on Tuesday, scarlet and I caught a matatu (taxi-van) to Katosi fishing village in the mukono district where avery and colleen live. we arrived in the late afternoon in time to sit in on the end of a fish farming meeting happening at the katosi field office. a specialist from France was visiting and to give a small workshop on plankton growth in fish farms (who knew?)
because the French people were visiting, Mama Gertrude (house-mom of the Katosi field office) cooked a huge Ugandan feast that was delicious! we ate with everyone and then hung out with avery and colleen for a little while and helped to prep all our supplies for the next day's activities at St. John Bosco primary school. we made name-tags for all the kids in the sanitation club and planned how to teach the members of the club about tippy tap construction. we went to bed fairly early due to the lack of power (planning and making nametags by flashlight alone was fairly tricky)
on Wednesday morning, we woke up at 7, had some breakfast and then made the 40 minute walk to St. John Bosco in order to arrive at 8. colleen and avery volunteer to teach in the P-4 class, so we went there and sat in on their math class. it was interesting to see how the class was taught and to see the what they were learning about math. during their second lesson, we went to inspect where the tippy taps (hand-washing stations) would be built and to talk to the groundskeeper about planning some gardens that we may get to plant this week.
after break at 10:30 (where we served bread and porridge, which is like sweet, watered down grits served hot) we gathered the students from P-3 and P-4, all of them are the hygiene and sanitation club, to instruct them on how to build tippy taps. we split them into 4 groups and distributed name-tags and rosters. it was a little disorganized at first, but after we finally got pictures of all the groups, we arranged them in a semi-circle around us as we built the first tippy tap near the school latrines as an example.
a tippy tap is a very simple hand-washing apparatus. it consists of two large sticks firmly planted in the ground with forked ends at the top. another thinner stick is then laid across these two and a jerry can is hung from the middle. by drilling a hole in the cap, a string can be thread from the can down to a stick that is used as a pedal to tip the jerry can over. water then spills out from two holes in the side and you are able to easily wash your hands.
each of the four groups built a tippy tap successfully and now the school has five!
it was really cool to see the kids completely take charge of the construction. each of the interns oversaw one of the tippy taps as they were built, but we really didn't do much. my group even went a step further than the instructions we gave them and they built a drain under the jerry can to collect the water from gathering in a puddle. I was seriously impressed.
Wednesday afternoon, heidi, the peacecorps volunteer at katosi, took us to a few of the local schools so that we could set up a project we are going to do this week. it's called "postcards for progress" and is part of a peace initiative set-up between uganda and rwanda. it's an art-based pen-pal program that pairs students from uganda with students in rwanda in the hopes of bringing the two cultures together and bridging gaps between the two countries. we bought all the supplies today (markers, pens, paper, etc) and are going out to Katosi tomorrow afternoon to stay for a few days. we are working with at least 2, maybe 3, schools on Monday and Tuesday and then hopefully going back to St. John Bosco on Wednesday to build gardens.
tomorrow is the 4th of july, which doesn't really mean much in uganda, obviously. but margaret (my boss) invited me (and colleen and scarlet) to go with her and her family to some luncheon in a town near the equator. I just found out that her husband is a member of parliament and we have to dress up for the meeting, so apparently he is pretty legit. I don't know exactly what the purpose of the meeting is, but it should be interesting to say the least.
that's all for now!
here's a picture of the tippy tap my group built:
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