Ugandan Bureaucracy Rules

Apologies to you, gentle reader, if you have already heard one or more versions of this story...

Just got done this week filing paperwork for the research project I'm working on here, to get a permit for foreign researchers (for me and the other people on the team) for when we start our project in a couple of weeks.  

The final step of this process involved going to the "Speke Road branch of Standard Chartered Bank" (as per the Ugandan government's instructions) and making a $300 US deposit in the Ugandan National Council for Science and Technology's bank account.  Although the payment needs to be $300, the account only accepts payments in Ugandan Shillings.  Once making the deposit, I needed to get a receipt stamped and signed by bank staff, then take the receipt to the Council for Science and Technology building on the outskirts of Kampala.  

There, I had to take my receipt to the finances office, where I would receive a receipt for my receipt (I am not making this up), signed and stamped, and in duplicate.  I apparently am supposed to keep one copy, while the other one goes to the case manager for our application. 

This is only the most recent step in an odyssey involving:

Two copies of our research proposal (80 pages)

Three copies of form SC-7 ("Foreign Researcher Application") for each researcher (four of us) (20 pages)

Two copies of form SR-1 ("Application for Permission to Conduct Research") for each PI and Co-PI (36 pages)

And four duplicate passport-style photographs per researcher.

Of course, you can't just print these things out because there isn't a functioning printer within like three miles of the University.  And even if there was, they don't have but 60 or 80 sheets of copier paper. 

The guy developing our passport photos very sweetly told me Joanna Stefanska, one of the Polish researchers on the team, is "very beautiful."  He then asked if she was my sister (?), and after I told him that she is not, he asked if she was available.   

If this was Bolivia, they would have lost our forms at least twice at the UNCST, but apparently, some sort of bureaucratic efficiency rubbed off on Uganda during the British colonial period, because although the bureaucracy is incredibly complicated, it actually is pretty efficient and even reasonably helpful.  It helps that all the people working on our case are former colleagues of our collaborators at the Makerere University forestry school.  

Now, I go to sacrifice a goat to the Gods of African Bureaucracy.