Village visit to Bubala

Nedra arranged for us to visit Bubala Primary School, where some friends, Jodi and Joanne are involved with a project to build a new latrine. Poor sanitation is a health concern, and the latrines should prevent waste contaminating the water supply, which comes from a borehole by the school.  Here am I sitting on the new but not quite completed latrine - Nedra has a box of tiles painted by children at a school in Wayne, PA sitting in her apartment waiting to be installed at the project next week and the grand opening ceremony is planned for early August.

First, we picked up Koojo Justus Kojax in Jinja.  Justus is an amazing young man.  At the age of 25, he has established a non-profit called Kitenge Africa Foundation that cares for street children in Kampala, providing them with a place - a churchyard - to meet where they can bathe, get clothes and food, as well as counselling to try to reunite them with relatives.  Justus also co-founded 1000 Shades of Green Safari Company, which supports the Kitenge Africa Foundation through its profits.  Justus is involved in the Bubala latrine project and was able to introduce us to the others in the team.  He also happens to be a fabulous photographer - he took the shots of me above.

Bubala is in the Iganga district, which is about 50km east of Jinja.  We drove through Iganga to the town of Idudi, where we picked up Paul, who runs a microfinance organization called WOWAYA to help people in his district get out of poverty.  WOWAYA provides local people with small loans to start poultry businesses, or to buy boda-bodas (motorcycle taxis) which they can use to generate income to pay off the loans.  Paul comes from this district and was trained by the Red Cross in Kampala in community development and project management.

We left the main road and Paul directed us about 5km along narrow dirt tracks skirted by fields to the village of Bubala.  We passed people mainly riding or pushing bicycles, and had to toot the horn at the occasional cow or goat meandering along the track ahead.  The village was fairly spread out - it's hard to tell where the boundaries are.  Most people here live in small round mud huts constructed from wattle and daub with thatched roofs.  Apparently a family of as many as ten people sleep in one hut.  There is no electricity or running water in the area - people must fetch it from the borehole.  Paul told me that there are about 2,000 households in the area, approximately 10,000 people. The people are very poor but they don't seem unhappy.