Cafe Larem Update August

The day before Mollie left Gulu for 5 weeks, we fired our latest manager. We liked her, but we weren’t entirely sure of her value addition for some time. We had an intervention a few weeks before and gave her a very explicit list of things to do in the hopes that we’d see improvement. We didn’t.

Two days before Mollie left, Emily my housekeeper of three years and the Café’s pizza maker and shopper, came into my house in tears. This is extraordinary because showing much emotion isn’t Emily’s thing. In fact in three years I can’t remember ever seeing her upset. She got into a fight with the manager, cursed her mother (a big no no here, apparently) and swore never to go back to the café. I have a very small trusted circle in Gulu and Emily’s in it. She has never let me down. Mollie was with me on this and together we decided this was the catalyst for a cut and run with the manager. In her tenure, our expenses were up and sales were down. Nice lady. Nice time.

Sigh, what was I to do without a manager and much more importantly without Mollie?!

Well, three weeks in and we’re surviving. Letting the manager go strangely was like lifting a major weight off the café and off of me. Maybe our expectations were too high, but the silver lining is that I’ve actually relaxed a hell of lot since the manager left. It’s like, at least we know where our chips lay, as opposed to constantly second guessing. And the other staff have stepped up. Emily’s even more reliable and stepping up to newly assigned responsibilities. Perhaps this is pride (or remorse) for her stance on the manager. I’m not sure. Our temperamental barista has stepped up too. She’s still not talking to anyone, but she’s helping me and not not speaking to me for once. Tonny continues his very interesting feat as our resident café electrician. He has fixed an exploded stereo and both ice cream machines. He has designed Wine Bar lightening and spliced and diced wires to wonderful effect. Stephen rides his Café Larem-subsidized bike to Gulu hotels to deliver fliers to tour bus drivers. (Yes, tour bus drivers.) Alice, who’s been struggling, seems un-rebuffed (a word?) by a reduction in her hours and Jackie has stepped up to her increase in hours.

At the beginning of the year I would have expected us to have a lot more Ugandan customers by now, great advertisement campaigns, delivery service and be moving toward devolving ownership. These things will come or maybe not. For now, knowing that our food is consistently delicious, our staff can handle customers reasonably well and that we’re more or less in the black is good enough for me.