Meeting Day

Today was a day of many meetings, beginning immediately after
breakfast. Muganzi, our first contractor to interview for the biogas
project, arrived unexpectedly early. He and Asiimwe John had driven 3
hours from Hoima on a boda boda and were waiting for Ed and Jim in the
waiting room of the convent. The interview went very well, and Muganzi
even arranged to meet us again in Mpala at 6 am Saturday to take us to
the market district and show us the materials he was confident they
could procure there, including the flexible rubber sheet and a burner
large enough to heat one of the school's kettles.

Erin and Connor had a preliminary meeting at BCDC, followed by a
long-awaited "kick-off" meeting with the BCDC officers and Father
Godfrey of the Parish. Erin began from square one with explaining
EWB's structure and project approach, to make sure that the water
project began with everyone on the same page. Father Godfrey expressed
his gratitude that EWB commits to the same project area for at least 5
years, and in fact hoped that there was not a maximum limit!

Since Ed played the smallest part in the water project, he was called
away to ride to Mubende to pick up our luggage from the airline
delivery there. Driver Phillip was an expert and safe driver, but was
in an understandable hurry, and Ed had a ride as close to the
Paris-Dakar offroad rally as he'd ever want! What a relief to return
with our luggage and deliver our care package cargo from the
Covington, KY convent to the Buseesa convent.

In the meantime, Erin, Connor, and Jim had scouted 3 water sources
near Buseesa Village and were preparing for a village LC1 meeting.
Adding Ed to the group, we were shuttled to the Akasalava crossroads
by boda boda in time to be front and center at the gathering. Erin
again did an excellent on-the-spot job explaining the EWB purpose and
project approach, with Connor as backup in answering key questions.
Locals named 5 water sources they thought could be candidates for the
first "protected spring" location. Wearing an "empowerment through
microfinance" t-shirt, Tusabe from BCDC handled the translating. All
finished well, and the LC1 continued their meeting with an
introduction of the new national identification card program.