News

This week, I’ve been mainly doing office work, which has its upsides and downsides. The upside is that it is usually much cooler in the office than going for sweaty hikes in the afternoon. The downside is, well, it’s not that exciting. I’ve spent most of my time writing a report analyzing the results of the surveys we took. Ryan, one of the Americans, did all the math stuff for me – stats, percentages and whatnot – which was a huge help. The main conclusion of the report was that the Ugandan Water Committees here haven’t been doing their jobs properly, so we’ll probably be doing some educational workshops about this in the near future.

            Other news… well, another ACTS truck rolled into the ditch. One of the Ugandans new to the wheel had a chicken-match with an army vehicle, which was going WAY too fast, as usual, and was right in the middle of the road. The army vehicle won, and the ACTS truck swerved off the road (I wasn’t in it). The army knows it won’t be challenged, so the drivers don’t bother to show the least bit of courtesy on the roads. They didn’t even stop when the truck went in the ditch. Anyway, this time, not even a team of Ugandans pushing, pulling, digging, and so forth, could get the thing out. We had to get a tow-truck. Fortunately, no one was hurt, and the truck doesn’t seem to be too badly off. One wheel is toast, but that’s about the extent of the damage (I think). Oh, and, while we’re on the subject of accidents, the young engineers, intent on fixing the pipeline themselves, managed to puncture the pipe they were trying to repair. The leak drained the reservoir before the engineers managed to right their mistake (but it rained buckets the next day, so the reservoir filled up again). Boy, did they look sheepish traipsing back with blistered hands (from digging) and covered in mud. They got a good talking-too from Bern later on.

            Another major new thing – rain. I was under the impression, for some reason, that I wasn’t going to be in Uganda during the rainy season, so I neglected to pack a raincoat. However, as I’ve recently realized, Uganda has a ‘short rainy season’ from late February to early March. And when it rains here, it pours. Some days, it’s almost like hail. The sky becomes grey and stormy with thunder and lightening, and the wind whacks the banana tree leaves as it passes by. When you’re sitting in the office (which has a roof made from galvanized steel) and it’s pelting with rain, the drops are deafening. Fortunately, it usually doesn’t rain for too long – an hour or two at most. After that, it clears up for a bit. The nice thing about this is that it tends to make the days much cooler, which I’m grateful for. The negative side: our shower depends on solar power in order to produce hot water. In the rainy season, when it’s overcast, there isn’t enough power to warm the shower, so you’ll often hear little gasps of shock from people showering in the afternoon. Ah well.

Other observations I’ve compiled lately:

-The word ‘please’ does not exist in Runyankore, so Ugandans often forget to use it in English. Until Nancy explained the please-issue to me, I was getting rather irritated with people pointing to something and saying ‘give me’ all the time.

-People here don’t obsess about their bodies here much, which is nice. The only Ugandan concerned with her body-image that I’ve noticed was Grace (she left a couple of days ago), who I learned was eating tubes of cream in order to gain weight (large women are considered attractive here).

-Because it’s difficult to get water, and because it’s such a pain to wash clothing (or wash at all), people often don’t. This is unfortunate, because the amount someone sweats in a day can be monumental. Also, nobody uses deodorant here. I’m glad my sense of smell is not very acute, but even I notice some things…

Well, that’s about it for now. I will likely have much more interesting things to say next week. This afternoon (Thursday), everyone is leaving for ‘the off’ – a 4-5 day break. The young engineers and I are going to Jinja, which is 1-2 hours away from Kampala, for a few days – should be fun!

Following the Engineers

Most of this week, I’ve been, surprise, surprise, following the engineers around while they do their thing. Repairs for the Kiyoora Water Project are well underway, although there is still much to be done. Recently, the young engineers – Matt, Melanie and Michelle – have been looking for another source. Apparently, even if they do repair the Kiyoora Water line, there isn’t enough water from the original source for all the people (the population has grown a lot, and I think the source has dried up a bit). Anyway, so Bern sent the young engineers (with me tagging along) into the hills to find another source that we can tap into. I don’t think Bern was very hopeful that we would find another source, because he was surprised when Matt told him we had.

           

What’s the new source like? Well, it’s pretty gross, really. When we hiked up the first time (quite a slog – it’s very steep, and of course the heat makes it unpleasant) on Friday morning, and found three sources. Two of the springs were too small to tap into, but the third was pretty big. It’s a mountain spring that the Ugandans had dammed up to make a brown, murky pool. Once we had spotted it, the engineers got out a jerry can and a timer to test the flow. But we first had to un-dam the spring. After digging the blockages out (logs, mainly), and letting the water flow out for a while, we found that there were tons and tons of long, black leeches sticking onto the underside of the logs. Ugh! These people had been drinking from leech-infested, chocolate-milk coloured water. Even while we were there, several families came down with jerry cans to collect water. Anyway, the engineers timed the water flow, and they found that it was fast enough to tap into.

The next time we went up, on Monday, we foolishly ascended in the mid-afternoon, when the sun was at its hottest. Still, Bern took a look at the source, and he said it might work. Some of the things we would have to look into, he said, would be to get permission from the person owning the land where the spring is located. Another thing we’d have to look into was the fishpond – lower down on the slope, a teacher had diverted some water to make a pool where he keeps his fish. They’re tiny little things, almost not worth eating, but they don’t wait for the fish to grow big. Still, we wouldn’t want to be responsible for drying up his ponds by taking too much water. But the most important factor we would need to consider was the slope itself. As the engineers explained to me, for the water flow to be sufficient in the pipes, the pipes have to slope down the mountain in a steady descent. The trouble is, there is a valley in between the source and the Kiyoora line, and we can’t have the pipe going down and then up – it’ll mess up the water pressure and flow. So I suggested building a little wooden bridge across to carry the pipe along. But Matt pointed out that we really needed to bury the piping so that most of the Ugandans don’t know where it is (to prevent them from stealing the pipes, which has happened before, sadly). So, yesterday morning, we trekked up into the hills again to try to find a way across the valley. Boy, we must have hiked up and down that valley, bush-whacking through ferns and brush, three or four times that day. Our conclusion: there is no good place to cross the valley – we’d have to go around it. This way would use more pipes, but it would keep the flow intact. 

Aside from helping out the engineers, I’ve eaten some different kinds of Ugandan food this week. We had a sort of stew with matoke, which I disliked because of the bitter spices, but they also gave us chapates – deep-fried, flour pancakes. The Ugandan staff eat them plain, but Melanie and I discovered that by putting sugar, cinnamon, and butter on them, they are really good. Mel says she thinks they taste like Beaver Tails. The chapates remind me of churros from Latin America. We’ve also eaten freshly made banana chips, which the Ugandan staff made for us. They are absolutely delicious. I hope they make them again. Also new for me was sugar cane. It looks a lot like bamboo. Bern sliced it open for me with a machete. The inside is white and stringy, and has a sweet, almost flowery taste. I mainly chewed and sucked on the white stringy stuff before spitting it out, but the Ugandans actually eat the stuff.

So that’s about it for now. I don’t know what next week will hold, but I know Grace is leaving us (she was only going to stay for a month). Also, Matt and Melanie and I have been working on getting visas for Rwanda, which is surprisingly tricky for Canadians (Americans can just get them at the border. I don't know why it's different for us), and we think we’ll have to go to Kampala to get it sorted out. Lastly, we got the news that David Moore’s mother has died. He is flying home today, but will be back soon. Keep him and his family in your prayers.  

Scholarships and Students

Scholarships and Students:

            Well, I’ve had a pretty good week so far. We finished ‘survey-ing’ for the week on Saturday afternoon, and then I had the rest of the day and Sunday off. Mostly, I lazed around in the shade and did my laundry. On Monday, instead of going out with the questionnaire crew as usual, I left camp for Mbarara to help Nancy with her scholarship work. We stayed in Mbarara until Wednesday. It was wonderful. I learned a lot about the Ugandan school system, which is very complicated.

            Here’s the gist: In Uganda, there are seven primary levels (P 1-7). Before a student can enter secondary school (if they can afford it, that is), they have to take a government exam, which tests them in four different subjects: English, Math, Science, and Social Studies. The best possible mark a person can get is “aggregate 4” – it’s kind of like golf in Uganda, a low score is the best. A score of 1 is awarded to a student who gets between 90-100% in a subject, 2 for 80-90%, and so on. But a total score of 4 is a very unusual score – only the very brightest (and usually the wealthiest, who have books, tutors, helpful parents, and electricity with which to study at night) get 4. Most of the kids Nancy was interested in sponsoring had 9-20. A student who gets “aggregate 12” or above after primary school moves into division one – kind of like an honours group. The rest fall into division 2, and the very worst are in division 3. Then, if they are accepted, the children go into secondary school. Here, there are six more levels. After four levels of secondary school (levels 1-4 are called ‘ordinary’ levels, and levels 5-6 are called ‘academic’), the kids take another exam to see if can go to university, after which they move on to secondary 5-6. And how old are the students at the various levels? Well, that depends. In poor families, parents sometimes have to take their kids out of school halfway through the year because they cannot pay school fees. The child then has to repeat the year. This happened to a couple of the kids that Urban Systems Foundation (an engineering firm based in Vancouver which, through ACTS, sponsors several needy children to go to school each year. Nancy works (volunteers) for them). All this is to say that it is not unusual for students to be in their early twenties before they finish school.

            But school really is the only way out of poverty. All the students we talked to said that they want to be engineers. Funnily enough, however, most of them had no clue what an engineer does – they just know engineers make a lot of money. Teaching and nursing are also common ambitions. The nice thing about Urban Systems Foundation is that the sponsors care more about whether a student is trying his/her best and is staying out of trouble than they do about their students having tip-top grades. So even if the sponsored kids don’t have good enough grades for university, they’ll be sent to teacher’s college or will be put into a trade – welding, masonry, mechanics, that sort of thing. Nancy says the teachers at the schools are not very nice – they cane the students and yell at them all the time (a bit like Nicholas Nickleby, I’d imagine). But the students are very used to it – it is the Ugandan way. Their grandparents, parents, and teachers all went through it, and now they must brave the storm for a better future.  

            And what do the schools look like? They vary, but most consist of big, brick, open-windowed classes with wooden desks, cement floors, and a blackboard at the front of the room. There is usually also a water tap, a bathroom, a space for children to play, and sometimes a garden area. Yesterday, I visited a high school with Nancy. While she was busy paying school fees, I wandered into the girls’ dorm to have a look around. There were a few girls standing by the gate to their sleeping compound (the boys and girls have separate, gated compounds), and they were very eager for me to come in. One of them pointed to the first couple of dorms. I peeked in. They were big rooms, but packed tight with school trucks and three-level bunk-beds. By the time I had finished taking a quick look at the first room, I noticed that there was a considerably larger group of girls surrounding me (these were senior girls – so they would be from 14-21 years old). As I walked along, admiring each room and examining the water tank, more girls approached. Finally, when I entered a corridor, I was swarmed. They knew some English, and peppered me with questions:

“Where are you from?”

“Are you still in school?”

“Why are you in Uganda?”

“ACTS? What is ACTS?”

 And while I was trying to answer their questions and watching my camera (which they weren’t interested in) I noticed that some of them were touching me – feeling my skin (“It ees very smooth and nice”) and playing with my ponytail, which they found very interesting (all of them have their hair cut very short, almost bald, for low maintenance).

            You’d think that, as a no-touching, crowd-hating person, I would have felt very uncomfortable during this time. I wasn’t. Actually, I was thinking ‘I can’t wait to write about this.’ After a few more minutes, I shook everybody off, and went to find Nancy.

            Well, that’s about it for now. The only other interesting thing I can write about is witnessing a snake-killing at a primary school. Boy – those Ugandans are tough! Instead of running when they see a venomous snake, they grab sticks and large stones, and beat the thing to death. I’m not sure what kind of snake it was, but I think it was a black ‘young’ cobra.

           

Oh- that's the supper bell - must dash or I won't get any food!

            Cheers,

            Erica

Interviewing!

Well, it’s been a much busier week than the previous two. On the weekend, I helped create and type up questionnaires and answer sheets for the Kiyoora project. The Kiyoora project is a pipeline that brings water down from a natural source, in this case a mountain spring, down to several villages. In each, there are numerous taps along the way. It was built in 1999, and was supposed to last over twenty years, but it has come into disrepair. The ACTS members are understandably frustrated about this – they had taught a caretaker how to maintain the pipes. The problem is that the communities were not paying the caretaker (the money for the caretaker was taken from the community by the water committee leaders, some of whom were corrupt; when they realized their money was being embezzled, the villagers stopped paying), so he blocked up the pipes with wood to send a message: “No pay, no water.” Also, children, who do almost all of the water collecting, have damaged some of the taps (they fight over who gets to be first to use the water, probably so they will not be late to school). Plus, some people built houses near the roads and cut the pipeline to put their houses in. SO, this week we’ve been questioning villagers close to the source in order to find out a) what were the problems (which I’ve just listed) b) how they think they will prevent similar problems from happening in the future (accountability, electing good leaders, watching the children, education), and c) finding out if the people need education about water (yes – it’s clear they do), AIDS (actually, a lot of them seem pretty well informed), and sanitation.

            So what is the surveying actually like? Well, there are now four of us non-engineers (not counting Nancy, who has her own scholarship agenda, or David, who attends meetings, does financial and admin stuff, and a host of other things) – Tim Folkman, me, and two American guys who have joined us for a month – Ryan and Andrew (they’ve been in Kampala for several months doing ministry to street children). So, we four are teamed up with four Ugandan women, and we go off in pairs, from house to house, asking questions. I’ve been teamed up with a lady called Jovanice. Jovanice questions the head/s of the household, translates the answers back to me, and then I record them (and when I’m bored, I make up new questions based on my own interests). The houses in the villages are made out of dried mud and thatch, wooden doors, and sometimes with corrugated iron roofs and woven thatch carpets or dirt floors. The nicer ones have been plastered inside and out, and have been painted. All of the houses I’ve been to have a sitting room where visitors can come – this is where we sit, usually perched on home-made wooden chairs. It is hot, and there are lots of flies. But everyone is very kind and hospitable – ‘You ah welcome’ they always say.

            Today was an especially nice day. We had breakfast at seven, and were in the cars at eight to start the bumpy ride to the villages near the Kiyoora site. We arrived at 8:30 am, and split up to survey the area. David Moore came with Jovanice and I because I had asked David if I could come with him to a meeting in Nyakyera about ACTS’ microeconomics work (they help widows by renting land for them. David has worked it out so that each widow will work four plots of land. The revenue from the first three will be enough to live off, pay school fees for children, and hopefully garner a small profit with which to buy goats, which in turn should multiply; the fourth plot revenue will go towards paying next year’s field rent, so that they can be self-sustaining. I hope it works.). Anyway, today we hiked through the steep hills to question goat-herding families about the Kiyoora project. It was beautiful up there – green rolling hills like out of storybooks, and a wide, blue sky – a bit like a Ugandan setting from Heidi… without the snow. Down in the valley below, we could see little mud houses nestled in among the banana trees. Because I climbed up and down the slopes quickly, Jovanice called me a mbusi, the Ugandan word for 'goat.' David said I might be given a Ugandan name while over here, but I'm sort of hoping that one won't stick... 

I saw an interesting thing in one of the houses today – a poster praising Saddam Hussein and his follows as strong, free men. In it, the heads of Saddam and his sons and brothers had been pasted onto the fit, strong, intrepid bodies of soldiers. I desperately wanted to buy it to bring it home to show my Islamic studies professor, but David said no. Still, what a weird thing to see in a mud hut at the top of a Ugandan mountain…

The second odd thing I saw today was a group of men digging into the earth. I asked our guide what they were doing (thinking they were fixing the pipes), and he replied that they were hunting. “Hunting what?” I asked, but at that moment, there was a chorus of excited voices – the men had obviously caught what they were hunting. They bounded up the slope and presented their prize to us. At first I thought it was a possum, but then I realized it was a giant rat – the biggest one I’d ever seen. It was a river rat, they said, and they were going to cook the squirming rodent up for dinner. 

Well, that's about it for now - tomorrow, Friday, will consist of more surveying and meetings, and on Saturday, we'll work a half-day. Sundays are completely free, so I will probably do my laundry then. 

Hope all's well in Canada,

Erica