Wednesday, July 21, 2010
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!
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Glad to hear that you have arrived in Kampala safely and seem to be enjoying it. Keep us posted and good luck with the remainder of your stay.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear Musazi was receptive and full of ideas-could definitely be useful in the future. Did you know he's presenting at a bunch of conferences over here?
ReplyDeleteHow was the boda boda ride?