Agandi!
Sorry for not writing another blog post sooner, it’s been a
busy few weeks since arriving in Rukungiri! I’ve been getting to know the water
and sanitation (WATSAN) team that I am working with and visiting lots of their
completed, ongoing and proposed projects around the local area. This involves a
lot of journeys on very bumpy roads (I told them that people in the UK pay a
lot of money to go off-roading like this!) with some stunning views as we ventured
through the steep hills and valleys where people somehow manage to farm,
growing bananas, pineapples, maize and beans amongst other things. On our
journeys we often pass school children and a chorus of “mzungo mzungo!” always
follows which simply means “white person!” (!) It’s not very common for a
lot of the locals here to see mzungos so they seem to find it quite exciting
when they do, and absolutely hilarious when you greet them in the local
language as they don’t expect a mzungo to know it!
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| And I thought Bristol was hilly... |
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| The guest house I'm staying in (on the right) |
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| Back of the guest house with rainwater tanks |
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| View from the back of the guest house |
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| My room and invaluable mosquito net! |
- Staying in a very nice guest house, which I'm very grateful for!
- Life by candle/torch light due to the frequent powercuts which seem to happen whenever it rains or is particularly windy.
- Frequent tremendous thunder storms – the UK likes to rain a lot but takes a long time to do it whereas Uganda likes to get it over and done with and get back to some sunshine.
- Visits from local primary school children who appear outside your house and seem to find watching the mzungos incredibly fascinating for some reason.
- Visiting Makobore boys senior school (secondary & A-level) that is over the road – I’ve been getting to know a good number of the boys there, having some great discussions, playing a bit of football and volleyball, and joining them on Sundays for their church service. I feel like I’ve made a lot of friends there which has definitely helped me feel more settled in.
- Attending a worship conference with a number of local churches and school groups on ‘prayer mountain’ – in the UK we usually have prayer rooms or maybe even a prayer centre…these guys have a mountain! There were incredible 360 views around the area, with mountains and hills in one direction and the plains of the Queen Elizabeth National Park in another – it’s incredible how beautiful God’s creation can be! The different groups performed songs with such rich vocals and brilliant traditional Ugandan dancing.
- Many people in rural areas own a few goats or cattle, and they are usually left to graze on the verges at the side of roads, simply tied with some rope and a peg in ground…it seems to do the job! You also occasionally come across a small herd of cows being walked through the town.
- Each morning we start the day with devotions with a number of staff from the diocese and girls from a local vocational training school, where we sing some songs (which sound beautiful from the a Capella Ugandan voices accompanied simply by a single drum) and study a passage in the Bible together – a great way to start the day!
- A number of American volunteers visited for a week or so, and it was great getting to know some of them. I also realised that sometimes you need a translator even to chat with them due to discovering how many phrases we use in the UK that they don’t!
- We've visited lots of schools and places where the WATSAN team have built pit latrines, composting latrines, tapstands, rainwater harvesting (RWH) tanks, bathing shelters and more! It's been encouraging to hear of the positive impacts these have had on the schools from improved student health and discipline to increased class attendance, and see the challenges involved.
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| Verge maintenance Ugandan style |
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| View from prayer mountain |
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| Traditional song & dance at the worship conference |
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| Visit to a secondary school to investigate the expansion of their RWH scheme |
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| Why not take a stroll through town... |
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| 3 girls from the local primary school who joined me outside my house |
One of the highlights of the last few weeks was the commissioning of a gravity flow scheme (GFS) in an area called Nyarushanje. The WATSAN team have been working on this project for a couple of years, and it involved the protection of 3 spring sources on steep hillsides, where the water is collected and then piped by gravity to reservoir tanks that then distribute the water via pipes to a number of tapstands around the communities which it serves. The scheme is pretty big, providing water to 11,447 people! As it was funded by Tearfund, I had the privilege of representing them at the commissioning day and ceremony, which was fun but also slightly odd as people were thanking me but I obviously hadn’t personally had any involvement in the project!
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| The hills near to Nyarushanje |
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| A tapstand in a primary school served by the GFS |
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| Cutting the ribbon to the tapstand at the Compassion Child Development Centre with the Bishop and sub-county chief |
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| Visit to a tapstand (with timber shelter to protect it) - can you spot a very young beneficiary? |
After officially commissioning the scheme by cutting a ribbon at the entrance to a tapstand (which I was made to join in with, along the Bishop and district government official), we enjoyed ‘lunch’ (at 6pm) at a child development centre that is supported by Compassion International (check out http://www.compassion.com/). Compassion are a large christian charity that support children through sponsorship by offering "educational opportunities, health care and health-related instruction, nutrition, life-skills training, and opportunities to hear about and respond to the gospel". As a family we sponsor two children in Uganda, one of whom we got to visit when we spent 3 weeks here in 2010 (which was an amazing time finally meeting him and his family after a few years of exchanging letters), and since then my parents have become advocates for Compassion, helping to find more sponsors for children. During our visit 4 years ago, we also spent time at Kisiizi Hospital which is a short distance down the valley from Rubirizi we ate dinner. Friends of ours from the UK live in Kisiizi for half of the year, helping to run a micro-hydro scheme, generating electricity for the local area, and so we spent time with them in 2010 trying to improve the reliability of the scheme as there is insufficient water during the dry season. So with a rather special coming-together of various strands in my life, this centre where we had the commissioning dinner is not only a part of Compassion’s work, they also gets their electricity from the Kisiizi micro-hydro scheme and now also their water supply as a result of the WATSAN team’s work. It’s funny reflecting on how God seems to weave things together…
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| The Compassion Child Development Centre in Rubirizi |
The WATSAN team’s approach is to deliver holistic water,
sanitation and hygiene (WASH) projects, as sanitation and hygiene play such an
important part in preventing disease and illness, and so when they implement a
water project they begin with mobilising the community and sensitising them to
issues surrounding water, hygiene and sanitation and the need to improve their
current practices in order to improve their health. These trainings continue
over the duration of the project, supporting the community to adapt their behaviour,
and implement things like improved pit latrines (e.g. installing concrete
sanitation platforms called ‘sanplats’ which are easier to clean than the
traditional timber and mud floors). Along with the community they also select a demonstration home that will be supported to implement good practices such as improved latrines, construction of dish drying racks, bathing shelters and separate shelters for animals. The rest of the community can then learn from this home. They will also look to construct ventilated
improved pit (VIP) latrines in schools for students and Ecosan (composting)
latrines for staff, as well as delivering hygiene talks. So in the
implementation of the Nyarushanje GFS, they also included many of these aspects
in the project.
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| A demonstration home in Nyarushanje |
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| A SanPlat (sanitation platform) |
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| Rabbits kept in a purpose built shelter |
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| A purpose built goat pen |
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| A 'tippy-tap' - simply press down on the stick and the bottle tips preventing tap contamination |
To ensure sustainability, on-going maintenance and support for the scheme from the community, it is vital that a string sense of ownership by the community is achieved. This is done partly through the sensitisation and mobilisation process, so the community understands the need for the scheme and actually wants it, but is also achieved through requiring the community to provide a percentage of the project cost (I think about 10-20%), usually through donation of local materials and providing some of the labour. Whilst that may seem counter-intuitive – requiring poor communities to pay or pay-in-kind towards a project – it’s the simple idea that if you put your own money/time/materials into something then you will value it more and so take care of the scheme once the charity has handed it over to the local community. Another key aspect of sustainability is ensuring projects are delivered in partnership with local government as they are the ones who will continue to be there in the long term. Therefore they are also required to contribute to some of the project cost to encourage their buy-in to the scheme.
So whilst I have taken much encouragement from seeing this
scheme, they also face a number of continued challenges in its operation. For
example there have been a significant number of illegal connections made to the
scheme, without the approval of the overseeing operation and maintenance
committee or the WATSAN team. This has greatly affected the flow of water to
some of the taps because the reservoir tank serving them is not able to refill
as it was designed to. This stems from not achieving complete community
ownership of the scheme – if they did then everyone would understand the
damaging impact connecting illegally could have on the entire system and so
work to ensure these do not occur. As it is, it can be very challenging to
ensure everyone understands such things. This is a very serious issue that must
be resolved to enable the successful operation of the scheme and so the local
government has promised to work with the community to address this. I think
this demonstrated to me the ‘nitty gritty’ of development – it is not all easy,
straight forward solutions that you put in place once and they work without
fault, in fact development projects are often far from that due to the
challenges of working in complex socio-economic contexts. BUT the transforming
impact that these projects have on local communities is definitely worth the
struggle!
And now for something completely different…
Another volunteer from America called Megan is also working
with the diocese with their children’s ministry, and will be here for a year,
so has been a helpful source of local knowledge and showed me where to find the
local ‘super’market and fresh produce market. She introduced me to a friend she
had made – a young guy called Emma (short for Emmanuel) who owns a stall in the
market. He speaks very good English and Megan assures me he gives a fair price
(rather than ‘mzungo price’)! He later told me some of his story – how he lost
both his parents, his younger brother and then his aunty who he was staying
with. His cousin and him ran the market stall together last year whilst he
completed a certificate in plumbing, however since she married recently she has
moved away, leaving him to run the stall on his own. He wanted to progress his
plumbing and complete a diploma, however the costs make it very difficult to
afford, nor can he leave the stall currently to pursue this. I have been truly
inspired by his trust and faith in God – how in the midst of these challenges
and all he has been through, he is so grateful to God for taking care of him,
he knows that God has a plan for his life, and he will keep persevering and
waiting on God for direction.
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| Emma's market stall |
If you are still reading then congratulations on making it
this far! I’m sorry it was a long one… turns out I need to work on this
blogging thing… Anyway thanks for reading, and hopefully it won’t be too long
before my next (shorter) post!
And because it made me smile:
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| #motivation |
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