One week down, five more to go! This first week was a busy one. Once we got to Oyam, we had the weekend to get settled down and got right to business Monday. We started our work off by going to local government buildings and introducing ourselves and our project. The officials seemed excited to meet us and hear about what we are going to be doing, which boosted morale and built excitement for our first official work day on Wednesday. Tuesday, we met more officials as well as members of other GHN(U) project teams. We stopped at two piggeries, where pigs are bred and sold to locals, and a tailoring group, where they make clothes for community members. Our last stop was our sanitation site. We met the people in the community first and together we all walked over to the site. The site was behind a few huts down the street. It was just an open area with a huge pile of bricks, a pile of rocks, and a third pile of sand. After seeing the site, we said our goodbyes and prepped for our first day of construction.
Wednesday was our first day of construction, and it was a hard one. First, the workers had to measure out the building using string and wooden steaks. Once it was measured, we had to dig trenches, about one-foot-wide and two feet deep, around the outline of the building and its interior walls. Breaking ground was done manually, in fact everything was done from scratch, from making concrete and bricks to digging the holes. Our lack of experience had the on-looking children giggling, but we eventually got the hang of it. The people we worked with were all very nice and even the community members with no shoes and flip flops helped. Some women had on beautiful dresses and were more than excited to help. When on the site, you could really feel the sense of community and togetherness.
Once we finished the trenches, we had to move huge rocks into the trenches while men crushed them into gravel. It was really interesting to see how the foundation was made, and it made a lot of us compare the techniques to those in the United States.
Thursday was a much easier day. We were all sore from Wednesday, but all we had to do was move bricks and mix cement. While we were doing that, the workers were expertly laying down brick and building up the walls. It was really cool being able to see a building actually rise up from the ground in a matter of two days. We were only on the site a half day though. The second half of the day we went back to the tailoring group and met with the older members to educate them on group dynamics and how to be a better, more efficient working group. A lot of us have group experience so it was really fun being able to share our knowledge and experience to a group so eager to learn and hear from us.
Before we knew it, it was already Friday and one week in Uganda had passed. Friday we did the same work as Thursday, but only stayed for half a day because it was a public holiday. It was Martyrs’ Day and people stayed home to remember those who sacrificed their lives for the right to practice their own religion when they were being repressed by the government. We got to go into town and see the market that is held each Friday for locals to gather and sell their goods. This weekend we plan on exploring a nearby city and taking time to relax.
It was a really fun and busy first week. It feels as though we’ve known the people here our whole lives making this experience even better. It’s hard to believe we’re starting our second week, and while time is passing quickly, we know it’ll be a good time.