During the first three weeks I have mainly done observations at the taps from the Muhanga Water and Sanitation Scheme as well as at several protected springs. I especially observed who is fetching water and how much they fetch and how they are interacting with each other.
One of the three protected springs. In the evenings you can find lot of children there fetching water, but I did not have the courage to take a picture of them.Amongst other things I found out that the water scheme in Muhanga is confronted with o lot of leakages. Every month they have to look for leakages and to repair them. Even one of the tanks is leaking.
Some taps, especially in the villages are not working. There have been some problems in the villages, especially in Ruhonwa. People failed to afford the water. Most of them have no income. The solution was that they get water for free and in case if a tap is spoiled, they collect money and repair it for themselves. It failed. That's why you find some taps surrounded by bushes.
So, people from Ruhonwa continue using the water from the river. I have even seen children drinking this dirty water.
Another problem why some taps are closed is that people are not willing to attend the taps. The reason is the low salary. Tap attendants get 40 percent of the collected money. And at some taps not more than ten people are fetching one or two jerrycans per day and each jerrrycan costs 50 shillings. You can count for yourself... it is really not much. There have been several attempts to solve this problem but until know they failed.
There is just one tap which is situated in the centre of Muhanga Town which is attended everyday.
The result is that you find long lines with people waiting for fetching water.
Muhanga has been the first village where the scheme has been implemented. People have been very unexperienced and used unappropriate technologies during construction work. It became a kind of a learning scheme and I am really curious if they have learned from the mistakes of Muhanga and avoided these in other villages. I will try to find it out in August :)
During the last weeks I have been very busy with conducting my research.
Two weeks ago I got assistance from a student who did a BA degree in Social Sciences at Makarere University and is now finishing a Post-graduate in Development Management at Mbarara University. I had some troubles with the arrangement of getting assistance because actually the sister of Elizabeth should have come but after shifting her arrival twice and about ten days later she told me that she could not come because she has not reached to finish her work in Kampala. Finally, her sister came and I have been satisfied with her assistance.
She has been here for about two weeks and she stayed together with in at Mary’s place. I appreciated her presence very much because she translated me many discussions we had for instance during lunch and supper. And also many “conversations” between Harbas (the worker of Mary who also stays here) and me have been translated. Normally he use to talk Rukiga (with few English words) with me that’s why I often fail to understand him. That changed! It was really funny as we talked about my family and about the skin colours. He asked if my mother is also a “Mzungu” (outsider) and even my grandmother. And he could not believe that an old woman can be not black. We laughed a lot. Sometimes the thinking of the people in Muhanga is quite funny!
So, the daily routine changed a lot, since the arrival of Elizabeth. The first advantage was that I could better understand what is taking place in this household and also in the town and even in Uganda.
As I have reported, for me it was very difficult to get information from Mary. This has also changed. Elizabeth had a good rapport to Mary and they have been chatting a lot. So I briefed her what I wanted to know and she did the rest. That has been working pretty well. I have also talked with Elizabeth about the communication problem with Mary and she thought that this is because of the foreign language. Mary feels a bit unsecure talking in English.
During the two weeks we have conducted about 50 interviews. We have been proceeded in a stratified random sampling.
Even sometimes we found us lost in a banana plantation. Actually many people should live here???
Finally, we found one homestead. But nobody was at home :(I wanted to have a broad picture of peoples opinions from different interest groups. That’s why we have interviewed the Water and Sanitation Board Members as well as some of the former members, tap attendants, tap users who are using different taps in the town and the villages around, people who have private connections and non-tap users.
Due to the use of a gender-sensitive approach, I actually wanted to have an equal number of interviewed women and men. But I failed to reach this aim.
We have been moving around in the different cells in the morning and the evening. But most of the time we only meet women in the households. In the morning men did already left the house and in the evening they have been still on the way. And if both of them, man and woman, have been in the household, the man send the woman to be interviewed because water for domestic use is mainly a women’s issue. In the villages it was a bit different because there we have often met both in the household, that’s why we have conducted the conversation with both of them. But mostly men have been dominant.
In general, people have been very willing to be interviewed and welcomed us very friendly. Some people could even not believe that a “Mzungu” comes to see them in their houses.
I have prepared an interview guideline with questions about participation and transformation processes. We directly went to different households and Elizabeth was the one who introduced us and our aims before we started interviewing. She started with the prepared questions and after each answer she translated the content, then I continued with posing questions or she continued with the guidelines. Sometimes I had the feeling that she did not translate me the whole content and she continued asking without involving me.
At the beginning of the interview process I have been a bit frustrated because many answers have been very short (one or two sentences) and especially the information the interviewees gave us concerning changes in their lifes due to the availability of save water has been very rare. We tried to formulate the questions in another way and inquired about these issues, but still the answers were very brief. I am not sure what I have been expecting.
Also brief answers are meaningful! There can be several reasons for this behaviour. The project has been started almost 13 years ago; maybe the people don’t know remember exactly how they have been participating and how their lifes changes through the project. Maybe they are not willing to give us much personal information about their lifes because they don’t know us. Maybe they don’t think a lot about the changes in their lifes. Now they have water and they are happy. Many many reasons which I have to consider in the analysis!
In addition to the personal interviews we have conducted three focus-discussion-groups. The arrangement of these eighteen people (three groups – each with six members) was really a big challenge. We started to organize the groups when Elizabeth arrived, so we had almost three weeks. We have talked with the Chairman (James) of the project as well the scheme operator (Mary). We had many many discussions with them and it cost a lot of energy but finally we could manage it.
The first Discussion Group. Elizabeth is the lady on the right-hand side and the Chairperson James is next to her. With the others I have not been interacting hitherto.
Mary (my host-mommey) is the first lady on the right-handside.
The last few days, I have spent a lot of time with my computer to transcribe the interviews. This work is too tiresome. But it is almost done and soon I can start with the analysis which is quite interesting. I am looking forward!
In general, I appreciated the cooperation with Elizabeth. Sometimes we had different conflicts about how to conduct the interviews and how to pose the questions. But we really tried to understand each other and to find the best way to do a good research.
She is a modern young lady (26), married and has one child. She has nine brothers and sisters and all of them have been studying or are still studying. This is quiet amazing!
The data collection is done and can be completed in Muhanga!
