Burnin' the Midnight Oil

The stoves have arrived! 

After a year in the making, my school finally received two state-of-the-art cookstoves provided by Virunga Engineering Works and funded by PEPFAR. Virunga Engineering Works is a company based in Kisoro, run by our American friend Max Gold, who has designed these fuel-efficient cookstoves. Jim's been working on the project for a year now,  working on obtaining funding so that Peace Corps volunteers can have these stoves installed at their schools across Uganda.

Typical three-stone fire. The pot balances on these 3 stones.

For a little background on cookstoves: a typical Ugandan household will cook on a three-stone fire (a pot balancing on 3 stones) or will have massive 300-liter stoves with the fire beneath and the pot that sits in a cement basin. These systems don't last for very long, as I'm sure you can imagine, with the aluminum pots needing repairs or replacement every 6 months. At my PTC (Primary Teachers' College), the kitchen staff is cooking for 500 people three times a day. That's a lot of people. They cook on giant stoves, mingling (mixing) posho (a cakey substance made from maize flour) and beans for every meal. They used spoons the size of oars to mix the sticky substance in giant vats. The stoves however are in terrible shape; many of them are either in disrepair or are completely out of use, with corrosion on all sides. The metal pipes build on the outside of the building are so corroded that they no longer function, and thick smoke clogs the kitchen all day. It's a pretty grim place to work. Not to mention that many of the staff have their kids around, young children who are breathing in smoke all day. Talk about asthmatics in the making.

The crew outside the kitchen. You can see the walls blackened with soot, the corroded pipes no longer ventilate properly

That's where these new stoves come in. Max has designed them with one important feature: volcanic bricks. The inside of the stove is lined with volcanic bricks, mined around Kisoro and the volcanic Virunga range. The volcanic rock absorbs the heat, making the stove about 70% more efficient than your typical stove. This results in not only less firewood consumed, but no smoke. I learned this week that smoke is a sign of unused fuel, therefore inefficiency. No smoke means that the wood is being burned efficiently. Another advantage is that the school can now start savings millions of shillings every term by purchasing less firewood. The second phase of my project is to reinvest some of that money saved, and have the PTC host a number of workshops on HIV outreach.
My friend Amanda brought her headmaster from Kabale Primary School to see the process of installation since they are also interested in having some cookstoves installed at their school.

On Thursday, the whole VEW crew showed up in their jumpsuits and orange hardhats with the two giant stoves strapped down in the lorry. It took ten (ten!) grown men to carry both the base and the top of the stove off the truck and into the kitchen. They took a few days to do some tests and assessments. They did one interesting test where they compared the efficiency of the new stove to the old one. They weighed two bundles of wood, 25 kg each, and put 40L of water in each pot to see which one would boil faster. Not only did the VEW stove finish 7 minutes faster, but consumed only 11.8kg of wood. The old stove consumed over 30kg of firewood alone. 

Of course, every project has its surprise challenges that arise. Little did I realize that the hardest part would be to get the cooks to actually use the stoves. We can all relate and say that sometimes, we are reluctant to change. Why change what you're doing when it seems to be working, why fix what's not broken? It will be a long time before the cooks feel comfortable using the VEW stoves as their primary cooking source, as I'm starting to understand. The Principal is very supportive and wants to purchase a new round pot that makes it easier for posho mingling. He knows it all won't be effective immediately, that we have to go about it mpola mpola.

It takes this many men to carry just the top part!

The Virunga Engineering Works installation crew

Mingling the imaginary posho

Work hard, play hard 

VEW engineer Max Gold with our school administration, Constance and Javan

The Peace Centre

Antony addressing Nyabirerema Primary School

We've had some visitors from Dulwich College in Shanghai, China. It was a small student group of international high school students who are in Uganda for a few weeks to help build an orphanage and practice their cross-cultural communication. They were a diverse group from all over the world, I felt really proud of my school and staff to be able to host them and show them around. Our students loved seeing new, diverse faces and learning about where they come from.

I made some banana cake for them that morning, and ran over to the primary school in the afternoon to spend a few hours at school. I stood nearby with some of my teachers, who were astounded that some of these kids were saying they were American when they had dark skin, and looked like they were of Asian or Indian descent. I explained that Americans are very diverse, from African Americans to Asian and Indian American. Not all Americans look like me! The visitors all introduced themselves and it was hilarious to see how the kids reacted to their names. "Tristan" sounded like "Christine," which the kids found uproariously funny that this boy was named Christine. "Sri" became "Swee" and they thought he was named after candy. We kept joking "Give me a swee!" Another kid was name Taylor, which everyone interpreted as Tiger, which if you ask me, is a pretty sweet name.

Our headmaster quipped with every name, saying some not-so-PC things like "Have you found that plane yet?" to a Malaysian girl and "Are you the next Chairman?" to a wispy Japanese girl named Mao. They also performed a few songs for the kids and gave them a message to work hard and try and learn many things. Adorable!

Their group leader Antony spent some time here in the late 90s as a volunteer in the Bukinda community. It was interesting to talk to him about what has changed and what has stayed the same in 15 years. One of the biggest visible changes here is the proliferation of mobile phones and the newly paved road to Kabale.

On Sunday afternoon, their home-stay hosts in Bukinda hosted a big meal and invited all the neighbors and officials from around. We had speeches from their hosts Peace and Golden, from folks working at the PTC and other prominent members of the community. The visiting students then performed a few songs, and we all learned the Bakiga dance with the women of the group. This involves dancing in a big circle to drums, and stamping your feet and waving your arms to the beat. It was a blast! This student group was also here to help build The Peace Centre, which will function as an orphanage and will be run by Peace. They are also hoping to build a program that hosts gap years students for eight months, so students spending a gap year between high school and college can work with the Peace Centre in Bukinda.

I also had a nice visit from one of our Peace Corps staff who was passing through Bukinda. The Principal and I gave a tour of the kitchen and our new cookstoves, one of which was piled high with matooke wrapped in banana leaves, and the other one cooking rice. This special-occasion food was being prepared for an official visit from the newly appointed Bishop of Kigezi. We had a feast for lunch, including rice, karo, matooke, potatoes, sweet potatoes, goat, beef, chicken and g-nut sauce. Ugandan food is getting better and better every time I eat! The matooke and the rice were delicious, both cooked in the new stoves.

Students introducing themselves, including their age, their nationality and their favorite subject

Singing songs

A Visit to the Village

A farmer and his dog
(Photos courtesy of Jim Tanton)

Justus is our campus's milkman, canteen owner and my new best friend. He's been bringing fresh milk to my doorstep since I arrived, and we've struck up a pleasant and harmonious friendship. For Christmas, I gave him a little American flag and a ball for his son, in return, I received a picture of him and his son Jethro, posing austerely for the camera. When I first arrived, my old site mate and I asked if we could help him to milk the cows, a prospect that delighted him. 

Justus has been inviting me to see his home in the village, and finally for the first time in 15 months, we found a day that suited us both to make the journey. Jim joined us too, and when we decided to walk there, what was supposed to be an easy stroll turned into an afternoon hike. 

I love exploring around the mountains of Kabale, they are an endless ocean of rolling hills that seem to go on forever. I've explored relatively little though, only the hills around Bukinda valley. I've also met other Westerners who say they're working at Ryabirenge School, but I had never been there. It's sad to say, but in 16 months of living here, I haven't even ventured past my primary school. Lately though, I've been a bit more adventurous. I visited the village Health Center IV and met the Head Clinician working there, inviting him to attend some HIV activities I was doing at the primary school. 

So you can imagine how happy I was to go past that imaginary line and go down the village road to Justus's. We walked for a good two hours, first past Ryabirenge School, then up up up into the crops and more hills, across a flat mountain top and down the other side into another valley. At the top, you can see for miles, right into northern Rwanda. Justus knew the way like the back of his hand, but I doubt I could do it again on my own. 

After walking through dusty crops of potatoes and barley, and sliding down the side of mountain, we finally made it to Justus's house. I was pleasantly surprised-- it was lovely. The house looked brand new, with new tin roofing, freshly painted walls and a pristine little yard that looked over the entire valley of Chogo. Little chicks followed their mother hen in the back yard, while baby goats munched away on the vegetation. I met Justus's wife Jennifer, who lived alone in the house while her husband was away working, her children away at school. She first served us pitchers full of obushera, a local brew made from sorghum. They mix the sorghum flour with water and let it ferment for a few days, making it slightly to very alcoholic, depending how long it sits. Drink enough of this stuff and you'll look like the men outside the local bars. Jennifer had just made the brew the day before, so lucky for us, it wasn't yet alcoholic. It tastes like a really healthy drink, a bit like yoghurt, but slightly more sour. 

We sat outside on mats and played with the local kids who had come to play with my hair (they were fascinated by my hair and its texture) until it was time to eat. I wasn't expecting to be fed, but as is customary here when you have a visitor. The meal was delicious, some of the best food I've had in country. I even ate matooke, which I normally avoid, but it was too good to resist (matooke is the signature meal of Uganda, it is steamed plaintains, or green bananas). We had beans, potatoes, sweet potatoes, matooke and goat meat. It was a feast and such a generous meal. 

After eating and laughing all afternoon, we had to make our way back to Bukinda before the sun went down. We walked back an hour on a dirt road to the closest town Muhanga, and took a matatu back to Bukinda. The village is pretty tucked away in a remote valley. No electricity runs through there, no foreigners pass by. You can imagine the faces of the locals as we passed by, seeing a muzungu in their neck of the woods! A few miles past the village of Chogo is the Rwandan border, and a small and unused border crossing. I love being in remote places like that, when you feel you're at the edge of the earth. 

I was happy to see my little American flag hanging in Justus' family's home, as a little reminder of the friendships made along the way. 

Sorghum season

Outdoor kitchen where the cooking happens

Justus, his wife Jennifer and his brother James

Justus and me in Chogo valley

Jim and Justus in his home village

Addressing Gender-Based Violence

One of the biggest problems facing Uganda is gender-based violence. Uganda has made some tremendous progress in terms of development, but will not get over that extra step without addressing the gender inequities that exist here. Men hold most of the power (in an effort not to generalize, I will say most and not all), in and outside of family life. Yes, women are voted or chosen as Local Council for the community and members of Parliament, but I feel these are figurehead positions rather than a position of true power. At the village level, women hold even less power.

I was astounded at the different gender roles I observed in Ethiopia. Men and women both had their assigned tasks--men to do the hard labor and plow the fields, and women to collect water and firewood and maintain the home. Seems like more reasonably assigned gender roles than Uganda, for example. In Uganda, from what I've observed, women do all the work. They are the ones walking on the edge of the road at sunrise, carrying various items-- a basket on their heads with the day's lunch, a hoe resting on their shoulders, a baby tied to their backs. After a day toiling in the fields, they return home where they are expected to rear the children, make dinner and maintain the household. What are the men doing, you ask? That's a very good question.

Gender-imbalanced societies exist all over the world, even in the United States, but especially in developing nations. One of Peace Corps Washington's initiatives is Student-Friendly Schools addressing and strategizing against school-related gender-based violence. What is gender-based violence? Briefly, it is any physical, psychological or sexual abuse against a person on the basis of gender. Usually, girls and women are the targets of GBV, but boys/men can also be victims.

We held a regional workshop in Mbarara to discuss gender-based violence, gender inequities and corporal punishment in schools. It was a successful and thought-provoking workshop that I will highly value as a part of my Peace Corps service. I helped to organize the workshop with another PCV, Jenn, who is very passionate on the subject of GBV and raising awareness in Uganda. We invited several Volunteers in the new Education group from the western region, along with their counterparts. We also invited several Ugandans to serve as keynote speakers and facilitators. This made an enormous difference to the workshop and helped foment discussion surrounding these issues, open up the dialogue between Americans and Ugandans.

Our first speaker we met at the regional HIV/AIDS in Masaka back in November-- Jenn and I both loved and remembered her. Hope is a firecracker, I wish there were more women like her in Uganda. She says herself that she breaks every mold made for Ugandan women. She's bold, brazen and passionate, a champion against domestic violence and GBV in Uganda.
She led our first session at the workshop and did a fabulous job of educating what is GBV and how to look for it in schools. With the counterparts, we analyzed several scenarios of GBV at school and how to address them. A common one across Africa goes like this: a girl is good at math, her male teacher notices her. Her offers to give her extra tutoring lessons and insists she carries his briefcase. One thing leads to another, and soon the girl finds herself being molested by the teacher. Who is in power, or who has none? In most scenarios, the girl won't say anything for fear of being failed in class or whipped as a liar. This might seem like an outlandish scenario but it is the reality in many schools.

Our next speaker was a representative of Mifumi, a Ugandan organization devoted to combatting domestic violence and GBV. The name comes from a small village outside of Tororo, to the east, where a local woman started an organization and a shelter to protect local women from domestic violence. We had some interesting discussions surrounding corporal punishment in schools, wife-beating (statistics show that more Ugandan girls than boys say that wife beating is acceptable) and types of abuse.

Our afternoon sessions involved break-out sessions where participants could choose according to their interest. Jenn and I have made some key contacts in the last year, and we invited them to facilitate. We had Hassan from Breakdance Project Uganda (you may recall them from my post about Camp BUILD), my counterpart Bright to talk about gender-equitable games using the Base Pack, PCV Taylor to give a session on making reusable menstrual pads (many girls stay home from school when they have their menstrual periods, therefore putting them more at a disadvantage), Jenn to talk about gender roles, and Tush from InMovement to talk about using music, dance and drama to inspire youth. Tush was also one of our speakers on the second day and used movement to talk about gender and GBV. Her organization will be working with our Eastern Camp BUILD/GLOW in August, so stay tuned!

Jenn's exercise with gender cards was insightful. We looked first at the difference between sex and gender (sex is biological, gender is constructed by society). Therefore, gender roles in America differ greatly from gender roles here. Next, there are three categories--Female, Male or Both-- and several cards that must be placed in each category. Things like "beautiful", "asks for sex", "aggressive", "enjoys sex" and "raises children". You can imagine where many of these cards are placed. But eventually, Jenn talks through each one and argues why it should be placed under "Both", including "gets pregnant" since it takes two to tango. This game is really interesting to do with youth, it gives great insight on how gender is viewed. For example, one of the cards says, "Beautiful". Boys will argue that a man cannot be beautiful, nor can a woman ask for sex. The keyword is "can". The point is to challenge beliefs and ask, "Well, why can't a woman enjoy sex? Why can't a man raise a child?"

I learned a lot from the workshop, issues surrounding gender and power in Uganda. I was an outsider at the workshop, an organizer not a participant, yet I came away from it realizing that I've only scratched the surface of the culture here and there's still so much to learn and understand. But one of the biggest takeaways was how strong the women are in Uganda. They can be treated like second-class citizens sometimes, and it drives me mad, but their strength indubitably commands respect.