Adventures in Engineering: More Reflections on the Gulu Project Trip

Exploring the Site [photo: Tim]

To pick up where I left off, after our group visit to the 400+ acres of land on Tuesday (March 8), everyone spent the rest of the week working back at the guest house with their calculators, sketch pads, and laptops. Only a few people ventured out to the site occasionally to collect information. I didn’t mind staying back, though, because it was pretty hot the whole week, and at least the guest house had shade and fans (well, when we had electricity). [Thank you to everyone who prayed for me in dealing with the heat. Even though I was hot and sweaty most of the time, it didn’t ever get to the point where I felt sick or irritable, which is an answer to prayer!] We had a whole section of the guest house to ourselves, which was great, because we basically took over! We had 4 sleeping rooms surrounding a big living room area, where the architects spread out on a big dining table, and the engineers spread out around a circle of couches.

Engineers Hard at Work [photo: Kirk]

Testing Water at a Spring [Andrew]

I spent the first part of the week working with the water/wastewater team, since that’s what I’m most familiar with, and also somewhat helping John (the team leader) to coordinate/identify the numerous tasks to be done. I was put in charge of coordinating the presentation, which is what I spent much of the end of the week doing. I drew little diagrams in PPT and talked with the various teams (architects, structural engineers, civil engineers, agriculture, and livestock) to identify what was needed for their part of the presentation.

Architects (and Engineers) Hard at Work [Terry]

One day, about half of us (those who weren’t out at the site) walked into town for lunch. I think it was about a half hour walk, and it was really dusty, hot, and sunny, so we were all grateful for the semi-air-conditioned western-style café. On the way back, we took a “short cut,” which ended up taking about 2 hours! One of the guys had GPS on his iPhone, so he knew which way the guest house was, but we kept trying these small side streets, which would end up turning or taking us into someone’s yard. I think we crossed over some train tracks 2 or 3 times….

Traditional Brick Huts [Chad]

While it was long and hot and exhausting, it was a pretty neat experience because we basically ended up walking around residential “neighborhoods” most of the time. It was interesting because we were on the outskirts of a major city, but it looked just like “the village” (although more concentrated), since most people were living in small round brick huts with thatched roofs. I later found out that this unusual settling pattern was a result of the history of the area. Families moved near the city (often into relatives’ yards) to gain protection from the LRA, so they set up simple “temporary” housing resembling their own houses out in the villages. 25 years later they are still living in these “huts”, many of which have been improved and added onto along the way.

Discussing a Sketch of the Site Master Plan [Kirk]

On this trip, EMI was uniquely partnered with an architecture firm from Australia, which has already been working with Watoto to create a masterplan for the development of Gulu town. It’s exciting to see that a church/ministry is getting involved in caring for the improvement and restoration of an entire city and region. Often ministries are only set up to help those “within their gates,” which can be of great benefit to those in the program, but I was excited to see this “bigger picture” approach, especially for a war-torn region that has needs at every level of its society. The agricultural and technical college is a part of that bigger vision for raising up citizens to have skills that they can use to further develop their own communities. Also, because of Watoto’s and the architecture firm’s connections, the incoming mayor of Gulu attended our presentation at the end of the week. We think it was a great opportunity for the new mayor to understand Watoto’s vision for the college and also their overall desire to work with the government to help improve the region.

Nearby Church Under Construction [Andrew]

One of the cool things that happened on the trip involved structural engineering. (Don’t roll your eyes yet.) Our structural engineer and architects ended up having a really long conversation one night to try to figure out how to make these buildings both seismically safe and buildable. (Watoto often has teams of volunteers come and build parts of their buildings, and we wanted to create a design that would allow that model to continue.) Gulu is in a region that is more seismically active than Kampala, so it was great that we had a structural engineer on our team who works for a firm that specializes in seismic design. The team finally came up with some pretty creative (and cool-looking) building designs, but we were a little worried about selling the ideas as well as the importance of designing for earthquakes. (It is of course hard to want to spend money to prevent something that doesn’t happen very often – just like car insurance!) We thought we were going to have to convince our audience that an earthquake really could happen in Gulu. But the amazing thing was that ON THE MORNING of our final presentation, the entire region was woken up at 6:20am by a 5.0 earthquake! How amazing is that! It wasn’t big enough to cause damage, fortunately, but just big enough for everyone to feel it and to be reminded that Gulu is located in a seismically-active zone. God has great timing (and a sense of humor)! Who knows, maybe that one earthquake will cause buildings to be built better and save lives in the future!

Me, Tony, Chad, Andrew, Angus, and K2 on a Rock in the Middle of the Nile (really) [Kirk]

I had a wonderful week and a half, and found that it was just what I needed as I was transitioning back into living in Uganda and working with EMI. I was worried that I would find it too exhausting or overwhelming to go straight from moving to Uganda and spending a week setting up my apartment to leaving again for a busy project trip, but instead it left me feeling energized and excited for the road ahead. Thank you again for all your prayers in that regard. I feel like God knew exactly what I needed, even though it didn’t necessarily seem to make sense. The camaraderie and positivity of the team and the fun times we had together were life-giving, and the project itself was a great reminder about the difference that EMI is making in partnering with ministries that are doing great work here in East Africa.

Some more pictures of the trip (courtesy of my teammates):