This morning, started like most mornings do these days.
Jon got up around 4 because he couldn’t sleep any longer. He let Zipper out and then put her back to bed. She had her first trip to vet yesterday, and was feeling kind of under the weather from her deworming medication and her rabies vaccine, and so she wasn’t much into playing.
I got up around 7 and let Zipper out again. She did her thing, came back inside, ate her breakfast, and curled up to go to sleep on her pile of “Zipper’s towels.”
Jon and I took turns getting ready for work, both emailing from the kitchen table and drinking coffee for a while—taming the mass of emails that pile up over night when all of colleagues, friends, and family are active—before 9, when we called a special hire and went to Good African Coffee, a restaurant that has finally caught on that if you give free access to relatively decent internet, you do a bang up business. And business we give them.
Anyway, at 9, we let Zipper out one more time before she was put into “Zipper’s house,” which used to be our front half-bath, that was never really used.
When we first brought her home, we gave her a house in her house—a cardboard box that one of Jon’s work computers came in. Although I think she really liked her cardboard box (which a few days into getting to know each, Jon and I turned on its side to make it more of a cave than a box), she proceeded to chew it up completely. We didn’t really mind, because it’s a box, and it’s hers, but it eventually became rather unusable and we pitched it. Anyway, long story short, there seems to be a shortage of crates in Kampala right now, so we’ve given Zipper reign of the whole half-bath, and she does pretty well.
Zipper is about 3 months old now, and so she spends all of her time when we’re not available to keep an eye on her in her house. She is pretty well housebroken these days, as long as we’re paying attention and do our part. Knock on wood, she also still finds “Zipper’s toys” more exciting than most of “Sarah and Jon’s toys.” Again, that’s when we’re keeping an eye on her.
All of that is to say, that today started out just as any other day.
At Good African Coffee, Jon and I both worked for the morning. He had had a lunch meeting planned there for 1, and I planned to have my lunch, and come home around 1 to let Zipper out, play with her a little and then get back to work. I ordered my lunch around 12 and didn’t end up actually arriving until 1:40 (somewhat unusual for lunch at Good African Coffee, but not so unusual in Kampala generally).
I ate my lunch—an “herbed seasonal vegetable sandwich,” which I’ve finally convinced them to make with a side of steamed vegetables rather than fries or fried potato wedges—and then I packed up to come home around 2. Normally I would have called one of our regular special hires who are safe, reliable, and cheap, but I didn’t have my phone with me, and so I picked up a special from outside the restaurant. After negotiating what should be a 5000 UGX ride from 10,000 UGX down to 7000 UGX, we were off.
Four minutes after leaving, we were waved off the road by a traffic woman. She talked to my driver and asked for his permit. He gave some paper to her, which isn’t usually what people pull out. She seemed only moderately satisfied. She walked around the front of the car and found that one of the headlights was broken. She shook her head. She walked around the other side of the car and checked out the insurance.
I could only hear a little of the conversation, because the radio was still blaring behind me, Ugandans tend to be much softer spoken than we loud Americans, whom I’m sure Ugandans must think yell all the time, and because it was a combination of English and Luganda. It seemed, though, that there was some issue with the permit, not that it was expired, but there was maybe some tax that hadn’t been paid. There was also the issue of the headlight.
My driver tried hard to convince the police officer to let him go and drop me and then return to clear whatever fines he had to pay. Not unreasonably, the police officer didn’t want him to do that. She proposed to drive with us to my house. The driver didn’t like that idea. They went back and forth for a while, and eventually she settled on filling in blank piece of paper with his name, age, vehicle number, and maybe a few other details, and gave him a warning that he’d better return immediately after dropping me, because if he didn’t, she’s have his car impounded. Done. And it only took 20 minutes.
Finally, I got home. When I walked in the house, I found the door to “Zipper’s house” open. And, not surprisingly, I did not find Zipper inside. Oh dear. Remember, we’re not really sure how well to trust her when we’re not watching.
As I was discovering the open door and putting my bag down, Zipper came and greeted me waggily. We went outside where she peed just a little bit (oooh, no good…), and pooped (well, that might be good…?), and then we went back inside to assess the damage.
Front of the house: Zipper finished her both of food that was nearly, but not quite, finished this morning. Seemed that nothing was chewed, and there didn’t seem to be any telltale puddles or piles. I then checked the kitchen, which also seemed to be okay. I could tell that Charmime, our housekeeper, had been here. Hmm, a clue?
Back of the house: Back of the house? Oh no. Although the front of the house is not completely puppy-proofed, there’s not too much that she can get into. The back of the house, though, is currently off-limits to our little four-legged one, and so has not been puppy-proofed. Hallway looks clear.
The room that was formerly our office remains fairly empty, as we’re not totally sure what we want to do with it, yet. In the mean time, Charmime has been doing the ironing there, and leaves the clothes in a pile on the floor. “Zipper’s blankets,” which proved to be really fun to destroy were in there, folded. However, when I got home, they were less folded, and one of “Zipper’s toys”—her favorite toy—was next to the blankets. Cute. Across the room, I spotted the toilet brush from the guest bath next to the clean towels, where Zipper had also been sitting. Gross. But the dog does like to sit on towels. I put the brush back in the guest bath. Otherwise, nothing seemed amiss.
On to our bedroom (again, normally all of these doors are closed, but Charmime had been here and so everything was open. Nothing grossly out of order in our bedroom. A few socks out of place, but not terrible chewed. Luckily, Zipper didn’t seem to find interesting my open suitcase that remains on the floor. Mostly it’s unpacked, but what remains are all of the various pills and lotions that I travel with that TSA seemed to have poured out of their bags on my last trip back. I need to reorganize it all, but I haven’t done it yet. So, that was, amazingly okay. I did find a chewed pack of Ventallin asthma pills that had been on the floor. I know that Jon had taken one of them, but I’m not sure he had taken two. Zipper may have gotten one. Not great, but probably not the end of the world for her.
Finally, I make into our bathroom. Yes, our bathroom got the worst of it. Zipper found a roll of toilet paper and shredded the outer layers. She did so, kindly, on a towel in front of the shower, though, so it wasn’t so terrible to clean up. She found a random pair of sunglasses, that I think must have been left here by a Couch Surfer or something, because they’re not familiar. The base to the toilet brush was in the middle of the floor, but the brush was nowhere to be found. There was some mystery liquid in a few places on the floor. I have to say, though, I couldn’t tell if it was pee or if was mop water, or if it was the liquid that pools at the base of the toilet brush (gross again!). I wiped it up, and still couldn’t really tell. The towel was also sort of damp. Maybe she peed, or maybe it was damp from my shower this morning. Also, a mystery that likely we won’t find an answer to. Stranger still was that there was an envelope on the towel that contains our lease to the house. Where did she find that?
And where was the toilet brush? Come to think of it, where had Zipper gotten off to while I was cleaning up the bathroom?
I left the bathroom on my way back into the bedroom. I passed through the little hallway that contains my closet, and I heard a little shuffling. I looked, and there was Zipper, inside the bottom cubby of my closet where I’ve been storing our “important documents that need to be kept, but don’t have a good home”—like the lease! I bent down, along with Zipper, I found the toilet brush! Zipper had been hanging out there during the day!
So, Zipper had a big day out. All and all, I think she did pretty well. Could have been a lot worse, that’s for sure. She’s now all tuckered out and has curled up on “Zipper’s towels” next to me to go to sleep.
How did she get out? Like the mystery water in the bathroom, it remains a mystery. Our best guess is that Charmime let her out. It’s possible, I suppose that we didn’t quite get the door closed all the way this morning, but that seems sort of unlikely. I suppose it’s also possible that she has magical opposable thumbs that she saves for just such occasions.
Written by Sarah in Life, Photos, Uganda ~
On Saturday, June 13, Jon and I adopted a 10-week-old Kampala mutt from the USPCA.
We’d been talking for a long time about getting a dog, but with the general craziness of the last several months, we just hadn’t been able to do so. But finally, we’ve done it.
Zipper’s first few nights with us were a little difficult, but we’ve figured each other out pretty well. She’s done a good job of getting house-trained, and she’s becoming a mighty explorer of the backyard.
She has quickly wiggled her way into our hearts, and we’re happy to have this addition to our little family.
Written by Sarah in Life, Uganda ~
May 21, 2009
It’s hard to believe that it’s been exactly a year since I had my first day in the Water For People office in Denver. It’s been a great year. The first two months were spent getting to know my Denver colleagues and learning about Water For People’s current Africa program, then in July, Jon and I made “the big leap” and moved to Uganda. Neither us had ever been here, though I’d spent a lot of time in Western Kenya, which has some similarities, so it was a big leap indeed. At least here, English is one of the official languages, and so most people speak at least a little.
Once we got here, we had the great fun of finding a house to live in and establishing it from scratch. One of the differences we found was that most of the houses and apartments for rent don’t even have appliances when you move in, and so we not only had to figure out how to bargain for couches, dining furniture, and our bed, but also how to assess and bargain for a used fridge and stove. We learned later that we probably paid too much for appliances that don’t really work (and have since had to replace our fridge, which we bought new the second time around), but we laugh about it and chalk it up to being a part of the great learning curve.
During that time, I was also beginning to establish the Water For People’s program in Uganda. That process started in Denver, where I began the process of registering our office in Uganda. Water For People operates as a local NGO in the countries where we work, and so it’s important for us to be recognized by those local governments. Registration establishes us in a country and sets us up to be able to hire staff, make purchases and sign a lease for an office, and more importantly begin to program in the country. I say that I began the process of registration in Denver because the process itself had several steps that couldn’t be completed until after arrival, and even then the process took several months to finally be completed. That said, we were finally successful at registration in September—a huge accomplishment.
While our registration was working its way though the system, I spent several months learning about the water and sanitation sector in Uganda. In so doing, I talked with lots of local NGOs and visited their work. During our visits, I learned about their individual groups, but I also learned about the sector. One of the most interesting things to me about the water and sanitation sector in Uganda is that access to safe water is slowly increasing, but access to improved sanitation has flat-lined in many districts, and in several areas, access is actually decreasing. There seem to be many challenges, but two that stood out are (1) many NGOs focus on water, but sanitation is something of an afterthought, and (2) management of household sanitation seems to be difficult—when a family finally gets a latrine, they don’t maintain it very well and so it collapses or becomes unusable, or even if they do maintain it, once it is full, they don’t build another one. For these reason, Water For People—Uganda is going to start by looking creatively at sanitation management and maintenance and will work to build a strong sanitation program before looking at water. That’s by no means to say that access to safe water doesn’t need to be addressed. I just would like Water For People—Uganda to become set an example in prioritizing sanitation, and in the mean time give some good thought to really understanding what the challenges are in water and how Water For People can help to address them.
Water For People—Uganda has found two local NGOs with which to begin developing a sanitation program. These NGOs helped to determine which districts to begin work. They also helped to lead Water For People’s initial work in each district, which was to take GPS coordinate readings and to fill in a baseline questionnaire for each water point in the chosen areas. The water points and a sample of households’ latrines and hygiene behaviors will be given scores that are color-coded, those colors will be marked on the map where the water points where found. The maps created will be used by Water For People, our partners, and other actors in the districts, including local government and other local NGOs to strategize where to work to be most effective. We’re expecting the results within the next month, which will be a great way to start our work.
In addition to starting the Uganda program, as Regional Manager for Africa, I also work with our ongoing program in Malawi and our new program in Rwanda. It has been great fun getting to know those two programs, and I’m excited because we’re beginning to share program ideas between the three countries. Last week when I was in Malawi, for the first time we had staff from all three countries together, and it was really fun to hear and participate in conversations between the three countries. There are some differences, for sure, but there are also a good number of similarities between countries, and there are enough that I think we’re going to be able to share learning and adapt programs fairly readily.
Water For People—Rwanda is in a similar place to Water For People—Uganda. The Rwanda program was registered in April 2008 and since then has been doing similar needs assessments and programmatic prioritization. One of the exciting things about Rwanda is that the private sector seems to be very strong there. The Rwandan government has been promoting Public-Private Partnerships in the water sector for some time in Rwanda. Those systems show some strength, but still have some challenges, again, primarily in management. One of the things that Water For People—Rwanda is going to explore is what happens if we move from Public-Private systems where a private company builds the water system but then the government manages it, to more of a standard utility model where the same company that builds the system also manages it and users pay a user fee to the utility. The neat thing about a management system like that is that it ties the community and the utility together, which will hopefully mean that when the water system needs to be upgraded, either because it is worn out and needs to be replaced, or because the community grows, the utility will already have a relationship with the community and will be able to offer that service.
An easy way to think about this type of program is like a US cell phone plan. For example, when you sign up for service with AT&T, you sign a contract with AT&T saying that you will stay with AT&T for two years. During that time, your contract says that you will pay your cell phone bill, and in return, AT&T will keep your phone working. If you fail to pay your bill, AT&T will be able to cut off your service to encourage you to keep up your end of the deal, and if AT&T stops providing good service, you’ll hold them responsible by not paying for service you haven’t gotten. At the end of two years, you’ll have the option to upgrade your phone. That upgrade might be free if you get basically a new version of the same phone, or you might pay a little extra if you get a more advanced model or decide that you want more service.
The utility model works the same way. The community and the utility will have a contract stipulating what the utility owes the community and what the community owes the utility in return. It will also stipulate what the consequences are if either party fails to make good on its part of the contract. After the contract period, or as needed, the utility will be able to work with the community to upgrade service as needed or as wanted by the community. It puts the community in charge of making decisions about what kind of service they want—which is a very good thing.
This program is still being developed in Rwanda, but we’re excited to get it going and adapting it as needed to work in the specifically Rwanda context. We will likely look at this model in Uganda, too, when we begin to water programming.
Water For People—Malawi is also doing some really interesting things right now, and in fact, we’re modeling all of our sanitation programs in the region on the work that Water For People—Malawi is doing. Water For People—Malawi recently declared that it was no longer going to support subsidized sanitation. Instead, Water For People—Malawi is working helping to establish sanitation businesses. One model of sanitation businesses that the program is supporting uses the strength of the fertilizer market in Malawi. Malawi has a large agriculture sector, and that sector uses a lot of fertilizer, which is a valuable commodity. Water For People is working with entrepreneurs to start businesses that sell “humanure” which can be abundantly available if more households use composting latrines. The entrepreneur sells composting, or “EcoSan,” latrines to households. Household use the latrines, which creates compost, and then the entrepreneur buys the compost from the household and resells it to a fertilizer company.
Like the Rwanda water model, this model ties the household to a private-sector company who maintains the toilet. Because households receive payment for compost, they are encouraged to keep using their latrine as intended. In this way, household sanitation will be sustained for longer than it might be otherwise. It also encourages the sanitation market, meaning that households won’t have to rely on subsidies for sanitation, which also means that sanitation coverage can expand beyond Water For People’s direct support—a very powerful prospect. Water For People—Uganda is going to focus on trying out and adapting that model for sanitation, and Water For People—Rwanda will begin to try out this type of work as well.
All of that is to say that it’s been a great year. Water For People is doing some really exciting work in Africa. It’s great being in Kampala where I can get to visit the Rwanda and Malawi programs more frequently than if I were in Denver, and it’s been a blast establishing the Uganda program. I’m excited to begin hiring staff in the next few months and really beginning to see that program take off.
Written by Sarah in Africa, Life, NGO, Uganda, water for people, work ~
Recently my for-profit Uganda start-up Appfrica Labs was funded but that’s just the beginning. Now I have to make that money worth someone’s while! Anyways, here’s pictures of the new office, and the equipment I’ve purchased.
Written by Jon in NGO, News, Uganda ~
Last Saturday was the big “Facebook Developers Garage” at Makerere University that I helped organize here in Kampala. Someone from the Facebook staff (a senior engineer no less) actually flew to Kampala to run sessions about making Facebook Applications. You can find out more details about it all at the links below.
There were just over 100 attendees and everyone was focused, eager to learn and thrilled that someone from the company took out the time to come to Africa. IMHO, ICT is going to change this continent, we haven’t even seen the beginnings of what’s coming.
Project Diaspora’s Interview with me
My podcast the day before
Reactions from Uganda
Written by Jon in Life, Photos, Uganda, work ~
While out running some errands this morning I stopped to get some lunch to bring back for Sarah and I. We tend not to eat at the ’street’ vendors, mainly because the majority of them don’t come out until night time, well past normal dinner hours. I think this may because during the day the local restaurants are open but at night when people come out to party and enjoy music, the street vendors replace them. Still, today I managed to find one woman who had a stand making some weird concoction of…stuff.
On the left, we have spaghetti. Center stage, cabbage. On the right, we have chips (fries). In the back, obscured by the pink and purple lids, we have beef stew. Now, I know what you might be thinking. This will make an interesting plate. But no, mien friend, this meal doesn’t come on a plate. It ALL goes into the bag the woman is holding…including the beef stew!
First she places the chips in, then the spaghetti on top, then cabbage, then a healthy dose of beef stew. Here’s what the meal looks like when it comes out of the bag.
Oh, and here’s the bag it all came out of. The bag is pretty innovative in itself, it’s just a regular 8×10 sheet of paper, folded and glued to make it a lunch sack. It’s either someone’s homework or that last page of the Ugandan constitution. They line them with plastic, so they can pour large amounts of stew on top of your chip/spaghetti thing.
I asked the woman what the meal was called, and what the stew actually was but she didn’t seem to understand. She told me the stew was fish, but Sarah quickly pointed out later that it was beef when she took a bite. When I asked what it was called, she said something that sounded like ‘jingi’. But that could have also been her name. After going over the conversation in my head, I realized that she probably thought I was asking if ‘Beef’ was her name.
Perhaps next time I’ll opt for the bucket of grasshoppers.
Written by Jon in Life, Photos, Uganda ~
Friends from Kampala
Written by Jon in Photos, Uganda ~
I am happy to share today that Water For People—Uganda has been officially registered with the Uganda NGO Board!
This registration is a major achievement. A team of people began the registration process in March of this year, only to find that the requirements they had been given were not the right ones for an international NGO. We began the process again in May from the Denver office. Because I would not leave for Uganda for another two months, the Executive Director of the Uganda Water and Sanitation NGO Network (UWASNET) agreed to allow their Program Liaison Officer, Alex Mbaguta, work with us on the registration process.
Over the next two months, Kathy Miller and I had regular correspondence with Alex. We gathered the documents that we could gather in Denver, and Alex gathered the pieces that we needed from various offices in Kampala. He helped to arrange a Post Office Box and talked to numerous people in the Ministry of Water to gain their support of our application. Alex also worked with a lawyer, Robert Lubega, to ensure that all of our documents were in order and to put the necessary official face with the registration; we couldn’t turn in the application without Robert’s presence saying that we are a qualified organization.
When finally I arrived to Uganda, Alex, Robert, and I pulled together all of the pieces that we’d collected. We took them to the NGO Board the last week of July, but were turned away saying that we did not have a letter of support from local government that was required, but not was listed on the requirements sheet.
Alex, Robert, and I had the necessary meetings (several letters were needed in order to get the one required by the NGO Board), and returned with a newly completed file on August 1.
The NGO Board was set to meet later in the week, but we were told that their program was already too full and so we’d have to wait until the September meeting. The September meeting was delayed by several weeks, but was finally held on September 26. Although Alex, Robert, and I each visited the office several times in October, it was not until late October that we finally learned that our application had been accepted.
Several visits later, I took our file number to the office on October 24, and Grace at the NGO Board said that our certificate was being signed and to try again the following Tuesday. I was in Malawi that Tuesday, and didn’t get back to the office until today, November 12.
When I was finally seen by the NGO Board staff member who held the certificates, he told me that I was lucky, because the signed certificates from September 26 had only just been delivered yesterday. Three signatures and a photocopy of my passport later, I left the office carrying our certificate of registration!
What does being registered mean? Well, it means that we can finally start to build more substantial relationships with government and potential partners. Before being “official” I found that many people raised their eyebrows at me when I was speaking with them, as though they didn’t believe that we were really going to be able to program in Uganda. I look forward to going back to some of those offices to begin conversations again.
Being registered also means that we can continue with a host of administrative tasks that are very important to our existence in Uganda. Among them are projects like filing for tax-exempt status, purchasing a truck, and opening a bank account. I can also begin to look for an office , hire staff, and enter into agreements with partners.
In essence, being registered means that we have a green light to move forward with all of the exciting work that we have planned for Water For People—Uganda. Hurray!
Written by Sarah in Life, NGO, News, Uganda, water for people, work ~
Home for Halloween
By IRSHAD MANJI
Published: October 31, 2008
FOR me and my family, Oct. 31 has always been significant. Not because it’s Halloween, but because that’s the day we arrived as refugees to a free part of the world.
Beginning in August 1972, thousands of Asian entrepreneurs fled the East African country of Uganda after its dictator, Idi Amin, declared us to be bloodsuckers, seized our property and gave us three months to leave or die.
My family and I had only Ugandan passports, so we couldn’t escape to Britain or India like many of our neighbors. We’d been in Africa for two generations; my father and his brothers owned a car dealership in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. We didn’t know where to go, but we knew we couldn’t stay: Amin viciously enforced his 90-day deadline.
By the final week of October, the nations that would otherwise accept Ugandan exiles had exceeded their quotas. My family heard that Sweden and Canada might make room for a few more, and so out of desperation my mother, my sisters and I flew to Montreal, with Dad to follow. We had no guarantee that Canada would admit us.
We also had no guarantee that we’d meet an extraordinary immigration agent. But on Halloween 1972, we did.
Though the middle-aged woman had doubtless been dealing with a flood of Ugandan refugees, and though burnout could have led her to turn us back or indifferently wave us through, she chose to talk with a harried mother shepherding three girls under age 7. “Why do you want to live in Montreal?” the agent asked, en français.
My mother, who grew up in the Belgian Congo, mercifully could respond in French. “Why do we want to live in Montreal?” Mum repeated, buying a few seconds to think. “Well, Montreal begins with the letter ‘M,’ and our family’s name begins with the letter ‘M,’ so maybe God believes we will fit nicely together.”
Sensing my mother’s fear, the immigration agent assured her that this wasn’t an interrogation. “It’s just that I’m looking at your daughters,” she explained, “and I realize that they’re all dressed for tropical weather. Madame Manji, have you ever seen snow?”
Terrified at the prospect of being booted out, my mother blurted out, “No, but I can’t wait to!”
“Then you’ve come to the right country,” the agent assured Mum. “With your permission, however, I’d like to send you and your children to Canada’s version of a mild climate.” Several stamps of the paperwork later, we boarded a plane to Vancouver, where I learned to make peace with rain.
Some would reduce this immigration agent to a shrewd gatekeeper of cheap labor, carting us off to a city that would get rich from the Asian work ethic. And yet she was more complex than a caricature. Instead of simply unloading us on the local authorities, the agent cared enough to ask what we might need more of — peace, yes, but also fleece. Her small act of empathy bucked an ice-cold system.
As an adult, I’ve come to understand why I’m so blessed to have immigrated to an open society. Here, the individual — and the choices she makes — matter. The agent chose to practice the first lesson of human rights: just because a problem doesn’t affect you personally doesn’t mean it ceases to exist.
Mum tells me that she’s never been able to track down the lovely lady who let us into Canada. Still, she won’t be forgotten. As Madame Manji reminded her girls on Halloween in 2002, “When we touched this soil, we won the lottery of life.”
Idi Amin died in Saudi Arabia a year after that. Friends assumed that I’d be cursing his corpse. No. His hatred introduced my family to the gift of choices.
On Halloween, one can be forgiven for obsessing with murderers, but it’s not Idi Amin who will dominate my thoughts. It’s the immigration agent.
Irshad Manji, the author of “The Trouble With Islam Today,” is the director of the Moral Courage Project at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University.
Written by Sarah in Africa, Articles, Life, News, Uganda ~
I’m sitting in Kampala traffic on my way to Entebbe to pick up Jon from the airport. Don’t worry, I’m not driving! At the wheel is my favorite taxi driver. He’s the driver the hotel sent to get us from the airport when we first arrived to Uganda. Since then, we’ve become friends, and it’s always good to see him. While I’m waiting, I thought I’d update you on what I’ve been working on recently.
This week has been a busy one. A few weeks ago, I wrote about meeting with SNV (the Netherlands Development Organization). At that meeting, they told me about the Water and Sanitation Reverse Expo that they would be having in October.
What is a Reverse Expo? In a traditional trade expo or exhibition, vendors set up shop and pedal their wares to potential buyers. At an expo in the water industry, vendors show off their best pipes, their perfect water tanks, and their improved hand pumps. Their goal is to tell passersby that their product is the answer and to sell as much of their product as they can. The consumers at traditional expos are private water contractors, government, and NGOs. They listen to what the vendor has to say and make decisions about what kind of technology their clients will receive. However, their clients are not in attendance to represent themselves. As a result, their clients—communities without water or sanitation—receive whatever technology the vendor chose for them, whether they like it or not. When they don’t like it, often they stop using it for one reason or another.
The Reverse Expo was established to give communities—the consumers—a voice. They were the ones on exhibit, and their role was to tell manufacturers, government, and NGOs what they like and what they don’t like. Community groups set up booths that depicted what they their needs, their priorities, and told the story through their voices. The idea was that this forum would give consumers the opportunity to tell the people who usually make decisions for them what was working and what wasn’t. If they like rainwater harvesting tanks, but hate that the tap con the tank is always breaking, the Reverse Expo would give them a chance to say that. If they don’t like how difficult it is to pump water from a deep borehole, this was the time to say it, to the people who make the pumps, and to the people who install them.
The Reverse Expo was three days long, and was held at Hotel Africana, off Jinja Road. I arrived on Monday at 8:00 am. I registered and as I walked in, a student band kicked up. Blaring trumpets and pounding drums put out a quite a cacophony. Through it all, I made out some familiar, if not surprising tunes, including “Guantanamera.”
The community groups were still setting up their stalls when I arrived and it wasn’t yet crowded, and so it was a nice time to tour around and read those posters that were already hanging. Some stalls were quite elaborate. One group from Mukono brought a small rainwater harvesting tank that a group of women masons had built. It was pretty simple—cement stuccoed around chicken wire—and, I’m told, quite heavy. They brought the tank to demonstrate that it’s not necessary to have big plastic tanks, and that there are ways to make the tanks within the community without much outside resource.
Another group brought a biosand filter made out of concrete and locally available materials. The biosand filter was shaped like a square column about 10 inches on each side and about waist-high. On the front was a spout. A wooden lid had been placed over the hollow center. One of the community members showed me three types of sand of descending coarseness. He explained to me that the different sands were layered at the bottom of the column. Water was poured into the center everyday for 30 days and allowed to filter through the sand and out through the spout. As the water filtered through the various layers of sand, pathogens and other foreign materials were filtered out. During the 30 days, a layer of biofilm formed within the filter, which further slowed the filtration process, allowing the remaining pathogens to die “a natural death,” as he put it. Basically, they were deprived oxygen long enough that they died and were no longer harmful. The result was water that was 93% safe. We talked about methods that could be used to decrease the remaining risk, but all and all he was happy with the result of the filtration.
Throughout the day, several community groups performed dramas about the challenges they face in their communities to an effort to begin conversation with those in attendance. One skit (conveniently in English), was performed by a woman’s groups from Arua, in the north of the country. It depicted the challenges faced by women as a result of not having safe drinking water. A mother and her daughter got up and walked a long way to get water. Once home, the mother found that her husband had already gone out drinking. When he came home, quite drunk (the woman playing the husband, I imagine, had lots of experience dealing with drunk men, as her performance was quite impressive), he was belligerent and abusive. The daughter got sick as a result of the water that she drank, and had to go to the hospital. However, there was no money because the husband had spent it on Waragi, a local liquor. Instead, the child was taken to the witch doctor, but died on the way.
Although there were some funny moments, the drama demonstrated well a number of challenges. Over the last two months, I’ve heard many times that there is a big problem with husbands drinking all day long and leaving their wives to tend the field, haul the water, and take care of other household necessities. I’ve not yet heard any solutions to this problem, but it’s one that’s on people’s minds.
The Minister of State for Water (a woman!), attended the event for several hours. She walked around to ever stall and spoke with each of the community groups in attendance. As the community group from Rakai was showing her their vision of an improved community, the Minister asked them, “What role does your local government have in all of this.” I couldn’t hear the answer, as the Crane Performers, sang and danced their way by the stall.
At the end of the day, I participated on a panel about sustainability and creative financing solutions. (It was actually two panels joined together because it was already 6:00 pm.) I explained our creative loan program in Malawi which makes sanitation into a business and in so doing makes loans for latrines possible to pay back. The audience responded well to the idea and asked some good question about payments and timing of the loans. Their interest further confirmed what I am already thinking: That Uganda is a good place to try to replicate the Malawi program.
The panel wrapped up around 8:00 pm, and I headed home. I was very impressed with the day. Water For People has used a model of community choice and community demand for many years, and so it was good to see so many other groups who do not usually interact with communities in that way have the opportunity. I hope that everyone learned a lot.
It’s been about an hour and a half, and Lake Victoria is peaking in and out of view, signaling that we’re nearing Entebbe. Signposts indicate that the airport is about 2 kilometers away, and so it’s time to put my computer away. More soon!
Written by Sarah in NGO, Uganda, Water, water for people, work ~
