bank transfer didn’t make it. So after investigating it, I find out the money is in our US account. Which means I have to wait for a manual bank transfer (3+ days). That means that when we show up in Kenya, it’s on a bit of a sour note because they’re in the hole because the money we promised never showed up. And I think it will be even more awkward because we had planned to take cash to help the Pokots, but how can we do that when we owe AOET? And the point of the trip is to see the Pokots, and we can just show up and snap pics and video when these people are dying thanks to the drought / floods / floods / more floods?

The whole thing is a real mess. But Jen is excited, and now the kids really want to go. It’s a bit of a field trip sine we really haven’t “been” anywhere other than Jinja and Kampala and the family’s getting a bit stir crazy. We hope to see Lake Kayunga as well, and the assorted wildlife there, so I can see the allure.

But I’m just blah about everything right now. Finances are getting tight again, and to right that I’ve got a training gig coming up, but that pulls me out of pocket right before the opening of the cafe. So I’m not even really jazzed about the gig nor the money it will generate. I can only focus on how mush there is to do, and the fact that Jen’s ticked off at me because I get too hyper focussed on one thing at the expense of all else. For the last three months, it’s been the training center. Well guess what? It’s running ok. The rest of my world may have crumbled around me in the mean time, but at least there’s that, right?

Thing is, I just don’t multitask very well. I never have. And it sucks (really sucks) when that one thing I focussed on actually works, and hardly anybody notices. There’s a part of me that likes the pat on the head and all, but this is bigger than that. There’s a fundamental flaw in the way I do things that’s been baked in for the past 30+ years, and for a while that was beneficial.

(“I will not give up until this billion-dollar government security system FALLS!” And whaddya know, it freaking’ DID fall, and that made my employer happy and the government sad.)

Back then, this flipped-out version of ADD or whatever it is made me money and made me popular within a certain small, yet brilliant, percentage of the population.

But now, I don’t know. It just sucks and other things suck, and that just sucks.

The Jinja fiber is down, so we’re back to dial-up speeds.

Our exterminator did a terrible job so we’re mosquito bitten and flea bitten and the little weird snakes are back, and the ants are carrying off whole potatoes again. But we have potatoes, so that’s good.

The lawyer is dragging his feet on the visa paperwork and the creation of Hackers For Charity, Ltd, the legals business entity of HFC Uganda. Yes, the same lawyer that got us good and boned at the airport.

Our contact in the Ministry of Finance is being ridiculous about the tax waiver on imports, so we’re still not tax exempt despite the fact that he’s doing this as a favor for one of the most powerful men in the country. And after six months, he says we’ve got to start over from the beginning because I “didn’t keep behind him” despite the fact that I did everything he asked for, and bugged the living crap out of him about it.

I wanted to take a bike ride today and get some exercise because people are no longer politely ignoring the fact that I’ve doubled in size over the past three years. But that didn’t pan out, so here I sit exercising the strongest muscles in my body which might not even count as muscles… those weird tendons on the back of my hand. Even that’s not working out because I think I’m getting carpel tunnel.

I’m at least a month behind on emails, and there are excited people getting unexcited and polite people getting less polite, but there’s not much I can do about that because I have no bandwidth and it’s time for bed and for the fifth time I’m being reminded that I sit in front of the computer too much and the kids are waiting to say goodnight to me.

I don’t even know what to call this post. Maybe I shouldn’t even post it. Seriously depressing crap.

And just like that, we have a title.