From East Africa: It's Impossible to Describe the Energy, Dancing, Hard Work and Focus

So far, I have been quite healthy. Only 3 mosquito bites, and Malarone has a pretty good record of keeping people safe from malaria. Of course, there has been some stress, but overall, it has been incredible.

I was in a room with 56 women who are all leaders in this water development and community work.....it is almost impossible to describe the energy, conversations, dancing, and focus. We worked very hard for 7 days having class in the morning and then hands-on infrastructure building every afternoon.

Mildred Mkandla and I have become good friends. She says she is "65 years old and retired, but not tired," and that is an understatement. I could hardly keep up with her. She was mixing cement when all but the youngest of us had run out of steam.

My three teams are all at different levels of organizing experience. The team I will be working with from August 8th to 13th are superstars, and I know I will learn a lot from them over the coming year. They already have an "assets catalogue" of skills, materials and availability in the community they work in.

The community we will be working with has about 47,000 people who all get their water from the river. There are land stability issues that make it difficult to build latrines, and open defecation is a big problem. The women work with a local NGO that will support communication between us.

We have a beautiful house in Uganda where I will be till next Tuesday. It is humid. It gets hot and sticky during the day, but oscillating fans do a great job and I slept very well last night in my new place.

We will be leaving to go to the source of the Nile soon, so I will go now.

More soon!

Terri Harris, graduate student, Community and Regional Development

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Here you will find updates on our organization, and blog posts written by each of our Blum Fellows about their experiences abroad. Make sure to check out our website at blumcenter.ucdavis.edu, and like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/UCDavisBlumCenter to get regular updates and see our upcoming events.

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