Since we last updated...

Their last picture together before saying goodbye - I don't know if they'll remember her as a sister, an aunt, a cousin, or a nanny, but one things for certain, they won't forget Dani!

SINCE WE LAST UPDATED:

* I have fully transitioned into the role of Director of the eMi East Africa office. I’m finding myself much busier these days than I have been since we arrived here a year and a half ago, but overall things are going well.

Chad & I hanging out at their going away party.

* My project team has been working hard these past few weeks and were able to finalize our project report this past week! It turned out great and we’ll be mailing it to the ministry this coming week.
* The boys participated in three, week-long camps at the school: soccer camp, basketball camp, and a ‘superstar’ camp that taught them about both sports and character. On the last day of superstar camp, over 600 Ugandan primary school kids came to participate in various games and sports. Samaritan’s Purse put it on and it was a lot of fun.

The boys at Summer camp, taking a break to hear a devotional by Mr. Nick, the camp director.

On the last day of camp, all the kids got to play on a slip and slide!

* Alisha has been working tirelessly in her new classroom to get it ready for the school year. She spent over 40 hours going through stuff, throwing a ton of junk away, organizing and rearranging the room. She also bought a bunch of paint and hired some painters to paint the room. It's looking amazing now!

The finished Kindergarten Room

Alisha had her birthday on Monday. She turned...you'll have to ask her! Neighbor/friend Lynne baked her a birthday cake - her favorite, carrot cake!

* My sister Terri arrived for a 9-day visit. We had a great time and her and Dani enjoyed an amazing safari last weekend. But sadly, we said goodbye early Wednesday morning as they headed out for a week in England/Italy en route back to SoCal.

Terri and Alisha hanging out for coffee at Quality Hill, Alisha's favorite spot in town.

The whole family (minus me, who steered clear of the mess!) joined in for a painting project - painting the blocks for the kindergarten classroom.

The four of us went out to dinner for Alisha's birthday at the new Mexican food place downtown. For Kampala, it's pretty decent Mexican food...but real Mexican food is still something we long for from back home.

One of our last nights with Dani - it's like sending a kid off to college. Fortunately we have a good decade before we have to go through that for real. But our house is a lot different without her around - we're definitely having to readjust.

Terri even braved downtown Kampala on the back of my boda!

* We have been preparing to say goodbye to Dani these past several weeks. We’re sad to be losing our newest family member, but at the same time we’re excited for her to start the next phase of her life – college! We’re so happy and blessed to have had the chance to have her as a part of our family this past year. She’ll always hold a special place in our hearts.

The last supper with Terri and Dani - of course, our favorite, Banana pancakes, were served!

Aunt T was a big fan of the banana pancakes, and the boys were big fans of Aunt T!

Aunt T reading the boys a book on her last night here

The boys each made Dani a going away card and presented it to her on her last night.

* I’m attending a 3-day conference in downtown Kampala this week called the Annual International Standards Conference. This year’s theme is ‘Regional and International Trade – the Role of Standards’. I’m one of only two mzungu’s in attendance – the other is a representative from the French embassy – out of nearly 300 people. Topics include: Eurocodes in Uganda, Safety of Buildings and Construction in Uganda, and Quality of Cement in the Uganda Market. My main reason for attending is to get some professional development hours for my Oregon P.E. license renewal due at the end of the year (30 PDH’s every 2-year renewal period). The Minister of State for Trade was in attendance so it’s a bit of a media circus. The conference is attended by many local business leaders.
* Jonah had a broken filling, so we took him in to see the dentist. After x-rays and examination, the dentist said he needed a crown, two other fillings, and possibly a root canal or even extraction with a spacer add afterwards. Yikes! We have to wait 3 weeks to see if the tooth is still sensitive. Pray for him!
* Last weekend, we had 4 parties to attend – two 4th of July parties (lots of fun, but made us miss home!) and two goodbye parties. In the next week, we say goodbye to 13 people from the eMi office, not to mention Dani and Terri. It’s not the fun part of our lives here.

We had over 50 people at our house on the 4th of July. It really made us miss America. Early in the day, I went downtown to the second-hand market here ('Owino Market') and found a red Old Navy 2003 flag t-shirt for a dollar! You can find pretty much anything at that market!

Some of the departing eMi Interns and volunteers at the going-away party

Terri and Dani with more interns. This was a great group of interns and they will be sorely missed. There's a big Terri and Dani sized hole in our household too.

* The coming 6-7 weeks will be a fairly quiet time around the office. It will be just Janet and I for part of it, but in August we’ll be joined by intern Jill, who is returning as a long-term volunteer for the Fall. We’re excited as the boys love Jill (Jill was also an intern last winter and arrived in Uganda at the same time as us. She returned for another internship these past couple of months.)
* Alisha has a terrible stomach flu at the moment – her first major illness since we’ve been here. Yuk!
* Someone attempted to break into the eMi office this past Wednesday night. I received a call at 1:00am from Stephen, our head of security, notifying me that the night guard had found two intruders in the compound and chased them off. They had hopped the wall and switched the power off in the office. So I drove to pickup Stephen and we went to the police station a couple miles away and picked up 3 police officers – two who were carrying rifles. We went and checked out the office and the lot next door where the men had come from, but only found footsteps. They had tried to open the rear, metal kitchen door but fortunately we had it padlocked. By the time I drove the police back to the station and dropped off Stephen, I didn’t get back to bed until 3:30am. I was just glad the night guard had not been harmed. We will be discussing how best to increase our security next week. The police are being very helpful and proactive, and are contacting the neighbors and local chairman (LC) of our area to talk about what to do with this particular lot. Four burglaries have originated from this lot in the last year, which does not have a security wall and can be accessed by anyone off the street. The police also told us that they will be increasing patrols in the area.

Too bad Superman isn't around to help fight crime...or is he?! We bought the movie Superman downtown last weekend and let the boys watch it. The movie wasn't even over yet and Graysen was fashioning this costume together. Dani colored the logo, but the rest was Graysen's creation, including the red Man U towel as his cape! He's since refined the look to include tall, red soccer socks since he noticed Superman has red boots.

UP NEXT:

We’re eagerly anticipating the arrival of Alisha’s parents on July 17th for a month! During their time here they are taking our family to Kenya for a couple week vacation! We are sad to be missing another summer back home, but this trip to Kenya will be a great ‘stand-in’ for our usual camping trip to the redwoods.

Tanzania project trip - Part III

PART III

The project team (L to R): Long-term volunteer Denis, Long-term volunteer Megan, Intern Ryan, Intern Suellen, Volunteer Ben, Intern Tim, Intern Andrew, and me.

The Master Plan, designed and sketched by Megan

Saturday May 23rd:

Presentation day – after a late night we got an early start to make sure we were ready for the presentation. Since we had finished everything the night before, it was actually a pretty relaxing morning. But just as we were feeling really good about being ready ahead of time, the power went out! All week, the power had only been out a couple times and for short periods. This time, it went off around 7:30am and stayed off all morning. So with the presentation to begin at 10am, we asked the hotel staff around 9:30am to turn on the generator. Unfortunately, they were out of fuel so they had to go get some. After waiting for an hour, they finally returned with gas and started it up.

The topographic survey, performed by Interns Ryan and Andrew. It's pretty impressive that they were able to survey an uncleared, 22-acre site in just 3 days.

The site 'area' diagram. The architects started with this to identify the various areas on site and how they would interact with one another. This stuff always impresses me because it's pretty foreign to any training I've received for engineering. But the great thing about leading these trips is I get to learn a lot from the talented volunteers and interns who come on the trip!

Fortunately, that was really the last hiccup, as the presentation went very well. We had great communication with the ministry all week, so there were no surprises to present (which is always a good thing). They really had just a few minor questions sprinkled throughout, so all in all it couldn’t have gone any better. We thanked them for their generous hospitality during the week and closed. Debra, the ministry director, was very touched with the team’s work and gave us a very heartfelt thank you for helping them. It’s always especially satisfying when the ministry is so appreciative of the team’s hard work during the week.

The floor plan and elevations of the children's home. The ministry plans to build four of these structures at a time, creating a cluster that would act as extended family. At full build-out of the site, there would be a total of 16 of these houses, housing a total of more than 120 orphans. A house mom will live in each house of 8 kids.

The guest house, where mission teams from the west will stay while they work at the site.

After packing up a bit, we ate lunch and then headed into town to do a little souvenir shopping at the local market. Pastor Richard’s nephew Alex, who had been helping the surveyor’s on site all week, accompanied us to the market so we would have an interpreter. It was fun to walk through the market, though again not knowing Swahili was a big difference with Uganda. People try to greet to you, but you really have no way of communicating with them except to wave. It really made me appreciate the fact that most people in Kampala speak English.

It was a late night the night before the presentation.

Me and Megan waiting for the generator fuel to show up so we can start the presentation.

After the market, we went across town to a nice hotel for our team closing meeting and a nice dinner. The closing meetings are always one of my favorite moments on the trip as it’s a chance where people can really open up with the team about their experience here as well as encourage the other team members. We each took a turn talking about our high and low points of the trip, what we feel God taught us here or what we’re taking away from this time and any prayer requests we might have. Then, each of the other team members takes a turn sharing a word of encouragement about that person.

Intern Andrew explaining the water plan - I loved this schematic plan the civil engineers created.

For me, my low point on the trip was getting the computer virus. Computer problems drive me crazy, so I was glad that intern Ryan was along on the trip to work on it. My high point was Friday night, the last night of work. We were all taking turns listening to music on our computers, and we landed on Keith Green for an hour or so. Since volunteer Ben and also intern Ryan are big fans of his music, I just enjoyed the time of listening to his music while we all worked. Every time I hear Keith Green I am reminded of a person who was so committed to his faith that his passion is both encouraging and convicting at the same time.

Our work room was perfect - it even had a pull down screen for our powerpoint presentation! Usually, we have to tape up blank white paper on the wall to make the screen!

What I took away from this trip was an appreciation for all of the talent that was there. It’s always a little hard to be the leader of a group of professionals since it seems there are preconceived notions that the leader is somehow more knowledgeable or spiritual than the other team members – and that certainly is not the case. I come at it more from a learning position, as there is always a lot to learn from the other team members. This trip was no exception, as we had some talented people working on this design.

Interns Tim and Andrew sitting down taking a break while volunteer Ben and I stand by waiting for the team at the downtown market.

Sunday May 24th:
The trip home. It sounds so easy to write - if only it was that easy to accomplish! It turned out to be a very long and ‘interesting’ trip home. Here’s what all happened.
We left the hotel at 5:15am to catch the 6:30am ferry. We wanted to be sure to make on that ferry so we could get an early start. When we arrived at 5:30am, there wasn't a soul around but the security guard, so he let us in and we parked, the first car in line. After about 45 minutes and no activity, Alex our driver went to ask about it, and was told that the first ferry left at 7:30am, not 6:30am as we had been told! So after standing around and waiting for a total of 2 hours and 15 minutes, the ferry finally left at 7:45am. We arrived at 8:25am and left soon after. So, 3 hours and 10 minutes in, we had traveled about 5km, with 695km to go!

The sitdown ferry had a nice covered outdoor area in back where we liked to hang out. A much more enjoyable 40 minute ride than the standing room only ferry, where we basically just filled in the cracks between the vehicles.

I had noticed when we got in the car at the hotel that our gas gauge showed a 2/3 full tank even though we had filled it up the night before. I mentioned it to our driver but he said sometimes the indicator takes awhile to rise. I thought he probably knew his car better than I did, so I dropped it.
After several dozen kilometers, I checked and the gas gauge was steadily dropping. I suggested to the driver that perhaps someone had stolen gas out of our tank the night before. He seemed skeptical of that idea, but after just 150km we were almost on empty. The car was also making a loud clicking sound whenever we accelerated, so Alex mentioned that the car was having trouble and that’s why he was driving slower than normal (60-80 km/hr (40-50 mph) the whole trip!) Overall, the first 85km were the worst road of the entire 700km journey, and took 2 hours to travel.
After driving awhile longer and the gas tank getting lower and lower, we pulled over in a small village and Alex drained the fuel filter, suspecting that the people who stole gas from us also put some dirt in the tank (which was causing the sound and forcing Alex to drive slower). While we were stopped, we also noticed one of the back tires was 50% flat, so Alex changed the tire with one of two spares we were carrying on the roof. But there was no gas for sale there, so we had to forge ahead another 50km to find a station.
Just as we were running out of petrol, we found a small town a couple miles off the main road that had a petrol station. It was a small joint, and the power was out so no automatic pump – they’d have to pour it into a jerry can to measure the amount and then fill. After filling up just 20 liters since Alex didn’t trust the gas, we were back on the road.

Some of the more sophisticated equipment I've seen in East Africa was being used to rebuild the road in Tanzania.

When pavement ran out about 100 kilometers further down the road, we were back on the dirt. Fortunately, there was no rain on this day, so what was a terribly crazy road on the way there was a much more easily traversed, dry road this time around. But towards the end of this second dirt section, we were running very low on fuel once again. Our driver, noting that the fuel prices were 50% higher in Tanzania, only filled up another 20 liters this time, so I spent the majority of the trip worrying that we were going to run out of gas out in the middle of the Tanzanian savannah!
Finally reaching the border at 5:30pm, it turned out to be the easiest part of the trip with no glitches. Moving into Uganda, nighttime started to fall, which was unfortunate since the Ugandan roads, though paved, were covered with pot-holes, making it difficult to drive on at night. The team was getting hungry since we hadn’t really eaten anything all day other than snacks (except for me – I don’t eat anything on these trips to help combat motion sickness and also to avoid having to stop for the bathroom). So after driving around for an hour in a town called Masaka, (which is about 3 hours from Kampala) we finally found a little roadside stand selling some stuff the team could snack on.
At 8:30pm, we rolled out of Masaka for home. At that time, our driver started complaining that he was feeling feverish and overall not well. After about an hour down the road from Masaka though, the trip took another turn. Intern Suellen just barely happened to catch out of the corner of her eye that one of our steel hand-auger rods had flown off the top of the car. It took us nearly a kilometer to stop, so when we went back it was a bit hard to know where to look since it was pitch black out. But, after an hour of searching with flashlights (my Surefire flashlight I love so much was the hero!), we finally found it, and after briefly losing one of the team members who had wandered way off down the road looking for the lost item, we were back on the road at 10:30pm.
We finally rolled into Kampala at 12:30am, and by that time our driver was shaking with the chills and feeling terrible. We stopped off at the guesthouse to drop off the volunteer. When we arrived, a very sheepish and worried looking manager met me at the front door and asked why we were here. I explained that we had a reservation for one made weeks ago, and confirmed 6 hours earlier by Alisha when she stopped by to put a pizza in the fridge for the volunteer and a homemade brownie on his bed. The manager explained that she thought we had cancelled and that she was full. What’s worse, she thought Alisha was with the other party so she had given them the pizza and brownie!
I’m not sure if you could see flames coming out my ears, but I could feel them! Fortunately, I stayed calm and told her we would figure something else out and I would be by the next day to discuss what to do. (Mainly, I just wanted a refund for the pizza!)
So we stopped by our house, picked up some spare mats and sheets and had the volunteer cram into the boys place – 7 guys in a small 2-bedroom, 1-bathroom apartment with 3 on the hard tile floor with mats! The volunteer, Ben, was a great sport and I think it turned out Ok in the end.
So, after dropping all the team members off, I finally arrived home at 1am – 20 hours after leaving the hotel! By that time, the driver would curl up into a ball and just shiver while we were waiting to unload at each stop. I felt very badly for him, but there was nothing I could do. So after winding down and getting settled, I went to bed thoroughly exhausted around 2am!

Again, this doesn't have to do with anything, but there were a bunch of these signs and I thought they were funny. Entering the town, it's the same sign without the diagonal line. Then when you're exiting town, they have this sign! I don't know why, but I just thought it was funny. I can't imagine driving out of Los Angeles and seeing a sign that has 'Los Angeles' crossed out on it!

The next morning at 9:20am, I received a call from Chad that our two local staff members, Stephen and Semei, had had some terrible tragedies happen. Semei, our office manager and bookkeeper, had found out a couple days ago that his twin brother (around 32 years old) had died earlier in the week, just a few days after being diagnosed with AIDS. Then Stephen, our head of security, had knocked on Chad’s door the night before around midnight and informed Chad that his 3 year old daughter, Comfort, had suddenly died. She had cerebral palsy since birth, but had been healthy otherwise lately. It was quite a shock and a terrible loss, especially since Stephen had just returned from the village the day before after attending his Christian Father’s (similar to a Godparent in the U.S.) burial (another unexpected death).
It’s unbelievable that all of that happened in a span of 6 days, and a terrible tragedy, though sadly this culture sees such tragedy like that routinely. It doesn’t make it easier though, and I’d ask you to join me in praying for Semei and Stephen’s families in this very difficult time. Semei is not married and has no children. Stephen is married and has a 2 year old son remaining.

Tanzania Project Trip - Part II

PART II

Tuesday May 19th:
This morning, we sent the surveyors and civil engineers off at just before 8am to the site to begin their work. We then set up a work room on the top (4th) floor of the hotel. The entire top floor is an open conference room. We checked and no activities are planned for the conference room all week, so the whole thing is ours!

The architects Megan (on right) and Suellen get to work while intern Tim sets up his computer. Our work room was fantastic - a huge open room with no people traffic and a great cool breeze that blew all day since we were 4 floors up.

About mid-morning, intern Tim and I went into town with Pastor Richard to do some research on various building materials. Since our office has extensive data on material costs around Kampala, we picked about 10 things to price so we could compare with Kampala prices to get an idea of what the comparative building prices are.
Having Pastor Richard with us was a necessity, as very few people in Tanzania speak English. Being downtown, I really noticed how different it is being in a culture where you can’t readily communicate with people. Almost everywhere else I’ve been that has not been the case. Rwanda was a little similar, but a few more people there could speak some English. But even in Europe and the parts of Africa where I’ve been thus far, you can pretty much get around with English. But here, Swahili is the only language people speak. On one hand, it would be nice to be forced to learn the language since that’s really the only way to learn it quickly, but it would certainly make life a lot more difficult.
So we made our way around downtown finding various building materials such as concrete, pvc pipes, toilet fixtures, metal roofing sheets, and 2x4's. Mwanza is much smaller than Kampala, but is still a good sized city. It feels comparable to Jinja, though a little busier in town. Still, there’s little traffic and getting around town is no problem during the work week, unlike Kampala which is one big traffic jam Monday through Saturday during the day.
I also noticed there are far fewer mzungus here than in Kampala. I guess it makes sense, but I was expecting a major city like Mwanza to have more westerners. During our 2 hours or so in town, I think I only saw 2 other white people! Surprisingly, white people don't seem to be as big of a novelty either -which is opposite of what I would have expected. There was a lot less fan fare while we walked around the markets. Back in Kampala, people would've been talking to us left and right.

Wednesday May 20th:
After a quick breakfast, I decided at the last minute to join the surveyors and civil engineers going out to the site. So we crammed onto the early ferry (most of the locals take the early ferries, presumably to go to work), just making it on as they started to raise the receiving platform much like they used to raise the wooden bridges over castle moots. After the 40 minute ride across where I stood between two buses, we went to hire some motorcycles to take us to the site.

Crammed between two buses, I was able to carve out space to see out so I wouldn't get sick. The ferry was pretty stable, though I was a little leery on some trips that were rougher since the vehicles would shift some.

Intern Andrew (thumbs up)and volunteer Ben enjoying the ride.

The busses and trucks unloading the ferry. There were two ferries that ran, this one which was standing room only and another one, which had some nice seating areas.

Since there weren’t enough for all of us, the civil engineers and I decided to walk.
After the 30 minute hike, we arrived at the site. The civil engineers began digging holes, while the surveyors got back to the survey. Since the land is mostly covered in tall grass, moving around is a bit tricky. It’s also a little unnerving walking around not being able to see your feet when you know there are some undesirable critters out there (namely, snakes!). (Later that night, one of the interns surveying reported seeing a large black mamba snake (2 inches thick) on site just 4 feet from where he was standing earlier in the day! Fortunately, it quickly slithered away.)
The holes the civil engineers dig are used for a few purposes. First, they chart the soil types as they go down, noting the depth where any changes occur. Changes to the color, texture, moisture and content can each have a big impact on both the structural qualities of the soil, as well as the soils ability to filter waste water. Second, the depth to either the water table or to bedrock is important to note, again for both structural and waste water purposes. If the water table is too high, putting a soak pit in the ground to dispose of waste water would not be a good option. Third, the holes are filled with water and the rate of percolation is measured to see if the soil is a good candidate for filtering waste water in a soak pit or leach field (a leach field is a much shallower pit that is spread out over a large area, as opposed to a soak pit, with is a smaller rectangle but could be 4 meters deeper).

Cleaning out the hand auger can be a tedious process depending on the soil. This site had a lot of sand so it came out pretty quickly.

Intern Ryan taking a survey shot of one of the boreholes dug by civil engineers Denis (left) and Ben. I gave intern Ryan a hard time for wearing a flourescent traffic vest out in the middle of the African bush - you can never be too safe! ...But it turns out, it was quite handy since it helped intern Andrew (who was on the gun) spot him amongst the tall grasses in some areas on site.

Looking down on the site from Glory Mountain (where the survey gun was set up), you can just make out intern Ryan...thanks to the traffic vest! The civil engineers are also shown farther downhill to the left of where Ryan is.

After a few hours on site, as I stood on top of the hill where the survey instrument was setup, I could see in the distance the ferry was coming. I knew if I walked back I would never make it. So Dominic and his brother Alex, two young Tanzanian men who are the nephews of Pastor Richard and who are helping us out while we’re on site, called ahead to the ferry and asked a motorcycle to come pick me up. After descending the hill and making my way to the road, I took off jogging. After a full kilometer, the motorcycle finally arrived and gave me a ride to the ferry, making it just as the passengers were loading.

Intern Andrew, setup on top of Glory Mountain. It was an ideal land feature for surveying, as it allowed them to do a full topographic survey for the 22-acre parcel in 3 days. Not bad since it was Andrew's first time running the gun. Intern Ryan knows his stuff so he trained him and the two of them got all of that work done pretty fast. eMi East Africa gets the cream of the crop when it comes to interns! The young people who come through our office are pretty impressive.

Not a bad work environment, even if it is 10,000 miles from home!

For the rest of the day, we worked up in the workroom on the top floor trying to start putting the pieces together. Since the electrical engineer helping out for this project is not on the trip, we’ve been gathering as much information for him as possible. I’ve also been working on the report, and then just supporting the team as needed and coordinating meeting times with the ministry.
There’s a construction site in back of the hotel that we’ve kind of been watching (I think it's the hotel expanding). Today, we saw these two workers working on forming the columns on the 2nd floor preparing it to pour concrete soon. They were each on a wooden ladder about 10 feet tall, right near the edge of the 3rd story. No harnesses, no ropes – not even the ladder was tied off. Then I noticed that one of the ladders wasn’t even resting on the floor, but the bottom rung was supporting the entire weight as it rested on a board propped on top of the partially built wall. There’s no way to explain it, so I took a picture:

From this guy's feet to the ground is probably about 20 feet.

Look at how this ladder is supported - resting on the bottom rung!!

It’s incredible how life and safety just don’t seem to be valued as highly here. Not that Tanzania needs an OSHA necessarily, but some common sense rules that we take for granted are the furthest thing from people’s minds here, whether it’s at a water slide, on the road, or at a construction site.

Thursday May 21st:
Today is Brodie’s 8th birthday, so before breakfast I called to wish him a happy birthday. He was getting ready for school after being out sick the past two days, so I got to talk to him. Boy, time flies. He sounded so old on the phone, just carrying on a normal conversation. I think turning 8 is starting to move out of ‘little boy’ and into the ‘kid’ stage. I hated being gone for his birthday but there were a few things going on at the office that kind of dictated this time frame for the project trip. I remember last year I was able to just barely schedule the trip around his birthday, but unfortunately this is when the Summer eMi trips go out. If I stay with eMi for awhile, I’ll have to figure out a way around this since I don’t want to miss his birthday every year.
This morning, most of the team headed out to the site right after breakfast. I stayed back to try to solve a problem we’ve run into. A program needed to download our survey data and create contours of the land is not installed on any of the computers we have here. So I called back to the office in Kampala to have them email it to us. Since the internet has been on only 5 minutes a day thus far (the hotel says they are coming to fix it today), I went downtown to an internet café to download the email. So, for 75 cents, I got online for an hour and was able to get the program! It was pretty important to get since we couldn’t import the survey information into AutoCAD without it.
Otherwise, it was a pretty low key day. Since 6 out of the 8 team members were out at the site all day, there wasn’t a lot of action going on around the work room. My main objective for the day was to solve the program problem, so since it was solved by 11am I had time for other things. As is the case on all project trips, most of my work (structural, report, etc.) has to wait until we get back to the office since I have to wait for the architects to get most of their work laid out before I can begin. This time, since I have a structural intern (Tim), I’ll be passing a lot of the work off to him back in the office. It’s good because it gives me more time to figure out logistics and make sure everyone else has what they need information-wise to do their work.
About an hour after I got home from downtown, the internet came on at the hotel and stayed on for the rest of the afternoon – go figure! I actually got to skype chat with Alisha for awhile which was a very nice treat! Whenever I am gone on project trips it always reminds me how much I treasure Alisha. She is an amazing person and wife and I am so blessed to have her in my life, for life! It sounds like all is well on the home front, though after planning and hosting a birthday party for 8 little boys Alisha sounded exhausted when we spoke on the phone tonight.

Friday May 22nd:
This day marks our last work day before the presentation, which will be tomorrow (Saturday) morning at 10am. This was the first day where all 8 team members were in the work room all day – that is somewhat unusual. I think the reason it was the case on this trip because it took so long to get to the site. By the time you add in waiting for the ferry and then transporting to the land after you arrive, it’s about a 2 hour process.
It was fun having everyone around, though much of my day was interrupted by a computer virus! I knew going to the internet café and downloading a file there was a risk, but we really had no choice. So after plugging in my flash-drive and copying the file there, I plugged it into my computer to copy over the file. Apparently, that’s not the only file that copied over (even though I had immediately scanned my flash-drive upon plugging it in). Anyway, the virus is call ‘furio.exe’. So far, it hasn’t caused any major problems, but it has an ‘autorun’ function that is forcing itself to try to run virtually non-stop. One of my virus protection programs has caught it, but when it removes it the virus reinstalls itself. Arrg!

The work room, running at full tilt.

Not too many late nights this week, though the night before the presentation is always the latest. On this trip, Friday night was that night as most of us were up until about 1:30am.

Intern Ryan worked on a fix for a couple hours, and he did make progress, but I’ll have to wait for a solid internet connection back in Kampala to fully solve the problem.
Another interesting experience today has been the food service here at the hotel. Both at lunch and dinner, it took 3 hours from the time we ordered until the time when our food was ready! It was definitely a test of patience for the hard-working team. Fortunately, since all of our meals have been ordered at the hotel, we were able to continue working up on the top floor in the work room until they came up to tell us our meals were ready. Overall though, the accommodations have been really nice. The ministry was very nice to have put us up in a nice hotel and paid for us to order off the menu all week.
After a long day and a late night, I think we are finally ready for the presentation at 10am tomorrow morning. It’s nice that everything is coming together. The ministry has had a lot of input and seems very happy with the design that has been developed thus far.

This doesn't have to do with anything, but it's a picture of the lot next door from the 4th floor of our hotel in Mwanza. I watched this family for about 10 minutes...

It's amazing to me how much time people in Africa seem to have. It's good and bad - bad because I know boredom is a problem. A lot of people don't have a job or have an inconsistent job schedule, so they're left with lots of time to kill. But the good side is, families spend all day together. If this was America, the little boy would be playing video games, the older sibling would be on facebook, and the baby would be in a baby seat watching a video while the mom worked on chores or was at work all day like the dad. But it amazes me that families just sit there, doing nothing, and talking. My kids wouldn't sit this still for 60 seconds!

Project trip to Mwanza, Tanzania - Part I

PART I

Sunday May 17th:
The trip to Tanzania got off to an early start – up at 3:30am and on the road by 4:00am. We’d packed the van the night before and parked it at the office so we could get right on the road.
The 220km (137 mi) to the border was pretty uneventful. At the immigration office, we almost got stuck as one of the interns was about a month past due on his visa. The immigration officer was threatening to send him back to Kampala, but after about 15 minutes of apologizing and asking what we could do, he finally stamped it and allowed him to continue (free of charge, surprisingly). The Tanzanian side was a breeze, and we were on our way in Tanzania!

This is how we sat for 14 hours before finally arriving at the ferry.

The first 150km was amazing – the road was better than anything I’ve seen in Uganda so far, and the surrounding terrain we were bisecting was so beautiful. The terrain is hilly, but with large, circular valleys between the hills covered in green grass with clusters of trees, including the occasional palm and banana trees that give it a distinctly African look. Light grey rock outcropping speckled the landscape as well, helping to make it one of the most beautiful landscapes I’ve ever seen. But from there, it got interesting.
Like it had been cut with a saw and taken away, all of a sudden the pavement just ended, giving way to a wider than normal dirt clearing. It was clear that they were rebuilding the road at first glance, and this was confirmed after 500 meters when we saw the first of what would be over a hundred new concrete culverts crossing the road. For the next 100 kilometers, the path we took was dictated by the tire tracks from vehicles that had traveled before us. But it varied from the dirt surface of the main (future) roadway, to a makeshift frontage road on one side, to a drainage ditch slash road that was chosen because it was the best option at that point. The weather also made things interesting as small thunderstorms were blowing through every couple hours, so the roadway was at times engulfed by seasonal streams.

One of the many flowing streams we crossed on the way. This one was nearly 3 feet deep up ahead where the truck had just passed.

At one point, the roadway was almost completely underwater for a couple kilometers.
A few spots were particularly hair-raising: one spot, the depth of the water was close to 2 ½ feet and it was flowing at a good pace; another spot was deep and rocky, so a small throng of local kids walked us through the best path to take. Our driver, Alex, clearly not trusting the kids, charted his own course and nearly got us stuck as we hit a number of large rocks! (He should have trusted the kids!); another spot, we came across a truck stuck in the middle of the road, so we had to take a narrow path around it to the left which was very steep – everyone in the car leaned hard to the right fearing we’d tip; in another spot, the road was narrow and very slick with ‘gushy’ mud as it winded down a slope on a hairpin curve to the left. Coming around the corner, we came upon two trucks who were stuck – one going uphill and the other downhill. We took a narrow, gooey path around to the right but we were sliding just like we were on ice as we just made it around the trucks. A group of about 15 Tanzanian young men were out trying to dig and reinforce the road in front of the trucks to allow them to proceed (hopefully they’ll be successful sometime in the next week before we have come back through!).
But just like it had ended, the tarmac reappeared and we were back in business, soon forgetting the adventure of the dirt road behind and marveling at how good the road now was. However, our luck would soon end and we were faced with another 50 kilometer stretch of the same situation.
The last 100 kilometers (the trip was 100 kilometers longer than we’d thought) was hard dirt with potholes, so while it wasn’t nearly as harrowing, it was definitely the least comfortable to drive on. At 5:20pm, I got a text from Pastor Richard with the ministry in Mwanza that we had to be at the ferry by 6:00pm, otherwise it would close and we’d be stuck on a different ferry that would add an hour to our trip! So Alex started driving like a maniac to make the ferry, which was 65 kilometers out at that point. Since it was a terrible surface, this made for a very bumpy ride – a couple times we landed so hard I thought sure our tires would burst or the axle would break! But at 5:56pm, we rolled into the waiting line for the ferry – we made it!

The line waiting to get on the ferry

Standing room only on this ferry (there were two that alternated, and the other one had benches inside to sit down on)

Our safari van (off center, to the left) coming off the ferry

After an hour long process of ferrying across Mwanza bay (Lake Victoria), we were greeted by a friendly Pastor Richard who led us to our hotel just 3 or 4 kilometers away, arriving at 8:00pm – 16 hours after we left Kampala. After a quick greeting to the ministry people (who had flown in earlier that day), we ordered dinner and ate, and then made our way to our rooms to clean up and go to bed. Me and one other team member, long-term volunteer and civil engineer Denis, each have our own rooms – the rest of the team paired off into two’s.

Not everyone in East Africa is poor! I have no idea how these homes are accessed as they are located on a very narrow and almost solid rock strip of land that juts out into Mwanza Bay. The lower house has a staircase down to the water that was chiseled out of the rock!

Monday May 18th:
I haven’t had as solid of a night of sleep in a long time! When the alarm went off at 6:30am, I opened my eyes and thought, “Where am I?!”
The team ate breakfast and then met upstairs in the 4th floor conference room for a short devotion and worship time. After that, the 4 ministry people came up and met with us to give us the background on their ministry. There are four ministry people here: Debra – the director, her husband Wayne, and then Shannon & Christine Wentzel – the couple who plan to move to the site with four of their five children. All four ministry members are from Minnesota.
Hearing about the ministry is always a crucial time for the team as it allows us a chance to connect with what they are doing. This ministry, called End-Time Glory Ministries, is focused on bible training and evangelism in nearly 20 countries around the globe. This trip is Debra’s 90th trip out of the U.S. They have bible training schools in Kenya, Uganda, Guyana, Burundi, the Philippines, and the U.S. This project is their first orphanage project of what they hope to be many more in the future in many different countries. They’re vision is big – but they are trusting in God to develop what they feel He’s put on their hearts.
After the introductory meeting, we headed to the ferry to visit the site. The whole ferry process takes about an hour and a half, since you have to arrive early, load, and then wait for the ferry to begin the 30 minute trip. Once on the other side, we all piled in the van and drove towards the site. After just a few hundred meters, we turned off onto something that looked more like a seasonal stream coming down the mountain than it did a road. It took our van two tries just to get over the hump on the side of the main road. After that, it was probably the worst excuse for a road I’ve seen in Africa yet (which is really saying something!).

One stretch of the terrible access road to the site. This picture doesn't do it justice, nor is it the worst part of the road, but it was solid rocks up near the top of this picture.

There were large rocks, 4 foot deep trenches down the middle, holes and deep ruts, and at times it was only a few feet wide with 3 foot deep ruts on each side! With 15 people in the 8 passenger van, there were a few times where it looked and felt like we were going to tip. Before we’d even reached the site, we had already decided to walk back to the main road on the return trip!

The team walking back to the ferry

Walking the site was beautiful. It’s mainly covered in tall grass (4-5 feet) with some bushes and a few large trees. It’s gently sloped, but with a pretty large hill in the middle the ministry has dubbed ‘Glory Mountain’. The ministry has planted various crops on about 25% of the land while they wait to develop. We walked the entire perimeter and much of the middle as well, including a quick hike up the 100 foot-tall Glory Mountain. Pastor Richard saw a small, black Cobra, but he didn’t tell us until later for fear we would have been scared so sorry, no pictures.
After about 2 hours on site, with off and on light rain mixed with piercing sunshine and sticky humidity, we walked back to the ferry (the walk was much more pleasant than the drive had been, and probably only took 10 minutes longer).

'Glory Mountain', with team architect Megan and Pastor Richard's nephew Dominic helping read the survey map in the foreground

After ferrying back, we ordered lunch around 3:30pm with a plan to do the big programming meeting afterwards. Well, the food didn’t come until 5:00pm, so lunch turned into dinner.
The programming meeting finally happened around 6pm, and went very well. This is the meeting where we ask tons of questions of the ministry to get details like how many people in each function on site, what kind of toilets they want (flush, latrine, squatty’s, etc.), how they want the different functions on site to interact with each other, etc. It also was a chance for us to talk about how to phase in the project, and what the priorities are.

The site viewed from atop 'Glory Mountain', with Lake Victoria off in the Distance

Overall, the meeting went very well. I think we all realized that the land, at 22 acres, is a little small for their vision which includes: an orphanage for up to 64, guest housing for up to 24 short term missionaries, a radio station, a medical clinic, a primary school and secondary school for up to 300, a bible training school for up to 100, local staff housing and long term missionary housing! Plus, they would like to farm as much of the land as possible in hopes of being self sustaining. Fortunately, the ministry was realistic and realized that they will have to purchase more land before some of their future phases can be built.
All in all, it was a good first day, though things like the ferry and the late lunch made it a bit unorthodox timing-wise. Tomorrow will finally be a full work day, so we should be well on our way to having a good first draft of the master plan by the end of the day.

This rock outcropping is called 'Bismarck's Rock' and greets you as the ferry brings you to Mwanza - the balancing rock is actually only resting on two small places. You can see air under the rock between the two places where it rests.

Bismarck Rock - it's amazing to think that centuries of people have looked at this rock and no one has tried to tip it over!

One project completed, heading out on the next one Sunday!

This past week, myself and interns Ryan and Lindsay completed our project report for New Hope Uganda's new Musana Camps site. Since we've been back from the project trip, I have been overseeing the staff, interns and volunteers from the trip as we've finalized the project report. This process typically takes 3 months or longer, but due to time constriants with my next project our timeline was shortened to 7 weeks!

Civil Engineering Intern Ryan, working on site during the trip

Architectural Intern Lindsay, sketching renderings on the project trip

Last week, the process of making corrections, printing and binding the reports and preparing them to mail out to the ministry and trip volunteers has kept us all busy. In all, the eMi team has spent over 1700 hours working on this project! I don't have any pictures of the completion process, but our outgoing Director Chad Gamble made up a great photo essay of the whole process for his trip, which printed this week. So if you'd like to see a bunch of pictures of what the process of finalizing an eMi report looks like, check out this link Chad created. Thanks Chad for the great idea!

Chad Gamble, the Director of eMi -East Africa. Chad founded the eMi-East Africa office back in 2003 and has been the Director ever since. Next month, he will be moving back to Sacramento with his wife Shanthi and 4 children. We are all mourning his departure as he has been a great boss, leader, mentor and friend.

This coming Sunday morning at 4am, I am heading out on my next project trip. This time, I am leading a team of 8 staff, interns and volunteers to Mwanza, Tanzania to design an orphanage, school and medical clinic for End Times Glory Ministries. The trip is 600 kilometers (about 375 miles) but we're estimating will take 14 to 16 hours! We've hired a minivan and driver to drive us, so at least we won't be stuck on a bus (the trip on a bus takes 20 hours!). I'd appreciate your prayers for safety as the roads here in East Africa are the most dangerous part of being here. If you want to check out where we'll be, the Google Earth coordinates are: 2-deg, 31', 25.38"S, 32-deg, 49', 55.18"E. Check back in a couple of weeks for posts and pictures from this trip.

Normal life

Graysen dressed as Jack Sparrow for a Pirates and Princesses birthday party a friend threw. (We brought this costume back with us from the States in February). In this picture, Graysen is eating a fried grasshopper - the first in our family to try one of these local treats. Even though he thought it was ok, he may be the last of us to try one too!

The last few weeks have felt very 'normal'. No major sickness, no major problems - just typical life stuff. We did go away to Jinja for a couple of nights since the boys were off school for their 2 week Easter break. We went with our neighbors the Kelly's and another family (the Stride's) here who are a part of a small group of families who we hang out with. We had a fun time, visiting the Welcome Home orphanage (we love going by and checking in with the kids and goings-on there), letting the boys swim, going to see Bujagali Falls where I rafted last Summer, and mountain biking (my neighbor Brian and I went for the morning) through a rain forest.
Last Sunday, Alisha and I also ran a 10K here in Kampala. It was terrible! The first 2K was all downhill so you started out too fast, then most of the rest of the run was grueling uphill. We were surprised at how fast we'd run it given the terrain (me-41 mins., Alisha-51 mins, second for women ages 20-39) - until our neighbor Lynne told us her GPS clocked it at only 8.9KM! Hilarious that the race organizers could be off by more than a full kilometer!
Anyway, enjoy some pictures of these last few weeks. Work-wise, this coming week we will be finalizing the design report for my Spring project. Two weeks from today, I'll be setting off for my Summer trip to Tanzania. We're going to try to take the ferry across the lake, though it's a 19-hour boat trip on an old boat and that lake can act more like an ocean during storms. I say 'try' to take the ferry because it depends on when it arrives - there is no set schedule so we have to check a couple days before to see when it's coming! The backup plan is to take the bus, which will be 18 hours! Both cost about $50 round trip, which is a lot cheaper than the $500 round trip plane fare. I'm praying against any motion sickness, whether on land or sea!

Alisha, with friends Jenny (hot pink), Lynne (white tank top), and Dawn (yellow visor) before the 10K race. The race started 40 minutes late and was 1.1km short of 10K...but it was still a lot of fun (Alisha would disagree witht he fun part), despite the intense heat and gruemsome hills!

Me, Alisha, Lynne and Jenny before the race - the asphalt we're standing on was some of the only paved roads we'd see that day!

Stephen, eMi's Head of Security, was stationed at our house for the day. His 2-year old son named Bless-You came by, so he borrowed a pair of swim trunks and all the boys took a dip in these bucket pools.

Neighbor Brian and I went on a 25km mountain biking trek through the Mabiri rainforest between Kampala and Jinja. It was probably better suited for a walking trail with all the roots, but it was a lot of fun. It was very humid and dark in the jungle!

This clearing was at the destination of our trek, a waterfall in a nearby stream. The Mabira Forest can be seen in the background.

The waterfall was a little dissappointing actually. The stench in this little river was so bad we didn't get within 25 feet of it. It smelled like fermented fruit, and wasn't exactly the pristine water you'd expect flowing through a rainforest. We found out later that the sugar factory upstream dumps their byproducts into the stream. Sad - it actually gave me an appreciation for the EPA back in the U.S. that I hadn't really thought of before.

This was one of our bikes - note the brand name: Panasonic. We thought that was pretty funny. I haven't googled it, but I think it's safe to say there's a 0% chance that this is actually a bike made by Panasonic! ha! If so, they should stick to electronics! The seat was so uncomfortable our rears were killing us after only 15 minutes.

Our neighbors - Brian and Lynne Kelly. Brian is the pastor at the Calvary Chapel Kampala church we attend downtown. They've lived here 7 years and are great people. Having their family live next door has been a big blessing to us, and a big answer to prayer.

Our kids and the Kelly kids playing in the pool at the Kingfisher Safari resort where we stay in Jinja. The prices are pretty cheap and the kids love the pool.

The bottom of Bujagali falls (the first class V rapid in the Nile River rafting trip). The person in the water is one of the local guys who brave the rapids with nothing more than their swimsuit and a jerry can (a 5 gallon, plastic jug). There are a number of them that do it all day, every day as their job. The going rate is usually about 5,000 Ugandan shillings, which is about $2.50. It's pretty dangerous - one of them died a few years back.

Family photo at Bujagali Falls

Alisha and the boys with Lynne and her 3 kids: Judah (2nd grade), Julia (1st grade) and Liana (almost 4 yrs old).

Visiting Welcome Home orphanage is always one of our favorite parts of coming to Jinja!

Alisha and I thought little Veronica was so precious - and we loved her even more when we found out that she used to follow our new niece Becky around everywhere before Becky came home to San Diego with Alisha's brother's family.

Veronica says 'hello' Becky!

Unstable buildings

In the past couple of months, there have been a number of buildings in Kampala that have partially collapsed, killing several people each time. Many of these instances have been at construction sites where the buildings weren't yet complete. But there have been some failures of completed buildings too. As a result, there has been a lot of public outcry about building design and safety. (This is good!)

President Museveni (moo-seven-ee) even went so far as to say that the architects and engineers involved in the collapsing buildings should be hanged! Obviously, that is ridiculous and I think he was speaking in hyperbole, but a number of local architects and engineers have been put in jail as a result of their role in these building failures - nevermind the fact that the architects and engineers have little control over how the buildings are actually built once their design plans are given to the contractor, and that the city government does very little in the way of requiring construction inspection or code compliance.

Anyway, I have been starting to take note of some unsafe structures here as I pass them, and where possible, try to see if there is anything I can do to bring about a little more safety. I saw one such building on the way to ARA several weeks back. It stood out to me because this little 1-story covered patio area looked like the roof was going to cave in at any moment. After a week went by and passing this patio roof a couple more times, I finally felt like I needed to say something. Alisha and the boys were with me a couple of Saturdays ago, so we pulled the car over out front and I went to talk to the people inside.

I was actually a little nervous to pass under the patio roof to talk to the people, but as I approached they waved me back. I walked under the roof, noting the 3 women and 4 small children sitting under this very unstable structure unsuspectingly watching TV (there's a Bar under the roof). I explained briefly why I was there to a couple of men, who quickly got another man who listened to what I had to say. He was quiet but friendly, and asked me to wait for the owner while he went and got him. Two minutes later, he appeared from the back with a man in his 50's who greeted me and asked what he could do for me. I explained the situation, that I was an engineer and I felt that his roof was very dangerous. I told him that the problem was there was too much stuff on the roof, and that if he just removed the stuff he would make it a lot safer.

Well, it didn't go so well. He stayed friendly, but I don't think he was understanding me very well. He kept thinking that what I was telling him was going to cost a lot of money. I kept telling him that taking things off the roof shouldn't cost anything, but he didn't get it. I think he might have been muslim, as he clearly had a negative view of white people (common among some Ugandan muslims). Though he said it with a slight smile while holding onto my hand (Ugandans are just terrible at being rude - their culture is so friendly that they usually find it very hard to be anything but friendly to white people - a big generalization and it doesn't apply to everyone, but the vast majority are this way) , he basically told me that all the white people in Uganda were leeches and that if I wanted to help I should just give him money.

So I ignored his comments and explained once again that within 30 minutes and no money spent, he could have the problem solved. He finally said ok, though I wasn't sure if he was just saying that to get rid of me. As I left, I told him one more thing. I said, "And I want to tell you something. I am not a leech. I don't have a job here - everything I do here is for free and I get paid by people in the U.S. All of the money I spend here is from the U.S., so I am taking nothing from Uganda and actually contributing a lot to your economy." He kind of looked at me stunned and said 'Ok'.

I was kind of bothered by the fact that he had said that, and I doubt that what I said changed anything in his mind, but hopefully I planted a seed of doubt that some of the lies he's obviously been told about Westerners in Uganda are not true.

Well, it was a couple of weeks before I passed by there again, but I wanted to snap a picture. I had to be careful about doing that as I'm sure they would've recognized me and not been pleased to see me taking a picture. But in any case, when I snapped the picture, I could tell that they had removed about 3/4 of the stuff from the roof! It's still unsafe and could fail at any time, but hopefully with less weight up there the collapse will be slower and they'll have time to shore it up before it comes all the way down.

This is the picture I snapped of the roof. Believe it or not there is a lot less stuff up there than there was. It's still dangerous, and has partially collapsed at the front (it was that way prior to me noticing the building a few weeks ago), but hopefully they will continue removing stuff. The dark opening under the portion of roof that is sagging (near the center) is where I walked in to speak with the owner. Scary.

So I snapped a few other pictures of some construction items here, some good, some bad, that I thought were interesting. Enjoy - sorry for the 'engineering' post!

This is kind of a scary wall. It's a driveway supported by an unreinforced brick retaining wall that is about 15 feet tall. There aren't even columns in this one. I'm hoping they used the brick to form the outside of a concrete core wall, but even so, given the way they reinforce walls here this is still scary (you can see a concrete core wall with reinforcing in a different picture below).

The other side of the driveway wall - the brick mortar joints (vertical distance between bricks) vary in thickness, but some of them are over 2 1/2 inches thick! (they should be closer than a 1/2 inch)

This is actually a pretty well-built retaining wall. I saw them as they built it since it's right on the way to the pool we swim at. At the bottom, they used the stacked rock on the outside as a form for a solid concrete wall. Every 3-4 meters they had column reinforcing in the wall (spacing out the reinforcing in the wall would be better than clumping it together into columns, but I have never seen that done here - they always form 'columns' with the rebar even if it's a solid wall). The weep holes (pipes sticking through the wall) are great for the heavy rains too and really reduce the stresses on the wall. The hollow block wall on top is not retaining soil, and is not filled or reinforced (other than the colums).

A different wall (across the street), but built the same. You can see that the rebar is set in columns. The wall pictured here is about 15-18 feet tall with a road at the top! Certainly not meeting U.S. design standards, but pretty well built by Ugandan standards.

You can see the small rebar 'stubs' sticking out of the wall below - about 6 inches long (should be 4-5 times that much sticking out)

The house below the wall across the street. This too is fairly well built, though no where near Western standards. The walls are plastered so you can't see, but they consist of unreinforced brick with reinforced concrete columns interspersed. The front awning (roof is not yet on) leaves a little more to be desired - the brick stacked on top of the concrete trellis would likely come down in an earthquake since it's just sitting up there.

These metal huts are used as housing for military cadets and their families. Structurally they are fine, but they are not an ideal design here at the equator where the sun is shining most of the time. How these people sleep at night in these 'saunas' is beyond me.