Finishing Touches

We visited a little island out in Lake Victoria last weekend, which is run by a wealthy retired man of British descent (known as an ex-pat) and his six dogs. The place had a strange decrepit feeling that made me believe I had stepped onto a pirate island.
The island was very relaxing, but the most exciting part of the weekend was getting the boat to and from the island. Small canoe-like motorboats ferry passengers between the islands, and are well described as being taxi vans on water. Most importantly this means the ride is bumpy, and your vehicle’s appearance makes you worry that it’s going to break down. To get between the boat and shore, porters run about, carrying passengers on their shoulders.
(The picture of the boat resting inexplicably in the forest is from the island, which is full of bizarreness).



At the end of the weekend I was ready to get back to work. Since this is my last full week in Uganda, I needed to wrap up my projects. Last Friday Lauren helped me to cut the metal roofing into pieces that would fit into a parabolic cone shape, so this week I arranged these pieces onto the stick and wire framework I had previously constructed.
Today we added the roof to the latrine walls we have recently built. So far as I can tell, this structure should serve RASD well for many years to come.



We visited St. Paul’s public primary school, which is struggling to both pay bills and provide its students with a quality education. Although the Ugandan government has declared that under their new system of public schools every child has an opportunity for education, there are still significant obstacles. At public schools the Ugandan government pays the salary for the teachers (they provide one teacher per 45-50 students), but it doesn’t pay for meals, utilities or maintenance. At St. Paul's students have to miss class to get water from a source more than a kilometer from campus. The headmaster hopes to get rainwater-harvesting tanks installed, so we met with him to see the school's current situation and better understand their needs.



Happy news! One of Peter’s goats gave birth to three kids on Sunday. Only two days later his sheep gave birth to twins. As kids, the small goats don't yet have the distinctively unattractive features of older goats. I asked him how long it would take the baby goats to grow out of being cute, and to start to look like… well, to look like goats. He told us it would be about a year and a half, which is longer than I would have guessed. Until then he will have a whole tassel of baby animals stumbling around his yard.