After a morning on the wards, we head back to the guest house (our home) for lunch. The afternoons are spent in the village - working on public health projects.
We partner with 2 local NGOs, actually. The 52 Kids Foundation as I previously mentioned KAPIDA - Kamuli Area People's Integrated Development Association. The second group identifies the villages we will work in and the community members decide on the projects. The village we went to this year was one that we had gone to the first year I came to Uganda. Word had traveled and many more community members were involved with our projects this year. It was great to see the people I had worked with a few years ago - the kids were bigger, people had more children, and I got to see the fruits of our labor from previously. We had built "fuel saving stoves" (the health benefits of this? Women cook in the hut over an open flame...not ideal for smoke inhalation and burns. The stoves we build have a chimney and enclosed flame - they save fuel and lives!). The stoves were still in use and one woman was even able to open a small store because she had more time now that she had a stove! Pretty cool!
We do the same public health interventions from year to year, but they just don't stop being useful:
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| Fuel saving stove |
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| Plate stand in progress - keeping dishes off the ground (and away from chickens, pigs, goats, small children) |
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| Digging a drainage area for the plate stand |
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| One of the kids from the 52 Kids Foundation lent me his bike so that I could travel from site to site and check up on my students and their projects - thank you Karim! |
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| Digging composting pits - then we taught the kids how to use them! They had fun throwing their jack fruit rinds into the pit |
We also build handwashing stations, or tip-tops, but I couldn't easily locate a picture of one. We stay in the villages until early evening when we head back "home" for dinner and much needed rest. Busy days!
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