Return to Kamuli & meeting the pen pals

Last weekend I was finally able to return to the Kamuli District in east-central Uganda, the base for Iowa State’s CSRL program. Sadly, I had not been to Kamuli since I visited back in August with the ISU delegation. In fact, this trip marked my first time driving outside of Kampala with my car; in other words, my first Ugandan road-trip!

Kamuli Town is the center of government for Kamuli District – think of it like a state capital…but much smaller. Official statistics (not sure how “official” they actually are) place Kamuli at having just over 20,000 inhabitants. The vast majority of people in the district still live rurally, and there isn’t too much going on in the city beyond a couple small supermarkets, random stores, and lots of boda-bodas.

Location of Kamuli


A line of shops in Kamuli town

Coming with me were Justin List & Mitra Miri, two of my best friends over here who have offered to help me with the mosquito nets project. When we set off early Friday morning, I was a little apprehensive about how my car would take the trip. I have traveled to most parts of Uganda, and there definitely are some roads that my little car would not be able to handle. But I had checked with Kizito beforehand, and he said it would be fine.

The ride over there turned out to be no problem. We didn’t have to deal with much traffic since we were going against the flow, and we made it to Kamuli in about three hours, about an hour ahead of schedule! We were happy to find that the road there had recently been redone, and we felt like royalty driving on the relatively obstruction-free path.

The primary reason for the trip was to continue work on the mosquito nets project. Before getting to work, however, we made a stop at the VEDCO guest house, our lodging for the one night in Kamuli. There, I was able to catch up with Dorothy, my self-proclaimed Ugandan mother with whom I stayed for my first month in the country. She had recently moved to Kamuli from Kampala due to the vast majority of her work being based there. We then spent the afternoon in meetings with Benon (the VEDCO nutritionist who is the organization’s coordinator for this program) and some district government officials.

The highlight of the trip came late in the afternoon when we were able to visit the schools at Namasagali and Nakanyonyi. These are the schools that are paired with Tracy’s 6th graders in a pen pal exchange, and they will also be the recipients of the mosquito nets. We first went to Nakanyonyi, the closer of the two schools, where most of the school’s 50 pen pals were waiting for us. They had recently received their first two letters from the Iowa students along with several boxes of school supplies, and they were happy for our visit. The three of us got to address the group of students briefly and then I excused myself to run to my car and bring back one more gift for the kids: a new soccer ball from the Gilbert students! The Nakanyonyi students loved it! We then tried to excuse ourselves to head to the next school in time, but the teacher insisted that we stay for at least one performance from the students. We agreed and were treated to a very nice song before we had to say our goodbyes.

Justin (back left), Mitra (front left), the pen pal teacher/coordinator (far left), the pen pals, and I pose for a picture with the new soccer ball.


Nakanyonyi students performing a song for us

We arrived at the Namasagali school a little bit later than hoped and caught the students as they were lining up to be dismissed for the weekend. The teachers asked us to speak to the students so each of us said a very brief hello and encouraged the kids to keep studying. We then watched them quickly scatter as their teachers let them go for the weekend; anticipation for a weekend of freedom is something that definitely is constant across our cultures!

A few of the pen pal students were still around, and we were able to see them receive their letters and school supplies. They were very excited, and even more excited when I presented them with their own soccer ball from the Gilbert students! We got a few pictures, a short tour of the different projects at the school, and I was able to see the finished product of the school rooms that I had helped paint back in August…they looked really nice!


The Namasagali students were very excited about their soccer ball


One of the pen pals poses with his letters from a Gilbert student and his new pen/pencils in his shirt pocket

By that time, the four of us (Benon had been going around with us as our guide) were pretty beat. We piled back in my car, made a quick stop in Namasagali town to admire the view of the Nile, and then drove back to Kamuli where we had a very tasty Ugandan meal waiting for us at the guest house (the price included full board). Benon took off to head back to his home and the three of us spent a relaxing night in the guest house sharing stories and catching up on some reading. I should point out that a significant portion of the stories we shared involved food in some facet…apparently we were all craving some good American eats!

The next morning was filled with a planning session and a visit to a local farmer who had a biogas digestor installed by some ISU Engineers for a Sustainable World volunteers. He gave us a quick tour of the operation and then I passed on a message from some of the ESW students back in the States regarding new methods for operation. After that, it was time for a quick lunch before hopping back in the car to head back to Kampala.

The drive back was a little more eventful. To say that Ugandan drivers are aggressive would be a definite understatement. Twice I had to take my car completely off of the road since an oncoming driver was taking up my entire lane. With my small car, I don’t take any chances messing with the big trucks on the Ugandan roads!

We made a short pit stop about 50 km outside of Kampala at the Mabira Forest, a 300 square kilometer stretch of undisturbed rainforest. Well, “undisturbed” might be a stretch since a significant portion of the forest was cut down in the 1970s while Idi Amin was in power. Either way, it’s a very beautiful area that I had driven through several times and had been meaning to explore.

I had read about trails in the forest, but had no idea where to go to find them. I opted to just follow signs to a forest lodge, and we ended up finding a place with gorgeous - and correspondingly costly - accommodations. We only had a few hours, so we found a guide who led us on a 30 minute walk through the forest. He had been working there for well over 10 years, and it was obvious that he had lost his enthusiasm for the job a ways back. Still, we saw a few cool things like monkeys jumping through the forest canopy and a green mamba snake. It was definitely worth the stop, and it would be a nice place for just a day-trip in the future…we’ll see!

The view through the canopy of Mabira

The rest of the trip back to Kampala was uneventful (not necessarily a bad thing when driving). That day was actually Valentine’s Day (which, strangely enough, seemed to be a pretty big deal in Kampala). Almost all of my friends already had plans for the night, which left Justin and me on our own. We opted to celebrate Valentine’s Day with a man-date of our own. We tried a new steak restaurant for dinner (some of the best food I've had yet!) and then caught a movie. Uganda still has a very socially conservative culture, so the two of us got quite a few interesting stares/reactions from people throughout the night! Oh well…it was worth it for that steak! :)

Cheers!
Chris

P.S. Update on the mosquito nets program: we recently were able to set up online donation capabilities. Feel free to check it out at http://www.srl.ag.iastate.edu/gift/

Catching up...crazy times in Rwanda

I fell way behind on posting last November during my last couple weeks of classes. I had a couple weekend trips during that time – one to Rwanda and one to the Ssese Islands. Here’s a recount of my trip to Rwanda. Be forewarned: this will be a long one…

Last September, I took part in a Makerere-sponsored trip to Kenya for graduate students. It was the most unorganized thing I had ever been a part of…at the time. A month or so later, I found out that there was a similar trip being organized to go to Rwanda. Letting my frugal side outweigh my common sense, I opted to go along again. I had a good idea of what I was getting into, and didn’t think the planning could be any worse than the trip to Kenya. Ha! That’s the last time I will ever question someone’s ability to under-plan over here!

The official reason for the trip was the same as that for Kenya: an academic conference about graduate study in East Africa. We were going to spend 3 days there – 1 1/2 at the national university in Butare and 1 1/2 in the capital, Kigali. Like the Kenya trip, I really wasn’t interested in the academic conference, I just wanted to see Rwanda!

My first indication of how the trip would play out came before we had even left. A day prior to departure, I got a call from the trip coordinator saying that he had switched the departure time to 3:00 AM on Thursday morning, October 30, leaving from some random place in Kampala. Apparently, he was trying to time our arrival for something…I never figured out what that was though.

I got to the meeting point a little before 3:00, and everyone else arrived soon after. Amazingly, we were on our way within 30 minutes of the scheduled departure time! I think that was the only thing that happened according to schedule the entire trip. :)

The ride over was fairly uneventful. Once the sun came up, I gained an appreciation for western Uganda. The flat East African plateau turns to rolling hills, which develop into the foothills for the Rwenzori Mountains, which form much of Uganda’s western border. Beautiful.

My first real shock came when we crossed the border into Rwanda. I had been told to expect a different feeling entirely from that of Uganda, and that’s exactly what I found. Less than 15 years ago, Rwanda was the site of one of humanity’s most horrific genocides. The gains the country has made since that time are incredible. Unlike Uganda, where garbage is littered everywhere and many laws are blatantly ignored, Rwanda seems orderly and clean. In fact, our bus got searched when we crossed the border for any polyurethane bags, which are illegal in Rwanda. As we drove into Rwanda, the differences were striking. First of all, the countryside itself, with its alternating mountains and valleys, is gorgeous. And, unlike Uganda, there is no trash piled up to distract from nature. Additionally, the roads are well maintained (no more huge potholes!) and drivers aren’t as crazy. In fact, boda-boda drivers are, by law, required to wear helmets and provide a helmet for their passenger, which all of them (at least that I saw) did. Rwanda really did feel like a breath of fresh air from the chaos that I had grown accustomed to in Kampala.

Still, Rwanda definitely is not perfect. It has the highest population density in all Africa, with most of the population engaged in subsistence farming. The per capita income is only $900, almost 20% less than that of Uganda. Development is still reeling from the 1994 genocide and poverty levels are higher now than before the genocide. But the country definitely deserves commendation for its turn-around since having its entire infrastructure decimated, and international aid is starting to flow into the country in support of this effective development.

As we continued driving through the country, it became apparent that the group coordinator, who told all of us that he had made the trip a few weeks ago, either had not actually come before or just remembered nothing from the trip. After hearing him say “only 10 more minutes” numerous times during the final 3 hours of trip, we finally arrived at our lodging, about 2 hours later than expected. After a basic meal we had the rest of the evening (about 2 hours) to ourselves. Most of us retired to our rooms early to crash from the long journey. I fell asleep still trying to understand the logic behind leaving at 3:00 am…

The next morning was the conference. Naturally, our group arrived 30 minutes after the scheduled start time. But, of course, the conference hadn’t actually started. In fact, it appeared like nobody there knew what we were talking about when we asked about an academic conference. I hung around for awhile, then, knowing that if/when the conference ever did start, we would be covering the exact same topics I had sat through in Kenya, decided to make better use of my time. I, along with Ryan Schuette, another Rotary Scholar in Uganda, quietly exited out of the building, grabbed a couple bodas, and took off to see the city of Butare. I had done my research before the trip and knew that there was a well-acclaimed national museum in the town. The two of us headed there and spent the next couple hours reading all about the history of Rwanda. The museum was very well done, and, in my opinion, a much better use of our time!

At that time, we decided we should get back to the conference before it became too obvious that we were completely MIA. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a little more difficult getting back than it had been getting to the museum. The main culprit: language barrier - Rwanda is officially a French-speaking nation. Although many of its residents speak English, most of the drivers do not. I wasn’t too worried since I knew how to direct my driver back to the university. The problem was Ryan…great guy, but lousy sense of direction. He knew some broken French, so he tried to use that in talking with the boda driver. The driver’s response: blank stare. No luck there. So, after explaining the directions to Ryan and drawing him a map, he was confident he could get back. Off he went, and, after taking a few minutes to get myself a driver and haggle him down to the right cost, I was following behind. When I got to the site of the conference, Ryan was nowhere to be found. Great, I thought, I lost one of the Rotary Scholars! Luckily, I found Ryan, about ½ a mile away with no real idea of where he was, but happily taking some pictures of a memorial from the genocide.

We caught the last session of the conference and then joined everyone for an afternoon social event. No one seemed to have noticed that we were gone, probably because they were having a hard enough time staying awake themselves during the conference! The social event was great because of the food; I had forgotten how much I enjoyed cheese, which Rwanda, unlike Uganda, uses frequently!

We then boarded the bus to head back to Kigali, which we had passed through on our way to the conference. We were on a fairly strict timeline since we were due to be at the Ugandan embassy for dinner that night. We stopped at a couple locations on the way back, and still managed to get lost for awhile, which, of course, made us late in getting to the embassy. However, we did eventually arrive there, and spent the rest of the evening eating more delicious Rwandan food and speaking with the Ugandan Ambassador to Rwanda. It was a very interesting night, because I got to hear the Ugandans’ impressions of Rwanda. There was basically unanimous consent that Rwanda was doing something right that Uganda was missing, and a very constructive conversation about what they could do to change that. Encouraging to hear!

As the night wound down, we boarded back on the bus and exited the embassy en route to our lodging for the night. That is where the little planning that had been done for the trip ended. We found out that we actually had no lodging for that night. Well, the coordinator said he had reserved rooms, but since we arrived late in Kigali they had been given away. He had been working through much of the meal trying to find rooms. He had found enough rooms for about half of our group, or nearly everyone in our group if we agreed to pair up. Ryan and I agreed to split a room and got dropped off at the first of several locations where the coordinator had found a room or two. Several in the group took one look at the rooms and refused to stay in them. I looked in a room, and it was definitely the sketchiest place I had ever been. Still, it had a mosquito net (or at least most of a net), so Ryan and I said we could handle it in an effort to reduce the confusion.

The next morning came and, after speaking with the coordinator, I found out that there was no set rendezvous point or time. He assured me that I had a couple hours’ time before anything would happen. I had no doubt that that was a true statement, so I set off to explore Kigali by myself for awhile. I found a boda driver and basically paid him to be my chauffeur for the next couple hours. We visited the Hotel des Mille Collines, the hotel documented in the movie Hotel Rwanda where the owner saved over a thousand lives by sheltering them during the genocide; the American Embassy; and a few other random locations in the city. Again, I was blown away by how much order Kigali seemed to have when compared to Kampala.

I eventually returned to the hotel and, as I had expected, found that nothing had yet happened to organize the group. The next couple hours were spent driving around the city, picking everyone up. I really wanted to get the group together so we could get to the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, the official memorial for those who died during the genocide. To my dismay, I found out that organizing a group of Ugandans was quite a sizeable task! Eventually, after plenty of prodding, everyone was on the bus. We then had an extended “discussion” about what everyone in the group wanted to do. After some compromising, we finally agreed to do a short stop for breakfast before moving on the memorial centre.

When we did finally arrive at the memorial, I was filled with a weird combination of excitement/dread concerning what I was about to see. Before I had decided to come to Rwanda, I knew next to nothing about the genocide. I remembered that there was a conflict in the '90’s that had caused a refugee crisis and a movie (that I had never seen) had been made about it. Beyond that, I didn’t know the difference between a Tutsi (the people targeted in the genocide) and a tsetse (a fly that carries African sleeping sickness). After deciding to go to Rwanda, I had done a little reading about the genocide, but I was still pretty ignorant about the whole thing.

The memorial visit started with visiting the mass gravesite of over 250,000 who had been killed in the genocide, a suitable beginning for what I was about to see. I spent the next four hours wandering through the rooms, reading about the atrocities that had occurred in 1994 and wandering how I had never heard about this event where more than 800,000 people were slaughtered for no reason at all…during my lifetime. Appropriately, the final room of the memorial was dedicated to the children who perished, with short biographies of several children that listed their favorites (food, game, activity, etc.), the last photo that had been taken of them, and their method of execution. “Bone-chilling” is the only real way to describe it.

The experience wasn’t a happy one by any means, but it was definitely worth the trip to get there.

Once every emerged from the memorial centre, most of them being visibly shaken by what they had just seen, we made our way back to the bus. This is where things got interesting.

Before we started on our way back to Kampala, our trip coordinator informed us we were going to have a group meeting to discuss some “issues.” As he went on to explain, we had run out of money, and didn’t have enough to purchase enough fuel to get us back to Kampala. You can picture how that went over with the group. At this point, chaos ensued, with lots of accusations and complaining. After awhile, I tried to speak up to offer some suggestions on what we could do to get home, which involved people pitching in a few extra shillings each and covering our own meals. This is the point, as I was doing a quick accounting of expenditures to try and figure out where everything had gone, where I found out that Ryan and I (the only two white people on the trip) had been charged 20 percent more than everyone else.

As you can imagine, I wasn’t very happy about this, but that wasn’t the time to dwell on that fact. Eventually, after the group lapsed back into chaos/borderline anarchy a couple more times, we got everyone to agree on a plan, and we set off for Kampala.

We drove across the remainder of Rwanda with no real problems. That doesn’t say much, though, since the country is smaller than Massachusetts. Once we crossed the border back into Uganda, several people commented how nice it was to be home, opened the bus windows, and tossed garbage onto the roadside. So much for my hope of this group taking steps to make Uganda operate more like Rwanda…

We stopped in Kabale a short distance later for dinner. As we were eating, the idea of staying there that night was discussed. By that point, I was more than ready for the trip to be over, so I was a strong opponent to the idea, as was Ryan. However, we were apparently the only two who felt that way. We consented to democratic rule and went with the group’s decision. However, after speaking with the bus driver, who explained the dangers of driving at night in Uganda, I agreed that the idea wasn’t that bad.

And, this gave us an opportunity to do a short trip to Lake Bunyonyi, which was less than 10 miles from Kabale. I had heard a few good things about the area, and I was interested in seeing it. We all got back on the bus and made it over the hills to the lake just as the sun was starting to set. The views were absolutely stunning. The lake is completely surrounded by hills (and, although fairly small, is rumored to be the second deepest lake in Africa) and, as it appeared before us on our descent, I was blown away by the views…definitely the most beautiful place I had yet seen in Uganda!

We spent the next couple hours going between three different resorts/campsites and taking in the beauty. I quickly admitted that I was wrong about wanting to continue on to Kampala; seeing Lake Bunyonyi was worth the extra night!

We eventually returned to Kabale, and several of the people decided they were going to go out that night. I was in a better mood by that point but definitely was not looking for a crazy night, and I went back to my room and crashed. The next morning, after a couple hours spent pulling everyone out of bed and threatening to leave people behind, we were on the road within an hour of our scheduled departure…I was fairly pleased with that.

The trip started off well, but issues came up again once we reached Mbarara, about halfway to Kampala. At this point, the coordinator informed us that we were completely out of money. He got creative at this point, though, and instead of asking everyone to contribute a little more, he decided to turn the bus into a glorified mutatu. So, we started picking up people along the side of the road who were looking for a ride to Kampala. The money we charged them went to buying fuel.

It wasn’t a bad idea, except for the fact that our bus was already full. After picking up about 5 people, the people on the bus started complaining…fairly vocally…about space issues (which was the first time I’d ever heard people complain about personal space in Africa). At this point, chaos returned. The coordinator got frustrated and told everyone that we had picked up to get out of the bus. But then the people riding the bus realized this meant they were going to have to pay more, and they decided to let the newcomers stay.

I had lucked out and gotten the very front seat, across from the driver, for the whole trip. It was nice because I had a little extra room, and even had a seat belt to myself. However, the only thing that separated me from oncoming traffic was the full-length windshield, so if we ended up getting into a collision, well, I opted not to think about that scenario. By this point in the trip, I had quit offering suggestions and was just sitting in the front trying to imagine if there was possibly anything else that could go wrong. I was also trying to document everything that was happening, because I knew I couldn’t think up a story this good!

Eventually the chaos calmed and we continued on our way. After a few more hours of listening to the same cassette tape of sappy love songs over…and over…and over (I now know every word to the song “Hero” by Enrique Igelsias), we arrived at the outskirts of Kampala. I let out a sigh of relief, believing the end to be near. Just as I did that, the bus shuddered and came to a halt, and, of all locations, while we were going up a hill. I looked at the bus driver who just shrugged and said “out of fuel.”

Of course, this happened right in the middle of typically crazy traffic in Kampala, so we spent the next 15 minutes diverting traffic in order to let the bus roll back down the hill. Luckily, there was a gas station not too far away. We let the bus roll as far as it would go, then we got several of us to team up and push it the rest of they way.

The problem with a diesel engine that runs out of fuel is that you can’t just put more fuel in the tank and start it up. Oh no, that would be far too easy. Instead, you have to bleed the air out of the lines and then prime the engine until fuel is coming into all cylinders. We spent the next hour waiting as the driver got the bus up and going again.

Finally, we were back on our way, and we eventually arrived back at Makerere University. Approximately 16 hours later than originally scheduled, beating the previous mark of 12 hours from my Kenya trip.

In summary, all I can say…TIA :)

Cheers!
Chris

P.S. I posted a few pictures from this trip on my “Staying busy…” Nov. 13 post. Also, as I was writing this out, I remembered that Ryan had taken a few pictures of us pushing the bus. Hopefully I’ll get those from him and get them posted here in the next couple days.



The Rwandan countryside. Just across the Uganda border, the valleys are filled with tea plantations.


A few local children came up to our bus when we pulled over for a pit stop


What? Boda-boda drivers with helmets? Weird...


Much of Rwanda's development is fueled by labor groups composed of convicted felons from the genocide. They're easy to pick out with their bright-colored uniforms


The Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre

What dry season???

January is generally considered to be Uganda’s driest month, with rain only coming every great once in awhile. February has a little more rain and March is then usually considered to be the start of the rainy season. At least, that’s how it’s been almost every year before this. January started off the normal way: very hot & dry. However, since I arrived on January 20, it has rained every day except for one, with the rain usually coming in a short burst of 30ish minutes.

All Ugandans that I have asked about this have said that they have never seen anything like it. Just add it to the list of weird weather going on all over the world!

This departure from the usual weather pattern gets very interesting when you look at agriculture over here. Uganda is able to have two growing season each year, coordinating with wet & dry seasons. Usually January is a harvest time and planting starts in March with the rains. However, with the abnormal rains this year, it sounds like farmers may start planting their crops earlier. Agricultural advisory organizations, such as VEDCO, are considering pushing for planting to get started. If the rains hold up, that should work out alright. However, no on really knows if the rains will continue straight through the typical rainy season or if things will stop earlier. Let’s hope that the rains do hold out, because irrigation systems are anything but common for most of the farmers here!

Not too much else going on for me right now. Classes “started” (on paper) last week. Actually, to my surprise, we did have one of the eight scheduled lectures. Hopefully they’ll get going this upcoming week. Beyond that, I’m chugging along with research and the mosquito nets project.

Schools around the country (primary through university) started last Monday (Feb. 2nd) so two of the kids from my host family – Charity & Innocent – went back to boarding school. The two others, Peter & Patience, will start in the next couple weeks. They both had major tests in November: Peter finished his 4 years of O-Level Secondary School and was testing to get into a good A-Level school while Patience finished her 7th (and final) year of primary school and took the PLE’s (Primary Level Examination) to determine which O-Level school she could attend. Their results came back within the last couple weeks and they both did well. Peter will start boarding school again while Patience will continue as a day school student so she can be home at night to help with Gloria, the 9 month-old baby.

Before Charity & Innocent returned to school, we took a “family photo,” which I have included below.

Cheers!
Chris



From left to right: Me, Charity, Innocent, Peter, Patience, Agnes, Gloria, & Kizito. A few of the weird faces are accounted by Margaret, the cook/maid who took the picture, not giving an indication of when she was pressing the capture button...either that or they just didn't want to take a picture with me! :)



Gloria and I. She liked me when I first came in September, but by December she had changed her mind and decided the random white guy was scary. Now she usually ends up crying whenever I hold her. We got this picture just before the tears started :)

Mosquito nets for Kamuli

One of the aspects of my Rotary scholarship that I enjoy most is its incorporation of a service component. It’s a great way to take an incredible experience and add even more to it. I’ve been able to participate in a few rewarding service projects up to this point, like volunteering as a teacher at a local high school, painting a school in Kamuli, and pouring cement for a school in the Ssese Islands, and I've really enjoyed doing all of these things. However, since I came over in August I’ve been trying to find something a little bigger that could continue to make an impact on people’s lives after I leave. Something more…sustainable.

I’m happy to say that I’ve found what I was looking for. The idea came after discussions with my VEDCO contact at the Namasagali and Nakanyonyi Primary Schools, the schools that are participating in the pen pal exchange with Tracy’s 6th grade students in Gilbert. Tracy’s students wanted to collect some school supplies to send over, so I was asking what was most needed. Instead of being told pens or paper like I expected, I was informed that these kids needed mosquito nets more than anything else.

This statement prompted a little research, and I soon found out that only about 25 percent of the students at these schools had access to mosquito nets, which meant that nearly 1100 students out of 1400 had zero protection against malaria.

So what’s the big deal with mosquito nets? Since there currently is no vaccine for malaria, insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) are basically the only preventative measure that people here have against malaria (there are prophylactics that can be taken to reduce the chances of getting malaria, but they are expensive and take a toll on the liver if used for too long). When used properly, ITNs can reduce the spread of malaria by 90 percent.

Malaria is a major issue for students at these schools. If not treated properly (which requires money for medicine), the protozoa are never killed and the malaria becomes a recurrent illness. The recurrences cause multiple absences from school, which can often lead a child to fall so far behind that he/she must drop out. In the worst case scenarios, malaria can kill. In fact, malaria kills over 1,000,000 people in Sub-Saharan Africa every year, with the vast majority of them being young children. That works out to being approximately one death every 30 seconds.

Obviously, something needs to be done to help with this problem. That’s where this idea comes in…

In a nutshell, I’m working to create a sustainable source of mosquito nets for these two schools through the ISU Center for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods (CSRL). Funds will be collected that will go to the ISU Foundation and start what will be a mosquito nets endowment. The principal will remain intact while the interest will be used to subsidize the price of approximately 150 mosquito nets each year, enough to cover all new, incoming students at the schools who would not have access to nets otherwise.

The net price will be subsidized to 1,000 Ugandan shillings (about $.60) from the original price of 10,000 shillings (about $6.00). This will hopefully avoid the stigma that can sometimes accompany handouts in a developing world context. I won't go into a long, drawn out explanation for why this is; basically handouts tend to remove any inherent value that an item might have had and can create a reliance that can ultimately does more harm than good.

This whole program will cost about $25,000. It sounds like a lot up front, but when all is said and done, this program will provide access to mosquito nets for all students at these two primary schools, thereby increasing their ability to attend school, get an education, and hopefully have a better chance at breaking out of the poverty trap into which they were born. And it is a sustainable program; once the money is raised, this program will have funds to operate in perpetuity. The great thing about doing this through ISU is that it will be introduced into a system that works, with people on the ground that have proven success in development work. And the coolest thing about going through CSRL is that this program will move with the organization. So twenty or thirty years down the road, when Kamuli is no longer in need of development assistance (which should be the case if the program works), this nets program will move with the entire CSRL program to another area in the world that does need development assistance.

I’ll admit right away that it is by no means my own personal creation. I’ve had plenty of help along the way, with numerous people at ISU and here in Uganda offering advice along the way. Without assistance from Rich Bundy at the ISU Foundation, Dr. David Acker with CSRL, and Benon Musasizi with VEDCO, this thing never would have come together. And I also owe thanks to Mitra Miri, another Rotary scholar in Uganda, who is going to Kamuli with me next weekend to help with a baseline study for getting a little more information about the current situation.

The main source of funding for this project is intended to be Rotary clubs, but – here’s the kicker – anyone can easily give to it! So, yes, I will admit that this is, in a way, a selfless plug for this project. But it’s a good project, so hopefully you won’t hold that against me!

The fund is already set up with the ISU Foundation, so giving to the program is as easy as writing a check to the ISU Foundation with “CSRL Mosquito Nets Project” in the memo line and sending it to the following address:

Iowa State University Foundation
2505 University Boulevard
P.O. Box 2230
Ames, IA 50010-2230

There’s also an online donation page set up for CSRL at http://www.srl.ag.iastate.edu/gift/. The option for giving to the mosquito nets project should be appearing on it very soon. And all donations are tax deductible!

Every little bit helps and, if we do run into the "problem" of raising more money than expected, we can just expand the program to include more at-risk individuals like pregnant women and younger children.

If you are interested in learning more about this project, just ask. I can send you plenty more information about its setup, accountability features, etc.

That’s all for now. Thanks for making it through my shameless plug!

Cheers!
Chris


P.S. Here are a few of the pictures of the kids from Kamuli that would benefit from this program. These were taken when I was visiting the schools last August with the ISU delgation.


A young girl with her younger sibling came to watch us while we were painting at Namasagali


The kids were waiting when we drove up to Nakanyonyi


Nakanyonyi students who had shown up to see the borehole (water well) that had been donated by CSRL being drilled for their school

The return of Pelé…not quite

My time home in December/January helped me to realize how quickly my time in Uganda is actually going. It gave me an opportunity to think about what I had done and seen and also what I still wanted to do and see before my work over here wraps up in early June.

One disappointment from my first four months in Uganda was my lack of interaction with locals through sports. I love to play sports and I came over here expecting to play all of the time. However, when I came back in December, the closest thing I had done to group sports was running the Kampala half marathon with a few friends.

I decided to change that when I came back for the second half of my time in Uganda. I had received an invitation from Dr. Da Silva, the coordinator of the renewable energy master’s program, to play sports with a group of students that he mentors. This last Sunday I took him up on the invite for the first time, and met a group of students/professionals ranging in age from 23-30 who were going to play football (soccer).

When it comes to sports, soccer is the undisputed king over here. Kids grow up playing the sport. I had played soccer a little while growing up, but since Jefferson didn’t have a high school program the last time I had played soccer competitively was in 8th grade. In other words, I hadn’t played for about a decade. This, obviously, didn’t bode well for me.

Once everyone arrived (as usual, people showed up about 30-60 minutes after the intended start time) there were eight of us, and we played four on four with small nets and no goalkeeper.

There wasn’t too much exciting for most of the game, basically me just running around chasing people who were much better than me. I did manage to have a classic “me moment” though. While defending the ball, the dribbler went one way and I went the other to try and steal and…crunch! His forehead met the upper part of my nose, and his forehead will win that battle every time. I was off on the sidelines for about 15 minutes trying to stop the bleeding and to tell if I had broken my nose or not. Looking at it the day after, I’m still not sure, but I don’t think it’s broken. I really can’t tell that much of a difference actually…but that’s probably because I had a big nose to start with!

I eventually got back on the field and played with everyone until the game ended at 7:00 with sundown. I was the only non-Ugandan, and definitely the least skilled, but I don’t think I made too much of a fool of myself. At least, I received an invite to come back next week…but maybe that’s because watching me on the field makes them feel better about their own skills!

Cheers!
Chris


This is not what I looked like...