A Series of Unfortunate Events

Since my last post, the field course group has moved back to Y.E.S. hostel in Fort Portal, given their potential hydro site evaluations and gone home. Some went directly, others took more meandering routes to take in more of East Africa. I gave Stan (Dan) a couple of letters for my Nanna, which he has graciously posted on his return. Before leaving, Stan was breifly host to some 'Jiggers'; click here for wikipedia's explanation. Jo (the aforementioned "Moobi") stayed on later than most, after a local NGO showed interest in collaborating in a long-term rain-water harvesting project, aimed at bringing clean water to those currently too far from a source. Jo, James, Rae and Hok Lam's project during the field course had been to develop a cost-effective system. I should point out that, like all good NGO work, the idea is not to simply give the systems away, worsening local western dependence, but to sell them at an affordable price.

I've spent the last couple of weeks working on the hydroscheme's electronics, making very slow progress; in the last few days, the rest of the team has moved to live on-site, leaving me behind in Fort Portal where there is (usually) power. I've actually only spent two nights without at least one other member of the team in the hostel, due to the various errands and meetings needed here.

The first of the post-entitling unfortunate events was the theft of Rajiv's camera as he worked on-site at Mabwe. The fact that the camera was not on show, and safely tucked away in his rucksack, made the theft even more disheartening. The community's reaction was a little shocking; four men were apprehended and tied to a tree. Whipping began, before Dan intervened. The locals were keen to demonstrate their no-tolerance attitude, and even keener to pin the blame on an outsider. A trusted contributer to last year's scheme was one of the four. The man we believe to be the thief was also within the four, but maintained his innocence. We were reluctant to persue the issue, as the man clearly has some mental health issues. Another reason for our reluctance is the traditional Ugandan punishment for thievery: death by immediate beating. In a country in which stealing from a person could  literally starve them, theft is a serious crime.

Three unfortunate events have befallen my person, although the first two were mainly my fault. Firstly, I ignored label warnings and took my antimalarial (Doxycycline) pills immediately before bed and without any food. The next morning I had severe heartburn and couldn't swallow anything without pain. Realising that the Doxy had damaged my oesophagus, I decided I couldn't really stop taking my antimalarials, and so simply treated the soreness with Ibuprofen (painkiller and anti-inflammatory). Three days later, with the symptoms getting steadily worse, I finally did some research, only to discover that this mistake is quite common, and usual treatment is to immediately cease antimalarials, at which point recovery takes a few days. I also discovered that Ibuprofen is known to excasserbate oesophagitus. I am never self-medicating without research again.

Towards the end of my end of my eating difficulties, I managed to forget that a mains transformer I was working on was still plugged in and switched on; grabbing it to move it, I electrocuted myself and startled everyone else by shouting very loudly. Luckily the conduction path was simply through my hand, rather than anywhere vital, so the only consequence was a numb and tingling hand.

My oesaphagus healed slowly over about 5 days, and I managed to get two painless meals in before my third mishap: the worst stomach bug I have ever had. I will spare any readers the more graphic details, but the lowest point came on the first night of infection, with the rest of the team out for dinner leaving me behind "feeling a bit queasy". A routine bathroom visit resulted in me, dizzy and sweating buckets, having to call for help (from strangers) from the cubicle, unable to stand.

Another event, too potentially serious to be labelled a "mishap", turned out to be a lucky escape; Dan and Becca were returning from Mt. Gessi on the back of a Boda when a dog ran out in front of them. The driver couldn't avoid it, and all three were thrown from the bike. Becca suffered some bad scrapes and grazing down the right hand side of here body. Dan, with reflexes of a panther as always, landed on Becca. Even his camera came out scratchless. If both had not been wearing helmets (purchased only a few days earlier) the results could have been a lot worse.

I write this looking out over the lights of night-time Kampala, having made the five hour coach journey again in an attempt to find some electronics supplies in the capital, as well as other components of the scheme. My initial impressions of the city may have been unfair; having walked around a fair bit alone this evening, the atmosphere is nowhere near as bad as I thought. The people are all friendly and helpful. Perhaps being introduced to Kampala in the dark, after a two-day journey, did not help my feelings towards her.

Some updates and a few photos

Living at URDT has been fairly uneventful, if sprinkled with the obligatory African surprises. On visiting the metal-working workshop on campus in an attempt to find a pillar drill, Jack, Vish and I stumbled across an apparently recent project; a helicopter. Powered by a two-stroke engine and with flat plank blades, it clearly wasn't entirely a welding exercise. The frame itself is thin strip steel and probably not strong enough to stand on. It doesn't fly, and has no mechanism for tilt or yaw if they manage to make it do so.

Twice this week we've been woken by loud running footsteps on our roof, which turned out to be the baboons. The second time, the locals living in the quadrangle with us decided to tease them with a huge stuffed bear, causing much confusion among the younger baboons. Later, one of the aforementioned was playing on the volleyball net and damaging it, so Jimmy ran at it; the tiny thing stood its ground for a second, before running directly towards Jimmy, reversing the roles and chasing him across the field, much to everyone's amusement. 

The third and final picture is of the final survey site mentioned in a previous post, with locals shown standing nearby for scale.

Marco, who lived in Africa for the first 12 years of his life but has been taking Malarone as an antimalarial precaution anyway, managed to miss a few doses and contract the parasite. Last night, he was considering heading to Kampala to see the European High Commission doctor, but heavy doses of Malarone have seen him improve greatly overnight. Earlier in the week, he badly twisted his ankle playing volleyball, causing it to swell by about 50%. Not a good week for Marco.

On Sunday we were invited to play what we thought was a small game of football against some locals. We were led to what turned out to be the town full-size pitch, where a crowd of between 75 and 100 people waited. The full-size pitch allowed the locals to use their speed and stamina; even with rolling subs we were all shattered. Jo earned himself cheers and the nickname "moobi" (tough) from the crowd after replacing my feeble efforts in goal, and James caused much mirth by attempting an overhead kick. James is Warwick Rugby's first team prop. He redeemed himself by scoring our only goal, resulting in a final score of 2-1 to the locals. Apparently there's a good picture on somebody's camera, I'll try to acquire it.

The beard is coming along nicely, I'll give it a week or so and post a picture.

Mt. Gessi, URDT and Electrical Experiments

Sunday's plan was to move with the rest of the field course to URDT, the Ugandan Rural Development and Training program, a few hours North-East of Fort Portal. Jack and I will spend two weeks there attempting to find and eliminate the cause of early CFL light-bulb failures at Mt. Gessi primary school, the hydro scheme installed last year. We decided to visit the scheme to talk to the headteacher and pick up the failed CFLs for analysis. James and Tom were interested in seeing the scheme, so four of us jumped on two bodas and headed West, with Jack giving his sunglasses to our driver to protect from the dust. The traditional boda race ensued with each pair making the appropriate gestures on passing. At one point, with James and Tom's boda 15 yards ahead, their bike made an as yet unexplained bang, and James' arm-flailing panic amused our driver very much.

The Mt.Gessi school (and hydro site) is around a 30 minute walk from the main road; the area in which we left the boda was very poor and strewn with rubbish. As we climbed the steep slopes on narrowing paths, the scenery dramatically improved, until we reached the school with a commanding view along the huge valley and towards mountains in the distance. Uganda had officially taken the Norwegian fjords' scenery crown. We were enthusiastically greeted by locals on the route, with several recognising Jack, who had been part of the team responsible for installing the scheme. On arrival, we were greeted enthusiastically by the headmaster. The kids weren't there as it was a Sunday. After a brief description of the bulbs' failure, we collected around 5 and headed back down Mt. Gessi. The boda ride back to fort portal was fairly uneventful. Wandering around the town centre, I bumped into a bloke in charge of a group of 20-odd schoolgirls from Cheltenham, travelling across Uganda, who seemed somewhat surprised to see two white men wandering around in Fort Portal; I don't think they were allowed off the bus very often, in an effort to avoid trouble.

After returning to the hostel and spending a good half hour clambering over a minibus attempting to secure everyone's luggage on the roof-rack, we set off North-East towards the grounds of URDT (Ugandan Rural Development and Training). They are an organisation intending to empower locals of the Kibali region through training in various disciplines, from food cultivation to artisanship to general life management. Also on the 60-acre site is the African Rural University (ARU) and a girl's primary school. We are now staying in a quadrangle of double rooms on the campus, along with a family of baboons who regularly try to steal our food, cows, goats, sheep, monkeys and a family of cheetahs that we are yet to find. I'm in a hurry, so more details will follow!

Ugandan Adventures and the Perfect Hydro Site

Friday night saw my first "bodaboda" ride; Uganda is full of men with 125cc motorcycles, more than happy to be paid around 1000 shillings (25p) to shuttle you around. The name is a corruption of "border to border", as the bikes were originally used to ferry people crossing no man's land between borders. On Dan's advice, we made our driver demonstrate his brakes and headlight before setting off. The ride was surprisingly relaxing.

On Saturday, we returned to the promising site, only to be told by a local man that the river led to much bigger drops further downstream. We followed him off into fields and were dissapointed to see the river diminishing as we followed it. We logged a small drop on the GPS before continuing to the next, apparently bigger drop. This process was repeated about 5 times over the next 2 hours, with each drop being admittedly bigger than the last. As we walked through the countryside we gathered quite a crowd of curious and friendly locals. My neck and face were beginning to burn quite badly, so I stopped to top up the sun block. The locals laughed (in good nature) about my "weak muzungu skin". Eventually, the hills became steeper and the river faster flowing, and the sites we came across more and more promising. Twice, we had decided that a site was perfect before being led to an even better one. The final site had a drop of around 30m and a huge flow rate; we still need to crunch the numbers on the various measurement methods we used. The locals were somewhat bemused by Dan and I clambering around in the river. The only concern was usage: the local population was much lower than the river could potentially supply, given the huge costs of efficient transmission over distance. One man stated that there were 8000 households within 2km, which was clearly ridiculous. On the walk back to the car, we were low on water and what we had was very warm, so I decided to try out the Waterstraw, an instantaneous filtering device that claims to be capable of removing anything harmful down to chemical or viral contaminants. Our guide, Silva, and the locals were very concerned when I started drinking from the river, but on explanation and demonstration were very impressed, and wanted to know how much one cost. We also came across a mango tree, and some children trying to knock them down. We helped and took a mango each - they were safe to eat due to their (removed) skin, in much the same way as Bananas. It was the juiciest, most flavoursome piece of fruit I have ever tasted.

On returning to the hostel, I was glad to remember my solar shower: a thick black 20 litre plastic bag and tap arrangement, that I had left out in the sun before leaving. With a little thought to conservation, the bag supplied almost  3 warm showers, a rare luxury. We decided to go to a restaurant in Fort Portal called Piers (but pronounced "Pierre's") that specialized in Pizza, in an attempt to minimise typical African dining waiting times. We invited three film-makers also staying the hostel, making an educational film about the impact of human activities surrounding the Mpanga river on those living downstream. The film was to be entirely in Roturo (the local language) and shown along the length of the Mpanga river. After a lot of food, beer and good conversation, bodas took us back to the hostel.

6 modes of transport, 72 hours, and lots of dust.

It's Friday night and I'm sat on my bed in the hostel at which we're staying in Fort Portal. I've been in uganda for 2 days; I still haven't managed to access the internet. I'll upload this to my blog when I do. The journey here was very long and tiring: a coach from Manchester to Birmingham, Birmingham to Tile Hill and back to pick up some rock climbing equipment, Birmingham to Amsterdam by plane, where we spent the night, then Amsterdam to Kigali by plane, followed by Kigali to Entebbe, Uganda. The private hire picked us up from Entebbe at around 11PM, and we arrived at Backpackers' in Kampala around an hour later to find it without electricity or enough water to flush the Western-style toilets. At this stage, my spirits were low. The night was uncomfortably warm, but I slept fairly well through exhaustion.
The morning sun showed me what the dark had hidden; lush vegitation and beautiful scenery. My spirits were lifted, and my first encounter with a "Keyhole" toilet went well; it's surprisingly natural, and it became clear why Western-style toilets are seen as strange elsewhere in the world. Breakfast took a typically African long time to arrive. We left our bags in storage at Backpackers' and got a taxi into the centre of Kampala, to see the man in charge of GIZ about obtaining a permit for the Mabwe hydro scheme. Kampala itself is chaos - dusty, dirty and packed with human beings selling anything they can. The heavy traffic saw us abandon the taxi and walk to Amber House, where GIZ are located. We were stared at constantly, as even in the capital city centre, 'Muzungu' are rare. The new head of GIZ was welcoming and efficient, and happened to be coming to Fort Portal in a few days, where we could meet him and collect our permit.
Traffic wasted even more time in returning to the hostel, and the journey back to the centre became a race to catch a coach across the country to Fort Portal. Stationary traffic again caused us to abandon the taxi and walk, but this time we were all carrying very large bags. The area around the coach station was particularly busy and dirty, and the atmosphere was not good, making us glad to reach the station. On arriving, the coach was already full, but those in charge decided they could fit both us and our huge baggage onto it. 10 minutes of struggling later, the coach left the station. We all got interesting people to sit next to: Jack was paired with a large lady with little concept of personal space, Dan attempted to educate two young Ugandan men, before pulling out his Ukulele, Becca was proposed to by a compulsive liar, who offered a dowry of a mobile phone, and I conversed brokenly with a combined Civil Engineer and Christian minister; the conversation swung between how he could get work in the U.K., and attempts to convert me, including his belief that God had sent me (a self-confessed Athiest) to Uganda to meet him. The journey was 5 hours long.
On arrival in Fort Portal, it was dark but immediately clear that this was a cleaner, more relaxed city. We hired a car to take us to the Y.E.S. hostel, finally meeting the 20 coursemates joining us for the Field Course. We ate what was left of dinner, and headed out with everyone else to the Mountains of the Moon hotel, which happens to have a very comfortable bar and garden. 500ml of Nile beer, a very drinkable lager, cost 3000 shillings; around 75p in British money. Being exhausted from our 3 day journey, we soon returned to the Hostel to sleep.
Having arrived at the Field course 3 days late, we were left with 2 days to complete the first portion, a survey of a river site. We had also been given the task of investigation a 20km-long escarpment, in contrast to the other groups' well defined sites. We had gained a teammate by this point, Ray, as his bags had been temporarily lost in Cairo, delaying his journey. This meant that 5 students, a driver and a local guide all piled into the 5-seater Toyota Hilux. Ray and I jumped into the back, at first enjoying the lack of a rear window, bouncing along dirt tracks, waving to rural folk shocked to see Muzungu. However, the car was kicking up a huge dust cloud, and we were soon covered; pictures to follow. We closed the window and continued attempting to find our way to the escarpment using a combination of 1968 maps and my laptop GPS (without an internet connection for maps). This did not go well, and after many hot, bumpy hours and circles, when we thought we were finally close, a local informed us that most of the roads marked on the map leading to the escarpment no longer exist.
We eventually came to a village at which we were directed to talk to the LC1, a man in charge of around a 10 person settlement. He took us to a very small and useless river, before getting in our car to take us to one he promised was much larger. In the car, he explained that he had built his big house using his profits from growing a local chewable narcotic - before showing us his fields on arrival. Although technically illegal, the local police do not enforce any laws unless there is profit in it for them. The new river site was fast-flowing, but with only around 5m head (drop). On climbing out over a branch to investigate the depth of a pool, I met my first colony of biting ants. The locals informed us that there were 2 trading centres within a kilometre, and that they had small solar panels that were only useful in summer. This potential use coupled with prior knowledge of electrcity conservation made the community viable hydro-power users. We decided to return tomorrow with a supervisor, to carry out flow measurements and mapping of the river.

And I'm Off

Now that I've started actually travelling, the strong sense of apprehension is beginning to be overtaken by excitement; I suppose if I've messed up and forgotten something, the damage is done.

I'm cruising down the A556 towards Birmingham International, where I'll meet up with Dan, Jack and Becca, before flying to Amsterdam at 17:30. Paul, Emily and Rajiv can't yet take part in the Field Course, so are flying out 3 weeks later.

Going to see if I can squeeze in a return train journey from Birmingham International to Tile Hill to pick up some climbing quickdraws, as they might be useful when we're dangling off bits of rock at the Mabwe site.

Who, Where, Why, and Why the Blog

My name is Ethan Fowler, and I'm a student studying Systems Engineering at Warwick University. I'm very into Development Engineering, and co-founded Warwick's branch of Engineers Without Borders in my first year. Next year is my last, and I'll be co-president of the branch.

This project isn't actually affiliated with EWB in any way; Dr. Colin Oram, of Warwick's Development Technology Unit, has begun using his extensive Ugandan experience to supervise what are to be annual projects in the country. Each team of around 7 students choose the next, through a series of interviews, with some members staying on for a second year.

I was lucky enough to be selected, and the project begins in earnest in 3 weeks. The immediate goal is to electrify Mabwe, a trading town just east of the Mountains of the Moon, in Western Uganda. The long term goal is to establish the knowledge and confidence in micro-hydro electricity generation within Uganda, such that the technology spreads of its own accord, without Western interference.

Before that, however, I will be taking part in the university's African Field Course module, initially surveying a separate potential micro-hydro site, before moving on to investigate the cause of an existing scheme's energy saving light-bulbs' untimely demise.

The main reason for this blog is for my own records and future reminscence; if others find it interesting, even better. I fly tomorrow, on the 12th.