August 17- Kampala and Ddegeya

Hello from Kampala and happy belated birthday Shavi! Most of the team is in Ddegeya, but Angela and Tess are in Kampala at the moment. Angela has been in Kampala since we came back on Thursday and has been getting her visa to go back to school. Tess only just got here today. Since I (Tess) last wrote, we celebrated Shavi's birthday with a nice dinner in Jinja on Saturday and then joined Michael and Elliot (a friend from the clinic) for dessert and cards and heard lots of fun stories about their white water rafting experience. On Sunday we headed back to Ddegeya. We arrived in Ddegeya after a long and uncomfortable day of traveling, but full of delicious chapattis and happy to find out that we were having chapatti for dinner as well. I had a yummy rolex (a chapatti with egg, avocado, cabbage, onion, and for everyone else, tomato, wrapped up in it), as well as many plain chapattis that day. I think I will need to learn to make chapatti back in the US because they are delicious.

Yesterday we did a lot of work. Marisa spent the morning finishing the biosand filter, so that it is now fully assembled and not even leaking! Woo! Shavi and Alan went to Masaka to pick up more materials and to get the metal that we bought in Kampala on Thursday turned into a drill bit so we can dig. Tess, Emmanuel, and Michael spent the morning walking around with the one of the hosts, Mrs. Mwenika, finding and measuring the houses that the Water Board suggested for rain water catchment. It ended up being a 3 hour hike on probably the hottest day so far, so by the end of it we were very excited for lunch. After lunch, Marisa, Emma, and Tess decided to go back to those same houses with a GPS to make sure we knew exactly where they were. At the same time, Shavi and Alan continued working on making the drill bit, and Michael got to do some of his work, which was good. At dinner, I happily announced to everyone that it was Shavi's birthday and we sang him a birthday song. 21! Very exciting.

This morning, Michael, Marisa, Alan, and Tess went to a broken borehole with 2 carjacks, with the hope of fixing it. This borehole had been repaired by the previous EWB group, but when putting it back together, some part of the pump had stuck, and so it still wasn't functioning. Unfortunately, even with carjacks lifting this pump up, the pump was still very much stuck and we did not see a way to unstick it. We will have to abandon that pump until we know more about it or can get a rig in to fix it (which we probably can't do since it's in the middle of nowhere surrounded by crop fields).

At the same time, Emmanuel and Shavi went back to Masaka (poor Shavi- going in again) to get one more thread put on a pipe, so that the drill bit can be attached. I also called Eunice (our customs clearing agent) and found out that we need to get a document to Entebbe, and it can't be faxed or scanned- needs to be the original document. So John gave me the paperwork, and I headed off to Kampala after lunch. Before that though the guys got a lot more wiring done and we also got about 30 free bricks from a local brickmaker so we can experiment with making a brick water tank for rainwater catchment.

The trip took a long time and there was a lot of traffic because of rain, so I didn't get a chance to drop off the document today (it ended up taking 6 hours from Engeye to Angela's house). Tomorrow morning I will drop the document with our clearing agent so she can keep working, and Angela needs to go get her passport at 2:30, so we're not sure exactly when we're heading back, or if we're heading back together. Tomorrow evening is the second Water Management Board meeting, so hopefully that goes well, and hopefully I'll be back before that. I finished my book on the drive here, so I'm not quite sure what I'll do on the 3 or 4 hour journey back, but I'm sure I'll manage.

Time is getting short! Michael and Alan leave our team on Friday, and the rest of us leave the following Sunday. Amazing how time flies!