Back to living the Ugandan dream!

Oh America…It was fun.  And we miss you.  But now we are back in Uganda after a month long trip back home to the wonderful States.  We got to see many friends and spend plenty of time with family.  We celebrated my sister Samantha’s wedding in Chicago, which was a great time.  The Woodson’s always know how to throw a big party.  Samantha did a phenomenal job of making us feel at home…she had the wedding at the zoo.  Both Aubrey and I gorged ourselves on the wonderful food and enjoyed plentiful amounts of cold drinks with real ice cubes in them.  We got to see both the Wynne family and the Woodson’s, including my grandma, who just turned 80!  It was a great time! 

We enjoyed time in Indianapolis with Aubrey’s family and ate plenty of Aubrey’s mothers lasagna…I gained 15 lbs.  Seriously, I weighed myself when we landed and the day we left.  A full 15 lbs…It was all worth it.  I also got to work on my hop farm with Aubrey’s dad that will be fully in bloom by the time we return.  We also were fortunate to have a wonderful lunch in Avon with Aubrey’s grandma…a cook rivaled by no one! I also got to drink several of my high gravity homebrew beers that I had been aging in my parents basement (A huge contributor to the 15 lbs I gained).  I even got to drive a Uhaul across country for 13 hours (your welcome Chloe).  Good times were had and we fully miss everyone…but we are happy to be working again.  We have grown to love our friends we’ve made here, Namokora, and our work.  At times it is frustrating but it always seems to be rewarding in the end.  So…now on to all the fun we have had in the past month and a half back in Uganda!

When we arrived back in Namokora we found our garden was fully stocked with arugala and cabbage.  I was excited about the arugala...but now I am sick of it!  We need some lettuce!

I realize this photo is sideways but it took forever to upload so you are gonna have to deal with it.  We had a lovely package upon our arrival back in Uganda from my good friend Dave Vetraino.  He sent us homemade granola with a hand drawn photo referring to us as the "dream team."  Really good granola...until the ants got it.

We got back to find everything just as we had left it…except everything was flooded.  The rainy season is intense in Northern Uganda.  From late November to late March it is completely dry and the average temperature is around 90 degrees F.  The rest of the time it rains excessively.  It usually downpours for at least a few hours twice a day.  This means little work is completed during the rainy hours.  Most Ugandan’s utilize this time to nap.  Many bridges have been flooded over for brief periods of time.  Fortunately, Mercy Corps vehicles are equipped with snorkels so we are able to travel to most areas and get home fine. 

This is the first broken borehole we fixed with out handpumps.  It took several mercy corps WASH employees and my friend Jake Carpentar to get our PVC pipe 40 meters deep. 

A successful handpump installation

I have recently started a large pilot project for Mercy Corps.  With the help of a fellow PCV I have started the preliminary research on creating a manual borehole drilling business.  In a previous post I mentioned this project.  It has finally fully come to fruition and we are under way with our feasibility study.  This mainly has consisted of traveling to various extremely rural areas, finding broken down wells (there are thousands), and testing our homemade pumps on them.  Thus far, we have had great results with our technology and terrible results with Northern Ugandan weather (torrential downpours constantly). In the past month I was fortunate enough to attend a valuable training on manual borehole drilling and hand pump fabrication.  The training was hosted by World Vision, a large scale NGO that operates all over the world.  The training focused on teaching hand pump mechanics and interested entrepreneurs how to utilize these simple technologies.  My fellow PCV Jake was there.  He is an engineer currently pursuing his M.S. from USF.  I have been assisting him in his M.S. research and he has been helping out with my pilot project feasibility study.  Things are going well and the project is keeping me extremely busy, which is a nice change!  A few photos are posted below:

Aubrey and I were amazed with this local harp.  The body of it is an USAID vegetable oil jar made in INDIANA!  The kids are creative here

Aubrey has recently traveled to Gulu where she has worked as a camp counselor for Peace Camp.  This is a camp run by PCV’s that works as a leadership development and peace and reconciliation camp for former victims of the Northern War, as well as former child soldiers.  Pretty heavy stuff!  I am sure she will post about it soon with photos! 

On another note, we are moving!  Our time in Namokora has been wonderful but it is coming to an end.  We have made great friends in the village and thoroughly enjoyed the peacefulness and absolute quite of our small town.  Mercy Corps has decided to relocate us to Kitgum town so we can be closer to their main office.   This will increase our efficiency and ability to work within a greater number of areas.  We are excited about the move but it is a bit bittersweet to leave the small place we have made a home.  

Cow crossing all the time...

Local kid with a slingshot made out of condoms...Not sure what to say about this?

Our local cheerleader!  This kid followed us for two days straight sporting his nice looking cheerleader sweatshirt in 95 degree heat!