Kasese Again

So this blog should be much shorter and sweeter as it’s only been three days since my update. First, I’m happy to state that my malarial friend Naomi has recovered and seems to be at 90% of her former strength. Still, malaria seems like a very bad thing to get. She looked like the worst I’ve ever felt with the flu, but for two days straight. I’ll be doing my best to avoid it.

Spent Wednesday getting ready for the trip up to Kasese, including a 3 hr round trip to the Kinumefura Camp and back to pick up the supplies we’d need for a month of roving. The road is only 50kms (100km round trip), and it’s all paved. The thing that slows us down to an average speed of 33 km/hr is all the potholes. Potholes of all shapes and sizes. And most importantly, potholes that span the road on a regular basis.

The first week we were in camp we were put through a driving test by Tim Specht, the regional director of Acts, a Victorian who’s lived in Mbarara for the last two years. Three notable things stood out:

1) It’s sometimes good to swerve all the way to the wrong side to avoid potholes.
2) The horn is an essential tool on Ugandan roads, without it, you have only have half a car.
3) The largest vehicles on the road are the passenger buses, and if approaching from the opposite direction, they’ll plow you off the road...unless you hold your ground, just so the bus driver knows you’re there and moves over. In essence, a game of chicken with a bus. We are driving mini pick-ups. Thankfully I haven’t needed to establish my presence to a bus driver yet.

This morning we had a meeting with the regional office of water and sanitation. They have a far different manner of going about the installation of water pipelines than Acts currently does. The budget for initial project installation is taken from the federal government. However, order to ensure sustainability of the pipeline, they give the option of household metered hook-ups for $31, but also install public metered taps at the cost of $0.01 for 20 litres. This is to ensure that enough money is collected to pay for the system operation and maintenance and possibly pay for a new system at the end of the project life.

Acts installs the pipeline using CIDA funds. During the installation, tapstand committees are set-up to collect funds from the community in order to maintain the system. It seems to be a far softer system, and therefore open to abuse, than the government sanctioned approach. However, the government wasn’t very forthcoming on how the very poor (widows and such) pay for the water.

After the meeting, headed up to Kasese to investigate two projects suggested by the diocene engineer (I have to admit, this is the first time I’ve heard of a church region having it’s own water engineer – I know it’s wrong, but I’m tempted to try some Moses jokes, or maybe something about baptism, when we meet him tomorrow morning).

On the way to Kasese, we passed through QENP again, and this time saw some Ugandan Kobs and a leopard. The leopard was within 10 metres of the road and was stalking the kobs. However, once we stopped, it looked at us for a few moments and then took off. Might be the coolest wildlife sighting I’ve seen so far.

Arrived in Kasese without incident and are eager to set out tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed that it’s got a good flow and has no faecal matter.