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!