Babies and Bricks

Dear Friends,

First a technical message. The Internet here is very slow and AOL is nigh onto impossible to even sign onto! If you want to send me e-mail, please sed it to ugandapeter@yahoo.com. Please delete me from your forward lists until June, and *no graphics* please. Thanks for understanding.

As I ride along on the back of a bicycle (a boda boda), I am still struck by Africa and my presence here. Here I am in a town with no tourists on the other side of the world. It's quiet as I pass corn fields and small shops in Lira. Dozens, no hundreds, of bicycles cramming the streets with just as many pedestrians along the sides. My driver cuts to the left every time he hears a horn behind him letting him know a car is approaching. Suddenly, we leave the street and cut accrosss an open field -- a short cut to the brick yard near the Rachelli Center. My contemplation is interrupted by bumps and jolts. I've grown accustomed to them, just as I've begun to grow accustomed to the bumps and jolts of life in Lira.

It's Monday evening here. Adelitus and I spent the morning at Boke camp. He decided that we were going to have a constant stream of babies going to the hospital unless we cleaned up the camp. The other camp we spend time at, Erute, is well organized and clean. Boke has a weak government and it show in the health of the people. Many of the children have runny noses and eyes. So Adelitus, Evasta and I led a cleaning party. Evasta, a camp resident, is a midwife, speaks English and the people listen to her pretty well. She announced that we were there to help them clean up the camp. They reported that it was "B" block's turn to clean the latrines and they refused! After a few words from me thru Evasta, they started scrubbing them out and collecting the feces laying around outside. Adelitus organized the children and we went around the perimeter of the camp picking up litter, piling it up and burning it. Basic public health issues are a mystery here. But Adelitus explained that a clean camp would benefit everyone living there.

In the mean time, Ken was just down the hill at our brick yard where they were preparing to burn a large number of bricks. Maybe as many as 4,000. They should be ready be Friday. Issues there were getting a level bed on which to stack the bricks so that the pile of our bricks won't break with the weight of bricks on top of them. Then we had to negotiate more fire wood and get beans and corn meal for the workers.

Back at All Nations Christian Care, Christine was joined my Mary (from Lira) and two new volunteers from Jinga -- Rosette and Monica. They came on their own to help us build stoves, having attended Ken's training last October. Our merry band now numbers twelve! Anyway, Christine, Mary, Monica and Rosette mad a hay box, or, as Christine calls it, a magic basket. It's simply a well insulated box with an insulated pillow on top. The insulation can be sawdust, leaves, pine needles, newspaper, etc. So when they are cooking rice, for instance, they cook it on the stove for just ten minutes and then let it finish cooking in the hay box thereby saving fuel, smoke, women's backs. We had stopped by the PAG hospital to check on our babies there, but the doctors were making rounds and we weren't allowed in. We were to return at one o'clock. We returned at twelve to talk with the German doctor, but she'd already left, so we were told to return at three. Our afternoon was spent at Erute camp where Mary, with Christine lending a hand -- er, mouth -- cooked some soy beans and then put them in the hay box to finish. Mary did a great job. Ken was coordinating some other chores and was surprised and pleased at how well our demo went.

So far, all our sick babies are alive and getting better. The boy with bad vision was diagnosed as having glaucoma and referred to Lira Hospital. An eighteen year old woman had Adelitus' diagnosis of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia affirmed.

Ken and our visitors from Jinga have gone to a Rotary Club meeting at the White House restaurant. Rotary International sponsored Ken's first trip here, so he keeps in touch with the local club, and Rosette and Monica are Rotarians in Jinga.

I'm amazed at the number of organizations and individuals here trying to help. Many hold meetings at the Lira Hotel wehre Chuck and I stay. We spoke with the Director for the Horn and East Africa of the Intrernational Rescue Committee. Lori Uyeno is a surgeon from San Francisco here for a week studying staffing requirements at the local health facilities. She'll be in Uganda for three months. Annette from Germany was here last week to study post traumatic stress syndrome. She's moved on to Gulu, up north, for another three weeks. We run into a group coordinating food programs while we had lunch at the Pan Afric Hotel today.

As for our merry band, we preach the Gospel of the Stove, led by the Apostle of the Stoves, Ken. Life here is difficult for those with resources. The diplaced people in the camps lead impossible lives, somehow hanging on and showing the resilience of humanity. They are eager to have our help. They long for their own homes and yearn for peace. I have had pleasant conversations with JK from Boke camp about many things including bee keeping (which I did in high school) and Obote Tom at Eruti comes to greet me when we arrive.

It is now Wednesday and I didn't get to send this yesterday because the power went off just as I was about to hit the Send button. I had saved all but the last paragraph as a draft, though, so the rest ius here. Rosette and Monica have arrived from Jinga and they are real fireballs. They have never been to refugee camps before and I think they were surprised at the conditions there. Tomorrow Monica wants to do a demonstration at Boke camp and make the people there *own* the stoves -- so that they will maintain them without wazungu (first world of "white people") help. Adelitus has made them clean up their camp top prevent disease. Today they carried their scattered broken bricks or broke them back into dirt. Old hut locations have fertile ground because of the grass roofs that were over them, so they will be planting gardens where we remove the bricks. Our 2500 bricks at yard #1 were fired last night and should be ready Friday. Then they will fire another 4,000. And it looks like we'll have maybe 5,000 from yard #2. We'll have a hard time assembling all the stoves in our last days, but we'll make every effort. Ken had a well drilling seminar today and he will concentrate on that for a couple of days. We are all working to our best capacities.

Thjank you all for your continued support. We all appreciate it. Time is about out, so peace to you all and I'll write again soon.

Peter