Week 3 of the fellowship program was for team formation. The 15 CAIF fellows were split into three teams of five each focusing on a specific theme. Two teams are looking at clean energy, one on biogas and one on solar. The third is focused on animal health within the framework of agriculture and food systems.
We were given some prompts to guide preliminary research into the different themes and the Canadian and Ugandan fellows had some time to get to know eachother.
On Friday, the team selections were finalized after we ranked our choices. I will be working on the solar project with two other Canadian fellows and two Uganda fellows. We are composed of two electrical engineering students, one software engineering student, one mechanical engineering student, and the singular non-engineer in the program, an environmental science student.
For lunch on campus, we have been eating a traditional Ugandan meal. This is the meal that is served at most restaurants and homes, with some small variations. You can choose any number of starches, the options usually being posho (made from maize, white with a texture like denser and stickier mashed potatoes), matoke (mashed savoury plantain), rice, sweet potato, and irish potato (white or gold potato).
The price of your meal is determined by your protein, which is typically goat, beef, fish, or a stew of cow peas (chickpeas) or beans. There is also usually a ground nut (peanut) sauce. A typical price at a simple restaurant or university cafeteria is between four and seven thousand Ugandan Shillings, or about $1.50-$2.60 Canadian.
On the weekend, some of the Canadian and Ugandan fellows did a game drive through Lake Mburo National Park. The park is about an hour’s drive outside of Mbarara and has a number of animals including hippos, zebras, and giraffes. The park has no lions but does have 80 leopards, although they are hard to see. The photos I am including below are ones I stole from other fellows with nice cameras.
Note: I changed the week numbers in the post title to reflect the program calendar. My last post was about the program week 1 (not a full week) and program week 2 which was May 27-31. This post is about program week 3 which was June 4-7.
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