Week 6 - The Importance of Ownership

Location: Kalangala, Ssese Islands, Uganda

After weeks of classroom learning and field observations, the group anxiously awaited the chance to participate in an actual hands-on public health-oriented project. With our trip to the Ssese Islands in Lake Victoria, we were finally presented with such an opportunity. Given the mission to help extend a waterline to an unserviced village in Uganda’s Kalangala district, we were excited to finally contribute something that was both meaningful and sustainable to our host country. Not only would we be helping to improve the overall water security of the village, we would be helping to stop the spread of waterborne diseases. Needless to say, we were ready to give it our all.

Across the board, the group seemed to be fairly disappointed at our level of involvement in the project at first. Coming in with the expectation that we would have a pivotal role in the planning and implementation of this project, we were disappointed when we arrived at the site and saw that there were only enough tools for two or three of our group members to work at a time. Even when we were given the opportunity to participate, the villagers were quick to ask to be given their hoes back so that they may continue to work on the project themselves. In some ways, this only made sense. Many, if not all, of the villagers had been engaged in agricultural work for their entire lives. They were simply more suited to handle the hoes and machetes that we were using in the project, and they were not afraid to let us know it. Even after we came to this realization, we were still frustrated. Frustrated that we had come all this way to simply watch as others did work. Frustrated that we had yet to contribute anything sustainable to the people of Uganda. However, with the words of our friend and project director, Joel, this frustration quickly eroded.

As Joel explained to us, the active participation of the Kalangala community was absolutely essential to the long-term success of this project. Though it bothered us, it was necessary for the villagers to act as the greatest contributors to this effort. Had we done everything for them, they undoubtedly would have had great difficulty in seeing their stake in the success of the project. Through contributing their sweat, time, and energy to connecting the water line to their village, the townspeople had gained ownership of the project. This ownership, Joel elaborated, would motivate the villagers to keep using this line as their primary water source and would prevent them from turning to the dirty, contaminated sources that they had previously used.

Though we were able to participate in the project more and more as time went on, we were careful to give the community a significant role in the implementation of the project at all stages. Through contributing so much to the project, the villagers have gained ownership over it, ownership that will in turn ensure the success of our efforts for years to come.

week 6 - manual labor

Location: Sesse
Our trip to Sesse was valuable a experience for a number of reasons. We were able to see what life is like in one of the poorest areas of Uganda, and we were able to help some people in this area helping to bring clean, running water to their community. It was also beneficial because I think it gave many of us a new appreciation for manual labor and those who do it on a daily basis.

One of the purposes of our trip was to bring running water to xxxx (a community in Kalangala on the Sesse Islands). This involved digging a trench about 600 meters long in order to lay pipes that would connect the community with the nearest source of running water. Of course, this was not done using any type of machinery, rather, it was all done by hand, using rough wooden shovels and hoes. Unsurprisingly, our labor contribution to the project was somewhat limited, and although this was due to other reasons as well, one reason why this was so was due to our lack of experience doing such labor with our hands. I think it is safe to say that we all became tired rather quickly, and it was not the type of work that we could have sustained for a very long period of time.

Our Ugandan counterparts, on the other hand, worked for many hours, and many of them were older men or others mothers carrying their babies on their backs. Many of them did not wear shoes, and although we were advised to wear gloves (our hands were not calloused enough so we did not really have a choice), none of them did.

Manual labor is difficult and strenuous and oftentimes tedious, but it is very important in many places. Many depend on manual labor both as a livelihood as well as a means of production, especially in places where tools to take the place of manual labor are unavailable. In developed countries we tend to look down on those who do manual labor, but I think this experience was good for us, as we can now better understand both the importance of manual labor as well as the difficulty of spending even several hours of a day engaged in it. As with many of our experiences here, I think that this will also give us a great deal of perspective as to the lives of many people.

Week 6- Sustainability

Each year our program does a community service project in Kalangala, an island that’s a part of the Ssese Islands in Lake Victoria.  For the first two years of the program we helped build pit latrines in two different communities where there were few or no pit latrines previously.  This year we worked on a project extending the line of clean water further into the island.  My initial excitement for the project was somewhat quelled when I found out that we were adding a water tap in a place where there had already been a tap.  Robert, our engineer assisting us on the project, explained that each community that received a tap would need to pay a small fee for each jerry can of water.  Apparently, the community we worked with previously had a tap but refused to pay for the water once the initial free-trial period of six months was over. So, the company took out the tap.
    We were now adding back a tap and extending the line further into the center of the island.  While I was excited about getting our hands dirty and doing some real public health work, the idea of sustainability lingered in the back of my mind. Would a community that already once refused to pay for the water now agree to pay? When a new group of NU students comes next year will our project still be operating?  I hope so.  There are signs that it will succeed and signs that it will fail.  Joel, a well respected member of the community, worked on this project to convince the community that it was a worthwhile venture.  He sensitized the villagers, a tactic that might not have previously been successful.  However, we still saw very few villagers assisting us on the project.  We were repeatedly told by several people that more villagers should be helping with the project. So why weren’t they there?
    My fear was and still is that they are not that interested in the water taps.  I wondered if a pit latrine would have been a better investment or would have drawn better community involvement.  How did we decide to work on this project rather than build another pit latrine as the other two groups did?  It’s unclear but I hope that this was not a case of foreigners pushing an agenda on a local people. Water sanitation is a “hot topic” in global health and the office that sponsors our program has made it clear through a variety of new programs that they are interested in water sanitation.  It’s definitely an important topic as we saw the awful, contaminated water source that those villagers were using. However, I wonder if we pushed our agenda of focusing on water sanitation too much at the detriment of providing a product that would actually be accepted by the people in Kalangala.