Sunday, January 31, 2010

Friendship Village well repaired


Karen described the Bead for Life Friendship Village a couple of blogs back. Good news on their broken well! Bob Wright, a mechanically gifted and generous man, one who has lived in Uganda for several years with his family, volunteered his time last week to repair the broken hand pump. It no longer remains lonely and unused as it was two weeks ago when we took this photo. The village now has two working wells, giving them redundancy and a level of comfort with respect to their water supply. Further, he plans to return to train the local technician, Lawrence, in maintaining the pump. Thank you, Bob.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Ngenge water: training begins



As a refresher, the Ngenge Sub-county is a rural area of eastern Uganda. The Ngenge water project consists of repairing broken boreholes and installing new ones to serve the 10,000+ people living in 35 villages of this area. The goal is to improve their potable water supplies and to do so sustainably, meaning that few or no outside resources will be needed in future years. All involved agreed that training was crucial.

After much preparation and planning, we launched two of the training courses this past week. One was WASH (water and sanitation hygiene) community training and the other was a hand pump mechanics training class for four young men from four of the villages. I'll describe these courses more in later posts.

The top photo shows the JOY Drilling training team. JOY Drilling is one of the community development arms of the Deliverance Church located in Lira, Uganda. They've provided similar training in several other villages. Rev. David, the Church of Uganda director for community development for the Ngenge Sub-county, is shown in the lower photo introducing the training programs and JOY Drilling staff to the people attending the training in the lower photo. Looking at this picture of the villagers reminds me of Jesus' words,

When did we see you ... thirsty and give you something to drink? ...
The King will reply, "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of
the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." (Matthew 25:37, 40)


We're doing this together. You, back home, praying, encouraging, and supporting us. Karen and I, here in Uganda, doing our part.

I'm excited that it's underway. Look for updates in the coming weeks.

Paul

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Mom and Ken

I had hoped to post pictures of my mom and brother here in Kampala, but the internet didn't cooperate. They arrived fine on Wed. morning at 3:30 with some of their luggage, and the rest arrived a couple days later. We've done some shopping at craft markets and visited the fish market at the edge of Lake Victoria. It maybe hasn't been the most exciting time, but I think just being in Africa for the first time provides enough excitement for most people. A highlight for me was seeing Mom ride a boda boda (motorcycle taxi). She only did it once, but hey, she did it.

We'll leave early tomorrow morning for the Ngenge villages where Paul is working. He plans to check on the well work that is just getting started. I think it will be quite interesting for Mom and Ken to see. Then after an overnight back in Kampala we'll head off on safari. Our driver on both trips will be the intrepid Farouk, who took us on safari with the kids.

More later.

Monday, January 18, 2010

More Bead for Life


I'm on the left, dancing with the beaders and Bead for Life staff at the start of the workday. The young woman in the purple striped shirt in the middle is Clare, one of the women I work most closely with. She seems to like talking about words almost as much as I do. One day I shared my snack of almonds with her, which she had never tasted, and later she told me that when she went home she and her sister had a big discussion about whether you pronounce the "l" and the"d" in "almond." I ended up sending a signed note home with her to verify for her sister that most Americans pronounce neither (try it - we basically say "ah-mun"). As a side note, I brought in hazelnuts the next day and she said they tasted exactly like the almonds and both tasted like coconut.


This is one of our few male beaders presenting two weeks' worth of beads to the buyers. They'll choose the ones they want and advise him on changes to make for the next batch.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Friendship Village



Paul and I visited Friendship Village yesterday, the village that Bead for Life has built for some of its beaders. It's located on a lovely hillside a half-hour outside of Kampala. When it was begun about three years ago, women involved with BFL were given the option of building a house there with BFL's help. The village has since filled up with about 130 families, most of them headed by HIV-positive women. A number of the women are Acholi refugees who fled the violence of Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda and had been living in slums for years.

Although the houses might not look like much, they're a big step up from what the women had before. The second picture shows a typical house that many of the women used to live in: mud and stick construction in crowded conditions with poor sanitation (most of the women entering our program use latrines shared by ten or more families). The FV homes, built for about $2000, have two bedrooms and a sitting room. They're brick and mortar with a concrete floor, iron-sheeted roof, and a private latrine. The families have a yard around the house where they can grow vegetables or flowers, as well as a garden plot nearby. When they finish paying off their mortgage they will own the house free and clear.

Although it's a real boost in life for the women to have these homes, things aren't perfect. As is the case everywhere in the world, where you have people, you have conflict. The village is taking steps towards being self governing, but some of the women who have risen to leadership positions are interested in wielding power for their own advancement. Other women complain to BFL staff about this, but they won't speak up to the leaders for fear of the repercussions. The staff member who was giving us our tour yesterday told us that her vegetables had been stolen from her garden plot by women living in the village. I asked her what would happen if one woman saw another woman stealing from a garden, and she said, "Probably nothing, because both women would likely have stolen at one time or another." Some of the women are unmotivated to work because of years of depending on handouts from NGO's.

FV has problems with their water, which is typical everywhere we go. One of the village's two hand pumps is broken, and the water in the other one sometimes comes out rusty. Paul may not be able to do a lot for them, but he will look into options for getting the pump repaired and pass the information along.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Blockbuster



I've been wanting to post pictures of our local DVD rental store. This is one shop, and then there's one a little further away that's in a building, not just a kiosk. Both have a limited selection, and both are entirely stocked with pirated movies, I'm sure. On one of the first movies we rented, you could actually watch the shadow of a guy carrying his drink walk in front of the camera that was being used to videotape the movie in the theater. Yesterday's newspaper had an article about the thriving DVD pirating trade in Kampala. It seems that it's a booming business, but still too small for movie producers to pay attention to, so the pirates (is that what you'd call them?) operate openly. The article blamed the business on the lack of theaters in Uganda, and it could be right: I think it said there's one theater in the entire country. I'm afraid we're guilty of putting our ethics in our back pocket on this one, since we rent movies from time to time.

As a side note, you can see if you click on the first picture to enlarge it that there are several ads for cell phone companies on the kiosk. Virtually no one has land lines here, and everyone who is able gets a cell phone. Even among the low-income women we help at Bead for Life, one of the first purchases they will make if they can is a cell phone. No one has prepaid plans, in part because there's no functioning system for credit cards (which is in part because few people have street addresses and thus there is limited capability to deliver bills). Everyone buys airtime as they need it, and EVERYONE sells airtime, from the tiniest vegetable shack on up.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Traveling in rural Uganda




The photos are from Scott's and my trip to Karamoja in early December. The top one shows Scott waiting for the next load to go on top while Val Shean attends to a minor problem underneath. Halfway to our destination, we encountered a more major mechanical problem: a leaking fuel filter. We fixed it using strips cut from a spare inner tube. The last photo was taken by Scott from atop the car shortly after our arrival in the village.

We see lots of commercials touting the ruggedness of SUVs--here's a place where it means something. Rural travel (and frequently in Kampala) means bouncing over dirt roads and dodging potholes. It also means fitting in as many people, things, and animals as a vehicle could possibly hold. Here's a challenge. Figure out how you can fit 11 people, two boxes of food, a few jerry cans of water, two lanterns, and two chickens in the vehicle that's shown above. Okay, it was a trick question. It's not just in but on. We had two in the front seats, four in the second seat, two squeezed in the back cargo area (along with the chickens), and three on top (including Scott). (Moms, that wasn't for highway driving, just for the back roads, so your grandson wasn't at too much risk.)

Monday, January 4, 2010

More driving tales

We were entertained by baboons as we waited for the ferry

Our special hire to take Amy, Carl, and Tracy to the airport for their flight to London was 45 minutes late arriving at our apartment. The driver, Munday, knew we were anxious to make up for lost time, and actually the trip there went fine. The only place we hit a delay was at the police checkpoint at the airport entrance, but by then we knew we were in good shape. Munday, though, was still hustling. There was a line of about 30 cars. He quickly assessed the situation and then pulled around the whole line, drove ahead, and pushed his way back in at the front. We were all sinking down in our seats and hiding our faces. Ugandans tend to be aggressive drivers with a "to the victor go the spoils" attitude. The car he was cutting off tried not to let him in, but otherwise no one protested, no honking horns or anything. He had won and that was that.

When we were on safari we saw a similar maneuver backfire, however. We were waiting to get on the eight-car ferry to take us back across the Nile River after our morning's game drive. Our van was about fourth in line. The ferry, which we could clearly see across the river (it's only about a 7-minute ride), had broken down and so was delayed. By the time we waited the hour and a half it took for it to get repaired, there were about a dozen vehicles waiting. People were hot, tired, and hungry. The order was clear for loading on the ferry, but a couple drivers pulled a Munday and cut in, one of them almost hitting a passenger. The passenger became angry and threw a rock at the driver's windshield, shattering half of it. Then it was the driver's turn to get mad. He confronted the passenger, yelling and waving his arms. He demanded immediate payment for the cost of repairing the windshield and threatened to throw the man into the Nile if he didn't pay up. He even grabbed the man at one point. By now a child was crying in fear and other drivers and passengers were trying to defuse the situation. Eventually the ferry started moving and we got across the river. We found out later that the passenger paid up, and we saw the driver laughing and joking with the other drivers, so he must have been satisfied.

Karen