Thursday, October 17, 2002

My Midterm Report


The following is the midterm report I submitted to Wendy at VSO Canada recently. Thought I'd post it here because it gives a lot of details that I had been planning to post here anyways. Kinda wordy, not very professionally written, but hey, it was overdue and I was in a rush.

1. Summarise your major work activities so far (including significant achievements, progress & factors that have helped or hindered progress. Refer to the placement description or subsequently revised objectives, if appropriate)


Major Work Activities Accomplished



Factors helping progress:


Factors hindering progress:


These two factors related to KAD lead to some serious project sustainability issues for the telecentre:


How will the telecentre continue financially? Where will the money come from for:

- preparation of training courses?

- future repairs/replacement of equipment of the telecentre?

- salary of telecentre manager?


Who will be present and able to continue running the telecentre and the training courses?


It is highly likely that, if these issues are not resolved in time before my departure, the telecentre will not continue to function in 2003.


2. Have the original objectives (and/or indicators) of the placement changed in any way? If so, how and why? (Refer to the original placement objectives and indicators in the placement description. Where no changes are made this section may be left blank. Please attach an updated Job Description if it was modified)


Additional training opportunities are available because of IDP’s ICT projects in the area, most notably their TB DOTS program which uses PocketPCs to collect data on tuberculosis patients. IDP requires someone to train the health care workers on the use of this technology and have asked me to fill that role if I have time apart from my telecentre duties. This may require giving instruction on computer basics, as many of the project participants have never used a computer before, as well as training in email (used for data transmission) and databases (all data collected from the field will be added to a centralized database system).


3. Outline the activities agreed for the remainder of your placement, with indicators to monitor progress for each activity (Please ensure you include good indicators, i.e. practical ways of measuring/demonstrating the progress made at the end of the placement - i.e. ask the question: how will I know that the activities/targets have been achieved?)


Indicator for training will be number of people trained. Indicator for radio email system will be the ability to send and receive emails.


4. Are your goals for the placement being met? If not how do you think things could be improved so they are?


My goals for the placement are not being sufficiently met. I think the most important objective of this placement is to train someone who will be able to take over the management of the telecentre (including training responsibilities and offering of computer services such as word processing, email, internet, etc.) Unfortunately, the failure of KAD to provide suitable candidates (see response to question 1) has made this objective impossible to achieve. The lack of financial support from the NGO is another serious hindering factor. To deal with the first issue, I have looked elsewhere for suitable candidates and have managed to locate one who would not require much training (he already has experience with computers, Microsoft Word and Excel) and who would be more than capable of handling the responsibilities of telecentre manager. However, he has made it clear that he would require adequate financial compensation to take on such a role. This is why a budget needs to be allocated for the telecentre project – KAD cannot expect the manager to work for free and pay for training and repair/replacement costs out of his own pocket.


5. Is there any particular information about your work or situation which might be of value to interns looking at posts similar to yours?


6. Describe the work environment at the organization, your working relationship with your supervisor and colleagues, and any conditions you are having difficulty with.


My job title is IT Trainer – Kihiihi Telecentre. The telecentre consists of 3 rather old and slow computers housed in a room at the sub-county local government headquarters. I conduct lectures in the main hall of the sub-county and labs in the telecentre itself. Electricity is supplied to the building from the generator which powers the health centre compound a few hundred metres away. The connection is very weak, and as a result, it is not possible to have the overhead lights on when I am conducting lab sessions (they flash on and off in a strobe-like fashion). My students and I work in darkness, with only the light from the monitors allowing us to see. The telecentre is ridden with insects as the light from the computer monitors attracts them. The insects enter the room via the windows (no mosquito nets) or above (there is no ceiling). Other creatures, such as birds, bats and rats, have also been identified in the telecentre from the presence of their dead bodies and droppings.


Only one of the computers has a cd-rom drive, which makes it difficult to install new software. Also adding to this problem is the fact that each of the hard drives has only 1 GB of storage space, most of which is already taken up by Windows, Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel software. The keyboards are not standard 101-key English (American) keyboards, which makes it hard for those students who are learning how to type.


I have spoken with the vice-chairman of KAD about the power situation in the telecentre, and although he is sympathetic to the problem, he is either not capable of rectifying or not willing to rectify the situation. There doesn’t seem to be anyone in town who is an electrician (which makes me wonder how they hooked up the power in the first place?). There is also a lack of knowledgeable people about solar batteries and radio email, two things that were functioning at the telecentre as recently as one year ago – those people with the requisite knowledge seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Unfortunately, I do not have the resources that I would normally turn to at my disposal – internet, library, trained professionals – in order to figure out these problems. The people who work at the sub-county are very nice but have not got a single clue as to how to help me out, or even recommend people who could possibly have the answers to my questions. One of the most difficult things to deal with is that people expect you to be an expert on anything technological or mechanical in nature, and are very surprised and disappointed when you tell them that you are not. For example, I was asked to help fix a “rolling machine”- I had no idea what the man was talking about, and then I realized he was talking about one of those really old duplicating machines where you had to crank out the copies. He was confused when I told him that those were well before my time – I’d never seen one in my life.


My supervisor, Simon, actually has nothing at all to do with either KAD or the sub-county – he is the medical officer in-charge of the Kihiihi Health Centre Level IV. However, he has a great interest in ICT development for Kihiihi and is part of IDP, helping them implement their projects. He is really good at getting things accomplished and lots of big ideas for ICT development in our area. He gives good advice regarding how I should roll out my training sessions and how to deal with any problems I might be having, but there’s only so much he can do as he is not directly responsible for the telecentre. Simon is generally available all the time for consultation and direction.


There is a lot of interest in learning about computers in Kihiihi; however, there is the small problem of communication. Many potential students do not have the ability to comprehend English, and, as much as they want to learn about computers and as much as I want to teach them about computers, it is really a waste of time (mine and theirs) and money (theirs) for them to attend my courses. To combat this problem, I have been concentrating my efforts on making sure that my best students fully understand what I am teaching them, so that in the future they may transfer that knowledge to others in Rukiga. While I do not turn away any student who is willing to pay for training, I do make sure to warn them about the potential comprehension problems that they may face, and that it will be their responsibility to deal with them, not mine. I have adjusted the way that I speak English (slower, more clearly) as much as I possibly can, and I expect my students to have a certain level of English competency in order to successfully complete the courses.


7. Do you feel you are being fully utilized? How could things be improved?


There is so much work that I would like to do during normal working hours, but this was not possible with no electricity during the day. However, we’ve recently gotten the solar batteries at the sub-county to work and now I can use the computers for training or other work during the day. There is a lot of interest in ICT in Uganda and I would love to be able to travel to different towns or districts to give people in those areas an opportunity to learn about computers.


8. VSO finds it very useful to receive from interns detailed descriptions of their daily life at their placement and in the local community. Please use this space to describe the area where you work and live, your housing, local services including health care, your social life and availability of food and goods etc.


KIHIIHI


Kihiihi is a small town located in southwestern Uganda, about 70 km from the border with Congo-Zaire. Its population is probably around a few hundred people. The town itself only has 3 main streets, which do not see a lot of traffic (mainly vehicles going to and from Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, famous for its mountain gorilla tracking, and pickups travelling between nearby towns.) Although the region is quite remote, it is generally very beautiful, lots of green hills and valleys, trees, tea and banana plantations. The weather is quite hot because Kihiihi is not at a very high altitude, and at the moment we are in a wet season where it rains really hard every day for about an hour, usually in the afternoon or early evening. The rain is good because it cools everything down and makes crops grow (so that there’s more variety of fruits and vegetables at the market), but on the other hand, the rain makes the murram roads/paths extremely muddy and also brings mosquitoes (as well as an increase in malaria cases).


The primary language is Rukiga/Runyankore. There are also those who speak Runyanrwanda, Swahili and French (because of the town’s proximity to the Congo-Zaire and Rwanda borders). English is spoken mostly by professionals and those living in town, but the number of English speakers decreases dramatically as you go into the small villages of the surrounding area.


There is a health centre level IV in Kihiihi (one level below an actual hospital) that has two wards for inpatients, a maternity ward and an outpatient clinic during working hours, as well as an ambulance for emergency transport to Kambuga Hospital (approximately 45 minutes away). There is also an operating theatre which is presently closed for renovation (and has been that way for some months now.) Common drugs, such as paracetemol (Tylenol), chloroquine and fansidar (malarial medication) and vitamin C, are freely available. I happen to be really close to the medical officer in-charge (Simon, my boss), the two medical officers (VSO volunteers Richard and Ellie, good friends) and the clinical officer (Kenneth, one of my best students), so access to health care and advice is extremely easy.


There is one bank in Kihiihi, a branch of Uganda Commercial Bank. It is fairly small, but I suppose because I am a muzungu I receive preferential treatment and do not usually have to wait as long as others to withdraw money from the tellers. There is no ATM. To open an account, you require a letter from your employer (or other endorsement) and two passport-sized photos, one of which will be pasted to your passbook. Cheques take at least a month to cash (because it is sent to Kampala, then Mbarara, then back to Kampala, then back to your branch) and the processing fee is quite large; to avoid the wait you should try to receive bank drafts that take only a few days to show up in your account. I don’t think it’s possible to receive wire transfers of money, or to access my account back in Canada, through my UCB branch – for that I would have to go to Kampala.


There is a tiny market that operates daily, from which you can always buy tomatoes, onions, yucky greens, potatoes, cassava and matoke. Nearby shops always have a selection of bananas and pineapples, and often mangoes and passionfruits. The big market day is on Saturday, where people come from villages all over the district and even across the border to sell their goods. There, you can find fruits and vegetables, household goods, secondhand clothes, cloth material, etc. Every other Saturday it changes location, from the big marketplace on the edge of town to the smaller one near the centre. There are two gas stations in town – paraffin can be purchased there if you have your own container/jerry can. Mobile phone airtime and service fee cards are available in a certain shop, but they usually sell it in denominations of 5,000 and 10,000 Ush (which is a pain if you want 20,000 or 40,000 Ush worth – also you don’t get the bonus airtime if you buy small denomination cards.) The only bread available is the sweet bread, which I actually don’t mind so much but all the Brits that I’ve met here absolutely detest it. Packaged convenience foods are hard to find in town – things like processed cheese spread, chocolate bars, potato chips, snacky type foods – as are dairy products (because there is no electricity and therefore refrigerators are rare). There are certain shops/bars that do have gas-powered fridges, and there you can often get cold sodas, beer, or juice.


There is not a whole lot to do in Kihiihi. There is a “cinema”which usually shows awful action flicks. It’s really just a large shop area with a tv and video deck. They turn the volume off and a man with a microphone and speaker basically narrates the movie in Rukiga. (rough translation: “The muzungu man yelled this at her and then the muzungu woman shouted back at him…”) There are a few bars in town but the one we go to is called Garuga’s. It has a tv which shows football matches and the occasional bad movie when Mr. Garuga is in town. The only other place to go to is the Savannah Resort Hotel, which sounds far grander than it actually is. It is a partially-completed hotel about 2 km out of Kihiihi town centre, and it will stay that way until the owner, who is currently incarcerated, decides to sell it to someone. They have sodas and beer and you can get good eggs and chips (if you don’t mind waiting 3 hours for your order to arrive) and it’s completely deserted all the time, so it’s a good place to go when you want a bit of quiet and privacy.


MY HOUSE


I live in a small house with one bedroom and a main sitting room. The kitchen/store is located off of the back porch, as is the shower area. I use a pit latrine (or “long drop”) as my toilet, located a couple of metres behind the house (which can be really scary to use at night when it is pitch black out and you have no idea whatsoever of what is out there; also, proper aim can be a problem….enough said.) Out back is the rubbish pit where I throw all my garbage. I’m supposed to set the pit on fire every so often to dispose of the man-made materials that don’t decompose, but I haven’t yet gotten any strong pyromaniacal urges. Also in my “backyard”is a lot of grass, which provides grazing material for various herds of cattle and goats and chickens (not mine). My house is part of the sub-county compound, shared with my three neighbours who are all sub-county civil servants and their families (and whom I rarely see). It takes less than 2 minutes to walk to the telecentre, which is housed in the sub-county building on the edge of the compound.


The house has concrete floors and (I think) asbestos walls and ceiling. It is quite cool when it is hot out, and since I got the mosquito nets put in, insects are just a minor annoyance now (although you should have seen some of the things that worked their way into my house before the nets were up – but nothing a little spritz of Doom or Tox now and then couldn’t take care of.) The thing that sucks the most about my house is that it tends to get flooded whenever it rains and the wind is blowing in a certain direction. The water gets in through cracks in the doorframes (front and back doors) and slowly trickles in to form large pools on my living room floor. I have tried to solve this problem by duct taping the cracks or by stuffing rags along the bottom of the doors, but this does not seem to be effective, so I often find myself down on my hands and knees, mopping up the floor with rags (it seems that the mop with a long handle hasn’t quite caught on yet in Uganda) during a rainstorm, or coming home after a night of teaching to a house full of water. I noticed this problem only fairly recently, though, because the wet season has only just started, but I don’t think there’s very much I can do about it.


There is no running water; Ruth, the woman who cleans my house, prepares lunch, and does my laundry, brings me water in jerry cans every day from the pump at the health centre compound next door. Drinking water must be filtered and then boiled. Showers consist of filling up a basin with freezing cold water (or hot water, if I’ve bothered to boil some) and pouring it over myself with a small cup. Not as good as an actual shower, but it gets the job done. Hair washing is done once a week because it’s such a hassle. The toilet, as mentioned before, is the pit latrine, which I was really not looking forward to using when I first got here. Actually, though, it’s sometimes preferable when you don’t want to put your bare bottom on some germ-infested toilet seat. You also don’t have to worry about the toilet clogging when you flush it and anything can be dropped down there. The flip side is that ANYTHING can be dropped down there and never be retrieved, there is always the possibility of falling in or the latrine floor collapsing, you don’t want to get stomach upset and have to vomit in there, and I highly recommend the wearing of skirts for women in order to make your pit latrine experience more enjoyable.


Electricity is available each night from 7:00 pm – 11:00 (or thereabouts). Cooking is done on a paraffin (kerosene) stove – I have two of them. I use a flashlight when walking outside at night, and paraffin lanterns and candles inside my house when the power goes out.


TYPICAL DAY


8:00-9:00 am


Wake up. Prepare breakfast of fruit salad (bananas, pineapple, mango, passionfruit – whatever is in season or available). If it is Tuesday or Thursday (when Ruth comes to my house), I get the washing ready for her and tidy up a bit around the house to make her job a little easier.


9:00-1:00 pm


Activities include:


Now that we have the solar batteries working, I will be most likely spending my mornings at the sub-county building, using the computers to conduct day training and prepare course materials.


1:00-2:00 pm


Lunch. Ruth works at Richard and Ellie’s (the other VSO volunteers) place on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so I go over there for lunch, or they come to my place on Tuesday and Thursday. Lunch usually consists of some combination of rice, irish potatoes, spaghetti, beans, dodo (greens), and groundnut sauce. If we’re lucky, sometimes there is chapatti, fish, chicken or goat (depending on availability and how rich we’re feeling). In typical British fashion, we finish off the meal with a nice cup of tea.


2:00-7:00 pm


More of the same from the morning.


7:00-10:00 pm


Teaching. Lectures are held from 7-8, then labs from 8-10.


10:00-whenever the power goes out


Activities include:


SOCIAL LIFE


I have some good friends in Uganda, both muzungus and Ugandans. I am very close with Richard and Ellie (I see them everyday), and of course there are the other Netcorps interns to hang out with when I am in Kampala. I am good friends with Simon’s niece, Maria, and her brother Rogers – they helped me out a lot when I first arrived and Richard and Ellie had just left on their 3-week holiday back to the UK. I have a Rukiga teacher, Monica, who teaches English literature at the local high school and is eagerly awaiting acceptance to a teacher training college in Mbarara. She gives me language lessons in exchange for computer lessons (although I got the better end of the deal because logistics has prevented us from having many IT lessons.) My lessons are not really structured classroom-type ones, we just sit around my house and talk or go out for a walk. I have gotten to know a few of my students as well. I have attended a few weddings and at social occasions (Independence Day celebration, functions, church, etc.) the muzungus are often given special treatment.



9. Is personal security an issue for you? If so how do you deal with it?


Being a young, not-typical-looking-muzungu female, personal security is always an issue for me, but I feel relatively safe in Kihiihi. While it is not always first and foremost in my mind whenever I leave the house, I try to take some common-sense precautions, like having someone accompany me (especially at night) when I go out. People are generally friendly and willing to assist you if you need help, especially if you know a bit of local language, and I have not once felt that my safety and security were being threatened in any way.


Kihiihi is about 70 km from the border of Congo/Zaire, which by all reports has been quiet now for the past year, but there is always the small worry of rebel activity along the border.


10. Is your living allowance adequate?


Yes, because there is nothing to spend money on in Kihiihi except for food (and alcohol, but I don’t drink that much). Travel outside of the region can be expensive because we are in such a remote area, but necessary because you can go a bit crazy after living up-country for 6 weeks straight.


11. How does the reality of your placement compare with the expectation you had before you arrived?


It sounds ridiculous to admit this, but I was not fully aware of how the limited hours of electricity each night would affect my working day. It has been a difficult adjustment to life (mostly) without power – I don’t think that I have fully accepted the idea of writing up documents using just a pen and paper, because I have been using a computer to do all kinds of things for over 10 years now.


I also have had to be careful not to turn into a complete hermit with no social life. With my working hours, it is difficult to socialize and mix with people as much as I would like – I am at work when most people are not, and vice-versa.


Please feel free to include any other information or comments at this time.


The Netcorps internship is a great program, but I feel that it would be more beneficial to both the volunteer and employer if the placement were to be extended by six months (i.e. a one-year internship as opposed to only 6 months). This is especially true if the placement is new, where the intern goes in and is the first to set up systems and programs. It takes about 3 months to feel settled and comfortable in both your personal and professional life, and then that leaves only 3 more months in which to accomplish any actual work. In some cases, the settling-in period takes even longer than 3 months. It can be very frustrating for the volunteer and the employer to start to finally make progress on the project, only to have it end because the volunteer has to go home and the employer does not have enough money to support an extension of service. 6 months would be adequate for an intern who is continuing a project that already has systems in place, who doesn’t have to start from scratch.


Also, because the Netcorps internship is such a specialized program, it is vital that VSO ensures that certain resources are in place before sending out an intern. Things like access to a computer and electricity are absolutely essential to the success of the placement. How are you supposed to do any work in ICT when you don’t have the equipment or means to power that equipment? Training someone how to use a computer is not like teaching someone English. For English, all you really need is yourself and your own English skills, maybe a pen and paper as well. With computers, however, you can talk all you like about the different parts of the machine, or how email and the Internet work, or how to set up a database, but what good will it do when your student can’t see the practical applications? I think that 90% of learning about computers is by doing, making mistakes and learning from them, but how can your student do this without having a computer? It doesn’t make any sense.


But, all in all, I have to say that my experience in Uganda thus far has been great – I have not once regretted my decision to go away for 6 months and have not even thought about returning home early, even when it was really tough. I have learned quite a bit about myself, and hope that I have imparted a bit of knowledge to others as well. Support from VSO Canada and VSO Uganda, from other interns and volunteers here in country, as well as that from friends and family, has been terrific. This experience has sparked a desire in me to continue to do development work and travel the world.


// posted by Isha @ 2:25 AM

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?