Helen and Ian Flower

Ian Flower, Founder of EFOD: At Last

After 5 years of planning and hard work it was a delight to be at the formal opening of the Soroti Medical Centre built by EFOD for the Saltpeter Trust. The locals are delighted with the building, it is cool to work in, and we now hand over to the Medics to begin to run a viable 'not for profit' operation. There are many challenges here and the early few months have been stop start, but we are working on strengthening the staff and attracting more patients.

The Incinerator built in the grounds of Soroti Referral Hospital is now being rebuilt a second time since construction in 2005 in accordance with the inventor's instructions. As with everything here, things take time, and training of the operatives needs to be repeated several times, but EFOD are repairing what they build in true Civil Engineering fashion.

The team here is doing a great job, working hard, having fun, and making a difference, they all deserve a medal!  

At the lake north of Soroti

                                   Villagers and fishermen with their dug out canoe

                                        Cow grazing on the shore

                                         The children were a bit unsure of us as we poured out of our minibus.

                                         Fisherman gliding across the lake.

                          

Barnaby Bear from Glenboi school goes to Uganda

http://www.sallysudworthuganda.blogspot.com/

We have taken Barnaby Bear from Glenboi School, Aberdare, on our trip. Sheila Jones is their teacher and she is tracking our work as civil engineers on Barnaby's blog. We hope to raise awareness of civil engineering and the charity work that EFOD are doing in Africa, and maybe inspire engineers of the future!

More photos from Dave

A view of the multiple uses of the lake - I passed on the swimming opportunity!

Sam took us inside his hut. He is 23 and built this mudhut and thatched roof himself.

 His clothes for church are immaculate!

The markets of Soroti. You name it, you can buy it. Fortunately for myself, I found a razor!

A final polish from Helen 

Leon's helpers

Building access to the tanks

Improvising a hatch

Opening by Joseph Osotu; Kat on a bora bora(cycle taxi service)

Soroti medical centre opening

Arrival at Entebbe:Moses our driver;the joiners

Soroti Baptist Church; Liane the joiner; Local Soroti children

An update from Soroti by Dave Reynolds Chair apprentice

Dave

Each day continues to be as eventful as the last and I am not short of stories to tell. So where to begin?

The soakaway drainage system was finished on Thursday – albeit a few manhole covers I need to get fabricated in Soroti and some minor landscaping works around it. I took the mason and the labourers onto another task which was to come up with a means of access to inspect the rainwater harvesting tanks. The mason built stairs using maram bricks and filling out with stone and concrete. Afterwards, the stairs were skimmed with cement to give a neat finish. We mix all the concrete ourselves using a simple 1:2:4 ratio of cement, sand and stone respectively. Whilst the mason built the steps, Me and a labourer took some of the corrugated sheet off the tank covers and improvised a hatch system to enable access into the tanks. The next task for me now is to figure out how to make the hatch lockable. One thing we do not want happening is children throwing in debris, or worse, falling in. Elsewhere, my biggest achievement of the week is without doubt installing the plaque! I took it by hand from Cardiff to Soroti and made it through customs three times with a stainless steel plaque wrapped in bubble wrap and duct tape. We took a section of the wall out and made good before installing the plaque. The locals loved it and it went down well at the official opening ceremony.

I have found it difficult at times to deal with the time taken to carry out trivial tasks. However, as the week has gone on, I have come to accept that jobs are not going to get completed at the same pace as they do back home. From talking to others who have been in my position, this seems to be a common experience.

Their word for the white person is “muzungo” (I think that is the correct spelling). And so after the opening ceremony, we had a game of football of the locals vs muzungos. Unfortunately for myself, I had an incident involving barbed wire and my leg during the game and so had to seek some minor first aid treatment much to the amusement of everyone watching. It involved Sally rubbing alcohol gel into my cuts – it stung quite a bit and my high pitched screaming was apparently quite comical!

On Sunday morning I visited the church with the rest of the group. Whilst not being Christian myself, it was an amazing cultural experience. It seemed to be an event which brought a huge amount of happiness to the locals and they were extremely welcoming to us.

So now it is Sunday afternoon. We plan to climb Soroti rock at about 4:00pm and get some rest. We will certainly need it as we now have 4 days left to get everything that we set out to do complete.

Dave and his drainage gang

ICE Exec Committee blog update

Sally: Today was hot as there was little breeze. At the Soroti medical centre the EFOD/ICE crew is settling down and making some real progress, installing lights, internet connections, guttering and shelving. Momentum is gathering for the grand opening on Friday with local dignitaries to mark the occasion. Together with Liane we officially became the ‘joiners’ and we were elevated to fitting panels to door frames to the radiology room and making shelving. Much to my amusement I was working Uganda style this afternoon, sawing some wood for the aforesaid shelving, whilst four young Ugandan men stood round and watched!

I was delighted this afternoon to have borrowed the dongle which allowed me access to the internet whereupon I could create this blog. I heard today that next week I will be travelling to see the other EFOD projects; the orphanage that was finished just last summer and the grinding mill run by the widows co-operative. I also hope to visit Janet in Mbale before coming home to meet her class.

Friday 28^th: Official opening of the medical centre

It was a hot day and many dignitaries came along to the opening ceremony, including Bishop John Ecru, Pastor Sam Eibu and dep RDC for Soroti district, Joseph Osotu. I was invited to speak a few words in my capacity as ICE Cymru Chair, and Ian Flower and Stuart Gerrish spoke about EFOD. It was the culmination of a fantastic achievement by the team who have worked in Soroti for many years and was quite emotional.

We have developed a great rapport with the locals who are working with us to complete the last few details that will help to extend the building. We are completing fitting out of the radiology rooms and also creating a resource centre that will be used for training in technical, IT and craft.

Saturday 29 Jan : We made the trip to the lake – on a very dusty road. See the photographs of some spectacular scenery. The tiny villages we saw enjoyed the most perfect setting, overlooking the vast serene lake. There was a mixture in building materials from classic mud huts with thatched roofs, to small brick bungalows. Soccer was everywhere with football pitches dominating every village green! I expect they are all also vulnerable to flooding during the rainy season.

We passed a water station that was very busy where the young women and children were filling large yellow containers using the hand pump (perhaps WaterAid or Oxfam had installed this?) and the women were carrying the containers back to their villages on their heads. We have seen many women carrying many (challenging) items such as whole bales of timber and also very large baskets laden with fruit (bananas and mangos) carefully balanced on their heads.

Sunday 30 Jan :A day off at last – I have never done so much manual work in my career to date and in a heat of 35 deg and above! Sunday service at Soroti Baptist Church was an experience I shall never forget. There was much singing and dancing, and joyful singing; it was impossible not to be moved. There were even some pogo-ing (if you have ever seen The Blues Brothers film you will know what I mean!)

Liane's Update

We have computer access!! What an amazing place, I met a lady on Monday called Janet, who is married to Apollo and are friends with one of our group Eric.  Janet is pretty wonderful, she has 3 children but has also taken in 2 orphans and 2 needy children.  She is a primary school teacher, who has 94 pupils aged 9 years old.  They are in school from 7.30am to 5pm!!!! There are fees of 4000 Ugandan shillings each term (just over £1), but not everyone can afford it.  There are many challenges for the ugandan people in terms of education, many of the eldest children have to look after familes if their parents have passed away, and many of the young women who drop out of education (many due to money) get married at 12 or 13 years old, as they don't know any different.....however it just goes to show that even if they don't have much, they have a lot of love to give.

Working at the medical centre has been hard work and Sally and I have teamed up as joiners, undertaking several projects already..I'm pretty good with a drill and saw, but not too good at hammering nails!  There are a group of children who come over every day and remember everyone's names...they helped me with my calculations yesterday whilst swooped around me!...must go now medical centre opening!

Photo Diary

Arrival in Uganda

Sally (Chair): We had a very long journey travelling all the way to Soroti. Lake Victoria was amazing and so vast, and we landed on the shores at Entebbe before travelling north to Soroti. We were on the road all day with a brief stop for dinner with Apollo and Janet in Mbale. Kampala was humming with commerce with every square inch of the roadside covered by stalls selling everything from bedsteads to fresh mango. The pot holes got bigger and bigger as we travelled further north and we swerved from one side of the road to the other to avoid them. Moses is a skilled driver!

The food is fab with chicken, rice, matoki ( akin to mashed potato but made with a variety of banana – not sweet), chipates, fresh pineapple and water melon.

The local children love to come and watch.

Our first project was to make a new cabinet to cover the electric meters to prevent them shorting out when it rains. I have acquired a new skill as a joiner, sawing, screwing, hammering and planning!!

Dave (Apprentice):

We leave Cardiff at half past two on a cold Sunday afternoon in January. We arrive 29 hours, 3 flights and a 7 hour bus journey later to discover a whole new culture and climate to welcome us. Everyone is tired and we do not arrive in Soroti until 10:30pm on Monday evening local time. However, Tuesday morning is straight to work at the Soroti medical centre. Immediately I am given control of 6 labourers to construct a soakaway for the roof rainfall runoff. The morning sees slow progress as I find difficulty in motivating the workforce. However, in the afternoon, we push on well and have a manhole constructed and the pipes backfilled. We perforate a pipe to go in the soakaway pit and assemble a simple rodding pipe system to enable treatment in the event that a blockage occurs. We also take the opportunity to look around the markets of Soroti and observe the suppliers and manufacturers who have assisted and continue to assist in making parts for the medical centre. It is interesting to observe the amount of open air welding taking place with welders not wearing eye protection. I think my health and safety inspector would have something to say about that!

On Wednesday we progress with the soakaway by building a manhole to capture sediment. The mason constructs a stone wall and then plasters around to create a tidy finish, We cut a section out of the wall near the medical centre entrance where we plan to install the plaque to commemorate the opening of the medical centre. On Thursday we install the plaque after making good the cut made in the wall. Other tasks included building a plinth to allow inspection of the rainwater harvesting tanks, benchmarking the manholes to prevent them from ponding water (which would attract Mosquitos) and compacting the soil around existing manholes to landscape them into the surroundings. Tomorrow (Friday) we see the official opening of the medical centre.

Liane (Hon Sec):