Settling In

Red Tailed Monkey hanging out near the guesthouse

It has been a long week of settling in here at the guest house as well as working out the first details for the assessment of water sources. My banda hut is still being constructed up near the park so I spent my first couple of nights here in the guest house. It’s a pretty sweet deal with meals prepared daily, a solar shower (that I have yet to catch a warm shower in), and toilet- all of the 1^st world amenities are accounted for. Scott realizing that I was pretty cramped for space with my testing kit, supplies for 800 tests, pressure cooker sterilizer, as well as my personal belongings offered to let me stay in the “mud hut” that is down below the guest house (see photo above). Walking through the guest house garden of pineapple plants and Matoke banana trees the mud hut is secluded from the hospital and nearby road by a wall of tropical vegetation. A nice big lawn with an outside gazebo for working makes it a great living area. The building itself is a spacious two room structure, kind of reminiscent of my cabin back home though when the sun hits the corrugated metal roof it really starts cooking inside (which I guess is also a little reminiscent of my cabin back in Nevada City). Of course Scott failed to mention the minor rat infestation until after I had moved in. I guess some of my down time will be dedicated to designing primitive rat traps. If anyone has a prototype for a trap, let me know please! The photo to the right is my gazeebo office and bird watching vantage point.

On the water project side of things Scott Kellermann has assembled a solid team that will be managing the Rotary 3H grant (among many many other projects) to reduce malnutrition and to improve water sources in the region. The malnutrition portion of the grant involves providing sustainable goat herds to several villages in the area. My focus will be primarily on providing sustainable water sources as well as sanitation to villages with the greatest need (I will do my best to stay away from the goats). My first task is to determine where the greatest need is. To get started Paul Mahwezi and I visited Godfrey Abaganya and Reverend Sam who are the outreach health officers for the BCHC. They have been coordinating community health projects and providing vaccines to the villages in the Mukono Parish (encompasses about 14-15 villages) for the last 4 years. Among other things they have been collecting specific information on the number of households with access to sanitation and to protected water. Using this data to guide our assessment Paul and I will begin at those villages with the poorest sanitation and access to clean water.

Godfrey and Reverend Sam have also designated “village health promoters” in the villages in the region. These are community members in charge of visiting designated households to follow up on if individuals are taking their medication and knowing the status of sick individuals. This type of community follow through will be absolutely necessary for sustaining the water and sanitation projects when they have been implemented. Boreholes, protected springs, and rain-water catchments that are built by the government or NGO’s for communities very often fail because the community is not involved in the projects and not educated on how to maintain their water sources. If people are asked why they have not maintained their clean water supply their answer is often that the ones who implemented the project are responsible for maintaining it. To avoid this situation we want to involve the community as much as possible in the implementation of the projects. The village health promoters should be a great way to facilitate this community involvement.

The first step of the grant is to complete an assessment of drinking water sources in the villages to determine where the projects should be implemented. To practice I just went out into the neighborhood with Paul to find some drinking water to test. My trusted bacterial testing kit gives a measure of fecal coliforms in water in a measure of colony forming units/100 milliliters. To get a result you filter water through a 45um membrane that collects fecal bacterial cells then the membrane is placed on a nutrient medium and incubated at 44oC for 18 hours. Each bacterial cell is then able to grow into a visible colony that can be counted. Of which the yellow colonies are fecal coliforms. The photo on the right is the result of a contaminated test from a local spring contaminated by a pit latrine. Each yellow glob is a colony of fecal coliforms.

Many of the people around the hospital are lucky enough to have access to a piped gravity fed water system that originates from large springs within the Bwindi National Park for a small monthly fee. One would expect this local area to be pretty well-off when it comes to access to clean water. Unfortunately the preliminary information we gathered and the data we collected this week paint a far more disturbing picture. The gravity water system and selected protected springs had the lowest counts of fecal bacteria and the surface water (streams) displayed heavy contamination. One protected spring, suspected of being contaminated by a pit latrine up gradient from the spring was heavily contaminated.

Talking with the local villagers Paul and I discovered that many families refuse to pay the 500 Ugandan Shillings per month (about 33 cents) for the gravity fed water and drink this contaminated water instead! Even more disturbing was the conversation we had with several girls from 5 to 9 years old that admitted to collecting water from the river for drinking. During the conversation I watched a herder guide his cattle into the river for watering. Not only is surface water contaminated by poor sanitation in the villages but cattle, goats, and pigs are another major source of fecal coliforms. This trip once again hammered home the point that education is the key here. No amount of money or implementation of clean water systems or new technologies mean a thing without the basic education that clean water is life. Children live and die by the choices that are made regarding water everyday. In many cases it is not the lack of access to clean water but the choice to not walk that extra distance to collect clean water or the choice to refuse to pay a fee for clean water. I’m going to look into outreach to the local schools and churches here to talk about these choices. The photo above is of children collecting water at a protected spring. Each jerry can weighs over 30 lbs!

Although some of these issues are pretty hard to stomach my spirits remain high. I’m really looking forward to heading out to the communities in the Mukono Parish to start figuring out where the projects should go. The rain forest here continues to amaze. Every time of day and night has a different collection of bird and insect calls. There is even a set of calls during the heavy downpours that occur daily. Red tailed monkeys are always looking into the guest house most certainly contemplating a mad dash into the house to raid the banana dish. It is such a rich and beautiful place to be and every day there is something new to see or hear or taste. I gave Jack Fruit a try just this weekend. A giant oblong fruit that weights about 30lbs with a rubbery flesh that I can best describe as a bubble gum flavored. I’ve heard rumor that it is related to the Durian Fruit of Southeast Asia but smells about a thousand times better! I look forward to sharing more experiences with you all as they occur. Hope you are all doing well. This photo to the right is me with my prize. Stay away from my Jack Fruit!