“So what do you do now?”

That is a question I have had to put up with since October last year, when I threw in the towel, wrote my resignation letter and decided that no matter what, I will not get career satisfaction working full time for a media house in Uganda. So began the long ride down freelance road filled with months and months of no work and no earning. For those who do not work full time in Ugandan media, the job I once held seemed like the perfect one; after all I was a columnist who was read. And that for any journalist is a great achievement.. But that was not all, seeing my name in print for many meant I was happy, earning a lot of money and rich! Well for about Uganda Shs 1 million a month (about Euros 445), I was very unhappy. Not that I minded the money, between the job and the freelance jobs I could get a year, I managed pretty well and survived just fine. But left with the salary from my newspaper job, come to think of it, between paying rent, water and electricity bills, taking care of my car and buying food to last me a month, by the end of pay week, I had nothing left in the bank. So much for a “well paying” job.

So I thought I have been doing freelance work, why not just do it full time, give my all and well take it from there.

So I decided to become the change I wanted to see, I decided to become a freelance journalists and at the same time work on setting up my web publication covering women’s issues, mostly women’s health issues. So it has is not been easy, I remember going through about three months without getting any work done and earning no pay, wondering how I would pay my bills and then some how I broke through. Then there was that time I sent a story proposal to one of the publications I have written for in the Netherlands, and it sure was a good proposal, only to get a response that one of their own editors would be coming to Uganda soon and would do that part I had proposed as well. But if that did not get me screaming with anger, try the many emails I get from editors out there asking me to write for their publications for free, promising to pay me in the future when and if they get the money. But I am still hanging in there. All I do is say “no” to “write for me for free” offers and try to find a positive in what is am doing. And now the website is beginning to get to that point where I should have it up soon. See being a freelance journalist sound good, until you are right in the middle and chances of getting out are almost non existent. But being a freelance journalist in Uganda is just twice as hard. There are all these foreign journalists fighting for the same piece of cake and in the end they sometimes have it easier than the local freelance journalists. And of course writing for the local papers will certainly not put food on your plate at the end of the day as the pay sucks. Imagine the highest one could get paid for a story that may be run after months of submission is no more that US$50 and that is if you are lucky.

That leaves “fighting” for space in foreign publications and for now that and trying to set up the website is all that takes up my time, add to this worry of when the next paying job will come round and that is me NOW.

And how is the web publication coming along, well that is a blog for another day.