The NACWOLA heart

Three weeks ago was my first day at the NACWOLA office where, if all goes well and I secure funding, I will continue to work for the next six months. The office is based on a leafy compound, serene and quiet but for the ibis’ deafening shrieks that invariably start up as soon as something important is being discussed. The office is based far from a main road, down a long and tumbling dirt track. Boda boda riders (motorbike taxis) bump up and down the road, dodging potholes and long horned cattle. Meetings are held outsider under a thatched roof in the compound, and the atmosphere is generally relaxed. NACWOLA members and small crowds of children stop by to speak to Judia, one of our lovely volunteers, who offers psychosocial support and does a bit of washing up. Peter, another volunteer, takes on the duties of compound keeper. Both volunteers receive a pitiful remuneration for their efforts which doesn’t even cover their lunch. Unless someone buys them lunch, they don’t eat it. Resources are scarce at NACWOLA. Salaries are low to the point where many staff see the work they do as partly a charitable contribution. The staff are skilled and professional people who could get far better paid jobs elsewhere, but they choose to work with NACWOLA because of what Judia calls “the NACWOLA heart.” This heart is an attitude of professional and personal motivation to make a difference and is borne of peoples own experience of living with HIV&AIDS among themselves, their families and their communities. 

NACWOLA HQ, Kampala

While we thrilled to have secured funding from major development partners, it comes as project funding, rather than core funding. Current conditions are resource scarce; there is chronic toilet paper and soap insecurity. There is one towel, so on the day it is washed, there is no towel. There are no provisions for staff tea and coffee. Drivers stash their sugar pots in secret cubby holes and accuse each other frequently of helping themselves to one anothers supply. I bring in tea and sugar for the volunteers and have had to have words with a particular M&E person who has been ordering the volunteers to fetch him that tea, which he then slurps, blissfully. I had no idea hot drinks could be so political. Lunch was being bought for staff at one point, but that was stopped, presumably because of tight finances. There is no mineral water to drink-instead chlorine tablets are put in big tankards of tap water. The tap water is so full of heavy minerals that I now have rust stains on my clothes. I have heard there is a lot of lead in the water. We don’t have a hired cleaner-that is left to Judia, the volunteer on ART therapy who walks miles to the nearest taxi/matatu stand to come to work for no salary, and is given no soap to clean with.

Spot the sugar...

Extreme measures: A driver mixes salt into his sugar to give any potential thieves a fright. He doesn't mind it himself.

The office spaces are lively; people buzz in and out of each others rooms sharing updates, documents, and jokes, while mice run frantic relays behind the desks. An open door policy allows for free and easy exchange , and working relationships are presented more in terms of team work, than subordinate and supervisor  hierarchies. The office with the heaviest traffic is that belonging to the finance, HR and admint co-ordinator, unsurprisingly as cash flow is the life blood of any NGO. Unfortunately this seems to have dried up even more during the last week. The director of the organisation is currently on leave in the US, but due to bureacratic challenges, the transfer of financial control to the acting director was not completed successfully. While attempts are being made to rectify this untenable situation, permission continues to come from the US, as and when the director has a chance to check emails and process requests. However, as the director is on sabattical this must be extremely invonvenient for her, and so isnt really happening in the most timely and coordianted manner. This has led to the recent absence of soap in the toilets and the  fuelless vehicles sitting paralysed in the compound. Senior management are having to lend staff money to top up the phone and to refuel the vehicles, at a time when fuel prices have increased sharrply  to UGX 3500 per litre (£0.98). We finished a big proposal for project funding which needed to handed in as a hard copy to an office out of town. Without fuel in the vehicle this meant lending money to one of the drivers to take more than a days worth of time, a bus, a taxi and a boda boda to get there...and the same back.  

My desk in the resource centre, complete with miscellaneous unclaimed files, and a tupperware of fried crickets.

The NACWOLA heart is not a pampered one, and is not incentivised by the comparitively lavish salaries, buffet lunches and biscuit breaks provided by many international NGOs. But as the electricity in the office cuts out, the phone and internet dies and salaries are delayed due to cash flow blockages, the NACWOLA heart beats fiercely on.