Okay so this is my first time actually posting to the KKAB blog. So here it goes November has been the beginning of construction month. Since the time we have moved here (back in July) we have waited to put in a well and start constructing our houses. So here we are in November and things are
just beginning. Just a week or so ago we had Bob Wright come and put in a bore hole, big thanks to him and the work. At the current it is not finished, okay well the hole is finished but the pump is not installed yet, so no water as of yet. For us to get the borehole meant one thing, construction time is now here. So yesterday Bob Wright came up again with his team and we began to put the footing into foundation trenches. If water was around the job was supposed to be like 5 hours or less. Our problem was since the bore hole wasn’t finished and the submersible pump didn’t want to work that meant running back and forth to the borehole (about 8 Kilometers away). So Tom and Jean the entire day were driving a lot and moving water like crazy I imagine up to 2,000 liters of water. Meanwhile back at the land we had a crew shoveling sand, rock, and cement and then filling up wheel barrows and wheeling them to the dump site. I think by the end of the day we wheeled about 100 of them full of cement. Some would have stopped at a certain point but not us, we wanted a solid foundation so we finished at 9pm at night working by moon light. I wonder if this is a sign of what’s to come………
JT Grade DVM, PhD
Uganda: +256-758 899777
USA: +1-415 858 4262
Belgium: +32-488 94449
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Our adventure in our (unfortunately) non – amphibious vehicle
Tom and I left from Jinja to visit Okwalinga Augustine, an old friend from Soroti whom I helped put through school – who now is married with a newborn. Okwalinga rang me to ask if I would name his firstborn. I choose to name him after my brother, Andrew Justman – but then the family added on the royal 3rd name – hence Andrew Jean Justman. We kept putting off the visit for many reasons – bad roads, waiting for the driller to come, and more recently – the ole Landcruiser had many problems –to the tune of 2.8 million shillings. (It always sounds more impressive in Ugandan shillings, 2250 to a US dollar). So Ben, our local mechanic finally got the beast going with a new clutch system –but it died about 75 kilometers out of Jinja. I played with the fuel line and it moved almost 200m before pooping out. This gave Tom and I a chance to explore the happening whistle stop of Namatumba, just down from Busembatia – can’t miss it. We people watched and walked its two streets, had a cold soda as we waited for Ben et al to show up and save the day. They did this by rerouting the double diesel filter system – so it works –but you can’t turn it off… so we went back to Jinja 3 hours after sunset. The next day by noon, we were back on the road to Soroti (got your maps out?) Meanwhile, Ryan, exhibiting great insight chose to go up our normal way through south Karamoja using public transport.
It was great to see Okwalinga after many years, to see a boy turned man. I’ve watched him grow up over the years from a struggling lad living in an IDP camp to teaching others while providing for his family and 3 cousin orphans. So fun to see God at work! The next day, we headed down the road with KACHEP’s Chairman, John Loumo. John’s another story in himself - a few months ago, he suffered a terrible road accident in Kampala, the capitol city. He was sitting on the back of a boda-boda (a small scooter –taxi) when a matatu (a big van-taxi) smashed into them as the matatu entered the round-about. Then the taxi driver turned the matatu and drove at John’s lifeless body straddling the curb, put his van on top of John’s chest and ran off! It’s a miracle that John is alive.
Anyways back to today’s story – we headed north east up the Soroti-Moroto road. We stopped in the first Karamojong town, Iriiri and as we marveled at the mountains surrounding us, I asked, “Do you all want to stop here for lunch, or just push on to Nabilatuk?” The plate of beans and greens with chapattis was delicious –good thing we decided to stop, the next meal wouldn’t come for another day and a half! The mountain of Napak is really beautiful – it’s a serious of mountains that once, long ago, were all part of the same volcano – now it’s a large, craggy ring of 5 different mountains. Looks great from atop, as I’ve seen on multiple visits to search for medicinal plants and healers, and breathtaking from the circle below, changing with every angle and weather change. So, there’s this road (ahem, footpath) that goes to the south of it directly to Nabilatuk (home-sweet-home) that I haven’t traveled on for probably 5 years. One time, about 10 years ago, I met a huge raiding party of warriors from Bokora going to Pian. Thinking that I would give their plan away, hundreds of them menacingly surrounded our truck that day, guns ready, forcing us to retreat and quite literally beg for mercy…. but that’s another story for another day.
So, with adventure in the air, we asked around about the road. Another local NGO said, “Oh that road is fine, there are only 1 or 2 bad places, but your truck is strong, it will pass”. Off we went – it was about 1.30pm and we only had 45km to drive – what a short-cut! This’ll be great, John and Tom had never been this way, it’ll save us time and we’ll all enjoy amazing mountain views.
The road started out wide, with a narrow strip of grass down the middle and knee high grass on the edges. We’d pass handfuls of people along the way, every once in a while someone would recognize us and wave and shout in glee. It’s finally getting into the dry season, and the road showed it – dry and dusty, with women carrying large grass bundles on their heads in preparation of roofing homes. As we kept edging around the mountain, floods of memories danced in my head… here’s the protected spring that CHiPs put in, there’s the school where the healers first met Tom after he proposed – oh, they wanted cows for their ‘daughter’, here’s the village where one of our healers used to live, before he was tragically killed, oh, here’s a deep ravine that might be impassable –whew, made it through. On we went for 20km, sometimes in 4x4, other times hopping out to survey the road, but just chugging along happily enjoying sceneries, memories and conversation.
Till we hit the swamp.
We got stuck.
Then the flowing river, down the middle of our path, deep enough to our knees soaked, criss-crossed any way of easy escape. Along with the elephant grass, tall enough to block views left and right,– we could barely see the road that had become a narrow, windy path and certainly couldn’t see the hidden stumps below, just waiting to tear apart our tires.
We got stuck again, luckily some soldiers helped Tom and John pushed as I piloted. Thankfully, Tom and Ryan had just bought lots of building tools – but, before the ordeal was done – most of the tools had been used, and a couple broke. We got stuck in deep mud again, now the previous tire ruts were so deep that our chassis was sitting high and the tires just spun.
Actually, I can’t remember how many times we stuck and how many new people we met that day – none of whom knew how to drive, but all will willing to push and pull and give lots of advice on how to better drive.
They came out of the deep grass with machetes and hoes, we pulled out shovels and high-lifts, 2 meter long digging bars. Digging and pushing, straining and strategizing how to get out and search for more stable ground. We searched for any stone – rare in the dark, clay like muddy soil. No trees to secure a wench to…drats, we don’t even have one of those! Grassy savannah –perfect for zebra and giraffe. We cut grass and wedged under the spinning tires to get traction, lifted the truck to dig out the axel and put rocks under our tires. My shoes would get stuck deep in the mud till I finally just removed them. We had people standing on different corners of the truck as other rocked from the back and then ran to the front. We were all covered with sticky black mud, most of the time laughing, other times –frustrated, many times exhausted from the pushing and even walking. These shenanigans sometimes got us 2 feet, sometimes 20, but we just kept getting stuck - till we got stuck for the last time that day, in the middle of a swamp, just on the edge of the washed out road. The pushing ringleader of the now 10 men and 2 soldiers, Saidi, invited us to take a night in his manyatta –staying in the truck would have been miserable with swarms of mosquitoes and potential enemies. Soldiers came to watch over our truck as we slipped and slid along the path in the enveloping dark up to his huts in the foothills of Napak. Before locking up the truck, I found an apple, 3 full water bottles (from Okwalinga) and local mosquito repellent concoction (from Sarah). I left one water bottle in the truck for tomorrow’s escapades. Saidi had told us with about 30 minutes left of daylight that we should make a plan of where to sleep and his men were tired, they hadn’t eaten and all that was at home was local brew. “Let them rest and we’ll get you on the way tomorrow.”
So, as Saidi’s family got a hut ready for us, we splashed on the plant tincture to frustrate mosquitoes, divide the apple into thirds and gulped down water into our tired, mud-caked bodies. Washed our face, hands and feet and stretched out on the cow hides that they laid out for us. Surprisingly, they even strung up mosquito nets from the grass thatched roof, complete with holes that Florida cockroaches could pass through, the net almost reaching the floor. Throughout the night we enjoyed a cacophony of music ranging from the bzzzzzz of winged, blood sucking creatures and the whining and scratching of furry rodents crawling along the floor and bamboo roof supports. John’s head rested upon a pumpkin, my sore left shoulder butted up against the center pole; Tom used a sheet to cover his face from the malaria-infested creatures that were becoming fat and happy on our blood. Our morning came an hour before sunrise. After which we greeted our new neighbors and friends and slip slided away back to our sinking, non-amphibious Landcruiser whose white body was now mud streaked from tire to overloaded rack, which, by the way was leaning precariously to the left at a ever increasing 30* angle.
We strained from 6.30 to 10am before we finally moved…about 6 feet. Ugh.
This continued for another hour till we finally left our friends behind (with our pockets 100,000 shillings lighter) and us promising to return after the roads have dried with a goat and we’d stay for a long full moon weekend. This will give us a chance to story twice a day with them, share a goat roast and get to know one another better.
Off we went.
For about 20 minutes, just after leaving a one room school house in the middle of no-where. Now we were far from any civilization. Did I mention that I have yet to get the radio call working in the truck AND that cell phones don’t work so well in the bush? Well, they don’t. I had been trying to call ahead so that Ryan wouldn’t worry. Anyways, back to the adventure - John and Tom walked back to the school to see if they could get some help – I walked forward, looking for people (of which there were none) and rocks to help the truck’s spinning tires (of which I found few). The next time we got stuck, I heard a strange bird call… ah, it was my phone! By the grace of God –we found a 2 foot area of cell phone coverage and a search party was forming wondering where we were. So, as we were struggling to go forward to Nabilatuk, our friend Bob Wright from South Karamoja was with Ryan trying to find the cow path to rescue us.
Meanwhile, Tom and John found 4 guys to help push and pull us out. The same routine, lift the truck, fill the water filled rut with grass and rocks. Dig out the axels and push. After an hour, we whittled the work force down to 2 warriors and continued our trek to Nabilatuk. They ran ahead, swerving left and right off the ‘road’ to find solid ground, free of stumps, as I drove on following their flying tire shoes.
At one time, while Tom was atop the truck – he spotted Bob’s truck. Alas, it was turning around, we found out later he was concerned that he was about to get stuck and wasn’t even convinced that they were on the correct road. We pressed on, we prayed, we drove and finally spotted a white t-shirt in the distance. It was only 14 km from where we spent the night. Four relieved people spilled out of Bob’s truck with 2 thermoses full of cold water, much to our relief. 35 more km, we were home.
Ahh, just in time for the sunset, supper and shower.
It was great to see Okwalinga after many years, to see a boy turned man. I’ve watched him grow up over the years from a struggling lad living in an IDP camp to teaching others while providing for his family and 3 cousin orphans. So fun to see God at work! The next day, we headed down the road with KACHEP’s Chairman, John Loumo. John’s another story in himself - a few months ago, he suffered a terrible road accident in Kampala, the capitol city. He was sitting on the back of a boda-boda (a small scooter –taxi) when a matatu (a big van-taxi) smashed into them as the matatu entered the round-about. Then the taxi driver turned the matatu and drove at John’s lifeless body straddling the curb, put his van on top of John’s chest and ran off! It’s a miracle that John is alive.
Anyways back to today’s story – we headed north east up the Soroti-Moroto road. We stopped in the first Karamojong town, Iriiri and as we marveled at the mountains surrounding us, I asked, “Do you all want to stop here for lunch, or just push on to Nabilatuk?” The plate of beans and greens with chapattis was delicious –good thing we decided to stop, the next meal wouldn’t come for another day and a half! The mountain of Napak is really beautiful – it’s a serious of mountains that once, long ago, were all part of the same volcano – now it’s a large, craggy ring of 5 different mountains. Looks great from atop, as I’ve seen on multiple visits to search for medicinal plants and healers, and breathtaking from the circle below, changing with every angle and weather change. So, there’s this road (ahem, footpath) that goes to the south of it directly to Nabilatuk (home-sweet-home) that I haven’t traveled on for probably 5 years. One time, about 10 years ago, I met a huge raiding party of warriors from Bokora going to Pian. Thinking that I would give their plan away, hundreds of them menacingly surrounded our truck that day, guns ready, forcing us to retreat and quite literally beg for mercy…. but that’s another story for another day.
So, with adventure in the air, we asked around about the road. Another local NGO said, “Oh that road is fine, there are only 1 or 2 bad places, but your truck is strong, it will pass”. Off we went – it was about 1.30pm and we only had 45km to drive – what a short-cut! This’ll be great, John and Tom had never been this way, it’ll save us time and we’ll all enjoy amazing mountain views.
The road started out wide, with a narrow strip of grass down the middle and knee high grass on the edges. We’d pass handfuls of people along the way, every once in a while someone would recognize us and wave and shout in glee. It’s finally getting into the dry season, and the road showed it – dry and dusty, with women carrying large grass bundles on their heads in preparation of roofing homes. As we kept edging around the mountain, floods of memories danced in my head… here’s the protected spring that CHiPs put in, there’s the school where the healers first met Tom after he proposed – oh, they wanted cows for their ‘daughter’, here’s the village where one of our healers used to live, before he was tragically killed, oh, here’s a deep ravine that might be impassable –whew, made it through. On we went for 20km, sometimes in 4x4, other times hopping out to survey the road, but just chugging along happily enjoying sceneries, memories and conversation.
Till we hit the swamp.
We got stuck.
Then the flowing river, down the middle of our path, deep enough to our knees soaked, criss-crossed any way of easy escape. Along with the elephant grass, tall enough to block views left and right,– we could barely see the road that had become a narrow, windy path and certainly couldn’t see the hidden stumps below, just waiting to tear apart our tires.
We got stuck again, luckily some soldiers helped Tom and John pushed as I piloted. Thankfully, Tom and Ryan had just bought lots of building tools – but, before the ordeal was done – most of the tools had been used, and a couple broke. We got stuck in deep mud again, now the previous tire ruts were so deep that our chassis was sitting high and the tires just spun.
Actually, I can’t remember how many times we stuck and how many new people we met that day – none of whom knew how to drive, but all will willing to push and pull and give lots of advice on how to better drive.
They came out of the deep grass with machetes and hoes, we pulled out shovels and high-lifts, 2 meter long digging bars. Digging and pushing, straining and strategizing how to get out and search for more stable ground. We searched for any stone – rare in the dark, clay like muddy soil. No trees to secure a wench to…drats, we don’t even have one of those! Grassy savannah –perfect for zebra and giraffe. We cut grass and wedged under the spinning tires to get traction, lifted the truck to dig out the axel and put rocks under our tires. My shoes would get stuck deep in the mud till I finally just removed them. We had people standing on different corners of the truck as other rocked from the back and then ran to the front. We were all covered with sticky black mud, most of the time laughing, other times –frustrated, many times exhausted from the pushing and even walking. These shenanigans sometimes got us 2 feet, sometimes 20, but we just kept getting stuck - till we got stuck for the last time that day, in the middle of a swamp, just on the edge of the washed out road. The pushing ringleader of the now 10 men and 2 soldiers, Saidi, invited us to take a night in his manyatta –staying in the truck would have been miserable with swarms of mosquitoes and potential enemies. Soldiers came to watch over our truck as we slipped and slid along the path in the enveloping dark up to his huts in the foothills of Napak. Before locking up the truck, I found an apple, 3 full water bottles (from Okwalinga) and local mosquito repellent concoction (from Sarah). I left one water bottle in the truck for tomorrow’s escapades. Saidi had told us with about 30 minutes left of daylight that we should make a plan of where to sleep and his men were tired, they hadn’t eaten and all that was at home was local brew. “Let them rest and we’ll get you on the way tomorrow.”
So, as Saidi’s family got a hut ready for us, we splashed on the plant tincture to frustrate mosquitoes, divide the apple into thirds and gulped down water into our tired, mud-caked bodies. Washed our face, hands and feet and stretched out on the cow hides that they laid out for us. Surprisingly, they even strung up mosquito nets from the grass thatched roof, complete with holes that Florida cockroaches could pass through, the net almost reaching the floor. Throughout the night we enjoyed a cacophony of music ranging from the bzzzzzz of winged, blood sucking creatures and the whining and scratching of furry rodents crawling along the floor and bamboo roof supports. John’s head rested upon a pumpkin, my sore left shoulder butted up against the center pole; Tom used a sheet to cover his face from the malaria-infested creatures that were becoming fat and happy on our blood. Our morning came an hour before sunrise. After which we greeted our new neighbors and friends and slip slided away back to our sinking, non-amphibious Landcruiser whose white body was now mud streaked from tire to overloaded rack, which, by the way was leaning precariously to the left at a ever increasing 30* angle.
We strained from 6.30 to 10am before we finally moved…about 6 feet. Ugh.
This continued for another hour till we finally left our friends behind (with our pockets 100,000 shillings lighter) and us promising to return after the roads have dried with a goat and we’d stay for a long full moon weekend. This will give us a chance to story twice a day with them, share a goat roast and get to know one another better.
Off we went.
For about 20 minutes, just after leaving a one room school house in the middle of no-where. Now we were far from any civilization. Did I mention that I have yet to get the radio call working in the truck AND that cell phones don’t work so well in the bush? Well, they don’t. I had been trying to call ahead so that Ryan wouldn’t worry. Anyways, back to the adventure - John and Tom walked back to the school to see if they could get some help – I walked forward, looking for people (of which there were none) and rocks to help the truck’s spinning tires (of which I found few). The next time we got stuck, I heard a strange bird call… ah, it was my phone! By the grace of God –we found a 2 foot area of cell phone coverage and a search party was forming wondering where we were. So, as we were struggling to go forward to Nabilatuk, our friend Bob Wright from South Karamoja was with Ryan trying to find the cow path to rescue us.
Meanwhile, Tom and John found 4 guys to help push and pull us out. The same routine, lift the truck, fill the water filled rut with grass and rocks. Dig out the axels and push. After an hour, we whittled the work force down to 2 warriors and continued our trek to Nabilatuk. They ran ahead, swerving left and right off the ‘road’ to find solid ground, free of stumps, as I drove on following their flying tire shoes.
At one time, while Tom was atop the truck – he spotted Bob’s truck. Alas, it was turning around, we found out later he was concerned that he was about to get stuck and wasn’t even convinced that they were on the correct road. We pressed on, we prayed, we drove and finally spotted a white t-shirt in the distance. It was only 14 km from where we spent the night. Four relieved people spilled out of Bob’s truck with 2 thermoses full of cold water, much to our relief. 35 more km, we were home.
Ahh, just in time for the sunset, supper and shower.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Dr. Jean signing in
We are finally back home, to Uganda, the place where God first called me in 1998.
The sun is rising over Moru Angibui (“the mountains of the hyenas”); bleating flocks of sheep and goats, bellowing cattle are dusting up the path between me and the Karamojong sunrise as I pen this to you. Since I left, the livestock no longer bed down in their own village kraal, but rather are protected by night in the nearby army barracks; this has cut down on cattle rustling, but has increased animal disease (overcrowding) and milk loss (into the tummies of the army blokes).
After Tom finishes exercising and Ryan sets down his guitar we’ll head over to our garden and clear the sunflower stalks and plant some greens using local hoes and machetes. We bought some local cow-pea seeds (the leaves can be plucked and cooked in 4 weeks) and Lucy Hirsh gave us some succulent spinach vine seeds from Kansas City to try out. All around us, neighbors are harvesting sorghum and sunflower from their gardens.
Karamoja has been receiving more than normal rains, which is a mixed blessing. This is the first time I have ever seen maize-corn growing in Nabilatuk (“the place cows get broken” akibil-break, ngaatuk – cows). Typically maize is only grown near the mountains of Napak or Kadam – where Josephine (Iriiri) and Joshua (Namalu) live, respectively – but this year, with the combination of rains and more NGOs in Karamoja than ever before, including FAO giving out seeds, Nabilatuk is enjoying a new crop. Unfortunately, the foothills of Napak & Kadam have gotten too much rain – so their harvest has been poor. It would have been a good year for rice and sweet potatoes. Sorghum, a more drought resistant crop that the plains people use as their main staple, was looking good – but, the heavy rains have caused rot and crop loss. But I’ve also witnessed square fields with straight rows. Tractors have come!
Still, we have also come. Tom and I moved up to Karamoja with our teammate Ryan in mid July, the roads (as usual) were awful – over 60 vehicles were stuck on the way. Our old Landcruiser made it, thanks to Don and Penny Harris for the new tires they outfitted the beast with. (INSERT PHOTO).
So where do we live? Tom) and I have never owned our own home before, but we do now. We call it the ‘Pine-Lodge’, well; Eureka calls it their Pine Lodge too. (INSERT PHOTO) Thanks to David and Kim Carney from Tazewell, TN (near beautiful Cumberland Gap) for helping us become first time home owners! We haven’t been one place since we left Ghent, Belgium in August 09 – a full year ago, on the road living out of a suitcase. Thanks Mileen!
What are we doing? Daily we meet with our language helpers for half the day. Tom is guiding us with a program called PILOT, he attended a 2 week course at Colorado’s Missionary Training Institute last October. Setting up house has consumed most of the rest of our time – pitching our tents (with continuous readjusting with fierce winds and overpowering rains bending the poles), making shades to lessen the harsh sun and rain for over the tents, setting up a gazebo hut, putting up solar and wind power, setting up water conservation system, walking to the borehole (not so much now that we have barrels and gutters!), making shelves, cooking – wow this takes a lot of time, going to the market, washing clothes (of course by hand), planting living fences, visiting communities, knocking down termites, thatching the hut, drinking tea and shooting the breeze with visitors and old friends, introducing the KKAB team to church and government officials – all in all, just settling in. On Thursday evening we have fellowship with the KACHEP team, and on Friday morning we go to Okutuut village where Tom stories while Joshua translates. We have been able to clear the building site and string out our huts, gather sand and gravel. (INSERT PHOTO of Ryan and the guys in Okutuut)
Pray for us as we patiently wait for our friend Bob Wright to visit and guide us in building techniques – he’s a busy man pulled in 7 directions, but once he gives us the nod and puts in the borehole that KACHEP has been approved for – the work will really kick in. Come join us! Meanwhile – we have plenty to keep us busy.
Pray for team unity and language acquisition. Pray for patience and understanding in culture and for our neighbors to likewise have patience with us.
Preparing the land, planting His seeds
Jean
PS – look for KKAB updates at www.KaramojaKaabongandBeyond.blogspot.com
The sun is rising over Moru Angibui (“the mountains of the hyenas”); bleating flocks of sheep and goats, bellowing cattle are dusting up the path between me and the Karamojong sunrise as I pen this to you. Since I left, the livestock no longer bed down in their own village kraal, but rather are protected by night in the nearby army barracks; this has cut down on cattle rustling, but has increased animal disease (overcrowding) and milk loss (into the tummies of the army blokes).
After Tom finishes exercising and Ryan sets down his guitar we’ll head over to our garden and clear the sunflower stalks and plant some greens using local hoes and machetes. We bought some local cow-pea seeds (the leaves can be plucked and cooked in 4 weeks) and Lucy Hirsh gave us some succulent spinach vine seeds from Kansas City to try out. All around us, neighbors are harvesting sorghum and sunflower from their gardens.
Karamoja has been receiving more than normal rains, which is a mixed blessing. This is the first time I have ever seen maize-corn growing in Nabilatuk (“the place cows get broken” akibil-break, ngaatuk – cows). Typically maize is only grown near the mountains of Napak or Kadam – where Josephine (Iriiri) and Joshua (Namalu) live, respectively – but this year, with the combination of rains and more NGOs in Karamoja than ever before, including FAO giving out seeds, Nabilatuk is enjoying a new crop. Unfortunately, the foothills of Napak & Kadam have gotten too much rain – so their harvest has been poor. It would have been a good year for rice and sweet potatoes. Sorghum, a more drought resistant crop that the plains people use as their main staple, was looking good – but, the heavy rains have caused rot and crop loss. But I’ve also witnessed square fields with straight rows. Tractors have come!
Still, we have also come. Tom and I moved up to Karamoja with our teammate Ryan in mid July, the roads (as usual) were awful – over 60 vehicles were stuck on the way. Our old Landcruiser made it, thanks to Don and Penny Harris for the new tires they outfitted the beast with. (INSERT PHOTO).
So where do we live? Tom) and I have never owned our own home before, but we do now. We call it the ‘Pine-Lodge’, well; Eureka calls it their Pine Lodge too. (INSERT PHOTO) Thanks to David and Kim Carney from Tazewell, TN (near beautiful Cumberland Gap) for helping us become first time home owners! We haven’t been one place since we left Ghent, Belgium in August 09 – a full year ago, on the road living out of a suitcase. Thanks Mileen!
What are we doing? Daily we meet with our language helpers for half the day. Tom is guiding us with a program called PILOT, he attended a 2 week course at Colorado’s Missionary Training Institute last October. Setting up house has consumed most of the rest of our time – pitching our tents (with continuous readjusting with fierce winds and overpowering rains bending the poles), making shades to lessen the harsh sun and rain for over the tents, setting up a gazebo hut, putting up solar and wind power, setting up water conservation system, walking to the borehole (not so much now that we have barrels and gutters!), making shelves, cooking – wow this takes a lot of time, going to the market, washing clothes (of course by hand), planting living fences, visiting communities, knocking down termites, thatching the hut, drinking tea and shooting the breeze with visitors and old friends, introducing the KKAB team to church and government officials – all in all, just settling in. On Thursday evening we have fellowship with the KACHEP team, and on Friday morning we go to Okutuut village where Tom stories while Joshua translates. We have been able to clear the building site and string out our huts, gather sand and gravel. (INSERT PHOTO of Ryan and the guys in Okutuut)
Pray for us as we patiently wait for our friend Bob Wright to visit and guide us in building techniques – he’s a busy man pulled in 7 directions, but once he gives us the nod and puts in the borehole that KACHEP has been approved for – the work will really kick in. Come join us! Meanwhile – we have plenty to keep us busy.
Pray for team unity and language acquisition. Pray for patience and understanding in culture and for our neighbors to likewise have patience with us.
Preparing the land, planting His seeds
Jean
PS – look for KKAB updates at www.KaramojaKaabongandBeyond.blogspot.com
Monday, September 6, 2010
Rachel Nangiro Prayer Letter for KACHEP
How easy is it for you to get a cup of cool, clean water?
This month we’ve been busy visiting many communities in Karamoja to treat their animals, to fellowship and to understand their struggles. Many of their struggles arise from inadequate or polluted water sources. Without water, the people, livestock, and food crops all suffer. One day, me and my fellow KACHEP staff, Sagal Joshua went to Lolachat where we visited communities to see which ones had the lowest water quantity and quality. Let me tell you about Okutoot village. When people in Okutoot heard us, they all came out of the village (home) to know who had arrived. Men, women, children, and theelderly all came out of thick-walled manyatta, we sat under a large fig tree and invited them to sit with us. Lokut, a community facilitator led us in prayers, Lokut is a lame man, all his two legs can’t walk; they are too thin and weak. He uses two metal sticks to support himself to walk.
The Okutot people were very happy to be with us, and introductions were done around the circle. I and Joshua started discussing specific points with them about their water situation (i.e. where do they get water, how far it is, what is the quality and how many people and animals share the same water sources). Joshua asked them drinking water; one of the girls brought some from the manyatta and gave to Joshua. But when I looked in the gourd, the water was really too dirty to drink, brownish in colour, with some green residue floating underneath and many red worms swimming around. We asked them, “Where do you collect this water? They said, “it is too far”. We asked them to take us there so we could survey their water sources. Joshua couldn’t go with us, because the thorn was
inside Joshua foot, he was not able to walk far distance with us, Joshua and Lokut remained with some old men, woman, blind, and small children under the tree. Most of the people in the village went with KACHEP team. It took us 45 minutes of fast walking to reach their closest water point, Amaatata. The place is really bushy, with many thorns around the pass and too much sunshine on us, this day there was no rain, or any cloud on the sky. Karamoja is a very hot place not like other places in the country. We reached the place called Amaatata (valley dam), there were two next to one another. One was dug in 1962 during the time of Obote, the other in 1989. Amaatata is a very large, deep hole, dug using machines sometimes hands using hoes. When the heavy rain falls, this valley dam fills with water from March to December. Over 500 people and 8,000 livestock use the valley dam for water. The present dams are good for cattle but not for people. We, therefore, recommend that Okutoot receive a borehole for the people.
` The next water source is called Ekipur, so we walked there, another 35 minute walk away. Ekipur is a bend in a drying river that still has some trapped, stagnate water. We found a small valley, narrow, dark soil on the sides and too muddy, deep brown water flowing slowly. Inside water, we saw round worms with long trails of some green layer on top. At the time of the visit, people drank, bathed and washed clothes all in the same pond of water. Livestock also drank and walked in the water at the same time. I tell you, not only do they drink this water; they also drink direct from puddles along the road side.
The next Okutoot water source we walked to was a dried river, which only had sand on top without water inside. We stood and we looked at the river, then I asked them “can’t you dig down and to get some water here?” They told us, “it’s impossible, inside it is only mud, which is too hard to dig. We can only get water here when it flows. But, when it does flow, it becomes so full that, we cannot pass over to the other side of the river. Even school children can’t go to class for all week, and we have no schools on this side of the river.” The reason why we asked them about digging into
river is that in some places they get water in dry rivers if you dig down the sand to one meter. This water is very good, very white, clear and cold without any worms. If you could see and taste this water you’d understand there is no way people can bath inside, step inside this water wash clothes, defecate, to play in this water, urinate and even the animals can’t step inside, defecate, and urinate - which is
very common for any water source in Karamoja (except for boreholes). Therefore, this deep water from the dry rivers is the best water that can not be contaminated. The last place we visited was the old bore hole (hand pump well) which was put 10 years ago, which is no longer working. The bore hole is used by big machines to dig down 75-200meters feet to get water, they put many steel pipes, so that the pipes bring water from down to high level, then from there they connect some metal on top, so that one person pump up and down to let water flow following the pipes out, so as to get clean
water out. These people really use dirty water. They told us because of the water they are using, their children are always sick of malaria, diarrhea and etc. We took the all day walking with our foot, with too much sunshine on us, and some of the thorns remained inside our feet. Thorns which had hooks on our way pass tore our clothes. This was just one day for us, but community members struggle daily. I am very happy for the work God gave me and KACHEP Staff, and His protection and care.
In Isaiah 44:3 God says I will pour water on the thirsty land. As the staff of KACHEP, we felt that, this Community needs help in order to get clean (good) water. We sat down to write a proposal, about three bore hole which we have submitted last week. God is able and the Lord will hear our prayers and our cry for our communities. Hebrews 11:1 we should have faith for what we hope for.
Yours in service,
Nangiro Rachael
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Welcome to the new blog
Greetings and felicitations - We're KKAB and we're coming to you live (so far) from Karamoja - in the last couple of weeks, we've traveled a lot of miles: Jinja to Nabilatuk, Nabilatuk to Moroto, Moroto to Kotido to Kaabong, Kaabong to Timu (don't look for it, you'll go blind; you won't find that one on any map unless you come out here), Timu to Kaabong to Kotido, and now Kotido to Moroto (now, be honest, did you really want to know all that? - Indiana Jones once told Marian, "it's not the years, it's the miles" - sorry, Indy, but I gotta disagree, a lot of those miles took years off my warranty) - truck is still holding up, smiles remain uncracked, vision for the lost continues unabated and getting sharper by the meeting ... oh, yeah, so far, we haven't done any actual "work," if by "work" you mean language and culture learning or any form of gospel ministry among the lost - so far, it's been "meetings" - and I say that in the most appreciative and productive (as well as least ironic) sense - we've traveled all those miles in order to see people who will either be part of our future team or partner with us in other ways - now for all you people out there rolling your eyes (or even rolling them up into your head, falling to the floor and frothing at the mouth at the mere notion of "meetings"), let me remind you that God is big (no, bigger ... no, keep going ... nope, bigger ... keep going, I'll tell you when to stop) and He is well able to make "meetings" work to the good - we've gotten good advice; we've thought big thoughts and dreamed big things and hammered out details on plans that will likely be obsolete by the time we all get together to do them - but all in all, God is great and He is more clearly good with every passing day
- blessings ya'll
Tom
- blessings ya'll
Tom
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