No Water

"Do you have a jerry can?"
"Uhh...no" I replied.

I have been living in a small building behind the house of a local pastor for 3 days now, and everything had been great up to this point. It's small, but comfortable and has everything I need. However, when I got home this afternoon and went to draw water to cook some beans (they take forever!), nothing came out of the tap. Uh - I hadn't expected that. I waited an hour, but still no water. Finally I asked if the front house had water, and I was told that they did, but that this was probably because of the water storage tank (that my building is not connected to).

Turns out that even out here, about 1.5 miles from the center of Mbarara, there is city water supplied to homes. And sometimes it goes out, just like the electricity. That would explain the storage tanks placed on 12ft high platforms that I have seen around homes. And so without city water, I was given a large bucket of water. I can boil it and then use it for cooking and cleaning, and I have a UV purifier for drinking water (I will do a separate post on that later - it's great!). As long as the outage doesn't last long, it's no big deal. But it's an unexpected, first-hand look at what I imagine I'll be seeing a lot more of in the next few months.

Designing a World of Hope

This past Wednesday I had the opportunity to visit the construction site for a project designed by Engineering Ministries International, a Christian organization that brings together design professionals to work on projects in the developing world. This particular project is to be a primary school for orphaned and low-income children who participate in a choir that tours the United States, Canada and Europe.

The project is being built to the highest standards, but that doesn't mean that it's being built like a western building. The walls are constructed of brick and mortar, with concrete columns to support the weight of the roof and provide rigidity (yes, there are earthquakes in Uganda!). The tin roof will have a dropped ceiling to support light fixtures and provide good acoustics (a brief tangent - this is important because the buildings here are very echo-y. The exposed concrete is needed to keep the building cool, but it comes at the cost of bad acoustics). Additionally, all doors, access ways and ramps will be ADA-compliant. The high ceilings will stratify the air, and the open ceiling will let that air out through the top of the building, allowing fresh air to enter through open windows at ground level.

The project is also good experience for the Ugandan construction team because they get the opportunity to work on a high-profile (and well-funded) project. It also is an opportunity to see a modified and improved method of construction. It's a method appropriate for long-term maintanance, comfort and safety.

More photos

Development Quandry: Lake Bunyonyi

Lake Bunyonyi is a beautiful, peaceful lake in Uganda near the border with Rwanda. Steep terraced farms fall down towards the water in a patchwork of greens and browns, dotted with the shiny reflections of tin farm house roofs. The deepest lake in Uganda at 6,500 ft, it has a series of islands dotted throughout.

 

Until about 15 years ago, there was nothing in the area but the farms and the fisherman who scoot about the lake in their powerboats. But in the mid-nineties, a group of Chrisitan missionaries started a small camp for tourists on one of the islands. Over time, the camp became a modest tourist attraction, and other entreprenours took notice. Today, there are now more than 10 different resorts hugging the hilly edges of the lake. Each has their own piece of the market, catering to backpackers all the way up to posh full service cottages.

The tourist economy created by these resorts has brought a lot of good things to the area - jobs at the resorts, supporting jobs such as transportation, and a market for local handicrafts. These things are "sustainable" in that they don't need outside input to keep the development moving forward (other than tourist money of course, but every industry needs its investment source). Sustainability is an important goal in development work because it means that the people being helped are now capable of supporting themselves, so that development money can be spent elsewhere.

However, this success has its downsides. The resorts have pushed up the value of the land around the lake, meaning that as the population grows young farmers do not have enough money to purchase land to start their own farms and raise a family as they always expected to do. Tenant farmers could be forced off their land. And that valuable land? It's likely to be purchased by foreigners (muzungu's) to start a new resort or build a fancy vacation home. Clearly, every change has positive and negative ramifications. Less clear is the net benefit the resorts have brought to the Lake Bunyonyi region.

Arrival

I confess that I've seen the Steve Miller Band in concert not once, but twice. A big name in the 70's, a lot of people probably wouldn't know them today. But regardless, I was humming their hit "Jet Airliner" over and over in my head as the plane took off for Uganda on Monday:

Big ol' Jet Airliner, don't carry me too far away, big ol' jet airliner, 'cause it's here that I've got to stay

The song goes on about leaving trusted friends behind until returning home. I know I'm leaving many trusted people behind to see what international development looks like in real life. At this point it's an open book.

I arrived today in the early morning, then spent the entire day trying not to fall asleep so I could beat the jet lag as quickly as possible. It's funny how the head can more or less completely understand what's going on with the body being totally confused. And in the end the body usually wins no matter what the mind wants.

Hopefully I'll be back to normal by Monday when I will be meeting with ACTS to learn more about their work in Uganda and what a partnership with them might look like.

Organization Profile: Africa Community Technical Service

This is the last of 3 posts looking at different organizations I may potentially partner with.

The Africa Community Technical Service (ACTS) is a Canadian organization that works with local churches and community groups to help facilitate development in local regions. ACTS works with local residents to identify issues impeding development, and then provides some technical assistance to complete projects and build the local expertise to maintain projects into the future.


ACTS works to simultaneously address the many inter-related issues that lead to poverty. Their current projects address issues such as: water supply, agro-forestry, income generation, skills transfer, health, land rights, HIV/AIDS, and environmental conservation. This multi-pronged strategy is in response to failures that have been observed when focusing solely on one issue. For example, a doctor may come to treat symptoms of a water-borne illness. However, if the source of the water contamination is not removed, the disease will return. But then, if a project is completed to bring clean water, if the residents do not have the skills to maintain the system, it will eventually fall apart. When tackled simultaneously, these inter-related problems can be solved. However, the going can be slow and the work takes patience and perseverance. It requires a deep relationship with all people involved.

Organization Profile: A Single Drop

"Teach a man to fish..." We all know how to finish that saying. It sticks with us because it makes intuitive sense - teach someone how to provide for themselves, and they will no longer need your help. Basically, this is the work A Single Drop does - teaching local organizations the basics of water technologies and implementation so that they can do it themselves.
A Single Drop started in the Philippines and has recently expanded to Africa. Their philosophy focuses on providing a training workshop to local communities, which afterward will form a water group to manage local water resources. This training lasts for several weeks, with each week covering different aspects of implementing a community-wide water program. The first week teaches the community how to inventory their needs and identify areas for improvement. The second week is devoted to teaching the actual water technologies - embankments, rainwater collection, sand filters, sanitary toilets, etc. The last two weeks focus on budgeting, fund raising, and bookkeeping.

A Single Drop provides the training to implement projects - the actual construction is left to the local communities. This ensures that the communities take ownership of their own development. Also, by explaining water issues during the first week of training, A Single Drop helps to "open the communities eyes" so to speak, but doesn't tell the community what it needs. In this way, the community learns to identify its own problems. It can then look to the available technologies and decide which is most appropriate to their situation. The solution may look different for each group.A Single Drop follows a philosophy of growing influence in the world of development NGO's - working alongside communities to provide assistance, but not just giving things away. The idea is that when recipients take ownership of their development, the projects that are established will last long after the group providing assistance has left. In this way, long-term, sustainable development can be achieved.

Organization Profile: Medair

Planning ahead is a good thing - after all, it's what we teach our sons in the Boy Scouts. Planning ahead can make it easier and faster to adapt to changes. For example, bringing a rain jacket to India during the Monsoon season is probably a good idea.

But if you plan too much, you come burdened to your destination with things you'll likely never need. And if you plan for a specific set of circumstances that don't happen, you can find yourself with skills or items that are no longer needed. You're not flexible to handle the unexpected.

And so it's been a hard decision for me to leave some of the "pre-planning" for this time in Africa until after I arrive. The most important decision I have still to make is which organization I'll be partnering with when I arrive. I'm not fitting neatly into any organization's application process - the truth is I'm making some of this up as I go along. But it's also a tremendous lesson in leaving up my direction and expectations to God. And so as I arrive in Uganda, I will be meeting with several organizations to get a hands-on look at what they do. With time, I'm confident there will be an organization that will be a good mutual fit. Since my trip to Uganda last Fall, I've found 3 different organizations that I think may be a great opportunity. Over the next 3 posts I'll outline what they do. The first is Medair.The Organization

Medair is a Swiss organization that does relief and rehabilitation work in many countries all over the world, including Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Madagascar, and Uganda. Their work in Uganda focuses on the devastation caused by the Lord's Resistance Army, a brutal force that terrorized the population (especially children) of northern Uganda. Though the fighting has subsided (at least in Uganda), the physical and psychological wounds require much healing. This is where Medair steps in.

Mission
Medair provides two services as a result of humanitarian disasters. The first is immediate relief; as soon as is possible, Medair staff arrive to assess the situation and begin work. They have three areas of expertise: health, water & sanitation, and shelter & infrastructure. Medair works to provide each of these to return the impacted region to its previous level of these services.

Once immediate relief is provided, Medair then begins the rehabilitation process. In this stage, Medair trains local staff and population to provide health, sanitation and shelter without outside assistance. This is known as "capacity building". Through this work Medair ensures that the relief provided will be sustainable in the future.

Medair is not a development organization, and so there are many regions in need of assistance that may not be candidates for Medair's assistance. Instead, Medair focuses specifically on regions most hard hit by humanitarian disasters - in this way limited resources and expertise are used to the greatest effect.