July 30- Kampala

The whole team is here! Woo!

Today we split up into three teams- an electronics team, an NGO team, and a customs team. We started out together and changed money, but then split up when we got to Kampala. Bryan, Shavi, and Emmanuel (the Makerere student) went to look at batteries, charge controllers, and inverters. Marisa and Angela went to meet with the NGO called Community Integrated Development Initiatives, to get advice on the water project. Tess and John went to Entebbe (the airport) to look into what is happening with the crates.

Let's start with the bad news. The trip to the customs office, while very informative, gave some pretty disappointing information. Apparently, it is impossible for the crates to be let out of customs until we have a Tax Identification Number (TIN), which the clinic currently doesn't have. We can't use a personal TIN except for Angela's because she's the only person mentioned on the forms, but she doesn't have a TIN either. This means that we have to wait for the clinic to get a TIN (which they are currently working on) before we can start the process (which will take at least a few days in itself) of getting it through customs and having the solar panels tested and registered. So we will need to find ways of working around not having our solar panels or tools for possibly a few weeks. This is clearly very disappointing, but we are staying optimistic that the crates will be cleared sometime between one and two weeks from now. If they get through within 2 or even 3 weeks, we think that we can still do the installation ourselves.

The other teams were much more successful. The electronics team found everything they needed at Ssebegala and Sons, bought the units, and arranged for them to be driven to the clinic by Ssebegala and Sons' van, all for under budget! And the NGO team had a good meeting with CIDI, and got some good contacts that we will look into during our trip.

Tonight we had a lovely dinner at Angela's house (it's so nice having so many people around!) and then worked on figuring out exactly how much wire we need. Tomorrow we will buy wire, junction boxes, and combiner boxes, so that we can put together the system without the solar panels when we get to the clinic.

On Sunday we'll travel to the clinic to finally get to work!

July 29 - The Team is Complete

Shavi, Marisa, and Bryan made it into Kampala safely and the travel team is now complete (minus Michael, who arrives in a couple of days).

Tess and Angela have spoken with customs and it appears that FedEx misinformed us - the crates are sitting at the Entebbe airport customs post awaiting payment of customs fees. Good news is that speaking with them seems to have clarified the point that our panels are duty free and lowered our customs liability to about 1.5 million shillings. John K. is headed to Entebbe with Tess and Angela tomorrow with documentation of the clinic's operations to try and get the shipment completely duty exempt.

The wire transfer went through and we have cash in Angela's Kampala account

Plan for Friday is to divide and conquer: purchase necessary electronic components so they can be trucked out to Ddegeya on Sat along with the crates. Also visit the customs post at Entebbe to finalize our customs liability and get that paid so the crates can be transferred on to Kampala. Also meet with a water NGO in the morning.

Wish us luck

July 28- Kampala

Hello all,

Angela and I spent the day in Kampala, mostly hanging out with Angela's family and friends. We scheduled meetings and exchanged money and did other small errands. We also called FedEx, who confirmed that our packages had arrived and that we could pick them up on Saturday.

Then tonight when Angela's internet turned on (she has internet from 7 pm to 7 am), we saw an email regarding the customs duties and taxes on our crates. The person on the phone had not mentioned this, but a man had called me yesterday and mentioned these expenses. The cost is significantly higher than we had anticipated, and, if it is a real document, then we believe that they made errors in calculating the duties. We aren't really sure what is going on, so Angela and I are going to make many phone calls and visit FedEx to try and get the cost cut down. Luckily, my sister gave me some good contacts with the Ugandan customs officials so we're going to call them tomorrow to make sure that this is legitimate and try and fix the errors that we're seeing. Hopefully it will all work out- we have 3 days to pay and pick up the crates until they start accumulating interest. I have had a lot of chocolate, and talked to my trip leaders, so I think that it will be ok.

Angela and I are also going to meet with two NGO's tomorrow regarding our water project. We have been working to find a solution to the village's water problems, and we want to get advice from people that have worked on similar issues. Hopefully, balancing dealing with the crates and meeting with the NGO's will not be too bad.

Anyways, the crates are causing some issues, but generally things are going fairly well. I'll keep you updated.

July 27- Ddegeya and Kampala

Yesterday after I wrote, Angela and I were treated to a very interesting ride back to Engeye. The taxis are rated for 14 people, and on the way to Ddegeya the first time, there were probably 16 or 17 and luggage, so I thought that was bad. But on the way to Ddegeya yesterday, there were 20 people in the taxi! For a half an hour ride!

Anyways, Angela and I managed to find our way back to Ddegeya in plenty of time for dinner. Also, I forgot to mention yesterday, but Angela gave me a Luganda lesson. I now understand how to conjugate verbs, and I have a bunch of verbs to learn. Very exciting. My vocabulary is growing pretty fast!

While waiting for dinner, I played with some of the village kids (tag, where I was always it). During dinner, I started to talk to some of the clinic staff who were working on developing a simple form of electronic medical records for the clinic. There was one part of the electronic medical records that they were having trouble figuring out how to do in Excel. I realized that in java, that would be incredibly easy. I decided to look into it, since I don't think it would take that long, and it would be a very helpful side project. I then made plans with a couple of the other mzungus (white people) to go running in the morning and Angela and I went to bed.

I woke up in the morning at 6:35, determined not to be late for the group run at 7. Unfortunately, I was the only one who woke up, so I set off alone down the main road (there was no way to get lost, since there is really only one road). While running away from the clinic, I simply waved and said "Oli otya?" (How are you?) or "Wasuz'otya" (~Good morning) to the children and villagers on the road, who were all heading in the opposity direction. When I turned around, I quickly accumulated a number of children running barefoot with me on their way to school. I happily yelled "Tugende!" (Let's go!) and the kids laughed at my pronunciation. It was really fun, and I was sad to see them go when we reached the school.

After my run and breakfast, Angela and I went to look for the broken wells in the village. We succeeded in finding a borehole down in the valley about 20 minutes from Engeye, which had good quality, but bad quantities of water. We met brickmaker named Ronald who spoke perfect English. He said that his family walked the 15 minutes to Engeye to get water from the well there because the one here did not reliably have water in the dry season (now). However, another man came who got a little water from the pump, and took it to drink directly while working. We also went up over the hill and found 2 open wells which were incredibly dirty and disgusting, and met a woman who claimed that she drank it and cooked with it after boiling it. The water was extremely milky, so this worried Angela and I enormously. They are probably 40 minutes away from Engeye so people there can't really walk to Engeye for their water.

When we got back, Angela and I decided not to go look at the wood in Kinoni (a local trading center), mostly because we were running out of the money that we brought to Ddegeya, and wanted to make sure we could get back to Kampala. We also decided that because Kinoni is kind of our only option for wood, and John assured us we could get everything we need, that there isn't that much of a reason to go now. So, Angela and I decided to go back to Kampala. After about 5 hours of travel, we made it to her house to surprise her parents who had just gotten back from a convention in the US.

As you can tell- very busy days. I'm also happy to report that the crates are in Kampala, and are ready to be taken to Ddegeya at our earliest convenience. Thank you Bryan for working to get those crates out of England! I'll be in Kampala until Saturday probably, so I'll keep you updated on what we're doing. Can't wait for the rest of the team to get here on Thursday!

Monday July 26- Ddegeya

Oli Otya from Ddegeya! Well technically Angela and I are currently in Masaka, the largest town nearby. We came to Ddegeya yesterday with John by taxi- a slightly more cramped trip than I am used to. Taxi's here are not like taxi's in the US- they act more like buses, except on these buses they put 3 people in 2 seats. The trip took somewhere around 3 hours. The beginning and end were smooth but in the middle of the trip there was a lot of construction. Angela and I alternated reading Harry Potter, and Angela actually managed to sleep. I personally can't sleep when I'm being thrown forward every minute or so, but she was impressive. Apparently here instead of telling you to slow down when there's construction, they just put huge speed bumps on the road. Or maybe those are always there, I'm actually not sure. I personally found big speed bumps on a highway odd, but it definitely worked to slow us down. The Engeye Health Clinic is right on the highway from Masaka to Mbara, so as soon as we got off the taxi we were at the clinic.

This week, Angela and I are staying at the clinic because there is room for us. Next week when the rest of the team arrives, we will stay with families. It sounds like there will be 2 families with 3 people from our team each. These next couple of days though, Angela and I both have beds and misquito nets provided, and there is a clean shower area for us. The food is quite good (we will be eating at the clinic the whole time, so that's a very good thing). I tried matoke for the first time here, which is a staple of many villager's diets. It has the same consistency as squash or sweet potato, but (and this took me a while to place) it tastes almost exactly like artichokes. Luckily, I like artichokes, but sadly Angela does not. There are plenty of other things to eat though, so she can just skip the matoke.

After dinner we played cards with the volunteers at the clinic. There are so many Americans! And 2 or 3 of them are from Boston. It's a small world. By so many I mean like 7 or 8, but I think in 2 weeks they have a medical mission coming, and then there will be about 20 Americans there. It's kind of disconcerting after a week of only seeing Ugandans. Then we brushed our teeth outside, used the latrine (I was not ready for the latrine. All of the latrines I have used in the past have had seats), and then went to bed. We had to use flashlights and headlamps because the power from their small solar panels was used up during the day. Hopefully, with the solar panels we will install, that will change.

Today we got up at 7:30 after a very good sleep. Breakfast was at 8, and was hardboiled eggs, bread (and peanut butter!!) and small sweet bananas. Then Angela and I took pictures of various aspects of the building and the roof that the solar panels will be on. We then walked along the village's main road and passed houses and farmland. We didn't see any wells because those are down the hill, but we have heard that they are about 1 mile apart. We had thought we would pass a school because we had seen many children in uniform getting water that morning from the well near the clinic, but apparently we didn't walk far enough. The school is about a half an hour walk down the road, and we probably only went 15 minutes. Angela and I had fun speculating about which house we would live in, since John hasn't had time to show us yet.

After about 15 minutes of walking we turned back to the clinic. We then walked down into the valley behind the clinic to look at the well that Michael repaired last time he was here. We saw someone using it, and it looked like it was in good condition- the handle moved smoothly, the water came out steadily, and the water was clear. So that was encouraging. We hope to find the other wells tomorrow and see how they are working at this point.

Then it was about 11 or so, and Angela and I wanted to go into Masaka to buy misquito nets for our team and scout out where to buy various items. We have done those things, so our last stop was here, at the internet cafe. Still no word on the crates, but I am optimistic that they'll be ready to go when we come back to Kampala with the whole team this coming weekend.

I'll probably post next when we get back to Kampala. Which will be either tomorrow or Wednesday. Talk to you then!

July 24- Kampala

Angela and I spent last night hanging out with two of her good home friends: Timothy and Nelson. They had a good time trying to teach me Luganda, and we had some interesting conversations about the state of the world as seen from our different perspectives. Timothy is studying architecture (we had fun hearing our different pronunciations of that word) in Turkey, and Nelson is studying to be a minister in Tanzania, so we all had slightly different outlooks. Today we didn't have too much to do because we had originally thought we would be in Ddegeya, and it was raining very hard outside. We hung out with Timothy and Nelson more today and spent the beginning of the day obsessively checking our email for news on the crate, talking to our families on skype, and hanging out with Angela's friends. At 5:30 we still hadn't heard from anyone on the crates and the rain had stopped, so Angela, Timothy and I went out to a fancy mall in Kampala where we ate cake and drank fresh juice. Normally we don't go out at night, but we got back by 9:30 and the mall had tight security, so we felt safe.

Angela and I got back to the house (Timothy went home after our cake and juice adventure) and had dinner (after cake...). I emailed Helen and Bryan, asking whether they thought we should head to the village, or wait for the crates. We then watched 'She's Out of My League' while waiting for their response, which was a nice taste of the US (even though at one point in the movie, small silhouettes walked across the screen- it was filmed from a movie theater).

Helen responded after talking to Bryan saying that they thought we should go to Ddegeya. It's not worth putting our whole project on hold to wait for the panels to arrive and there is a FedEx holding facility in Kampala where the crates can wait if we're not back yet. At this point, the plan is for Angela and I to go to Ddegeya tomorrow at about 2 pm with John (the clinic manager) and stay there until probably Wednesday, but possibly Tuesday if it seems like there's a lot that we need in Kampala. Most of the team arrives on Thursday, and we will be there to greet them at the airport. Then the team and the crates will travel together, probably on Saturday.

Angela and I now have to go run around and pack up- we weren't sure what was happening, so we're not as prepared to leave as we could be. Tomorrow Angela is going to go to church and I am going to stay here and do laundry (by hand!) and pack up. Wish us luck!

July 23rd- Kampala

As you might have noticed from the title, Angela and I are not in Ddegeya today. I did not get a call from FedEx last night telling me that the crates had arrived, so I called the FedEx office in the US to try and get information. I was put on hold, and was sure that my phone was going to run out of money before I got through. Finally they got to me, but my phone died right as the man said "Your crates are delayed. They're in-" Obviously, that worried me, so I texted Harriet on Angela's phone and told her that we probably wouldn't drive to Engeye on Friday. Then this morning Angela and I went to the FedEx office in Kampala and had them look into it. They found that the crates were still in England, although they didn't know why. I still don't have airtime, although that's my next stop, so I will update Harriet soon. Hopefully she will be ok with a more up in the air date of departure.

Angela and I then went to Angela's mom's office where we are now using the internet. When I checked my email I saw that Bryan had also been looking into the shipping problem and had found out that there is a pretty serious issue in England. The crates should have been put on FedEx cargo, but for some reason they were not, and now they are sitting in England with British shipping people trying to find anyone that has enough room to take these 2 large crates. Not an ideal situation. I can't do much from here, as my phone calls last about a minute if I'm calling to the US, but Bryan is looking into. I admit, I'm a little nervous, but I am hopeful that it will all work out and that the crates will arrive within a week.

We are therefore not going to Ddegeya, probably until the crates arrive. We might still go on Sunday with John, but we would like to travel with the crates if possible, and Angela might need to sign for the crates here, so being in Ddegeya would be inconvenient. Also, we are going to call and meet with several water quality and quantity related NGO's hopefully within the next few days. We will call them this afternoon and try and set up appointments, so that at least we have a starting place on the water project if the energy project ends up getting delayed.

July 22nd- Kampala

This morning Angela and I slept through Angela's alarm (I forgot to set mine). Angela woke up at 11 and immediately woke me up too- we were supposed to meet Emmanuel at 11. We called him and told him we would be late, and got out of the house 15 minutes later. We got to Kampala road where we met Emmanuel at 12, and apologized for our tardiness. While traveling to Kampala road, Harriet Muyambi called me, so I called her back as soon as we got there. I set up a meeting with her for 3 pm at the Imperial Royale Hotel, where her office is.

Emmanuel, Angela and I then set off to look for charge controllers, inverters, and batteries. We first went to a taxi park where there were incredible numbers of taxis and people. I wish I had time to take a picture- it was litteraly a sea of small white buses. I'm not sure how they all got in there, or how any of them manage to get out. We finally figured out which taxi to take and then went off on a fairly long taxi ride, followed by a short boda boda ride, to Ultra Tech. We spent a while at Ultra Tec, as at first they just wanted us to tell us the load we had, and they would design our system for us. We finally convinced them that we just wanted to know the prices of various types of inverters and charge controllers, got the information, and headed back to the taxi. We got back near Kampala road and went to Market street where we went to 3 other vendors, again spending lots of time convincing them that we did not want them to size our system for us. We eventually got the information we wanted, finishing at 2:20- enough time left to get a quick bite to eat before meeting Harriet. Angela, Emmanuel, and I then went to a nice little lunch spot near Market St. where we all had chapattis and gravy, and mango juice out of juice boxes. Emmanuel is very nice and helpful, and really led the search for controllers and inverters today. Then we split up, Emmanuel heading back to Makerere and Angela and I going to the Imperial Royale Hotel, but we are looking forward to seeing him again next week.

Angela and I took boda bodas to the Imperial Royale Hotel, but our boda bodas went different ways so we arrived at different exits. I called her and we found each other easily, but I admit it scared me for a second. It was my first time in the city not being in an arms reach of Angela. We went through the 2 security check points and found the Super Rides office in the lobby of the Imperial Royale Hotel. Harriet was very nice and asked me many questions about my sister Rebecca, who she knows well. My sister worked with her while she was in Uganda, which is how I found out about their company. Harriet showed us the pickup truck that would take the crates and confirmed that we could ride with them to the clinic, which I think is currently our plan. We want to make sure that the crates get their safely, and make sure they are loaded carefully into a room in the clinic. We met the driver who seemed very nice, but did not speak any English. He's from the Masaka area, and knows where Engeye is, which is really nice since Angela and I don't. I then quickly confirmed the plan with Harriet- we would meet them at their office, then drive over to FedEx with them tomorrow morning, and head to the village. Angela and I have not decided if we will stay in the village for the rest of the week, or if we will come back with the truck driver to Kampala. We still have people we want to meet with here, but the weekend probably will not be the best time for that anyways. We'll decide that tonight.

After the Imperial Royale Hotel, we walked back in towards the main areas of Kampala (props to Angela for not getting us lost even though she had never walked that area before). We went and saw UTL- the internet carrier for Angela- so that hopefully we can have internet at her home when we are in Kampala again. It has been frustrating to have a computer and an internet connection, but not be able to use it. Finally we came back to Ntinda, where we passed my new friend who sells sugar cane on the street. We bought some from him the other day, and since we walk that road every day to get to the internet cafe, we now say hello every day. And now we are here, at an internet cafe at 6 pm, pretty exhausted (probably because we've only eaten chapattis today, which is essentially very flat bread). But we got a lot done today, even though we woke up later than we had intended.

I'll try and post again tomorrow, but if we're in the village then I'm not sure what the internet availability will be. I'm very excited to see the village! Can't believe we're going tomorrow!

Wednesday already! Days are flying by. Monday after I wrote I rode on a boda boda with Angela and went back to a delicious dinner and more Ugandan TV. That night, Angela and I were apparently still jetlagged so we were both up until 3 am (only 8 pm Boston time though). I woke up at 11:30 yesterday because we went to bed so late, but Angela slept until 1! Clearly we are still recovering. As soon as we got up, we called Dr. Musazi, our partner at the Makerere University, and scheduled a meeting for this morning at 7:30 am. We then called Emmanuel and Alan, two of Dr. Musazi's students who are helping us with our project, and scheduled a meeting with them for last night at 6 pm. Finally, we called John Kalule, the manager of the Engeye Health Clinic, and asked if we could get a ride to the clinic with him this Sunday. He seemed fine with that idea, so we are meeting him on Sunday to go see the Ddegeya village for the first time. Angela and I then traveled into Ntinda to find internet, but as soon as we got to the internet cafe, the power went down. We waited for about 20 minutes before giving up and heading back to her house. We then wandered around her neighborhood for a while, and I took many pictures of interesting houses and plants. I also saw lots of chickens and a rabbit wandering around near houses. Alan and Emmanuel came over at 6 and we chatted for a while about the charge controllers and inverter options. Emmanuel is going to show us some of the options tomorrow morning. After another yummy meal (I ate a ton of dinner- we didn't have lunch because we had breakfast so late) we watched a little more TV, surfed facebook on our phones (such a luxury!) and fought with Angela's computer until it was time to go to bed. Angela was not able to sleep, so I woke up this morning at 6 to find her sitting in the kitchen. We traveled to see Dr. Musazi at the Makerere University by taxi and boda boda. We finally found him, and after a small mix up over who we were, we started talking about the project. He had a lot of good ideas- LED lights, focusing on rain water collection, and marketing things like lights to the villagers at the end of harvest season, when people have money. Lots of things that I hadn't thought about before. We just checked our emails to find lots of new things to think about with the wiring issues, so we think we will wait for the rest of the team before we buy the wire. Next we are going to go to the bank, so that the money we fundraised this year can be wired over. It's another beautiful day- perfect weather, as the past three days have been. We still have lots to do, but we are definitely making progress!

First Day in Kampala

Angela and I arrived in Entebbe last night and were greeted by Angela's family and friends. We drove the hour back to Kampala with Angela's aunt, uncle, cousins, and brother, all of whom were very nice. Her little cousins were incredibly cute. We were then treated to a delicious dinner of chapati, beef, peas, and rice. We also had fresh juice, all at Angela's house. Today we took the morning to recover from out jet lag. Angela got her hair done and we hung out with her older brother. We ate good food and watched Ugandan TV, both MTV in English and the movie Beethoven dubbed over and narrated in Luganda, which was fun. This afternoon we took a taxi to buy phones and supplies. The taxi was cool- driving here is generally different and more crowded. I'm excited but nervous to try a boda boda soon. I'm so glad that Angela knows how it all works -I would be totally lost here without her. We got good phones (the one I got is probably fancier than the one I have at home) and visited Angela's aunt in the store that Angela's aunt and mother run. We then went to Hardware world, where we found a lot of what we needed. We were unprepared for the wires to be measured in mm instead of inches, so we are going to go back soon to get the electrical equipment. Everything's going really well- I can't wait for the rest of the team to get here!

Tess