Check out this email I got the other day….

” My name is Alina Pavlidi in France with my dad.



“Please Madame, give me 1000 for transport back to my Ntinda stage,” one broker asked me the other day. First of all, we were in Naguru, so it doesn’t even cost 1000 to get back to Ntinda. Second, he’d already wasted my time: he made me come to Ntinda to see the place in Naguru, even though I was coming from town so it would have been closer for me to meet him in Naguru. Third, he’d already asked me for money to see houses and flats that weren’t what I asked for. And finally, if he doesn’t move with at least 1000 shillings in his pocket, he has bigger problems than finding me a house.

I didn’t give him any money.

You call an agent, tell them what you want, they tell you that you’ll have to pay to even see places. I don’t pay until I find a place, I say. But still, they ask for money for petrol, for transport, any shilling they can squeeze out of you.

And what hasn’t failed to surprise me, despite the fact that I’ve moved with half a dozen brokers already, is that they truly don’t listen to what you want. You tell them, I need three bedrooms, so they take you to places with either two bedrooms or five bedrooms. You tell them, it must be close to the main road, and still you go down the road so far that you wouldn’t be able to find your way back on your own. You tell them, I can spend this much money, and they either take you to shit holes that they claim cost what your budget is or to places twice as much as you can spend.

You’d think, these guys want to make money, right? So they should show you what you ask for. But no, they just waste your time. Do they really and truly think you’ll change your mind and suddenly want a different number of rooms or a completely different price range? I say, we are three people, we need three rooms. But they show me places with two rooms (where will the third person sleep? In the kitchen?) or half a dozen rooms, plus staff quarters, as if the three of us were to suddenly multiply and become more. Or, they show you places far beyond your budget, and expect that suddenly you’ll come up with several hundred spare dollars per month. Given that these are the same people who ask you for a thousand shillings, it’s amazing to me that they think your budget will suddenly triple.

My favorite real estate occurrence is when brokers take you to places that are already filled. You’d think they would call ahead and find out, but no, they want what? The money for petrol, the money for transport, and just more damned face time.

I’d love to penetrate the psyche of one of these crooks and find out just how they expect to make money when they can’t even manage to do their job properly

I know that MBAs are in short supply in Uganda, but this isn’t even a matter of a higher degree but of some common sense and basic acumen.

It’s amazing to me that these agents stay in business. It’s even more amazing to me that anyone in the entire city of Kampala has ever found a place to live going through this god-awful process.

So yes, if you know a broker who isn’t a completely incompetent fuck head, do let me know.

North building new life from cotton growing

Ellen Rose Lalam of Karabongo sub-county can not remember the exact year her husband was killed in a raid on their village. Twenty people were killed and many homes burnt by the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels. Residents, however, murmur the year was 2001.

Like most condensed Internally displaced persons camps in the area, the round huts here house mainly old men, women, and children. Most of the men have been killed or abducted by the LRA or lost in clashes with the Karimojong raiders.

“Eeeehhhhh,” Ms Lalam says, tilting her chin towards the sky. She wears a strand of yellow, white and burnt orange beads. But, like most things in Northern Uganda, there’s never enough to go around, leaving the threadbare string exposed where the beads are finished.

Perhaps she didn’t want to remember the year. She’d already lost one of her sons, all of her livestock, her home and her livelihood.

“There is no alternative. I can do nothing. I can only look after the remaining children,” she says. Before the insurgency, Ms Lalam used to farm cotton. But insecurity in the region has forced her and other villagers into IDP camps, away from their farmland and into the monotony of internal refugee life.

Now, by cultivating cotton with the help of a regional $1.3 million investment by the American Cotton Conglomerate Dunavant alongside another half million from Usaid, Ms Lalam hopes that after the next season she’ll have a good harvest.

The falls were beautiful. Leaping off a clay colored arched cliff into a rocky vegetated pool below. Our guide down the steep gorge wore no shoes as we passed over the muddy and rocky trail. He wore a threadbare shirt that creped above his waist, exposing his

A group of children became our entourage, with Isaac, a thirteen year old who possessed the greatest English skills, as their attaché. Like many kids even in remote parts of Uganda, he wore used Western clothing: a Winnie the Pooh and Eyore shirt traced with the mountain’s dirt. Badru asked him what class he was in (P6) and what he wanted to be when he grew up (a teacher) and told him about being a journalist. He was interested. If you’re ever in Kampala, stop by our offices and ask for us, Badru offered. I found the promise both encouraging and defeatist to a boy 260 some odd kilometers from Kampala and a 12,000 Ush taxi ride away. He asked us for 200 shillings, but we’d paid all of our change as entrance to the falls. I gave him my pen and told him to write down anything he felt like writing instead of something he was supposed to write at school.

The Crows Nest, where we stayed, was filled with Ugandan Christian University college students on a holiday from rural home stay. Many of the all female group had corn rows. They prayed often and in their spare time talked about American Prom Dresses.

It stormed at night and was so cold in the tent that I had to sleep in my jeans and sweatshirt. My New York blood has thinned. It was probably 60. Maybe 50.

The journey back to Kampala involved two taxis so we left early Sunday morning after watching the sun rise over coffee. The same taxi driver in the same neon green Alligator print shirt who took up from Mbale to Sipi picked us up.

Chickens and ladies in their best Sunday gomesi and farmers carrying heavy bunches of green matooke to market filled the taxis. They all got on and off in the endless musical chairs played as we stopped every fifty meters for a new passengers’ entry or exit. From Mbale to Kampala we caught a big Gateway bus, complete with Somali conductor and baggage in the aisles. I finished the book I had been reading, “The Purple Hibiscus,” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and the girl sitting next to me started reading it. I had borrowed it from my roommate, who had specified I return it, so when the girl got off just past Mukono, she gave it back to me. Young lady, if you’re reading this, and you remember me and the book, remember that I asked you if you liked the book and you said yes. I said I hoped you got to finish it eventually, since I saw you furiously turning pages and even skipping some as we approached your destination. Anyway, I’m sorry I didn’t just offer you the book and replace it for my roommate. I’d like to give you the book now, so please send me an email.



The power returns, or I miss the red… whichever you prefer.

I’M STILL LOOKING FOR HOUSING, KAMPALA. LET ME KNOW IF YOU HAVE ANY LEADS…

Though I don’t lose power nearly as often now that I live in the quiet nice-ish neighborhood of Muyenga, I miss candle light nights with the chaos of Kamowkya Market (I hope I spelled that right… at least closer to right than the first time I tried a few months back in an article) and the occasionally falling guava fruit hitting the fiberglass panel that covering the small deck behind the house.

(KAMPALA, IF YOU’RE READING…I’M LOOKING FOR HOUSING. On the Bukoto/Kololo/Naguru part of town. Ntinda’s too far for me, plus I was robbed there so not going back. If you know of anything please email me glennagordon no space at no space gmail dot com).

So, in honor of Kampala’s continuing power crisis, the Scarlett Lion loses power and goes dark. Okay, and maybe I’m hoping it shows the photos too…

And on the topic of darkness, Obi was wearing his sunglasses in the darkness the other night.

“I told you, I’m putting them twenty-four hours a day,” he said.
“I’m not sure that’s good for your eyes.”
“It’s not for my eyes.”

So I’m going to Mbale, Eastern Uganda, for a few days and I don’t know what posting will be like… but here’s one for the road.

I told Obi and Mawe I was going to Sipi Falls, and nearby Mbale, after I finished my work, and not just had they never heard of it, but Obi says to me,

“Is it new?”

Learned about these guys from Ugandan Blogger Jackfruity. A guy named Abramz, a hip hop artist and break dancer, has organized a project where he teaches break dancing and talks about social issues in Kampala, Gulu, and soon other regions, and possibly for youth in prisons too. Article to follow, pictures for now.