Landmines and $10,000

We’ve spent four of the last five days at the guesthouse of the Kagando hospital. Kagando is a church run hospital in a lush valley to the east of Kasese, it’s approximately 30km from the border with the DRC. (But that doesn’t mean it’s in any danger from the tragic civil war occurring there, the Ugandan People’s Defense Force is in firm control of the border – so mom and Liz, please don’t fret).

We spent Friday tracing the low elevation source and possible pipeline routes, but as it became apparent when we went over the calculations that night, it won’t be possible to take that water anywhere useful with a pipeline. It’s strange, but we could actually take it further with a roman aqueduct than we can with modern plastic pipes, makes you wonder about technological improvements.

We were not the first ones to investigate this source as a possible GFS. The diocese had hired a private consultant four years ago to come up with a design and cost estimate, i.e. exactly what we wanted to do. However, the result of that report was a design bringing water to some 10,000 people. Curious as to how I could be so wrong, I took a very detailed look at the design...and found that a crucial line in the calculations had been deleted. This line would have changed all the subsequent calculations, proving the system wasn’t feasible.

So basically the report was incorrect due to one unintentional error (or perhaps it was intentional? – no consultant likes to come back to a client telling them a project isn’t possible – likely wouldn’t get paid as much!). The real kicker was that the diocese paid the consultant 17,000,000 Ush, or ~$10,000 for the report. Which made me immediately feel like I’d earned my keep here. Especially if I can put together three of these reports (without those kind of errors) before I leave.

Speaking of designs, Yona had put together a design for the project that we’d hiked up to some three weeks ago. This is the project that’s a three hour hike from the nearest road. In his design, he used steel pipe for some 2 km instead of plastic. I asked him why he would use a material that’s four times more expensive, was he worried about there not being enough soil to bury the pipe? Nope, he didn’t want to bury the pipe because he wasn’t sure if there were any landmines in the area from when the ADF where there in the late 1990s.

However, I should note that he completed the design some six years ago, and since then a Unexploded Ordinances (UXO) team has gone through and cleared the area. But you can bet, this will figure prominently in my proposal; no road, 3hr hike, and chance of landmines.

We are heading back to Mbarara at the end of this week so we can drive to Kampala on Saturday. Seems I may have mistakenly signed up for a half marathon. I don’t really like running, really don’t like running in large crowds, and the longest I’ve ever signed up for before is the 10km Sun Run. So I wasn’t really sure why I wanted to do this, other than I had nothing else planned for that weekend. And besides, how hard could it be?

So I’ve been training, and yesterday went for a long run deep into the valleys of Kagando. Everybody stares as I run by, except for the kids, who stare, and then start running with me. This is less motivating than you might think because they seem to run faster than me. It’s especially annoying because they’re generally between 2 and 5 and they shouldn’t run that fast.

Because we’re heading back to Mbarara on Friday, this week has generally been spent wrapping up the projects we feel good about, or thoroughly discarding the ones that don’t make the grade. I think I prefer this part of the job. Perhaps it's beacuse I finally have that feeling that I might finally be getting somewhere?