A long walk, a long hike and a short bridge

Monday morning we returned to the Kagando region and after dropping our bags and equipment off at the guest house, met up with Yona the diocene engineer. He told us it was too late to see one of the big sources in the hills, but that we could map out the pipeline route for the source we had seen the previous week. He wasn’t able to join us so instead he set us up with his plumber, i.e. a pipeline repair guy. Unfortunately, the guy couldn’t speak very much English. This was alright at the start, but rapidly got more annoying as the places he took us, and the places we wanted to see, were quite a bit different. Further, this source is relatively low and so the areas we were walking in were quite a bit hotter than the foothills we’re used to. Further, after the first hour we found ourselves walking along a road, which, in a flashback to the previous week, we could’ve driven too and saved ourselves some time and effort. In the end we drove most of the proposed route, but were still exhausted by the end of it, partially due to the heat.

The next day we woke up at 6:30am and headed off to a source called Kahindagoma, which apparently is the birthplace of the Rwenzuru Kingdom. While Wes and Asaph headed up to the mythically voluminous source, I went off with the chairman of the village to scope out where they wanted their taps. It was an entertaining tour which, thanks to my Garmin GPS, I was able to determine that I climbed a total of 1,600 metres over a 19km walk. All the while, the chairman was telling me about how, despite having one of the first schools built in the sub-county (back in the early sixties), the elementary school hadn’t been used very much until the last ten years first due to the war of separation (when the Bokonjo people tried to separate the Rwenzuru kingdom from Uganda), and then due to the Allied Democratic Force (ADF), who used the foothills as a staging area for the civil war in the DRC. On the same visit we found out that Yona also used to live in the hills, but decided to move into the safety of the valley after seeing the ADF cut off a man’s head. Surreal to think this mild mannered engineer could’ve witnessed such a thing and yet still be such a normal character to work with. He’s a hard worker, smart and easy to get along with. Without him we would likely have one tenth of the success we are currently having.

And I can now say that we are having success. The yield and quality at Kahindagoma were both excellent, and the elevation was good. In regular English, we’ve got water we can use, enough of it, and it’s high enough up we send it to the people who need it. The only downside is that we won’t be able to bury the line very deep as there’s very little soil that high up, and there’s no road to transport the material (A road to village has been surveyed, they just need to build it. Which in this country means gathering all the villagers and their hoes and pick-axes and hewing a road out of the side of the hills.) If I thought the 1.6 km of vertical gain was hard, try doing it with a 20kg bag of cement on your head. Thankfully our proposals will be reviewed by the Acts construction foreman who will decide if this is a practical project or not.

Wednesday we went back to Kalonge parish, Kyarumba subcounty. This is the same project where we managed to get the truck stuck twice the previous week. This time, the road was merely washed out by a stream. So we ended up making a short bridge out of stones and cobbles and driving across that. The purpose of the visit was for me to check out three further sources, while Wesley went around to map all of the communities with a GPS. This is necessary as the maps we have for the area were all created prior to the 1960s (i.e. prior to independence), and so information that we have on the population centers is a little outdated. In fact, I would like to take a moment to praise the humble GPS; this handy little instrument makes the survey and preliminary design about 1/10 the labor it likely used to be. I love technology.

Unfortunately for Wes, the chairman who led him around wasn’t too enthusiastic about walking and only showed him three of the seven villages in the parish. It would seem that our constant hikes and exercise have strengthened us to the point where we are exhausting our local guides. The path between two of the sources took us along a ridge approximately 1,000 metres above the surrounding valleys. Another day of beautiful views. Unfortunately the three sources were all contaminated, but we’ve still got two sources in the parish that should be able to service a good number of people.

Spent today hiking up to two piddly sources, that were hard to isolate, had turbid water, and relatively low flows, which all point to contamination, but we won’t know those results until tomorrow afternoon.

After the last three days at Kagando, I’m now covered in insect bites, and the origin was subject to much debate at the dinner table tonight (including an exhibition by yours truly). I’m hoping it’s not mosquitoes because of the malaria (though of course I’m diligently taking my malaria pills), but on the other hand I would prefer malaria over the Bot fly. Now the common consensus is bed bugs. Another new experience, yay!

Please let it be bed bugs.

(For those who may be worried, I feel perfectly fine)