Drop-off Day

Today, was a very interesting day.  Today we did what they call drop-off day.  This is when you are given a partner, and a topic, and we go out into Kampala and research that topic.  My partner was a girl named Emily, and our topic was the Economy, Trade and Markets of Kampala.  Yesterday we had a two hour lesson on basic survival Lugandan language.  Let me just say, I haven't learned another language since junior year of high school so this was quite difficult.  Some handy words I decided to remember were Oli Otya? (which is the equivalent of Whats up?)  Tonseera kubanga ndi muzungu ("DON"T OVER CHARGE ME BECAUSE I'M A MUZUNGU <White person>!)  So anyway, during our investigations in Kampala, we discovered a few things related, and unrelated to our topic.  One, was that even though we sound SOO unbelievably stupid speaking in Lugandan to Ugandans, The Ugandan's laugh and it is a good ice breaker... One thing we learned in our Cultural and Social norms lesson yesterday was that Ugandan's see greetings as a very important thing.  If you do not greet the person in the store they will not talk to you or assist you.  Once the Ugandan's laughed at our poor Lugandan use, they were very happy to talk to us and help us.  We talked to a bakery worker, an imported shoe store oner, and a book store attendant.  It was amazing how much these people could tell us about the economic standing in Uganda.  We also took a look at the local paper.  (now time for the boring stuff for all you adults out there; Kids you can skip this part until the next paragraph.)
Of course the inflation rate here is extremely rising, and at a rapid rate too.  This is effecting every person in Uganda because people are paying more money for the same amount of goods they were buying just a few months ago.  Also, we noticed that there is a higher demand for imported goods like technology, which is compromising for food exports.  Less and less money is coming into the country and more and more is going out.  I guess this is the great basis for entrepreneurs to come in and boost the economy!!!

Okay enough of that for today, more will come later (feel free to ask me for more info if you would like)
I am also going to try and put pictures up one of these days