I spent the last week with co2balance partners in Kaliro starting of the WASH projects and visiting project sites. It was a good exercise as I got to ensure the partners understand our expectations and that we were not pushing them to unreasonable levels and I also got to understand the experiences they face when out in the field.
We started off with a field WASH exercise with the community in Mwangha. We managed to get the community to select and commit members of the water resource committee to agree to their leadership roles and they also agreed on how they would manage the fund. We carried out an exercise on important aspects of primary health care and proper sanitation and by the end of the meeting they were very satisfied with the output. This meeting was so animated and full of enthusiasm at some point we had to resort to using a public address system to get the attention of the community. This was offered by a community member.
During this trip , I got to both enjoy and experience first hand the daily experience of our local partners. We visited all ten boreholes currently within our Kaliro system. They are all within a radius of about 10 km but the access to them is made difficult by the indirect routes lining them. We were met with the start of the rainy season so at the end of each day, we found ourselves escaping the rain and the slippery roads that come along with it.
It was a fulfilling and physically draining week and we are looking forward to continuing the WASH exercises and starting repairs as well this week.