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Maybe people shouldn’t ‘visit Uganda’ until...

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Writer: Benjamin Rukwengye. PHOTO/FILE. 

My gold standard for excellent customer service in a restaurant is a waiter I encountered about two years ago. We walked into a restaurant at Colorado Springs in Colorado, at the bottom of scenic Pikes Peak – the second most visited mountain in the world.

When we walked in, he quickly noticed that our accents weren’t the kinds he was used to hearing. He said he serves hundreds of visitors every year but he couldn’t place us and took turns guessing our countries. We also asked after him. He told us he was a local and that at the end of the year, he and his girlfriend would be moving to the Netherlands. 

I recognise that he is an outlier because, in most other places in the West, they aren’t always affable. Only efficient to a fault – which is the expectation. But that has to do with quality and standards – which we don’t have. That is why they thrive and we don’t at this stuff.

On New Year’s Day, my family asked around for a family-friendly place to go to. It was eventually suggested that we go to the Garuga Resort Hotel in Entebbe. Hidden, but quite a beauty once you get in. Lots of green space for kids to play and run around, and a waterside for adults to gaze into the endlessness of the world and reflect. 

What could go wrong? Well, a lot.The first red flag was when the waitress said they had no fish left (or was it available?). You are on the lakeside for crying out loud! We ordered whatever was available anyway – and were told to pay cash. 

Then the drinks took a year to arrive and when they did, they hadn’t been refrigerated. We noticed that lots of people had actually carried their food. Apparently, you were allowed to. 

So, if you were foolish enough to show up without your own and had to rely on their kitchen, that was on you. Well, we didn’t know this and that is why, two hours after ordering, the kitchen had still not delivered.The kids, now hungry and awfully irritable, started meandering off to whichever family they could find, to offer them food. 

We also noticed that some people – not black – were getting served fish even if we had been told that it was unavailable. We also couldn’t up and leave because we had ordered with cash – as is the policy.

We couldn’t find our waitress. When we finally tracked her to the kitchen, it turned out that she wasn’t hiding. She was peeling Irish potatoes because the orders included French fries. I kid you not!
Basically, the waiters were also the same ones peeling, cutting vegetables, and cooking. And if you exerted pressure or bribed yours, they could steal another customer’s ready order and pass it on to you. It was as comical as it was infuriating. We stood outside the kitchen until our orders were cleared. 

It got me thinking about all the talk about tourism and positioning Uganda as a destination of choice. How much work goes into training – or even enlightening – of proprietors? How much investment goes into skilling the hospitality staff? 

How is it that on average, one is more likely to experience poor service than not? How is it that establishments continue to provide embarrassingly substandard services yet they never run out of customers? 

Is it possible that Ugandans cannot recognise poor service or have we gotten so disempowered and desensitised that we take whatever we get? Mostly, we were grateful that we hadn’t invited any foreigners over for the day – because how were we to explain any of it?

Mr Benjamin Rukwengye is the founder, Boundless
Minds. @Rukwengye