June a very busy month

June has a bad reputation in Uganda. It is the beginning of the dry season when the frequency of malaria increases. Farmers harvest their corn, matoke and fruit and prices are low because of the abundance. This year we had many negative things happening in June

• Demonstrations by some people, protesting the increased prices of food to the consumers, tax on food and people were desperate to afford food for their families.
• Dry season came late causing harvest problems.
• Many people have been sick with the flu and malaria resulting in many deaths even among our church members. Hardly a household has not been affected by these illnesses.
• We have had lightening storms and there have been over 30 people killed by lightning and many more injured.

Ssimbwa said we had had an incredible month in humanitarian services this June and we had brought a positive outcome to this dreaded month. In June we have

• Closed two very successful water projects
• Opened two new water projects
• Received our wheelchair shipment - Held the wheelchair training and started distribution of wheelchairs.
• Closed a family health and hygiene project
• Opened two more family health and hygiene projects.
• We haven't had one accident (car) the whole month and we have come close many times.

According to Ssimbwa, "This has been a very good month. Even with all the bad things happening the Lord has blessed us all to have these good things happen."

MBALE Clean Water Project

TURNOVER CEREMONY

7 June 2011

Funding by: THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS

Implementation by: Union of Community Development Volunteers of Uganda

History: Construction of springs started 22 Jan 2011 - Finished 23 May 2011

Project consisted of

· 60 protecting spring water sources

· 15 school pit latrines with handwashing stations

· 15 rain water catchment systems at schools

· 30 clothes washing station

500 latrine slabs for at risk families without latrines

· 65 communities received Hygiene/Sanitation training

Ceremony held at the army school -2400 students - they desperately needed a new latrine and a water tank.

My new friend - I had to rescue her from the crowd as she had fallen down and the children were walking right over her.

Sign commemorating the dedication of the springs.

Elder and Sister Rixs came to the ceremony to represent the church. They are missionaries supporting the new branch in Mbale.

We had a dedication ceremony for the 60 springs with a ribbon cutting

Some of the women beneficiaries who were very excited to have a clothes washing station next to the spring.

A lot of entertainment - note the instruments - clay pot hit with a wooden mallet, flat rock beat with a stick and a
Ugandan drum - they made good music.

Beneficiary Communities: "Our community received 60 springs in 3 months. This is an accomplishment that has never before been heard of. Providing of 30 clothes washing stations a gift we had never before heard of now allows us to dispose of waste water effectively down stream instead of washing at the top of the hill where springs are generated and could be contaminated. This will save us from cholera and many diseases."

Head Teacher, Waluka John (representing the 15 schools receiving latrines and water catchment systems):

"Having the construction of the new design of VIP latrine with a school water catchment system is a land mark in our lives that will not be forgotten. We strongly urge all of the beneficiaries to protect and keep the gift that has been given."

LC3 Asharki Hahamas: (this man was very supportive of the project. He found a house for the construction crew to live in and gave UCDVU an office in the government complex of the sub-county.
"It was not by chance that you came to Mbale. You were sent to us. The tank provided for the Army school is life. We could not succeed without this water. We didn’t know your message to come was real we should not have been a doubting Thomas. We welcomed UCDVU giving them housing and an office to guide and protect them. They did what they said they would do in record time. What you have done is much but we need more."

Eddie Mutebi, Director of UCDVU: "On Jan 17^th a Memorandum of Understanding was signed with the Mbale District by THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS and the COU of Mbale District. Just 4 ½ months later the project is completed, Access for clean water has been given for 113,000 people of the district. Hygiene and Sanitation has greatly improved and will continue to improve with the teaching of the established Hygiene and Sanitation team. We have worked with the leaders at all level and have had good cooperation to implement this project."

Pres. George Mubeala - Mbale Branch President (He had just been sustained and set apart as the branch president for the newly organized Mbale Branch three days before this ceremony.): "The Church has been generous to our community. We only ask that you take care of this gift and make it last. You are all invited to visit us at our services every Sunday."

CAO Mbale District: "This event has been a accomplished in record time with an amount of work done that we have never had before. We extend our appreciation for all the work. Livelihoods have improved. Diarrhea and worms may now be avoided if the resources are kept clean and usable. Latrines will be spoiled if they are mistreated. The tanks at the schools must be protected and we encourage each school to put a cement barrier around these tanks to safe guard them. We have had problems of not maintaining the spring structures in the past and mistreating them. All communities must take responsibility and care for these structures. We are indebted to our donors."

Chairperson LCV - Official Guest: I attended a Hygiene and Sanitation training session. It was good and I learned. The trainers were good and made the training a good time.

We have been weak in clean water, sanitation and hygiene. Our rivers are silted and contaminated. We need to raise our standard especially in schools, our schools that can’t even afford chalk.

Your good deeds are coming from a Christian source. You have shown us that we should look after the body that God has given us. We are grateful for the influence you have brought to our communities.

Newly trained hygiene and sanitation trainers. They are specialists, it says so on the back of their shirts they got when they finished the training.

The greatest beneficiaries of these water projects are the women of the community.

Everyone receiving Hygiene and Sanitation training were asked to make a tippy tap for hand washing after using the latrine. They are very effective and people were very compliant in building them.

This man is a professional singer who happens to be handicapped. He sang about the abilities of people instead of concentrating on the disabilities. The day after this program he contacted the Rixs and asked for information about the church. He is taking the missionary discussions and is very interested in being baptized.

Many awards were given out at the ceremony with each person training in Hygiene and Sanitation program being given a certificate of completion, and the church was given a beautiful plaque in appreciation of the quality of the gift that was given. This plaque will be displayed at the church in Mbale.

Many children sang, danced and put on skits about what they had learned about hygiene and sanitation.

Kiryandongo Clean Water Project

TURNOVER CEREMONY

10 June 2011

Funding by: THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS

Implementation by: AFRICAN HUMAN RESOURCE INITIATIVE STRATEGIES

History: Construction of started 22 Jan 2011 - Finished 1 Jun 2011

Project consisted of

· 50 hand dug wells

· 14 school pit latrines with hand washing stations

· 14 rain water catchment systems at schools

Kiryandongo Level 3 hospital received a latrine and two water tanks

· 50 communities received Hygiene/Sanitation training

AHRIS , our contractor

We all met at AHRIS office prior to the turnover. We were greeted by these women singing about hygiene training and doing the dances of the Acholi.

Ssimbwa got in to it and played the drums for us - not bad but not quite as good as the real thing. The drummers in Uganda are very good. They drum bent over like this keeping a good steady beat and it goes on for a very long time.

Latrine at the Kiryandongo hospital has a terrazzo floor - easy to clean and will last a long time. Quite expensive but a good investment for a hospital.

The latrine was also outfitted with a water catchment system that feeds into the hand washing station which will help the sanitation for those using the latrine. This hospital has a water system that has failed and needs to be redone. An international organization keeps telling them that they will rehabilitate the system but nothing is happening yet. Meantime they are really struggling with their need for water and sanitation.

Wells are different than springs. They need continual maintenance and require a strong water committee to maintain the well and have people pay a small amount of money each month for the water. This well has been landscaped to help people realize the importance of maintaining the well. Each water committee was given training and some spare parts for their well and each sub=country was given tools and spare parts to maintain the wells. Water committees are charging each family using the well about 25 cents a month. This is enough money to pay for repairs as needed.

The head of the water committee is a very important person who needs to work closely with the community to maintain the well.

The district officer was pretty excited to get 50 new wells in his district. Their annual plan called for 2 wells for the whole district so 50 wells was a great windfall and then adding to that the latrines and water tanks at the schools. . . they felt like they had really won.

Our contractor Alex carved the table and chairs and presented them to us at the ceremony. We usually don't get gifts and if we do we usually give them away to someone in need. This gift was personalized in a way that it may be hard to give away.

Each piece is a carving of a well with people drawing water. They are beautiful and also have are name carved into them. Not easy to give away with that kind of personalization.

We were also given a chicken, a LIVE chicken. She is very colorful but she is alive. I explained to our site monitor, Hannington that he would need to take it as we had never killed and dressed a chicken ever and we were too old to start now. (I once told Olivia that I had never killed a chicken for dinner , ever. She did not believe me.)

So Hannington got the LIVE chicken. He is the site monitor he deserves the LIVE chicken. Besides our name wasn't carved into it so we didn't feel any personal obligation. (When we first met Hannington he told us he was a "man of few words." This is the same man that turned in a project report to us that was 300 pages long and bound - yes, a man of few words.)

We were served a LIGHT lunch but a lunch in Uganda is pretty substantial no matter what you call it.

They had lunch right in the middle of the program. This was moving way to slow so I went to help dish up food for 600 people. I made all the servers very nervous, I was putting too much food on the plate.

Just about every school had a number on the program. These dancers were very good and it was interesting to see the difference in the dancing from what we saw in Mbale. Although both areas are in the northern part of Uganda Mbale is east and Kiryandongo is central. Makes you realize how tribal the country is as the culture changes from one area to the next.
The dancers were very good and the singing was personalized, singing about the church and the gift of clean water and hygiene training.

Two turnover ceremonies in one week. What a great month June was turning out to be.

Side trip to Sipi Falls

Last December we did an emergency relief up in northern Uganda and after two days of distribution we headed back to Kampala. We decided we needed a little side trip and drove east to Mbale and over to Sipi Falls. This was our first visit to the Mt. Elgon area.

(In March 2010 when we had first arrived in Uganda the Glenns had just finished an emergency relief in this area for the victims of the Bududa landslides. The victims were relocated over to where we were now doing emergency relief in Amuria where they had had a crop failure from heavy rains. Life has not been easy for these people.)

Ssimbwa wanted to show us Sipi Falls. We were dressed in our missionary clothes, sandals for me and Elder Barlow had on his dress shoes. We asked Ssimbwa if we needed to change shoes but he said no it was an easy hike and not far.

The hike wasn't difficult except it was very rocky and slippery from the mist coming off the falls. We could hardly stay on our feet with our smooth bottom shoes. The scenery was beautiful and well worth the hike. When we were finished we were drenched but we had had an experience of a life time. People come from all over the world to climb these mountains. We didn't realize it at the time that this was one of the most beautiful places in Africa.

Terraced gardens all over the mountainside - cabbage, tomatoes, beans, potatoes, cauliflower, corn, bananas.

We were walking through peoples gardens and they wanted to be our guide. Mathias was assigned to get me safely to the top. He stayed very close, got me a stick to steady myself and pulled me up the rocky path keeping me from slipping and falling.



This woman had quite a load, was walking in gum boots and was having no difficulty climbing the trail

Not sure why the man wasn't carrying anything - looks like he could have shared her load or something.

Good thing there were some plateaus along the way which allowed us to catch our breath.

Even this far away the mist had soaked through our clothes and we were wet.

Mathias took good care of me. He had his work cut out for him as I was sliding all over the mountain but he never let me fall, not once.

The falls continue down a gorge from here. You can't hike much higher than this unless you drive up to the top and hike down. This was a beautiful spot, We stood in a heavy mist that felt like a light rain. We were soaked through.

This is a precarious spot as two feet behind us was the drop into the gorge.

Going down was faster and we slid most of the way. Elder Barlow was assigned a guide (watcher) but he didn't need his help he just slipped and slid all the way to the bottom all by his self.

The children ran up and down the trail barefooted like it was no effort at all. They ran to fast to slip or slid.

At the bottom the river runs very swift. We wondered where all that water was going. The need for clean water here is no less than everywhere else in Uganda. Looks like a good deal of water could be harnessed from this flow.

Thanks Ssimbwa for another great day. He is a great guide and it is always an adventure.

Spring Hike

Inspecting spring construction in Mbale brought a new experience for us. Look up at Mt. Elgon and just below the horn is where we were headed for an inspection, not down in a gully but up on the mountain..

You wind your way up the mountainside through trade centers on dirt roads -

There it is, that's the trail up the mountain to the spring. May not look like it from here but it is straight up. High humidity causes the trail to be muddy and slick.

Starts out pretty good with the trail leveling off for a ways but before long the grade gets much more steep.

On the way up we meet a young man fetching water.

He has made a nice wheelbarrow type carrier for his Jeri can out of limbs bound with reeds to hold it together.

Pretty ingenious and it works. Seems better than carrying it on your head.

On top a natural spring was flowing but you could only get the water by dipping your Jeri can into the little puddle stream it formed. Of course the water is contaminated once it sits in the puddle. The protected spring was under construction and not yet finished. It will service all those living on the side of the mountain.

Once on top the view is incredible allowing you to see clear to the next country.

While hiking up we walked through many gardens where people were working.

And families doing their wash. No washing station for this spring as there was no room to put it on the steep mountain side by the spring.

On top we found a man who was collecting herbs and bark for natural medicine.

Ssimbwa bought some bark to steep and make a tea to treat asthma.

Most of the housing here are made of sticks and mud walls with thatched roofs.

Latrines were pretty spartan with just a hole in the ground with a frame woven out of branches and then covered with banana leaves.

When we got back to the truck we purchased two bunches of matoke bananas (we don't cook matoke but that infamous shopper we travel with, who fills up our truck with all kinds of things, he eats matoke every day), a box of tomatoes and a bag of carrots. We had won as all this produce had been picked that morning and the farmers won because they didn't have to take their produce to market to sell.

We didn't by the sorghum that was drying in the dirt. That was being dried to make the local brew.

A beautiful hike, reminiscent of a hike we took several months ago when we were passing through Mbale. Ahhhhh but that is another entry for our Uganda adventure.