Positive response to Rotary's consistent approach

The Rotary 3H goat project in the community of Kitariro.

Hello all,

Below is an update written by Tor Erickson working on the ground in Kanungu District. The projects have moved forward with tremendous success in large part due to the ever increasing trust formed between the Batwa and Bakiga communities and our Rotary 3H implementation team. We have found trust building to work on multiple scales that include:

A consistent approach- Remaining consistent with our methods of community interaction and our expectations of community involvement.

A focus on individual relations with members the communities- This has seen a huge boost since Tor and I have nailed down the basics of the Rukiga language and can now interact on a higher level of engagement with the people we are trying to support.

Using existing community resources- We have maintained our efforts on using community based organization structures to run the projects while emphasizing community representation. We have also focused on using the existing skills of the communities as well as the material resources available to each community.



Update written by Tor Erickson:

The past month has been a good one for our Rotary Grant in the Kanungu District. In addition to marked progress on our deliverables, we have taken significant steps towards project sustainability as well. For the past few weeks we have been conducting an internal evaluation of our work carried out by the Batwa themselves. I will intersperse the following update with quotes from the interviews that have been conducted.

A spring protection in the Batwa community of Kebiremu was completed successfully, and initial talks with the Batwa and Bakiga communities there show a high level of participation, ownership, and overall sense of accomplishment. In the words of one man, when asked how he participated, "We all cooperated to carry sand and stones."


A local mason from Kanungu town directs the community of Keberimo for the protection of their spring. The spring serves about 40 Batwa and Bakiga families.

People have expressed great happiness with having a protected water source. The following sentiment from a Mutwa man was echoed in every interview conducted: "Before having this protected water, we used to fall sick almost every day. I haven't seen anyone sick since we got this spring."

A mukiga man looking to muscle up some stones used for the Keberimo spring protection!

Additionally, we continue to collaborate with the Bwindi Community Hospital on a spring protection at the mixed Batwa/Bakiga community of Mukungoro. The community there has nearly organized everything required for us to begin work; this includes bringing massive piles of rocks to the site, and organizing community labor for the project as well as food and lodging for the masons involved.

Sanitation work has leaped forward. In the last report I mentioned that work had begun on 3 latrines, at this point in time that number has jumped to 10 with a completed foundation at least. This means 10 Batwa families have invested the time and energy into digging a pit 16 feet deep to protect their family's health.

A Batwa couple stands next to their completed 16 foot latrine pit now ready for Batwa masons to begin construction.


When asked how they felt about the latrine project, people answered with things like, "I feel very good about this. People will not fall sick," or "I feel very good about this project so far. It keeps us from using the bush," or "It helps us so that we don't fall sick." Work on latrines has included one for a nursery school at Kitariro, which has included contributions from both the Batwa and Bakiga in terms of money, labor and materials.

A Rotary trained mason demonstrating a a local method of reed tying for building structures.

The work on these latrine projects has been conducted by our Batwa masons. These men continue to shine as intelligent and responsible community members and masons, capable of doing excellent work. They are now laying out foundations to square, pouring stepped concrete foundations on sloping hill sites, laying brick stem walls, building sophisticated and light weight ferrocement floors, and framing the walls and roofs of these structures without any sort of outside assistance whatsoever.

Trained Mutwa mason puts the finishing touches on a school latrine in the community of Karangara.

When asked how the vocational training he has received will be useful, one of the masons said "In case my latrine collapses I will build a new one using the knowledge that I learnt from the workshop," and another said, "I am getting some money from it, sometimes people call me and give me a job to build them latrines."

Goat shed in the community of Keberimo.

The goat projects are where some of the most interesting and impressive work is taking place. 10 months into the project our three communities continue to feed and water their goats twice a day, patiently planning and waiting for the time to 'share,' meaning when the herd will have grown large enough for every family to have their own goat to sell or eat. In only one instance have the communities sold one of their goats, and this was done to buy medicine for a sick woman and was completely within the limits of the by-laws that the community had decided upon. This accomplishment is impressive almost beyond words, and demonstrates with crystal clarity the ability of the Batwa to work towards long-term goals in spite of their extreme poverty.

The chairman of the Batwa community of Bikuto prepares a penicillin shot while our animal husbandry trainer, Henry, looks on.

In the meantime, however, the Batwa have been able to enjoy the benefits of the manure and milk of the goats. When asked why he wanted to participate in the goat project, one man said, "Because they are useful in that they can give us manure and milk for our children," and another: "So that after sharing I can get my own goat and when I get any problem I can sell it to solve that problem."

Healthy goats!!

All projects show good signs of sustainability, though there is still room for improvement. In Byumba, where we protected a spring source, the Batwa mobilized themselves to pressure the secretary of the spring committee to replace money that she had taken. They then removed her off the committee due to her poor transparency and accountability and are now voting to replace her with someone else. This shows a sense of ownership; that rather than have Rotary come in and replace the money, or tell the woman to comply with the community, they went and did it on their own. A number of participants in the internal survey stated a need for more education in the areas of animal husbandry and spring maintenance: "Education is required in measuring the drugs when injecting the goats in case they are sick."

-Update end-

Water tank in the community of Byumba serving 30 families, a school, and a clinic.

Thanks again for following our ongoing work in Uganda! Your comments and questions are greatly appreciated.

Opening communication lines

By Sol Henson

The heavily cultivated hills of Southwest Uganda with the Albertine Rift Valley seen in the background.

I literally live tucked into a corner of the world. One of the few places I have ever been that you can drive into but no through roads lead out except the gnarled dirt track that brought you there. To get to this place you must first travel 10 hours from the capital, Kampala, and wind your way along the crest of the rift valley skirting the edge of the escarpment and then climbing up into a beautiful green valley cultivated to the gills. The road through this valley climbs its way past two small trading centers and then abruptly crashes into the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest with no way forward but to shed your steel carriage and take well worn footpaths into the forest south or into Congo west. Just one or two kilometers from the Democratic Republic of Congo Border and only one road leading out gives you the sense that urban civilization belongs to another world. Living here for an extended period of time requires that you travel regularly and/or make fast friends with those you are sharing this space with.

Sitting high above this valley atop one of the ridge crests stands two brand new sentinels with flashing red lights. The recently built MTN and Orange cell phone towers are a symbol of how rapidly technology is advancing in Uganda and showers a network signal down upon the small sleepy community of Buhoma.

For the last year I have struggled on a daily basis to pass a basic text or communication that would save me two hours of travel. The only place where network could be found was at a tea field that sits across from a notch in hills of the valley where a weak signal could seep through and provide a broken conversation. Many of these conversation necessitated that I drag a translator with me making the communications that much more difficult to coordinate.

Now…I can make texts to my best friends in the states from the comforts of the porch of my house as I look into the depths of the primeval Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. Despite my feelings that Bwindi is no longer the secluded location it once was just one year ago, the benefits of improved communication have been immediate. I now make phone calls at will contacting communities where we have ongoing projects to pass along meeting times or key messages. Work is constantly evolving and without the ability to communicate, those changes can lead to angry and frustrated community members. Although only a small handful of Batwa have access to phones we are still able to contact them through their neighbors. Passing messages through intermediaries come come with their own issues however, it is far better than the alternative of missed opportunities due to lack of communication. Perhaps most importantly the Batwa now have an avenue, although limited, to communicate with me when a project issue arises or if they would just like to pass on an important message.

Too often the target of humanitarian work is on the poorest communities (ie the Batwa) who do not have access to cell phones and even if they did, do not speak Rzungu.

(Rzungu is the language spoken by the Mzungu aka English!) In most situations the Batwa must resign to speaking through middle men who often have their own agendas and/or opinions that can hurt the quality of the information being passed on, and in some cases completely change the meaning.

A group of Batwa brainstorming ideas for the sustainability of their goat projects. Their ideas are recorded on the butcher paper in the background by community members.

A meeting session that has moved into the cramped indoors to escape the rain.

In addition to improved phone communication we have focused on dialogue through meetings that engage and involve community members NOW. If you have been reading this blog it may come as a surprise to you that this 3H grant includes provision for community nutrition in the form of goat projects. Three Batwa communities have been provided one herd of goats each to care for communally and to share after the goats have multiplied. We felt like meetings in these communities were a great place to start to provide the necessary support for the ongoing projects but also to better understand unseen challenges and benefits to inform future projects.

Follow up for the goat projects has come in the form of a number of formal and informal meetings looking to bring out the issues communities are facing with the goats and what their potential resources are to find solutions.

Goats with their salt lick. These store bought bars of salt will most likely be replaced by local salt mined from the salt flats of Lake Edward.

Boys having a blast climbing around the goat shed. An unintended benefit of goats!

Raising goats as a community is a complicated undertaking that includes a large amount of coordination and cooperation and necessitates strong financial decision-making on how to benefit from the goats in the end. Holding these meetings has played a central role in our understanding of the direction the community wants to take the projects. Having this direction allows us to provide trainings and to encourage meetings relevant to community goals and concerns.

Innocent, a Batwa member preparing a syringe for an injection of Malaria medication.

Spraying goats to combat ticks and mange.

At times we are showered with questions about if we can provide work gloves, jerry cans, flashlights and other items that we see as provisions that the community must provide for themselves. Despite these superficial questions we came upon some major issues that the communities raised. These included needing more training on providing injections, better cooperation for feeding and cleaning, and wanting further trainings on using manure.

Following the thread of issues among the three communities we found that land ranked top among all concerns. Further probing into the issue we realized that crop raiding of the Batwa goats onto Bakiga land was a major issue that was exacerbated by resentment by the Bakiga neighbors of the goat project going to the Batwa. If you will remember from previous posts the Bakiga are the dominant tribe in Southwestern Uganda while the Batwa are a very small majority in both population, land ownership, and access to resources. This line of questioning and group discussion has led to some upcoming meetings between the Batwa and Bakiga about cooperation and compensation for the sustainability of the project. We’ve found that goats wandering onto neighbors land is not a question of if but a question of when and if communities are not prepared to deal with this issue, conflict will undoubtedly ensue.

Compounding the land issue is the small plots of land that the Batwa live on and the fragmented nature of the land. Keberimo and Bikuto Batwa communities live on two plots of land separated by Bakiga land and the community of Kitariro lives on three disconnected plots of land. This situation requires the Batwa to cross Bakiga property to graze their goats on other plots of land. I never thought this would be a big issue to just move goats from one plot of land to the next until I watched a group of hungry goats charge out from their shed in Keberimo. Surrounded by Bakiga crop land the goats turned into giant black and white locusts devouring cassava leaves and corn stalks. At that point I truly understood how fostering relations with neighbors is central to the success of raising goats and how necessary opening lines of dialogue was needed to be a top priority.

Community worker Beth Kyamazima working with the Batwa settlement of Keberimo writing down the ideas of the community members.

More to come folks. Let me know what your thinking as you read these posts!

At long last my return to Uganda was realized as I stepped off the plane to a cool black night at the edge of Lake Victoria. I was immediately reminded how fast changes occur in this country as I took the accordion tunnel from the plane into the airport. Just one year ago the same airport spat me out on the tarmac to make my way across the runway and to my baggage. I’ve been staying at the Backpackers in Kampala for the last two weeks getting my bearings and preparing for what is shaping up to be an incredibly busy 6 months back in Bwindi. My time has consisted of a large amount of e-mailing back to the states and to the 3H grant staff down in Bwindi, two hour long phone meetings with Tor Erickson, and six hours of Rukiga lessons each day.

Accompanying me for the last week has been Chris Edwards, an eighteen year old volunteer from Nevada City who has signed up to put his shoulder to the Rotary 3H millstone for three months. He has jumped into the language lessons with me and is also assisting with the startup and design of our new Rotary 3H website (coming soon)! I was impressed by Chris’s ability to immediately pick up the Rukiga number system which in my mind has only been surpassed by his ability to down Coca Cola at a blistering pace.

A view of the Backpackers Hostel, where Chris and I stayed in Kampala.

The Rukiga language is one of several Bantu languages spoken across Southern and Western Uganda. Many tribes share the same core Bantu language. The language of Southwest Uganda is Rukiga of the Bakiga people (note the addition of an “R” to change the people name to the name of the language). The language instructors are a married couple Richard and Doreen who teach with great humor and with great pride of their people and language (Doreen is of the Bakiga tribe and Richard of the Banyankole). The at times grueling six hour daily lessons are often intermixed with conversations about American and Ugandan culture. The days are punctuated with hourly frisbee throwing breaks that Richard and Doreen have taken such a liking to I’m not sure if they will let me return to Bwindi with my old Ultimate Frisbee disc.

From left to right, Doreen, Richard, and Chris at our Rukiga lessons.

Starting the classes I immediately began making connections in the language that had eluded me for the past year. Just working on the pronunciation alone has provided me the opportunity to use the vocabulary that I already possessed from studying notes that I had found online. It is literally a key, unlocking these words that I had been struggling to use for so long.

The Rukiga language is filled with twists and turns that at times frustrate me and at other times provide me with new insights into the culture I have lived with for a year. What I have found is that the language is not so full of exceptions but filled with a vast multitude of options and ways to say what you want to say. Prefixes, suffixes, and infixes! litter the language changing the subject and meaning of verbs at right hand angles. There are scores of ways to greet people and ways to check in with how the day is going, how was the night, and how is the family doing. The language accurately represents the importance in the Bakiga culture for checking in on how your neighbors are doing. Ironically there is only one word for apologizing (and I think it is rarely used) and if you are looking for words of politeness you can forget it. Another interesting note is that the proper way to introduce where you are from is to say where your people are from because there is always an unbreakable link to your people that anchors you wherever you travel to.

Armed with an improved understanding of the language and a year of experience under my belt I am chomping at the bit to get back to Bwindi and to the communities. Understanding the reality and the complexities of conducting humanitarian work sits at the forefront of my mind. Thinking back I arrived in Bwindi with a masters degree in hydrology, a water testing kit, and the ability to say ‘how are you” in Rukiga. My ability to greet, I quickly realized, was the most important of those three items I carried with me.

What one sees when they visit Bwindi is that humans are the exact product of their environment and the way they interact with that environment. Recent arrivals from the West are invariably struck by the masses of people seen walking on the roads. On market day in the nearby town/trading center of Butagota, you might pass several thousand people just walking: to sell baskets or mats, to buy food for the week, to collect debts or pay debts, to make business deals, to buy clothes and on and on. There are virtually no overweight people. When you do pass someone with a few extra pounds around the waist you take note. They are the wealthy and influential people in the communities and are both respected and feared.

Just as there are no fat people you see few of the physical ailments that you often encounter in the West, like the back or joint pain associated with sedentary lifestyles. It is reasonable to ask whether the typical Ugandan villager suffers fewer muscle and joint ailments because of the physicality of life there or whether they are just able to ignore discomfort and pain because there is no alternative. Most likely it is a combination of the two. One invariably encounters women and adolescent children carrying 20 liter jerry cans of water or men hauling sacks of cement long distances on their heads or people working under hot and dusty conditions. I have a great deal of admiration for this type of physical work. When I express this to my partner Paul he will barely raise his eyebrows and nonchalantly state that these people are “used.” His meaning is not that the people are being used but that they are used to the hard work and the harsh conditions and that this type of work is what they know.
Batwa women carry large bags of sand for a spring restoration project.

I have found that being ‘used’ is something we can all relate to. We are all “used” in one way or another. Whether it is to commuting three hours a day and sitting in front of a computer for another eight or pushing 300lbs of matoke (green bananas) on a bicycle 4 miles a day we are all adapted to our current situation. I think we all know this but in Bwindi it becomes overtly obvious. Communities are also “used” in the way they are set up and organized which is based on village leadership, local government leadership and by the resources available to them. In a sense these communities exist in a type of equilibrium, which is to say that people know their roles in the community and work hand in hand to sustain their families with the skills they have and the few resources that are available to them.

By adding new outside resources or information to a community this equilibrium becomes disrupted. These disruptions can be positive, like in the case of effectively educating a community on the benefits of good hygiene and sanitation behavior. And they can be negative. I’ve seen a whole community collapse into angry quarrelling over being loaned a couple of hoes and shovels. (As a side note I believe this is one of the main reasons that the Peace Corps relies almost entirely on education of communities vs providing physical resources). One problem with providing resources is that they can be provided unequally. And even when they are provided equally they can still be perceived as being provided unequally. And perception can be an incredibly difficult thing to overcome where information is spread almost exclusively by word of mouth (one false rumor spread in Rukiga can take weeks if not months to sort out, stalling projects and creating arguments between community members).

Tor Erickson teaches a seminar to Batwa masons.


Batwa are often the intended recipients of outside resources as they are the focus of NGO’s and Missionaries because of their recent eviction from the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and because of their apparent squalid living conditions. What many people do not understand is that the neighboring Bakiga suffer from many of the same issues caused by poverty such as poor sanitation, malnourishment, and HIV and their communities are interwoven with the Batwa. Projects focusing on the Batwa must often include the Bakiga as well.

Because the Batwa are the target of so many humanitarian resources the Bakiga living in the same communities also look to benefit from the projects, and rightly so in many cases. Unfortunately the Batwa end up putting immense energy into projects, carrying bags of sand, cement, rock, and jerry cans of water and excavating large volumes of earth while the Bakiga refuse to work at all. However, when the projects are completed the Bakiga use the resources as if they were involved all along. Not surprisingly this causes deep frustration among the Batwa and leaves serious questions about where ownership lies with the project and who is responsible for maintenance.

One example of this occurred when we built a water tank in the Batwa settlement of Byumba. It was a resource where the majority of the community were Batwa, but there were 10 Bakiga families (about one third of the total families using the resource) who gathered water there, as well. It was a constant struggle to engage the Bakiga beneficiaries and in many cases they would only reluctantly work on the project, all the while knowing they would benefit from the resource. To this day the Batwa struggle to engage the Bakiga in the maintenance of the resource. The spring committee formed to manage the project is currently working with the local government to set up a system where the spring taps are locked and only those active in the maintenance of the spring have access to the resource. One can see how tenuous a process this is when you consider that all it takes is one angry villager, denied access to the water source, to come in and break the taps to ruin it for everyone. It is now up to the people to make the hard decisions on how to involve the entire community and we can only provide suggestions and continue to monitor the water tank.

Another challenge we have faced in the last year and will continue to face is trying to engage the Batwa in their own projects. Right now there are four Batwa settlements preparing to build family latrines on the Rotary dime. Our expectation is that community contribution includes digging the 15ft deep latrine pits and assisting with the unskilled labor during construction . In the past the Batwa have always received some sort of compensation for any work they have performed, even when they were the direct beneficiaries of that work. This compensation usually came in the form of food. The assumption was that the Batwa are so impoverished that food needs to be provided to support the labor because the families are too poor to provide it themselves. And the Batwa will agree wholeheartedly.

Providing this sort of compensation, however, adds a major complication to the process. The question then becomes are the Batwa digging their latrine pits for food or to have a latrine? And thus, if we provide food, is the community buy-in sufficient for ownership of the project, or can we tell if there is any community buy-in of the project at all? I’ve had many long, difficult meetings about this very topic with the Batwa where there has been a fair share of bitterness and anger. Many Batwa angrily tell me, “if you want to help the Batwa then help them in all ways.” Meaning, if you are going to help the Batwa build latrines, then pay them to dig the pits. Others, however, agree that the pit should be the responsibility of the families before Rotary gets monetarily involved.

Although, in the end we have the final say whether or not to provide food for this labor our intention is to engage the Batwa in dialogue to understand what keeps them from embracing such a great opportunity to provide sanitation for their families. We are trying to move at a slow enough pace so that so that we can understand what their capabilities are and so that they can understand that we cannot justifiably lay these projects into their laps. In an attempt to commiserate I once told the Batwa of the settlement Bikuto that I understood that it was hard to dig latrine pits without being provided food. As soon as the words left my mouth I realized it wasn’t true. I had no idea. The next day I showed up at Bikuto at 8 in the morning with a pick and a shovel and a gallon of water and began working on one of the pits that had been moving very slowly. The work was intensely hard and as expected my hands, unused to digging, blistered badly throughout the day. I learned two very important pieces of information that day: 1) that a pit can be dug in clay soil at a rate of 1 ft per hour and 2) this work can be performed on an empty stomach.

One must consider what the Rotary contribution to these projects will be. Rotary would be providing thousands of dollars of materials to build these latrines, we have trained 4 Batwa ferro-cement masons to build the latrines after the pits are completed (see the previous two blogs written by Tor Erickson), and we are paying the skilled labor to complete these projects. Where ,then, is the community’s opportunity to demonstrate buy-in to the project and to show that they are committed to sanitation. If they won’t dig their pits will they ever buy soap when they have some spare money? If they don’t participate in the construction of the latrines will they keep them clean down the road? Demonstrations of commitment now are the only clues we have that the projects will succeed in reducing water borne illness in the future.

Two Batwa makakuru (respected elderly women) hold bars of soap.