Here's a good idea: Design a whole lot of cool systems that'll empower a group of impoverished people in many ways.
Get some literacy programs together - both English and computer, get an online shop together to sell their crafts, work with local health officials to begin the fight against HIV, and bring in some international volunteers to help you.
Then all you need to do is rent a house, flick the electricity switch, and you're away.
Flick the switch. Ugh. Flicking the switch has taken four weeks.
The Heart of Uganda programs - that have been patiently designed over the course of months - have all been delayed for four weeks due to ongoing power nightmares.
Our initial time in Uganda was spent targeting an area in which to start our programs. We settled on the Sironko district as detailed here*. We found a gated compound in a little village called Chino. The house had all the right electrical connections inside the house and a power line running right outside. All we had to do was "connect it up".
To recount the entire tale of woe would take another four weeks. For brevity's sake, here are some selected highlights:
- We arrived on a Tuesday. People assured us that we would have power by Wednesday.
- The guy who was going to install electricity dieing (seriously).
- Giving a guy 80,000 shillings (about $US40) to come early and connect our house to the main electricity line.
This proved to be pointless as the main electricity line wasn't on. - Hiring a retired electricity worker to come to the village to tell us what the problem was.
The place where the main electricity line connects to the village line was disconnected along with a transformer. - The landlord failing to sign the electricity agreement for three weeks.
- The electricity company refusing to connect the power until we had organized a community meeting to discuss safety issues.
This is fair enough. Many people die in Uganda every year as they try to illegally connect their houses to the grid. Just a few days ago, a ten year girl died after stepping on an illegal line that had fallen off her house. - At said community meeting, the electricity company representatives shuffling their feet, and gazing into the middle distance.
I didn't know it at the time, but shuffling one's feet and middle distance gazing means "Give me a bribe and I'll connect you now."
We have another community meeting organized for this week. The electricity reps will almost continue their "zig-zagging ways" (as they say here in Uganda). I'm not going to bribe them.
Once we are connected, we will be the only (legally) connected house in the parish.
On the plus side, some kind hearted souls have donated a generator to Meaningful Volunteer. Not only will this help us to get over our initial power problems, but it will also help to keep us operating during the numerous "normal" power outages in Uganda.
*Seems slightly tragic now that one of things we liked about Sironko was that its electricity was "quite reliable".
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