So, I’m a little behind on my blog. In the interest of continuity, I’m going to still do a separate post for each week. This post will be about week 4, which was June 10th-14th.
Week 4 was both more and less eventful. My Monday morning started with this:
Thankfully, my symptoms were pretty mild. The Ugandan fellows and our program coordinator were all COVID-free, while three other Canadian fellows also tested positive.
While the Canadian accommodation is around 7km from our project workspace, the big advantage is that it’s across the road from MUST’s teaching hospital, which is also the referral hospital for the region. Because of our association with MUST, we could get in with the COVID treatment centre on the same day to be assessed.
It was disappointing to be sick for the first real week of working on our projects. My team was especially impacted with three of five being sick. I don’t think getting COVID was something any of us expected to have happen. We were more prepared for malaria!
By Friday, we were feeling much improved and went to visit a local solar company with our masks. FRES Uganda (https://fres.nl/company/uganda/) is a Dutch company that does solar installations and management of solar systems in rural areas of southwestern Uganda. FRES also operates in South Africa, Mail, Burkina Faso, and Guine-Bissau. Their model is to retain ownership of the systems they install on homes and businesses such that the company has responsibility for maintaining and repairing the systems. Users can purchase electricity using mobile money on a pay-as-you-go model.
The employees we met with were very willing to talk to us and answer our questions. We were interested to hear how they were working to mitigate common issues with small-scale solar systems such as failed inverters, misuse, poor maintenance, and mistrust of solar.
On Saturday, now feeling well again, I joined some Canadian fellows to go find a waterfall! While transportation around Mbarara is made easy by the consistent availability of bodas, one complication is that navigation is solely based on city landmarks rather than any form of civic address. This makes it difficult to get to locations for hiking or other nature-related sight-seeing, even if they are semi-established for those purposes. After stopping a few times to huddle around google maps or consult with passing boda drivers, we made it to our destination.
On Sunday, we went on another exploration, this time to Katete hilltop. We took bodas to the base of the hill, climbed up, had a Sound of Music moment, then walked back down through a community. I’m sharing a few photos I took, and also a very nice little video made by Vitoria.
Walking through the community was a very funny experience. The local soccer team was playing another team from the district so everyone and their dog (literally) was gathered outside as we came through. Very quickly, we became the central attraction instead, especially with the children. A lot of the younger girls were fascinated by my hair and skin and really wanted to touch both. There were a few young women closer to my age who were very keen on getting photos together.
It was a good opportunity to try and practice our Ruyankole (the language spoken in this region) ahead of community entry next week and to introduce ourselves using our Ruyankole names. My Ruyankole name, Kyomugisha, was given to be by our facilitator at MUST. It’s pronounced cho-moo-jee-SHA, and means “blessings”.
In the time we’ve been here so far, we’ve received a lot of attention out in the city as a group of mostly white foreigners, but this was the most acute case we’ve experienced so far. When we’re out in town, it’s usual for most people on the street to be looking at us, and to hear “mzungu”, meaning a “white person” or “foreigner” called out at us at least a half dozen people. The attention has taken some time to get used to, and takes a bit of energy to manage, especially when I’m so used to being so inconspicuous back in Canada.
On another note, by the end of week 4 I had stopped experiencing symptoms and was ready to rejoin the program in a full capacity! Being sick put our team a little behind in the program, and with heading into the community homestay has meant this blog was on the back burner. In my next post, I’ll talk a bit about the homestay experience. Hope you enjoyed this old news 😉
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