Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

I have been volunteering my time at the Sol Café Restaurant, one of Musana’s sustainability projects. All profits from the restaurant go directly back to the orphanage and help cover basic needs like food, utilities, books, clothes, etc., The Sol Café does pretty well and I was brought in to help get it organized and help with bringing in new audiences on slower days. It has been a challenge because business is not my forte and I am new to the culture and attitudes of Uganda. For the first two weeks, I have been observing and learning. I help balance the books and clean and occasionally serve. It wasn’t until this past week that I wrote up my list of recommendations. I hope these will help the Café become one of the best running businesses in town.

My true passion is health care, as many of you already know. I did my first health lesson with the Musana kids Sunday afternoon about hand washing. When I have an audience, it is my sole responsibility to keep them entertained and learning. We talked about what germs were, where we can find germs, and when to wash our hands. I know this is only the beginning for sustainable health at Musana, and it helps that they employee a nurse full-time. It was a lot of fun and all of the kids washed their hands at the very end. It was great to see them scrubbing in-between their fingers and under their nails.

We each have $500 towards a project of our choice at Musana. Already I have mine dog-earred; a second well with an electric pump to have running water to sinks outside of the bathrooms. The bathrooms at Musana need some work. Right now, there is a single building with 12 individual stalls that open to the outside. They sit on top of a cement slab. Each stall has a rectangular hole cut out opening to a deep black abyss, your typical pit latrine, a good bathroom in these areas except when they have no faucets/running water to keep them flushed and clean. The kids (and myself from time to time) aim for these holes and oftentimes miss. The feces and urine sit outside the hole, attracting winged friends and creating a most unpleasant smell (as you can imagine). It doesn’t help that one of the endemic diseases in our area is diahearria, possibly because of this cycle of uncleanliness and poor sanitation from the pit latrines.

If you would like to help contribute to my project (or any others!), you can donate online at Musana.org (make a note for it to go towards sanitation projects). They currently have one pump well where they fill up large yellow jugs and truck them around to various areas like the kitchen (doesn’t even have running water!), the showers (a good 30m walk away) or the bathrooms (which I’ve never seen done). The kids wash their own clothes by hand on Sundays outside with the older kids helping the younger ones. It is quite adorable. The staff at Musana have truly done a lot since starting. These kids go to school for free every day, any supplies/clothes/shoes they need they are given, they have three meals a day, clean water, matrons who look after them, beds and sheets and mosquito nets, a social worker, a nurse, and a lot of people who lose sleep at night thinking about their health, well-being, safety and education. We just need good bathrooms, that’s all, and considering that some households don’t even have latrines and go outside, we are already a huge step ahead.