Stories from the Field: "Tragedies" in Kazigo B

By Gloria Tran



On Thursday, July 26, two tragedies occurred simultaneously under the roof of Kazigo B.

It was a dark, but not so stormy night. Well, dark because there's no electricity of course. Four members of Kazigo B huddled in the living room around the light of a single kerosene lamp.

Simon Peter wasn't feeling well; he was thinking he had malaria. Emily and I exchanged glances: it was time to break out the malaria test. After reading the picture instructions by the light of our phones, we donned on latex gloves, alcohol-prep his finger and stabbed him with the little blue lancel needle. Poor SP needed to be stabbed twice to get enough blood. Then, we waited 15 min for the blood to migrate across the test applicator.

Meanwhile, Em visited the latrine. Suddenly I heard a shout from out in the yard. Wide-eyed with terror, Em ran in, asking if she could borrow my phone. When I asked her what was wrong, she replied, "I think something terrible just happened," and bolted back out the front door, clutching my phone as a flashlight. Dan yelled after her, "Snake bite?"

We then glanced at the white plastic malaria test piece to check its progress. With abated breath, we squinted as the fluid cleared the second line. Two strips, it's malaria! Sorry, SP!

A few moments later, Em returned with news of her own tragedy: her phone slipped out of her headband and dropped into the latrine pit. The phone had cracked into two pieces when it landed on the floor. Only the battery and cover had survived the accident. We mourned when the worst part of the tragedy suddenly dawned upon us all: we wouldn't be able to call the phone and have it ring suddenly while someone used the latrine! Noo!

 The rest of the week was the usual mix of the positives and negatives of community work.

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Kazigo B teamed up with Kazigo A to help them with their sanitation push, where we went around helping as many households build Tippy Taps, plate stands, etc. as possible.

Because we only had a couple of days, we only perhaps reached 80 houses, just to get things started in the community. Despite that, I am still so impressed by Kazigo A's commitment and cooperation. That's really the thing that made the push the most successful. They must have responded to the baseline survey, community meetings and sensitizations and the hands-on workshop with the VHT... and decided that they wanted to be a part of this huge sanitation improvement campaign. I saw giant swimming-pool sized trash pits, fortified sturdy perfectionistically perpedicular plate stands (better than ours!), Tippy Taps galore! What a feeling!

Thursday, we planned for a safe water sensitization using answering Jeopardy questions as a interactive way of teaching. No one showed, apparently due to it being rice harvest season. We were disappointed, yeah, but I think we understood that mobilizing for community education is always hard work.


On Friday, we enlisted Maureen's help to talk to our community members about Family Planning. Our group of women were attentive, but also really talkative and giggly. Nice to see that women can bond about their sexuality in rural Africa as well! A question was raise about where the Implanon implant should go, and an old woman (our most loyal attendee) said "Eh! (Psh!)" raised her arm to point at her tricep, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Stories from the Field: Borehole Improvement Day

By Lauren Smith 


Friday morning kicked off bright and early with the first Kazigo B borehole improvement day.  Approaching the borehole, shovels, pick-axes, hammer, and sunscreen in hand, we were pleasantly surprised to find the caretaker there and ready for action.  First task: dig trenches to drain the nasty puddle at the end of the borehole and clear away the brush.  Armed with enthusiasm and total confidence in our tool wielding abilities, all four of us mzungu ladies stepped up to the borehole for the first swing.  Shovel digging skills, Gloria and Emily, check.  Hoe swinging skills…well, Lauren found those could use some work.  Turns out that while the caretaker (who is most likely twice our age) could effortlessly dig a trench in a few graceful strokes, us mzungus were in need of some serious practice.  After a few amusing swings, resulting in laughter and raised eyebrows from the Ugandans present, the Ugandans took over trench digging duty.  But, while we may be in need of some lessons in the art of swinging a hoe, we can collect and place rocks like pros, shovel and swing a machete with the best of them.  SP took on fence building, and Dan played paparazzi, documenting the event with four cameras dangling from his arms at a time.  We had a great turnout. Three of our VHTs came to help, and in total, about 15 community members participated in the improvement day.  In a few short hours we’d successfully transformed a dirty and overgrown borehole into a model borehole.  Trenches dug and lined with stones, brush cleared, pedestal cleaned and fence constructed, everyone was in good spirits, proud of the results, and covered in mud.  He who is the dirtiest had the most fun!

Lauren is interning in Kazigo B village this summer. 

Stories from the Field: A flushing toilet, a shower, or a washing machine?

If you could only have one, which would it be? A flushing toilet, a shower, or a washing machine.


Gloria: “The toilet to avoid having to walk at night with possible snakes, ants, or dogs on the way to the latrine.”


Corrie: “I would take the shower because it makes me feel good on the inside and clean on the outside.”


Lauren: “The shower because I like hot water sprinkling on me from above.  However, I don’t mind being outside in an open shower as long as there aren’t any kids spying on me from the trees.”


Emily: “The toilet, because once at night I witnessed our neighbor kill a poisonous snake.  I like having a flushing toilet in the house.”


Simon-Peter: “The toilet because it stays clean.”


Daniel: “The toilet because I don’t mind the other two.”

And if you had to give up only one for a lifetime, which would it be?

Gloria: “The shower, because I think the basin showers can be refreshing sometimes.”

Corrie: “I would give up the toilet because I dislike washing my own clothes and appreciate my showers.”

Lauren: “I would give up the toilet because I like the convenience of washing machines and would keep the shower.”

Emily: “The shower because I still feel clean after my basin showers.”

Simon-Peter: “The washing machine because I like washing my clothes.”

Daniel: “The washing machine because I can wash my own clothes!  I would feel lazy if I didn’t.”

Gloria, Corrie, Lauren, Emily, Simon-Peter, and Daniel are all interns working in Kazigo B this summer. 

Stories from the Field: Lots of Teaching, Lots of Learning

By Emily Maheux

We had many sensitizations this week in Kazigo B with four sensitization in three days.  We learned a lot about how to work with our community and approaches to teaching young kids.  We performed skits on malaria for the community with paper mosquitos hanging from sticks (thank you Kazigo A) and the community members loved it.  One of our VHT members played the role of “VHT” in the skits and surprised us all with his superb acting ability.  He stole the hearts of the crowd when he pretended to slap the paper mosquitos away.  Any community members nearby who were not already watching the skits became curious.  All fifty of the mosquito nets that we started with were sold after the sensitization. 

We held our sanitation sensitization at Kazigo Junior School on Wednesday, which went smoothly but I noticed that students started losing interest in the demonstrations and discussion on germs.  Luckily, we had another chance to capture the attention of young children on Thursday morning at Toka Primary School, the local government school, during another sanitation sensitization.  For this sensitization, we teamed up with the Kazigo A team to teach about 700 students.  With the hopes of exciting the kids, we invited all of the students to participate in a warm-up this time.  Lauren and I had all the students stand up and follow us in one of our favorite games.  Together we would clap, dance, jump, etc. and have the kids mimic our movements and repeat our declaration of whatever we were doing: “I am jumping!”, “I am twirling!” and so on.  We started slow and then got faster and faster until at the end of it all, we slowed down again with some stretches and finished with “I am sitting quietly.”  After that, we split them into groups for each activity, where we also tried to make each demonstration more interactive.  In the afternoon, when we sensitized on HIV and STIs, we had the older kids spell the word “mango” with their hips (many thanks for the warm-up, Rashad).  This was also a huge hit and the activities that followed went well also.  We had the students play a game to test their knowledge on STIs and another to show the spread of HIV.  A third group discussed the ABC prevention strategy (A – Abstinence, B – Be faithful, C – Condom use). 

We were fortunate to have a very full and fulfilling week in Kazigo.  We certainly hope our audiences learned a lot from us and undoubtedly, we have also learned a lot from them.  I have learned from this exciting week that if we want to get our message across, we must also remember to have fun in the process.

Emily is the Administrative Team Leader of Kazigo B. Her teammates include Simon-Peter (Implementation Team Leader), Daniel, Corrie, Gloria, and Lauren.