Friday, 1.3. – On the phone

Felix ‘Early Bird’ breakfasts at 7:55 and takes a ride to the university with Boda-John for his second lesson on Cash Conversion. One of his experiences with his course’s participants (including staff) is that the students are not only eager to learn more on the topic but also demonstrate room for improvement regarding being on time – so the course finally starts shortly after 9:30 instead of the originally planned 9:00.

My plan for today: ‘on-boarding’ Banks for 14. March. After my quite successful and encouraging kick-off from yesterday with two banks having already committed participating in our MMU Banking Day, things turn out to be a bit more cumbersome today. I am working myself through a multitude of lists with contacts from various banks and – after the first 5 fruitless calls – get the impression there is bank holiday today. However, over late morning and into the early evening I manage to touchbase with the HR departments of 6 more local banks, so that already now we have a list of 8 potential banks participating in the event.

In the late afternoon, we sit together with Oliver Schmidt and discuss a number of topics around the event and the agenda for the week, which seems to become quite busy with a lunch on Monday with the Uganda Country head of GIZ on Monday, some appointments with banks before Thursday, a press event on Friday and a scheduled lunch or dinner with the German ambassador in Kampala.

We spend the evening with a stroll through Fort Portal ‘downtown’ and go for dinner and a game of snooker in the Forest Pub (no link available...). On the way back I decide to test my camera’s capabilities on night shots and manage to produce a snapshot from one of the local gas stations: