The Rate Has Picked Up!

As you may note from the title, this has been an eventful five days. And so for that reason, I’ve decided to split this into two posts, the first covering up to Friday and the second (posted below) covering yesterday and today. This is mainly to appease the more attention deficit readers in the crowd (I’m thinking mainly of my girlfriend here).

Wednesday was entertaining and a good follow up to Tuesday’s debacle. We were following up another report given to us from the district water office. We started the morning in Kasese at 1,000 metres elevation, and in the span of 40 km managed to climb to 2,000 metres to the community of Mahango. My amazement at our little Toyota Hi-Lux only grew that day as we climbed hills a Humvee would’ve had issues with. Once at the top, the road continued along the ridge with a panorama of the plains of Ugandan rift valley extending to the left (some 1,000 metres below), the Rwenzori mountains to the right and the town of Kasese behind us. And despite the 60 degree slopes on either side of the ridge, houses were spaced evenly all the way down to the valley floor.

One of the things I love taking away from traveling is being able to put a real image to a place. Before I visited south America, I had an idea that the amazon was a large, tropical rain forest and that the Andes were quite high. But I had no idea how much the identity of the entire continent was shaped from the relationship of the two. Apparently the five highest peaks on this continent are here in East Africa, and the Rwenzoris are the highest range in Africa. West of here the land descends into the Congo basin and the associated jungle. North of here, everything eventually drains into the Nile. (I’d love to be able to do an expedition into the Rwenzoris and see the equatorial glaciers, but at $600 for the mandatory six days, that seems like a very expensive undertaking at this time. Besides, every time I look at them, they look covered in clouds, so I can’t imagine the view from up there would be that great. On the other hand four of the peaks have glaciers, and seeing snow at the equator is always a cool undertaking.)

Once we reached Mahango and hiked to the source, it was, of course, half the flow reported, but we’re getting used to that. Certainly hones our patience.

It’s funny, for the most part the last two and half weeks have been a long, hard slog to find feasible springs. Our success rate is dismal (we’ve now visited approximately 40 springs of which 6 will be useful to us), and yet I’ve been finding the whole exercise incredibly rewarding. At the same time, I feel more pressure to succeed than any of the interns. Their time here is paid for by the Canadian government, whereas I’ve been entrusted with the money of my friends and family. I’ve never felt like such a workaholic and yet loved it so much.

So we headed back to Kasese at the end of the day, once again pessimistic about our chances for a good project.

And then Thursday our luck changed.

We headed off to an area south of the Rwenzori mountains called Kagando. Our resident engineer, Yona, met with us at the rural hospital in the area and then showed us to the spring.

What a beautiful sight! Water gushing out of the soil everywhere! Enough to provide 25 litres/day of water to 18,000 people (to put this in perspective, Canadians consume approximately 400 litres/day). Most importantly, the test results came in today and they were clean!

However, the downside of this source is that it’s located quite low in the valley. But that’ll be an engineering challenge as opposed to a resource challenge. At least we’ve got enough water to feed people. Which means in one day we’ve gone from 0.5 of a proposal to 1.5 proposals. Things are looking up. But then again, we always start the day of with reams of optimism. (We haven’t learned cynicism yet, we’re saving that for next month.)

Friday was also good, we headed back to the same area of the Kasese district, only further north this time. Arrived at a parish called Kalonge. Managed to get our truck stuck to the point of almost rolling off the side of the road (I was strategically outside and away from harm at the time...directing of course). No worries though, with the help of some seven local Ugandans and a pick-axe, managed to get the truck back on the road.

Parked the truck at 1,500 m and started ascending the side of the valley. Reached a beautiful source at ~2,000 m forty minutes later (while almost being passed a Ugandan grandmother carrying a huge load of fire wood - in my defense it was 34 C).

Looked at three more sources and all had high yields and what appeared to be good elevation. (Also met a very drunk local leader, entertaining, but also kind of annoying – always asking for money). Just found out last night that two of the four sources had good quality. Plus there are two more sources on the other side of the valley that’ll take another day to assess. Depending on those results, we may be up to 2.5 projects! The only issue may be building the line. If we had issues just hiking it, than building it could be overwhelming. On the other hand, as the Ugandan grandmother proved today, these may be idle concerns.

Had a brief (but typically incredibly strong) rain storm which turned the roads into a slip and slide. Managed to get stuck at the exact same location on the way out. But some quick road re-construction and we were on our way.

At the start of next week we’ll be heading back to Kalonge to do some community mapping (where to locate the tapstands, etc) so we can complete a preliminary design and cost estimate. Also, Yona has promised another good source, (this time a 2hr hike up), so by the end of next week, we may have three and half projects. One can dream.

Strange how one’s dreams can change depending on the circumstances.