Uganda #5

The journey continues.

I have returned from a week in Rackoko, Uganda. Rackoko (ratch-ko-ko) is about an eight hour drive from here in Kampala. It is about halfway between Lira and Kitgum. As I mentioned last time, we were traveling there to work on the Tabitha Project. The week was a flurry of activity. I was on the architectural team and was working on the programming, master planning, and architectural plans. The other interns were working on the survey and on utility design, like water and power. This project was a little different than other projects that I have worked on before. We were staying in a compound on the edge of an IDP camp. Rackoko isn't really much of a town. It's more of an intersection with an IDP camp. There are almost 10000 people in the camp now and it's a pretty deplorable place. There were many heartbreaking things to see. Life is difficult there and food is scarce. The biggest reason for this is that the area is still not secure out of the camp and off the roads, so people cannot go out and plant gardens in the bush. The most recent reminder of this came just two months ago when a school teacher went out to a garden just a few short kilometers from where we were and was killed by the LRA. Overall, the area is stable, but there are reminders everywhere of the things that have happened. Even the compound where we stayed had foundations that were left from huts that had been burned down by rebels in the past few years. I prayed for a woman in the church who did not have lips or ears because they had been cut off in a raid on her village.

During the week in Rackoko, I worked on developing the master plan and schematics of the buildings that would be built during the first phase at the site. Out of the approximately 23 acres that is owned by the Tabitha Project, about two acres will be used for the compound and the rest will be used as agricultural land. Now that I'm back at the office, it's time to put it all into real construction documents. It's a big task to complete, considering the deadline is the beginning of August.

It's tough to make everything that you see here add up into something you can process. I have more unanswered questions now then when I started. There are so many things to that don't make sense and there is no one to answer the question "Why?" Maybe there isn't an answer to all of the questions.

I have added some more pictures to the second album:
Album #1: http://gcc.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2004084&l=95213&id=69100021
Album #2: http://gcc.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2004301&l=1ea1f&id=69100021

Watch out for North Korean missles. They're aiming them your way and not mine.