4th week

I can not believe i have been here a whole month!!! wow its amazing how fast time goes by...this week has been very interesting, beside my vigorous training in coffee i have now been giving the position of Director of International Marketing for Nile Coffee which is Edmund coffee company. basically that mean i am and will be in charge of everything from operations to marketing. I really dont know how to feel about all that, it still has not settled in with me so i dont know all  the details but i had 2 meetings with edmund this week and his team here in uganda about turning the company over to me and letting me run with it. Basically he want me to run the company and have an aggressive marketing strategy implemented.  I dont even know where to start with it to be honest. I mean im just an ordinary person from springfield va here in kampala uganda in charge of a coffee company that is going to be the biggest exporting company to USA in uganda.. which is alot to deal with...i know one thing for sure, im going to need alot of help. Coffee is the second most consumed commodity next to oil. USA has the worlds largest market of coffee consumers, and let me tell you ugandan coffee is freaking great, these people  take  their coffee very seriously and they should because they have one of the best coffees in the world. this man edmund who i am staying with and who is the owner of nile coffee an expert in coffee..he studied coffee all over the world. i was looking at his resume and wow..he has degrees from all over the world, for example, he has a BA in Chemistry, 3 different masters in coffee tasting, and this and that from france, england and holland. His expertise is incredible when it comes to coffee and how to scientifically roast the perfect coffee bean to a specific customers need, for example US coffee drinker like their coffee sweet so he has come up with a blend that is naturally sweet, europeans love espressos so he has blend a type just  for them. I am telling you this company is going to blow up and ugandan coffee is going to be known world wide. i know that sounds kind of ambitious but thats what we americans are about, right? anyways that segment of my writing might of been a little boring but that i what i am going through right now so i thought for whom ever is reading this it might be of interest.

Any ways, a whole month in uganda has been great, i cant complain about anything edmund has been taking very good care of me, the only issue is the food.  As i mentioned a while ago i have decided not to eat any kinds of meat, so basically i have been a vegetarian for some time now, i just dont know how i feel about it. i mean i do feel pretty good and i believe i am taking in calories and protein the way my body should be but damn i miss a good steak or BBQ chicken. The problem here is that they eat the same food everyday, every restaurant has the exact same menu, rice, beans, peas, matoke(which is a raw banana boiled) chipate(kind of  a tortilla but made from wheat and flower), and a combination of vegetables. Eating the same thing everyday is not my style, i need variety in my life, but that is because we are so freaking spoiled in the states that when we come to a country like uganda the food is a shock. But dont get me wrong there are alot of restaurants down town which have very  good food but it is very very expensive, for example last 2 weeks ago we went to the sheraton hotel and i ordered a small pepperoni pizza which was very good but it cost 75000 shilling which is alittle less then 20 dollars, that is freaking crazy. Then we went to a Chinese place and their food was decent but the bill for 3 people was almost 100 bucks...i think living like this, make me appreciate what i had and still have back home and not take anything for granted.

Im kind of getting used to driving now, its been a full week that i have been going to work and back on my own, this whole driving on the left thing is a hard concept to grasp..20 years of driving on the right hand side and now all of a sudden the rules change. Here is an example, imagine coming to an intersection in the US trying to turn right, the first thing you do is put on your signal and instinct tell you to look where? your left right to make sure  there are no cars coming, now imagine here coming to a right turn and its all different now, you have to look right first then left. Oh and btw there are no traffic signals here, only in the middle of down town there are a couple but everywhere else you are on your own. i think im gonna have some issues when i come back state side and driving on the right hand side again. till next time peace.

the first picture is infornt of the chinese place, the second is sheraton, , the third picture is of the roads in kampala outside of downtown and the airport. the last one is of me driving.