I remember telling a joke at home about how I would be putting some bricks together in Kampala for helping out poor people in Africa… now I’m not so sure anymore who exactly are the ones that are poor.

Eight weeks ago I was selected to be part of a team that would assist the Uganda Red Cross Society on a real estate investment decision on behalf of the company I work for. I’ve been confronted with many challenges in both my personal and professional live, so I figured this one would not be that hard to handle… little did I know.

At the time I write this note, our team has been in Kampala for about four days. It took some time adjusting to the local circumstances, however, much of what had been told in the training back home now comes to use and we really seem to get through to most of the Ugandan people we are talking with. Everybody is really enthusiastic about us being here, especially local staff from the Uganda Red Cross Society. As part of our job concerns a feasibility study, some regard our work as threatening to their position; this goes mostly for the external (consultancy) firms hired by the URCS and this is of course quite understandable. Nevertheless I find it a great challenge how to go about this since it is difficult to interpret (non verbal) response.

What surprises me most are the things I learn from my own colleagues I’ve been working with already for quite a while. Somehow, functioning as a team under these circumstances brings other qualities to the surface and triggers creativity and drive in quite another way. Of course I’ve noticed this for myself for the past few days, but I really see a difference in how our team is operating at this project compared to back home. I brought this up yesterday when evaluating our progress so far, and all seemed to agree… have we become the next A-team?

Considering our goal – assessing soundness of a real estate investment opportunity – I’ve already been astonished several times about how irrelevant my experience is once all external factors are different. At work everybody is talking about how we should think outside the box… but now I realize we are so far into the box we really don’t have a clue anymore about how to get out… This became utterly clear the other day when we were in a meeting with the mayor’s office. When the discussion came to investment opportunities and the real estate market, I made some suggestions about consulting with real estate investment firms and development agencies to broaden our perspective. However in Uganda, real estate investing is not so much about making returns or long-term planning but more about putting down a building where and when you need one… an making sure it stands the test of time. Moreover, investing is done by a handful of wealthy individuals with little concern for returns, rendering the market unpredictable and non-transparent.

Before we came to Uganda, we enrolled in a series of workshops by EsteamWork that took us through the process of teambuilding, case analysis, way of working and scenario analysis. Although I now understand how much this helps us while we are here, it also makes me realize the growing amount of assumptions I made in the past that now turn out to be invalid. Even though we get all the help we need from local professionals and from an experienced EsteamWork project manager who has joined us for overall support, this is something we have to do ourselves. And it is definitely different from other challenges I have faced before, but I think this accounts for all of us.

Time is now 0620 AM. We have finished breakfast and are about to leave for the URCS offices. On the agenda are a meeting with local government officials and a group lunch with the URCS board. We’ll split up in the afternoon. Half of the group will visit another real estate development project initiated by URCS last year. The others will present our preliminary findings to the local construction and engineering firms URCS intents to work with. We’ll all end up with drinks at the ambassador’s place and hopefully find the time for good conversation with each other like we had yesterday.

I’m very much looking forward to being here a couple of days more… not only because of the beauty of the surroundings here but also because I realize I’m really making a difference by doing this. It gives me great joy and pride… and energy I guess, as I can’t remember having written a piece like this before at dawn!

I remember telling a joke at home about how I would be putting some bricks together in Kampala for helping out these poor people in Africa… but now I’m not so sure anymore who exactly are the ones that are poor.

Kwaheri, Hans.