On the way back from the U.S. for our Christmas Holiday, Sarah and I had a layover in one of my favorite cities. Here’s some pics of our outing that day.
Now that we are both back in Kampala, it’s business as usual. Sarah and I recently found and office space within walking distance from my house that we’ll share. In March I’ll be back in the U.S. to present at South by Southwest while Sarah heads off to Turkey to present at a water conference. Actually over the next month and a half we only see each other for a total of about a week!
Written by Jon in Photos, Travel ~
In 12 hours, Jon and I, along with two friends on the same flight, will be approaching the airport in Entebbe. We will heave out bags through security and get in the presumably long line (which I’ve learned to call a queue) to check in.
In 10 hours, Jon and I will be closing zippers and running through the list of things that has to happen before we go one more time–well, that will be me because I do love lists. Becca will probably be here, checking herself in for her house sitting gig, and Julia will likely be around, too.
In seven hours, I’ll acknowledge that there are just things that won’t get done before we leave, but that will be okay.
In five hours I’ll begin to think seriously about packing and wondering what has to get ironed before we leave and what can get thrown in the washer on Sunday and dried in a real drier.
In three hours I’ll become antsy that errands like paying the water bill, buying a broom and WaterGuard, and giving our askari his annual bonus won’t get done, and so I’ll take a break from work and do some of that stuff.
Looks like I better get down to business and get some stuff done!
Written by Sarah in Life, Travel ~
Last week I had the great opportunity to visit the Water For People—Malawi program. As Regional Manager for Africa, part of my job is to support the country program in its work. Up until this point, I have supported the Country Coordinator, Kate, and her staff from afar. Our schedules hadn’t lined up—when my time was open, she had conferences or was hosting visitors; when her time was open, I had meetings in Uganda or was in Rwanda. Finally, we were able to agree on a week that worked for both of us, and I was off.
I had never been to Malawi, and I really didn’t know what to expect.
The first thing I learned is that there is no straight shot from Entebbe, Uganda to Blantyre, Malawi, though both are international airports. There were essentially three flight option. The first was all on South African Airways. However, the flight from Entebbe to Johannesburg just missed the connection to Blantyre, and so would require an overnight in Johannesburg. The second was a flight to Johannesburg with transfer to Air Malawi, and the third was Kenya Airways to Nairobi, then to Lilongwe, Malawi, then Air Malawi to Blantyre. I can’t remember why I didn’t go with the Joburg-Blantyre option, but I ended up with the Kenya Airways flight.
The flight to Nairobi left at 5 am, which required that I arrive to the airport at 3 am, and leave the house at 2 am. Early morning and long layovers aside, the flights were smooth and uneventful, although there was an unexpected stop in Lusaka, Zambia for people to get on and off the plane. I should say that the stop was unexpected to me—nowhere in my itinerary did it mention another stop—but it was a scheduled stop. A mere 16 hours after leaving my door, I arrived in Blantyre.
The view from the doorstep of the Lilongwe airport where I had a really long layover on the way to Blantyre. I love the colors of the flame trees, the jacaranda trees, and the bougainvillea.
Needless to say, I was sort of a zombie when I arrived. But that changed when I saw Kate waving madly at me from the observation deck as I made my way from the plane to the airport. It was really wonderful to see her smiling face. I retrieved my bag, and found Kate just outside the baggage area. She gave me a big hug, and quickly escorted me to the car. It was a wonderful welcome, and it was much appreciated. Kate was doing well. One of her sons was just getting over the chicken pox, but otherwise her family was well.
Blantyre is the largest city in Malawi and is the business center of the country, though it’s not the capital. The city has a population of approximately 732,000, which is about double what it was 20 years ago. Although I’m sure that the rapid growth of the city makes the city feel very large to people who have been there for many years, coming from Kampala—with its more than 2 million people—I couldn’t help feeling like the city was small and very manageable by comparison. I actually spent very little time in Blantyre itself while I was in Malawi this time, and so I can’t speak too much about it, except to say that it felt very comfortable, and is a city I would like to spend more time in.
View from the hotel patio over a part of the city. This view doesn’t show it to be very densely populated, but it does show some of the steep–but beautiful–terrain.
One of the most interesting things about the city, I thought, is that a good chunk of the population lives in very densely populated neighborhoods. As we drove from the airport, Kate pointed out hills that were packed with small houses. She pointed out that the terrain was very steep and the spaces between houses were very small. We discussed the sanitation challenges that result from such terrain: Pit latrines eventually fill and need to be moved, but in when space is so limited, moving them is hard. Furthermore, desludging latrines in such conditions is difficult because you can’t get a desludger between the houses and up the hills. This area, Kate pointed out, is an area that Water For People hopes to work in soon. We’ve been thinking about ways to address some of these challenges, and it will be great if we can make it work.
Kate dropped me off at the hotel, but before she left, she introduced me to the World Water Corps team that had been working for the week prior on monitoring Water For People—Malawi’s work. The purpose of monitoring is to assess what is working and what is not working in our programs. Volunteers conduct interviews with beneficiaries, partners, and other stakeholders to determine how well the project has been sustained since it was completed.
The team was made up of six volunteers ranging in age from mid-20s to mid-60s or so, engineers, doctors, mapping specialists, and people generally interested in Water For People’s work. They had worked for the past week within Blantyre and in Chikwawa, Southern Malawi. The next, four members of the team would stay and continue to work on interviewing people who had received water and latrines as part of Water For People’s work in the south, and two of the volunteers, Kate, and me would head north to monitor the work that had been done there.
I ate dinner with the team, but by then my sleepless night the night before and the prospect of taking off at 7 am the following day put me to bed shortly thereafter.
The drive up north took about 11 hours when all was said and done. We passed through several different landscapes. Part of the drive was along the Mozambique border. Growing up in Tucson, with the Mexico border a 90-minute drive away, I was familiar with borders that are fenced and heavily locked down. I know lines at the border where passports are checked and cars inspected. The border between Malawi and Mozambique had none of that. The landscape to the left of the car looked identical to the landscape to the right, but to the left was Mozambique and to the right, Malawi. Kate told me that trade between the two countries in this area is easy. Sometimes it is done in Malawi Kwacha, other times (though less so these days because the Malawi government is cracking down) in Mozambique Meticas. People on the left side of the road learned Portuguese in school, but often they sent their children to the Malawi schools which were closer, and so their children learned English. It was fascinating.
An amazing outcropping of rock, which resembles the area where I was working Northern Mozambique
After another good night’s rest in a very hot guest house room, we awoke to monkeys eating mangoes from the tree outside along Lake Malawi. Lake Malawi makes up one third the area of Malawi itself. We visited half a dozen or so schools along the lake to assess how the sanitation program has been working there.
A view of Lake Malawi from the road. Sadly, I didn’t have my camera when I saw monkeys eating mangoes…but really, who’s surprised?
Schools have been building arbor loos, which are shallow pits covered by a relatively small cement slab (about 80 cm in diameter). The pits are shallow so that they can be filled quickly, then a tree is planted in the full pit. Students designed where the latrines should go, and as a result where their new tree grove would be. The most amazing thing about these school latrines, was that there was no smell. Even well-kept pit latrines often have an odor, but these latrines, despite some of them being quite full and nearly ready for tree-planting, didn’t have an odor at all. The reason? Kate explained that like with other composting latrines, after using the latrine, students were placing three handfuls of sand and one of ash to neutralize the contents. It was the ash that was keeping the smell down. It was very impressive.
A student demonstrates how he places three handfuls of sand and one of ash into the latrine after using it to make better compost, keep the flies away, and keep the smell down. It works!
That afternoon we drove up the plateau to Livingstonia, a mission that was created in the late 1800s. We spoke with a water committee that has been working to implement at gravity-fed, piped water system, that when complete, will serve 22,000 people. The water committee and the engineer showed us their plans and talked about where they were with the project. We talked a lot about management, and the importance of getting management systems in place before the water itself was available. A system that large will hold its own complexity and so it’s important for water users to understand what will be expected of them—what their regular monetary contribution will be, who will fix the system when it breaks, etc. The monitoring team interviewed members of the committee as well as members of the university that are now getting water from the new system.
The next morning, we set off at 6:30 on a hike to the source that was feeding this massive system. We hiked through people’s farms and into the forest. Much of our hike was covered in a canopy of fig trees and other vegetation, but every now and again the view would open up to a beautiful valley. After about an hour, we reached the source. The engineer explained that the water was flowing into a capture box that would regulate the pressure coming into the system. The capture at the source is nearly complete, only awaiting cranks to open and close the system. From there, they would continue to expand the system.
We passed this homestead on our hike to the spring source. This family is growing coffee. I brought home some Mzuzu coffee, and it’s delicious! Some of you may find it in your Christmas stockings if you’re very good.
We had another full day seeing schools and interviewing students, then it was back down south. On the way back, rather than driving along the Mozambique border, we drove along Lake Malawi, stopping along the way to buy rice, mangoes, and other goodies that are local to various parts of the country north of Blantyre.
One of the Water Corps volunteers interviews a student about the important times to wash his hands: Before and after eating, before preparing food, after changing a baby’s diaper, and after using the latrine. He got them all right!
Friday and Saturday I spent more time in the field. I visited a number of community homes that had begun their own composting latrines. We talked about what they liked and what they didn’t like about the toilets they chose to build, why they chose to build them, how much it cost, and what their plans were for when they were full.
This woman has constructed a beautiful arbor loo for her home. The designs were all painted in different muds. Sadly, the structure will have to be destroyed when the pit is full and she plants a tree. We’re working on ensuring that everyone understands the concept of the arbor loo. The wonderful thing here, is that the woman and her family appear to really like their latrine, which helps in usages.
Finally, Sunday morning came, and I was out the door of the hotel room at 5 am to catch my flight home. Another long and indirect flight pattern later, I was back home around 9 pm, where Jon had dinner waiting for me.
Written by Sarah in NGO, Travel, water for people, work ~
Our bed is here. The septic tank is repaired. Grass is beginning to grow in the back yard again. The volunteer tomato plants have taken root and are getting bigger. Our internet connection is slow, but more or less reliable when the power is on. Life is beginning to get normal.
Normal is really good. I went to Fort Portal the other day for a meeting. I called a friend who lives there. We were going to have dinner. But when I called, she and another friend were in the process of making cookies and were going to watch movies, and she invited me. When I got to her house, Trisha and Emerald announced that they had eaten most of the peanut butter cookie dough, but that they were going to bake some anyway. That was dinner. And it was great. We looked through Trisha’s collection of pirated movies with Asian subtitles and chose season 4 of Desperate Housewives. So it was cookies and trash TV. After an episode or two Trisha made tea. It was mint tea with honey. I’ve only found black tea, and so to have mint tea with honey was really comforting, too. It was a great night.
In addition to the activity feeling really familiar, it was really nice to be with people that I didn’t need to explain myself to. Jon and I have been very conscious to not only hang out with Americans. In fact, we haven’t really even met so many Americans in Kampala. However, the other night, it was nice to be with Americans—not because they were Americans, per se, but because we share a common background, a common way of talking, and a common way of relaxing. I didn’t have to explain what I was doing in Uganda. Emerald and I did the normal, what do you do, oh, what do you do, and that was it. No one was trying to network. No one was trying to create partnership or work together or compete. It was just friends. Easy friends.
After a few episodes of watching Bree Van de Camp and crew do mean things to one another, after a couple cups of tea, and after enough cookies for several weeks, it was time to go back to my little hotel room. I got on the bus back to Kampala early the next day, and came home to Jon.
It rained a little later, and Jon and I listened to Jason Mraz while watching the rain and writing various emails. Again, normal.
Mom asked me the other day if being here feels real yet. If it’s a real life. And I think that it’s getting to be. It’s nice to know that we’ll be going home in December and we’ll be able to see friends and family for the holidays. But being in Kampala, with Jon, and our house, and some friends is really beginning to feel like a place that we live, not a place that we’re visiting. It’s nice. It’s getting to be normal.
Written by Sarah in Food, Life, Travel, Uganda ~
Before we left Denver, I made a tentative travel schedule. I needed to come up with a budget for the regional expenses through the end of 2008, and to do so, I needed to have a general idea of when I would visit Hélène in Rwanda and Kate in Malawi. I tentatively said that I would make a trip to Rwanda the first week of September to see how the program was coming together after its first few months. However, I would only make the trip if at that point Hélène was ready for me.
As it turned out, in mid-August, I got an email from Hélène, saying that things were coming along well, but that she was really ready for some face-to-face time to discuss how to proceed with program development. We agreed that the first week of September was the right timing for my first visit.
Eileen and John Kayser asked Jon to come along and take photos. We wanted to have some “baseline” photos of the work that Hélène has been doing in Rwanda. One of the challenges of being the sole staff person in a country is that it’s very difficult to take photos at the same time you are leading meetings. We also wanted to make sure that we had some photos of Hélène at work.
Jon and I traveled last Sunday on the 9:00 am flight from Entebbe, Uganda to Kigali, Rwanda. Although the flight is less than an hour, it’s an international flight, and so we needed to report to the airport two hours early. It takes an hour to get from Kampala to Entebbe (where Uganda’s international airport is), and so Jon and I were in a taxi, before sunrise, at 6:00 am.
We flew over a piece of Lake Victoria, perhaps over some of Tanzania, and into Rwanda. It was very clear when we passed into Rwanda. Rwanda is the most densely populated country in Africa. The bird’s eye view showed us that the land was covered in small agricultural plots all lined up. Houses were close together, and from the air, everything looked well organized.
We arrived to Kigali and got settled. Kathryn Cooper, Water For People’s Water and Sanitation Leadership Fellow, had arrived to Kigali from Malawi the day before to begin her study of girls’ sanitation in Rwanda. She was set to stay at Hélène’s house for the two weeks she was working in Rwanda. They’d spent the morning at the market and invited Jon and me to dinner. It was great to have a chance to informally catch up with Hélène and Kathryn. We all exchanged stories of the last few months in our respective countries. We compared internet speeds, motorcycle taxis, and adventures in dining. Rwanda has a lot of avocados this time of year, and so Kathryn made a delicious guacamole. After the sun set, we sat down to a fantastic pasta dinner. Since Jon, Kathryn, and I were pretty road-weary, we called it an early night.
On Monday, Hélène and I spent a long time catching up on various administrative questions as well as some larger programmatic questions. We made a list of topics that we wanted to get through during the week, and began to work through them. Among the topics were:
- The 2009 budgeting process
- Potential partners and the status of choosing partners
- Water For People staffing priorities
- Timing the baseline mapping study so that it happens within the next six months, but doesn’t overlap the rainy season too badly
- Reporting requirements
- Water For People office space requirements and the timing for acquiring office space
- Potential programs and program design
It was an ambitious list, but one that we made significant progress on throughout the week.
One of the things that Hélène and I agreed was that because the Rwanda program is growing and changing so quickly that it makes sense to have more regular, frequent communication. For the next several months, and until we no longer feel it’s necessary, Hélène and I will have a short phone call twice a week to talk about where she’s gotten to and how she’s going to proceed. That type of frequent communication is one of the reasons that the Regional Managers have been moved from Denver to the field—by being physically closer, we’re able to give more regular support to our country offices.
On Tuesday, Hélène set up meetings in Kicukiru (pronounced KI-chee-KEE-roo) District, one of the districts where, through needs assessments, the Ministry of Water Resources of Rwanda has assigned Water For People to work. We met with the Executive Secretary of the District, where Hélène and I explained where she has gotten to in her program planning and what it meant for Kicukiru District. Hélène felt that it was very important for the District to see another Water For People face and to hear about the potential programming from someone else, and so I explained the programming ideas that Hélène and I had talked about. Rwanda has three official languages—English, French, and Kinyarwanda—however, many people are much more comfortable speaking French. Poor Hélène was faced with the task of translating my explanations of the program from English, and in many cases, then translating his questions back to me. I’ve made it through two units of Rosetta Stone French lessons, but I have a ways to go, I’m afraid.
During the conversation, the Executive Secretary told us that public toilets had been built in a nearby market. We think that they were pay-for-use toilets, but it was unclear who was managing them. After our meeting, we set off to find the toilets in the market. When we arrived, we looked around, and the toilets seemed nowhere to be found. We asked several people, and finally got some direction from a group of very bold children. We wandered around and finally found what we think were the toilets. However, it was pretty clear that people were uncomfortable with a group of mzungus (foreigners) entering. As we were entering, a man approached us and said that if we’re looking for toilets, he’d bring us to them. He escorted us away from the public toilet and brought us to a private toilet. It’s a mission that Hélène will need to continue on her own.
Wednesday Hélène arranged for us to go to Rulindo, Water For People’s other district. Rulindo is about an hour away from Kigali. After being in Uganda, where distances are long and where many roads are full of potholes, Jon and I were impressed at how easy the ride was. Hélène explained that many of the roads were new. In the places where there were still a few potholes, she explained that they were roads that had not yet been fixed, and the potholes were left from bombs during the Genocide. It was a stark reminder of what happened in Rwanda only 14 years ago. Although a lot of repairs have been made, there is still some ways to go.
In Rulindo, we met with the Assistant Mayor. We again explained where we think the program is going and asked for his thoughts. In many cases he thought that the ideas would work, but he had some suggestions. Hélène and I thanked him and told him that we look forward to working more with him to put the program together. Government is an important partner in Water For People’s work.
Hélène also arranged for us to meet with a potential partner in Rulindo. We met the partner at the Assistant Mayor’s office, and we drove together to see a water system that the group had completed in 2002. We drove up, up, up into the hills. We stopped the car at the base of a hill, and we set out to hike. The water system we were visiting was a gravity flow spring catchment system. We hiked from the road, through a number of homesteads, past a number of women working their small subsistence farming plots, and down to where the spring had been captured.
The Director of the local NGO explained how the system works, and we observed a tap that had been left near the source so that the people in the surrounding area could still access the water while much of the water was piped to the communities below. The system seemed well made, although was in need of some regular maintenance. The Director explained that the fence that had been surrounding the spring source to protect it from animals and other potential contaminants had been stolen. Neighboring children had set up soccer goals on the cleared area, instead. We talked for a long time about the management of the system, how many people the system served, and ways that the NGO might be able to improve the management. Overall, the system appeared to be in good working order.
From there, we visited a church on a nearby hill where some of the water was pumped to. The local NGO was able to rehabilitate a water tank there that had been set up many years ago and had since lost its source. By connecting the new gravity flow system to the tank, the tank was again usable, and the church, school, and other public buildings again had access to safe drinking water. While we were listening to the explanation, a young girl approached the tank and took a drink.
Thursday Hélène and I wrapped up. We finished our list of questions and had a few more meetings. At 3:00 pm Jon and I were on our way back to the airport and back to Uganda. It was a very productive trip. It was excellent to see what Hélène was working on, and to work together through some challenges that she was experiencing. She is making good progress on the Water For People—Rwanda program. It’s going to be an exciting program that will serve to use the good work that the Government of Rwanda is currently doing in the water sector as a base, and hopefully will provide some new ways of thinking that will improve services to Rwanda’s population.
Written by Sarah in Africa, Life, NGO, Travel, Water, water for people ~
(above) A memorial site where 14 Belgian U.N. workers were killed for protecting an official in 1994.
Paranoia. Distrust. Fear. Waiting to erupt again. Those are the ways that friends living in Rwanda have descirbed the feeling here. “People here never smile at one another. They don’t trust each other,” one person said. Another person, a Ugandan who moved to Rwanda following the Genocide told us just this morning that his wife is sill afraid to live here. She now lives in Zanzibar, only rarely returning to visit her family.
In many ways it’s a state of fear that I can only imagine must be something akin to what followed WWII in Germany. Although Kigali, Rwanda is very advanced with high internet penetration and nice roads, it’s a band-aid on a deep wound that will take many generations to heal.
“You see that valley over there,” the taxi driver said to us pointing to a gorgeous, green valley that stretched for miles. “When I came here in 1994 that valley was full of bodies. It was horrible.”
After that I rode in silence trying to absorb the enormity of the things that have happened here.
Written by Jon in Life, Travel ~
