Football Friday Celebrations

My three night / four day stint in Joburg was a bit of a whirlwind.  I started off exhausted enough to leave my passport in the forex and never quite fully recovered.  That being said it was an overall successful trip.

it wasn't the ice cream that made it a success - but haagen-dazs does make me smile!!

The purpose of my trip was to build on the UAM partnership sessions that had taken place the week before in Kampala.  We worked on country strategies and discussed some of the upcoming events where UAM will be featured.  Particularly exciting was the announcement that Brazil would travel to Tanzania to play their final pre-World Cup fixture and the game would be dedicated to UAM!!

View from the meeting room

Sandton - a Joburg Suburb

On Friday Standard Bank (known as Stanbic in much of Africa) hosted a UAM Partner's lunch.  They really pulled out all the stops and it was a great success.  Driving into downtown Joburg to get to the lunch you could really see the World Cup spirit.  It really was 'Football Friday' and almost everyone was in a football jersey - mostly supporting Bafana Bafana (South Africa).  Cars are also decorated with window flags as well as mirror covers.

Giant UAM Bracelet made on Big Brother Africa

(bracelets are being sold for $3 at Nando's across South Africa and will soon be available online - they are made by a women's group in the Kaelisha Township outside of Capetown.  $1 goes to the women, $1 to the Global Fund and $1 for materials)

Standard brought in a group to teach us all the 'Disky Dance'

I won first prize in the contest - a signed Abedi Pele Jersey

They are shipping it home for me....

Group shot of the core UAM team

On Friday night we went for dinner outside of Sandton which was really nice.  Admittedly in three visits to Joburg I had never really left this area which is dominated by Nelson Mandela Square and the Santon City Shopping Centre.  It was great to see that there are actually some real communities where people wander around and there are shops etc.  I know, it sounds silly but with the reputation of Joburg I hadn't realized that these areas existed.

Saturday morning did not start off well.  I went to pay for my hotel with my 'BidVest' visa. This is something that they are offering when you change money - they load it onto a card so that you don't have to carry the cash around.  From a safety stand point this makes sense.  I must admit I fell for the gimmick of it all and the idea of having a world cup visa so loaded R4000.  Well what wasn't made clear to me was that you had to keep R20 on the card so as we tried to process my hotel bill it was declined over and over again.  The hotel called and they said there should be no problem....so we tried again and declined.  We called again and were told about the R20 so they told us to process R3980 and it was still declined.  Upon calling again we discovered that for each time the card was declined I was billed R5 + a R1.5 transaction fee!!!  I was not pleased at all but 25 minutes later my bill was paid and I was en route to the airport.

When we got to the airport (I was traveling with a Ugandan colleague) there was a giant line to checkin for our Kenyan Airways flight.  Luckily they had little terminals that could be used.  Upon printing my boarding pass I discovered our flight was 2 hours delayed and we would miss the connection in Nairobi.  This would mean a 4.5 hour wait in Nairobi provided we could get onto the late flight and would arrived back in Entebbe at midnight!  This was not acceptable to me.  

It used to embarrass me when my parents would make a scene about things at the airport (well truthfully it still does sometimes) but they have managed to get us bumped to business class before.  Well I called on those skills and began to make my complaint and my request for them to switch us to the direct South African Airlines flight.  After speaking to three people I was put on the phone with the manager who insisted nothing could be done...but also told me to go back to ticketing to find out what it would cost.  At this point I was feeling pretty hopeless and a bit embarrassed about making such fuss in front of a colleague.  BUT when we got to ticketing the changes us both to SAA at no charge!!  The bonus for me is aeroplan miles and I ended up in the first row behind business class but still in a business class seat!!

I made it back to Kampala just in time to get to dinner!  Sunday afternoon I went to see SATC2 - I must admit the wardrobes seemed a bit extravagant and outrageous.  The power went out in the middle of the movie so that made what was already a fairly long movie even longer.  Still liked it though:)

Happy Graduation to Care today!!!