Dog-eat-dog

Having a hard time today. Being white and female cages me in much more than my free spirit would prefer. I went to Café Javas for an expensive cup of sanity and the familiar and I went alone. The security officer who checked my vehicle at the gate commented on my being alone, “You are alone?!”

“Yes, Thank you.”

“This is not safe,” he commented. “You need protection. I will protect you.”

Why did I have to say this but I did, “I will protect myself. Trust me. (Withering stare)”

For one, I am having a hard time with the way income is up and down and down down down, most of the time. Before I got here, I knew Stephen’s income was about $800/month. When I got here it dropped to $500/month. Now, it is $300/month. To me, it feels like the free market economy is blown completely wide open here, without stabilization buffers. 5% of the population is employed at an 8-5 job. The rest are running their own business and are in direct competition with each other to sell goods or services. Everyone is always in a mad scramble on a daily basis for getting their next meal. Income from one source dips and one must be agile enough to go and madly chase it from another source. If you are too kind. If you are not fierce, you will be crushed by the crowd.

I can’t track how the money comes in and goes. People here find it hard to keep an account of cash-flow in and out. I have a choice to either work together with Stephen on budget, which seems extremely hard for him and me because I rarely like what I find out in those discovery moments. OR I could simply make demands for what I want/need on a day-to-day and leave the how and where the money comes from to him (that seems like an undue burden on him). OR I could simply find my own source of income and skip thinking about what contributions I will get from him toward daily expenses.

In this struggle, I feel like I am constantly running into a barrier of a particular sort. Stephen has an extreme dedication to helping others and toward working for the benefit of his entire family and toward things he deems a project worthy of investment. When I am not here and sometimes even when I am here he will dedicate his whole day, forfeit breakfast, lunch and evening meal to making it happen. He will collapse late late at the end of the day and eat a small snack before falling into his bed and rising the next morning to do it all again. In that crazy cycle it is hard for me not to feel like I am the last investment on the list. Living in America, while he was in Uganda for the first 4 years of our marriage did not help him get a true feel of the absolute need I have for him to provide for our family’s well-being.

Aside: That cup of coffee/sanity cost $2. On a $300/month income it was 0.67% of my income.