Hello from Kampala! Angela and I are back at her house in Ntinda (a town right next to Kampala) while the rest of the team (Bryan, Emmanuel, Shavi, Marisa, and Michael now too) are all in Ddegeya.
Things have been going well the past few days. The families that we are staying with are very nice. The girls' room is up off of the main road, in the home of Ms. Mwenika, who has been very kind and hospitable to us, even providing us hot water in the morning to wash our faces. It has taken me some time to get used to roosters crowing all morning starting at about 5 am, but besides that it has been really nice. We have their whole front room, and we bought small mattresses and misquito nets which we are sharing between the 3 of us. The guys' house is apparently also very nice, and while they don't have roosters, they do have a host who enjoys listening to the radio at high volume all night. So we all have things to get used to.
The batteries and wiring all arrived safely in Engeye and have since been unwrapped and stored as we start to connect the system together. We have also found a man to weld two 3 storied shelves that can hold the batteries and keep them neat and out of the way. The shelves should be ready tomorrow or the next day. The water section of the trip is also going well. We have found a couple sources of sand, and are looking for others to find the purest source. We have also found many of the wells that are on the water team maps from previous trips, and we are hoping that Michael will help us in evaluating what is wrong and what could be fixed. Marisa and I (Tess) went for a walk to find the wells, but did not get to two of the dirtier open wells because an older lady talked to us for so long in Luganda (I just kept repeating "I don't speak Luganda" in Luganda, but she didn't seem to care), so we eventually gave up and basically ran away back to Engeye. Maybe next time we'll take either Emmanuel or Angela.
Angela got a visa appointment for Wednesday morning at 9 am, so she needed to head back into Kampala. Then I called a man named Roey from another NGO in Uganda that imports solar panels, and he gave me a contact at JM Freight, who he suggested I talk to about getting a more reliable customs agent. I set up a meeting for Wednesday at 11 am, so that I can talk to that company. Angela and I set out back to Kampala this morning at about 9:30, after having spent only 2 days in the village. Hopefully soon we will stay there for a more extended period of time (those taxi rides really aren't that fun back and forth to Kampala). We will return to Ddegeya on Thursday, hopefully with good news from Kampala and to find some good stuff happening in Ddegeya.
We have all had fun interacting with the kids (they all decided to pile on top of Bryan, getting him dirty enough that he finally agreed to shower) and we have had a good time getting to know the other Americans at the clinic. We have also had some good walks to Kinoni since taxis don't seem to stop for us at Engeye, which is about a 2 or 3 mile walk. Everything is going well, and I will keep you updated.
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