Preparing for the Pedal Power Workshop

Amy Smith has made several trips to northern Uganda and run workshops there on Creative Capacity Building and the design process. Her partner on the ground is Caritas, a Catholic organization that runs relief programs across the country. We (Amy, Bernard and I) were traveling north in a Caritas vehicle, which was a welcome change after some long bus rides.

As we traveled, we admired the scenery, and Michael (the driver) talked about the landscape and the history. He reminded us that some people did well during Idi Amin's reign who have now seen their standard of living drop during the presidency of Yoweri Museveni. Amy and I both noted that much of the scenery was much greener than what we're used to seeing (she used to live in Botswana in the Kalahari desert, while my experiences in Kenya saw lots of sparse landscapes). Michael mentioned the dangers of it as we drove through a pine forest and he explained that when the needles fall to the ground and dry out, the fires can be devastating. Then we started talking about pine needle gasification and inevitably to other simple technologies.

We arrived in Gulu and met David from Bikes not Bombs (BNB) who was also running the workshop. He had gone shopping and grabbed a few bikes as well as tons of spare parts for the sessions that we were going to run. David was collecting footage of a health project that BNB is running in another nearby community, so he left us with the supplies and returned to the village. We visited the Caritas office in Gulu and picked up a few more supplies at the market before heading to Pader.

When we reached Pader and were greeted by my friend Denis who was on my team at IDDS in Ghana. He showed us the community technology center that Amy had established there and I recognized several of the machines there from other programs that I've done with Amy. We set to work organizing the space so that it would be ready for the event. We were still missing one box (as stated in the last post, Kampala Coach had left our luggage behind), so we couldn't set up the GCS equipment. Instead, I set to work cleaning out a peanut butter maker which had not been cleaned in several months. After that, I designed a table and took inventory of all the supplies in the workshop. Meanwhile, Bernard set about creating a bicycle powered charcoal crusher to serve as an example.

We had 1.5 days in Pader before the participants arrived, so it was also a good opportunity to learn our way around the town a bit. Wokorach, the other staff member at the workshop, helped me buy some tools at the market and talked about the difficulties of life in the area. We also spent an evening at Denis's house where his wife cooked a delicious supper, and spent the whole time complaining that the large spread wasn't nearly enough food and she didn't like that we were rushing back to the workshop. I also took full advantage of MTN Mobile Money (another phone banking system similar to Safaricom's Mpesa), which has taken the bulk of the mobile banking market in Uganda (although when I was in Kampala, I noticed that there were several agents for Kenya's and Tanzania's mobile money systems in spite of the fact that they don't work with Ugandan sim cards).

I also had the opportunity to meet the local Caritas staff. It was most remarkable to talk with Jennifer, who is a social worker and helped us with the translation during the event. Her stories were terrifying and she told them with such non-chalance that it was difficult to contemplate the horrors that many of these people had lived through. Rather than letting the stories depress us, though, we saw it as a testament to the resilience of the community and saw it as a great motivator for running this workshop.

This is a map of northern Uganda that was painted in the Caritas office in Gulu. I thought it was really nifty.