Update from the Field: Buvule

Upon arrival in our village (Buvule), we pulled up into a dirt drive in front of a modest-sized house with a small concrete porch.  We had been told that our house was one of the nicest houses of all the teams, and so far it has fit us fairly perfectly.  We have four decently sized bedrooms and a common area that we use for meals and meetings.  We also have a shower area attached to the back of the house, and a well-maintained pit latrine about 30 steps away from the back door.  Our landlord is polygamous and we are living on his compound.  Many neighborhood children hang out around our porch, and Ravi built a goal post in the side yard by the kitchen where we play soccer with the kids.  They love to ask us to “okuzana omupiira,” which means to play soccer, and are always looking for the soccer ball through the front door of the house.

                On our second morning in Buvule, we met our village’s VHTs (Volunteer Health Team).  There are five for each village, and ours are named Harriet, George, Alice, Godfrey, and Yakubu.  They have all proved to be very helpful to us so far, giving us tours of the village, helping us coordinate meetings with the community, and teaching us words in Lusoga.  However, they had some misunderstandings at first about UVP’s relationship to them at first, and one of them even said she expected to be given a stipend because she was working with white people.  It was difficult to tell them that we could not provide many of the things they expected (e.g. money and more t-shirts), but once we had a conversation with them, we became close partners.  We work with them almost every day and they have been extremely helpful, even though most of them do not speak much English, which makes it difficult for the internationals to understand them.

                Our daily routine in the village consists of waking up with the roosters as the sun is rising around 6:30, or if you are lucky enough to be a heavy sleeper, maybe 7:30 at the latest.  Then two people go to the bore hole with the bike and the jerry cans to fetch water, which is about a 15 minute walk each way.  Meanwhile, someone helps the cook prepare breakfast while another person washes the previous night’s dishes, and some people also take a bucket bath in the morning with whatever water has not been used from the previous day.  Then everyone comes together for breakfast.  We eat a lot of starch in our diet here, but chappati is the best.  It is a flat bread, kind of like Indian naan, and it is amazing!  After breakfast, we generally plan out our day and then take naps or do more chores.  We leave for whatever activity we are doing that day around 1:30, and then we are home by 5 so two more people can get water and everyone can shower and eat.  Then we hang out with the neighborhood kids or play games inside for a couple hours and head to bed by around 10:00.

                As far as our work goes, so far this week has been mostly about community needs assessment meetings.  We have been meeting with different groups of people to ask them what they view as their community’s strengths, and what needs to be improved.  Generally people do not really have an answer for strengths, but they also say that before anything else, they need better access to clean water.  We have heard this from every group of people, and have been told multiple times that even if people understand issues like malaria and hygiene, they need clean water in order to start to tackle health-related problems.  While I completely believe that water is the most important issue for them, it is frustrating that as an NGO that is funded almost completely by private donors, we do not have the resources to just start building wells all over the village.  It is hard to realize that the problems faced in Buvule can only begin to be solved if we can improve access to water, and improving access to water is too expensive to be a realistic short-term goal for our organization.  While UVP hopes to implement a shallow well in the village sometime in the next 3 years, it is hard to imagine a short-term plan that will be satisfying to a village that just desperately needs clean water.

Update from the field: Kasambika 2

            Jambo from the intern team at Kasambika 2! Our team is made up of 6 wonderful students: Andrew Phinney from New Hampshire, USA, Esther Chung from California, USA, Isaac Kabuye from Kampala, Uganda, Juliana Nalukwago from Kampala, Uganda, Kenzie Scholl from Minnesota, USA, and Trisa Taro from California, USA. We are all extremely excited to work with our village members this summer.

                We have now been in the village for two weeks now and we cannot be happier with the enthusiasm and openness of the people in Kasambika 2. In our first week, during our community meeting, we introduced ourselves, UVP programs, and our mission for the next two months. We even found community members supporting our goals – dispelling the myths that we arrest people or report them to the government. In addition, we have an incredibly strong and passionate group of Village Health Team members who help mobilize the community. They are currently working with us on our baseline surveys where we go house to house collecting initial data on the village’s sanitation facilities and insecticide treated net coverage.

                We have also started to work with the local primary school on a hand-washing program. Last week, we conducted a survey with some students and this upcoming week, we hope to hold an education session on the importance of hand-washing and install some tippy taps, which are contraptions used to wash hands cleanly. Here’s a picture of ours for an idea of what it looks like!

                 Inspired and motivated by the people of Kasambika 2, we aim to work with the community to hold education sessions on various issues. We hope this summer will be an amazing one for this village and for us! 

First Community Meeting

Kasambika 2 Intern Team (From the left: Andrew, Isaac, Esther, Kenzie, Trisa, Juliana)

Survey-Taking at Kasambika Primary School 

Our Tippy Tap

Update from the field: Kazigo A

So much has happened over the last few weeks that it’s a bit difficult to capture completely. To introduce ourselves we are a team of six, with members hailing from California, Iganga, Jinja, Michigan, and New Jersey. Our names are Jill, Sues, Pricilla, Chirs, Soha, and Rebecca, and we’ve all come to live and work in rural East Uganda for the next nine weeks . As the follow-up team our goals are simple, but perhaps more difficult in practice: we seek to evaluate the impact of several programs put in place by the Uganda Village Project in four village communities. Although we will be living in Kazigo A, we will also be working in Kazigo B, Kidago A, and Kidogo B. The following is a snapshot of what we’ve done thus far.

Moving into the village, we were welcomed with warmth and enthusiasm. We spend most of the first week getting to know the Village Health Team members, members of a Ugandan Ministry of health pilot initiative which was set in place to improve the health of rural villages. The main areas of focus include water and sanitation, Malaria, HIV/AIDS, and Family Planning.

Home, Sweet Home

To support our sanitation program, one of our first priorities was to construct a dish rack for sanitary dish drying and a tippy tap, which is a device used to effectively wash one’s hands in settings without running water. Paul, an experienced member of a neighboring team, helped us construct ours and demonstrate its use.

Sues(team leader) working on the dish rack.

Constructing the tippy tap with the guidance of Paul.

The finished product! From left to right: Paul, Sues, Chris, Soha, Pricilla, Rebecca, Jill, and Leah.

As Friday approached we had completed meeting with most of the Village Health Team members in our four communities. This was a critical first step as these members know their communities best, and will be invaluable partners for the rest of the internship.

On Friday, we had quite a treat. We got the opportunity to watch the local village drum team rehearse. Not only was it a spectacle to watch, this group was said to be a great asset to last year’s team. They helped with mobilizing members of the community and getting across health messages in a culturally relevant way. We’re very excited to work with them in the future.

Local Drum Group.

Although it feels like we’ve already done so much, in reality we’ve only scratched the surface. Stay tuned to hear of our work through the summer. 

Update from the Field: Kasambiika 1

Jambo! Today marks the end of our first week in the village.

I’m sorry, terribly rude, we didn’t introduce ourselves. We are the Kasimbiika 1 UVP team! Our team consists of four American interns, Tina (our fearless co-leader), Nichole, Stephanie, and Nathan. We also have two Ugandan interns, Raphael (our other, actually fearless—to a fault, co-leader), and Josephine.

Raphael with Monday’s dinner.
(Photo Nichole Reinen)

Tina with two full jerry cans—who needs running water?

Josephine and Nicole stay hydrated. 

Stephanie in the middle, Tina and Josephine on the left and right respectively. They each hold oranges, which are green in Uganda. 

Nathan, the wasp-vanquisher. Just kidding, Nathan ran away soon after this photo was taken. Raphael got rid of the wasps. (Photo Nichole Reinen) 

But that’s enough about who we are; let’s talk about what we did this past week. We focused on getting settled in our new house, getting acquainted with our new community, and getting acclimated to each other as teammates.

On Wednesday we rolled up our sleeves and got to work constructing a trash pit, a tippy-tap for hand washing, and a dish-stand. Let’s have a look! We first dug a trash-pit. That was messy so we did not take pictures of the process, but here is the fruit of our labor.

Tippy-taps are ingenious contraptions made from local materials that allow for easy hand-washing without running water.

Josephine plans the base structure.

Raphael starts construction

The Tippy-Tap team tests the tensile strength of the timber. 

 Next we made a dish-stand. This is a hygienic and time-saving way to dry our wet dishes.

Nichole brings sticks from our gracious donor; we call her momma (she’s also our cook; we’ll talk about her in the next post).

Stephanie arranges sticks together so she can tie them together with banana leaves for the platform of our dish-stand. 

Construction begins! 

And voila, the finished project, in use.

 These amenities will help us stay healthy and happy and also serve as examples of sanitary and hygienic improvements villagers can make in their own homes.

We spent the rest of our week becoming familiar with our Village Health Team members and the rest of the Kasimbiika 1 community. In a future post we’ll make sure you get to know our Village Health Team members too! Our Village Health Team was tasked with announcing our arrival and first planned meeting: an introduction and question and answer session for everyone in the community. Their efforts were not in vain, we had a turnout of 142 villagers among the 285 households in Kasimbiika 1. 

A lot of people showed up! 

Our VHT chairperson, Swaga, answering some of the questions posed by community members about UVP’s purpose and function. 

Our team (sans photographers Nathan and Nichole), the VHT, and the Local Chairperson (far right) posing for a picture. 

We would be remiss to forget to mention how we spent our free time: intense word games, learning how to play chess, and conversation late into the night.

Tina relaxes with a book.

We were very lucky to find ripe bananagrams growing outside our compound.

Next week we dive into our projects. We start off with our first Tippy Tap sensitization in Kasimbika Primary School. Then we meet with a focus group for needs assessment. Finally, we will start our baseline surveys on sanitation, water access, hygiene, and malaria. Make sure to check in so we can update you with more stories and background about our projects and Kasambiika 1.