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! |
A few other quick highlights so far include:
- 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 |
An engineering insight…
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 |
On the day we visited a number of the tapstands and reservoir
tanks in the community, along with representatives from the local sub-county
and district government, the Bishop of North Kigezi Diocese, members of the
operation and maintenance (O&M) committee (who are members of the community
who are trained to look after the scheme) and others. The actual ceremony was
held in Rubirizi Church and after an incredible rain (and I think hail) storm,
which delayed the start of the ceremony due to the tremendous noise it made on
the metal sheet roofing, we enjoyed 3.5 hours of speeches by the various
representatives (in the local language). I just had to nod and acknowledge
every now and again when they thanked Tearfund for the funding! They also run a
hygiene and sanitation competition during the implementation of the project
where people aim to improve their homes in line with guidance from the WATSAN
team, and so prizes were presented to a number of winners, including new hoes,
machetes, a jerry can and a saucepan, which brought great delight to the
recipients!
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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 |
As I reflect on his circumstances, I realise how comparatively
straightforward and comfortable my progression from school to university to
work has been, having the support of my family along the way. And yet I am
challenged as to whether I am as grateful to God for it as he is. I visit him
in the market about once a week to get a few groceries and it is always a joy
to catch up with him and chat. We have also started reading the book of
Colossians in the Bible together (Colossians is a letter in the New Testament
written by Paul of Tarsus to the church in Colossae teaching them more about
Jesus and what it means to be saved through him and then what it looks like to
live for him – check it out, it’s a good read :) ).
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 |
