Uganda, a country that both single men and retired men want to go to, where you only need a little skill to make a lot of money locally, especially if you have a skilled job, such as repairing cars, bicycles, and tailoring, then you are a superior person in Uganda.
When you live in China and feel particularly stressed or feel like you're retiring with nothing to do, going to Uganda can give you a rich life. Although the country is not very developed, most Chinese make a lot of money here, and even some men are infatuated with the women here, so that he has never been able to extricate himself, and eventually got married and had children there, and even settled there.
I think I am fortunate in my life to be fortunate to be able to come to such a landlocked country as an ocean-going seafarer. At that time, it was the shipping company that contracted several dredging projects in Africa, and Uganda was one of them. I was also fortunate enough to be the only captain the company had sent to dredge Africa in the past.
There, I got a deep insight into what Uganda is really like and made me feel that Ugandan life is incredible.
Before leaving, I signed a one-year contract with the company to work in Africa, which also made me riveted enough to work in Africa again.
At the beginning, I departed from Shanghai, transited from Dubai, and arrived at Entebbe International Airport in Uganda after a ten-hour turnaround.
On the day I first arrived at the airport, the temperature in Uganda surprised me a little. The temperature here is so comfortable, when you get off the plane, the temperature is only 28 degrees, and it is still local summer time. It seems that Uganda is not the hot country I imagined.
Although Uganda is located in Africa, the temperature is relatively stable all year round, maintaining around 18-28 degrees throughout the year, making it a good place to live all year round.
After finding my suitcase, I got into the car of the driver who had been waiting for the dredged base of the airport, although the car was very old, it was not very comfortable to sit, and the fatigue of the long journey made me feel a little uncomfortable, but after the driver received me, it was very friendly and made me feel a little more comforted.
We passed a small town along the way, and I was overjoyed to see that the villagers here were very enthusiastic, smiling, riding their beloved and precious bicycles, seeing us from afar, greeting me, and looking at the bicycles they were riding, it turned out to be a Phoenix brand bicycle, and the intimacy of the sixties and seventies of the last century was born.
The driver told me that in Uganda, as long as the income can reach 500 yuan per month, then you can afford to buy a bicycle, but in fact, there are still many real Ugandans who cannot afford to buy a bicycle.
The traffic here is not very good, along the way I took a bumpy car and walked 50 kilometers from the airport by car, which took more than two hours to finally arrive at the hotel that the company had booked for me in advance. The hotel here has a big contrast with the scene I saw along the way, it is completely a big competition between the living environment of the upper and lower class, and the gap is not ordinary.
The first thing to do after checking into the hotel is to go shopping locally.
The first shopping was led by the hotel staff, who drove me on a motorcycle to a street, where I saw the rural atmosphere, and there were many locals on the side of the road with some self-grown things out to sell at stalls.
I tried to ask the price of pineapples on the roadside big brother's stall, and the big brother told me that a large pineapple, about five catties, only needs 1800 Ugandan shillings, about 3.6 yuan, a pound of bananas, looking unripe, in fact, it is ripe and very delicious, only 1000 Ugandan shillings, about 1.8 yuan.
Such a large pineapple, the price is so cheap I can't believe it. The most important thing is that these fruits are produced locally, the local has a unique natural environment, abundant rain, suitable temperature, as long as planted can be picked in large quantities, it is also a huge gift from heaven for this country, compared to other African countries, it is really much better.
In such a superior climatic environment, the vegetables and fruits eaten by the people can basically meet the requirements, which are too cheap and inexhaustible.
In addition to cheap fruits, daily necessities here are also very cheap, such as shoes, a pair of sneakers only costs 13,800 Ugandan shillings, about 25 yuan. When you don't know where this shoe came from, you will think that such shoes are really cheap, in fact, most of the shoes here are second-hand shoes collected by Chinese Chinese here from China, transported to Uganda, re-sorted and repaired and then taken out for sale.
Chinese Chinese do second-hand business here, especially to make money.
Of course, there are people who do other business here, and I think the locals will have live chickens for sale just like we do in the market.
At that time, I bought a chicken on the street, this chicken is used to give to the hotel staff, I know that the country does not need to tip, considering that I will stay in the hotel for another year, I need his help in many places. Therefore, I plan to give him a chicken as a favor.
Although the staff did not take the initiative to ask for this, but before departure, I learned about the situation in the country, in Uganda, it is difficult to ask someone to do an errand without benefits, which is also the first step of my human favor. A chicken is also cheap, and you can buy a rooster for only 20 yuan. Of course, in the eyes of locals, 20 yuan a chicken is a very expensive gift.
For the staff, they may not be able to afford to eat a chicken for a month.
The basic income of ordinary people here is very low, and although the staff work in hotels, the salary is not very high. Local bosses think that their labor is cheap and generally do not give more, and more people will be willing to do it if they are not willing to do it.
Many people, like me, are curious about how the local poor live. For my part, I care more about their income.
At that time, several of the workers on our dredging ship were local, and they were paid daily wages, one day of work, about 20 yuan a day, and 600 yuan a month. In my eyes, the company bosses are too pitted, they work so much every day, but give so little. Although the labor force in this country is cheap, it does not give such low wages. The drudgery of dredging is actually very hard, dirty, and a day of work is also exhausting and paralyzed.
At first, I still had compassion for these people, and then after living and working here for more than a month, I learned that the boss gave them such a low salary is really not low, in real life, there are even lower salaries than this.
In addition to workers, ordinary people who do business in the market, they carry things from the countryside to the market to sell, and they rely on the income from growing vegetables and fruits to supplement their family's income all year round, and it is very good to have an income of 400 yuan a month.
Of course, the gap between rich and poor does exist here.
In the city, the cashier of a small supermarket can still earn 1500-2000 yuan a month, if there is a skill in the city, it is powerful. For example, an ordinary tailor earns 4,500 yuan a month, and a car and bicycle repair master can earn 7,000 yuan a month.
The gap between the rich and the poor here can only tell everyone that as long as you have a skill, Chinese come to Uganda, you will earn more than you can in China, and you will not be very tired.
It's easy to make money, and the people here are also friendly, and they won't act xenophobically because you block people's money. In many African countries, they are repulsive to Chinese Chinese, and they do not like foreigners to rob their business.
In Uganda, this phenomenon does not exist, but it is very popular that we Chinese can do business locally.
I am still very impressed with the people here, especially the people in rural Uganda. They are simple, kind, and do not have too many bad intentions, especially the people in the small town are amiable and respectable, but the people in the city will be more cowhide.
Sometimes, when I ask someone in the city for help, they will directly ask you for money and remuneration, otherwise there will be no one to help you, in their eyes, there is nothing that cannot be solved if you have money.
On the contrary, rural people will not be like this, especially for Chinese, they are very friendly, get along with them, you will feel their enthusiasm and sincerity, especially children, their cute appearance, lovely.
However, the men here seem to make me feel that something is wrong.
The marriage relationship in this country is polygamous, and many women do not know who the father of the child is when they become pregnant, and some children are abandoned after birth.
At the time, the hotel staff told me that there was a mother in the town, who had been single all her life, but adopted three orphans. It touched me and gave me the idea of lending a helping hand to them.
In this kind of rural home, it is really not easy to eat and be willing to adopt two or three children. The strength of women reflects the cowardice of men here.
Although the men in this country are of good character, from the working conditions of the workers I have seen on the construction site, they are not men.
At that time, during the process of dredging, we needed to lay the pipeline, and the foreman temporarily hired a dozen or twenty people in the local area. Judging from the state of their work, I think the men here still have a bad sense of family responsibility. Most people always stare at the foreman when they are working, and when the boss is away, more people are there than they are working. It was clear that it could be completed in an hour, but in the end, it took half a day or even a day.
Not only that, but local men do not have the sense of responsibility to save money to support their families. After the completion that afternoon, the foreman paid them a salary, and they immediately consumed it that afternoon. They have no sense of having to provide for their families at all, just for momentary pleasure.
However, the people here, the life mentality is very good. They enjoy life in the present, never have any plans and plans for the future, and do not need to think about whether the future life will be rich or poor. All you need to do is get the sun rising every day and make some money to live your life every day.
Some of the more industrious people, they are still quite smart. Some know how to learn from Chinese, Chinese there are currently 20,000 people doing business in Uganda. Locals and Chinese have learned a lot of business methods, some know how to sell fish through fishing, Uganda not only has the world's second largest freshwater lake, Lake Victoria, but also many other lakes large and small.
You know, China exports a large number of various commodities to Uganda every year, including electrical products, electrical equipment, home appliances, clothing, and medicines, helping them improve the country's overall economic level.
At the same time, they also rely on their own unique environmental advantages to produce a large number of products in their own country and export them to China, including Ugandan aquatic products, such as dried fish from Lake Victoria. Of course, there are also local famous coffee, coffee beans, rapeseed, leather, etc., which also help their country to further improve its economic level.
I often wonder, no one in my hometown has ever sold tilapia before, but now it is everywhere in the market, is this fish from Uganda?
When I was working in the local area for half a year, I went to a market, and I did see a lot of tilapia in the local area, and I don't know if it was caught by the locals, and the price was very cheap.
I was impressed by tilapia, and I was even more impressed by the traffic here.
This trip is probably the farthest place I've been here in so long. In order to get to that town, we traveled through three other towns.
The traffic here may remind me of my childhood life in the countryside.
In Uganda, with the exception of a city centre like Kampala, which has slightly decent concrete roads, most town streets are dirt roads. The weather here is good all year round and it doesn't rain continuously, so it's acceptable to walk around on the road.
The traffic in Kampala can be said to be very congested, only 5 kilometers away, if you go to work rush hour during the day, you may need to drive for two hours, watching the congestion, there is no traffic order at all. The remote town is bustling and dusty.
It is still very inconvenient to go out here or have your own car, motorcycles and bicycles, which is also my second month of working in Uganda bought a Japanese second-hand pickup truck, spending 8600 yuan, especially burning oil.
Not to mention, when I worked here for half a year, after getting acquainted with many locals near the hotel, they always liked to take my car, at first I was reluctant, watching them always walk to shop, I still had a flood of conscience, and finally drove them shopping for free.
Some people are relatively friendly and will give me a few small bucks, some people are worried that I will ask for his money, and jump out of the car before they reach their destination, which is really dangerous.
It can be said that the level of education of the people here is also uneven. Most of the locals do not receive a good education, Uganda's educational resources are weak, and the local people receive very little education. In recent years, Uganda has recognized the importance of education and made education compulsory so that children have more opportunities to learn.
Uganda's education method is a 7+4+2 model, 7 years of primary school, 4 years of secondary school, 2 years of high school, and after 2006, the country began to make free and compulsory secondary education, which is also the first of its kind in Africa.
But because the country is poor, the education environment for children in many small towns is too poor, at that time, I passed through a small town, went to buy electrical materials, and saw a school on the side of the road, the teacher was teaching the children seriously, I was moved by the scene at that time. This is the uneven distribution of educational resources caused by the gap between the rich and the poor, and education in the central city of Kampala is better.
After witnessing this with my own eyes, I feel that Chinese is too happy compared to them, no wonder many Chinese, a little money wants to come here to make a fortune, here are everywhere are business opportunities, doing business here is very profitable, after all, they still have a great demand for materials.
The Chinese have invested in many projects in Uganda, including the production of building materials, tableware, furniture, clothing and many other products, and there are also many Chinese to operate supermarkets, hotels, guesthouses, farms, restaurants and other places to make money here. According to the locals, most of Uganda's money is earned by Chinese, and it has also contributed a lot to Uganda's economic development.
Chinese engineers who come to Uganda to do engineering in Chinese-funded enterprises can earn 20,000 yuan a month and 15,000 yuan in private enterprises, and many Chinese workers working here tell me that their wages are twice as high as those in China, especially those who have skills but are eliminated by the country when they are old, they will choose to come here for further development.
However, people who come here to make money still need special attention in some aspects.
UGANDHA IS A PLACE WHERE THERE IS A HIGH INCIDENCE OF HIVES, THERE ARE ALSO PEOPLE WHO WORK AS GIRLS, COME TO THE LOCAL AREA, WHEN YOU WALK SOMEWHERE, SEE SOME SMALL HOUSE DOORS WITH "WELLCOME TO THIS HOUSE" SIGN, DON'T BE TOO CURIOUS, CASUALLY ENTERING MAY COST YOU A LOT OF MONEY, AND YOU MAY ALSO GET AIDS.
During my year of working in the area, there are two things that impressed me very much, which may also be the cultural embodiment of a country.
Uganda is a well-known country for drunkards in the world, and locals basically drink a pound or two of local wine at every meal, and their wine is fermented from fruits such as bananas. And the locals drink very interestingly, they all use a plant straw, and everyone directly inserts it into the barrel to drink to their heart's content. I'm curious about the way they drink, what if anyone does something bad?
It's unacceptable to think about that hygienic diet, but the locals especially enjoy the atmosphere.
It's fun to drink, and it's fun to get married.
There is also an interesting way to get married in remote towns in the western part of Uganda, especially when local chiefs get married. When the chief married, they were ashamed to marry virgins, so before choosing a concubine, they would have people help him choose a concubine, and then let the chief be helped to avoid shame, in a way that only a few places in Uganda did.
In my opinion, such a small country does have something particularly worth exploring.
This is a very suitable place to live and work, the local geographical environment is very good, has a unique environment, where the pension is also very good, if you feel that the pressure of living in China is too much, you can go to the local to find a job of your own, the money will definitely not be less than China.
Even if you have a skilled job as a tailor, you can live a happy life in the local area, and if you can marry multiple wives here, it is a very good old age.