Gulu Week in Review May 27,2007
I was going to try and write weekly, but if I’m any less lucky this will become titled “Gulu Month in Review”. I have now been in Gulu for two weeks with hardly any power or water. Imagine my city, Eugene, Oregon, with no secure or reliable source of energy. Water is pumped with electricity and with no electricity, soon, there is no water. (You have finished drinking the contents of your water heater and you are heading for the Amazon Canal to fill some cans with water which you might not even be able to boil since you rely on electricity for cooking)(You have to carry the full can back home on your head!). People seem to adapt to this situation better than businesses. Imagine running a restaurant with no running water.
We have adapted by buying six extra jerry cans and carrying them around in our van. One day we paid to fill them at a private well here in town. You have to wait your turn in line. One day we filled them from a bore hole outside of town. An old man hobbled over on crutches and demanded that we pay 100 shillings (about a nickel) per jerry can for filling them. He claimed to be the well master. He said that he had a bank account in town with 190,000 shillings ($100) saved to repair this well, but it has not broken for two years. One day we filled our cans at Keith and Lisa’s water tap. Keith and Lisa are missionaries who have chosen to live and work in the hinterlands of Gulu. Ronda, our volunteer, got to know them and they have graciously allowed us to make our special stove bricks on their back forty. They have put a water tap on the outside of their compound for the public to use and now we are availing ourselves of it. Water is not only a problem in town, it is a huge problem everywhere. Palenga Camp has a sophisticated water system that will not work because there is no diesel fuel to run the pumps. Pabo camp has several hundred people queued at every bore hole and spigot waiting for water. I hope that soon we will be working on the water problem too.
In the meantime, our first kiln full of bricks are not wonderful but we are working to correct the problems. The first stoves will probably go into a nearby camp called Mon Roc. We have, more or less casually, taken twenty babies to Lacor Hospital and 17 were admitted, mostly cases of malaria and diarrhea. Five of the babies came from (our first volunteer) Hugh’s old stomping grounds at Palenga Camp.
On my way to Gulu I went to Mundo Village (in Southern Uganda) where the Tororo Rotary Club is completing the first Adopt-A-Village project with two bore holes, fish pond, mosquito nets for everyone, and SixBrick Rocket stoves for each family. It is exciting for me to go to a place I have never been and see my Rocket Stove babies being liked and used. Rosette and Bam went to Mundo and made these stoves. Now Bam is helping us here in Gulu and Rosette is starting on some more stove projects in the South.
“That’s All Folks”. Stay tuned for more exciting news from the hinterlands of Gulu.
Best regards, from Ken
Special thanks to hosting
By District 5110 and Willamette.Net
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Eugene Southtowne Rotary