Welcome to Uganda

FINALLY! The blog you have all been waiting for! The Interethnic Health Alliance January 2015 blog has finally arrived; but the team touched down in Uganda a few days ago, and we are already knee-deep in projects completed and adventures yet ahead.

This January trip, IHA has teamed with the Utah chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) to bring low-cost water well development and education to villagers, as well as additional testing and training to provide cleaner water systems. We will be working with EWB for the next five years, which will allow time for proper development of projects and seeing them through to completion. Most importantly, IHA and EWB stress the importance of educating the local villagers on how to build these systems and projects for future expansion on their own.

Nothing says “this world is a big place” like the 2-day journey we took to get from Salt Lake City to Entebbe, Uganda; but with the warm welcome of the Ugandan smiles and balmy temperatures, the long trek was behind us like a 15 minute car ride. With each volunteer packing 2 checked bags of project supplies, plus our own personal carry-on items, we loaded up the van like a clown car and headed for the hotel in Kampala.

Monday morning we rose early and began the 4 hour car ride from Kampala to Masaka, stopping at The Equator to see if the water does indeed swirl in the opposite direction. Though we couldn’t confirm on-site, we were able to document being in 2 hemispheres at one time. One needs little entertaining when with a team like this, doing great things for great people here in Uganda.

(Alexa, IHA Volunteer)

Let me introduce the IHA Jan 2015 Volunteers and the EWB team! 

EWB volunteers are Altaf, Nikki, Matt and Scott (plus Stella in this photo).

IHA volunteers are Stella (in group photo above), Alexa, Roger, Bryan, and our youngest volunteer to date, Reese.

(Reese and Bryan)

And what would IHA be without the man behind it all, Dr. John Shavers.

After settling in at the hotel MariaFlo in Masaka, we headed out to Kiwumpa Sangiriya village, to the God’s Grace schoolyard. We were welcomed by the women, men and children at a town hall meeting where we introduced the projects we are working on this week. 

I will summarize our projects in the following blog...read on!