Fire Relief « Hackers For Charity

2-Page PDF Overview

What a whirlwind these past few months have been. All told, the fire rebuilding process took a month of dedicated time and effort. Jessie Rich and Kelli O’Hea from Calvary dropped practically everything right along with us to care for the residents of Loko village. Returning to “our lives” took monumental effort as “work” was piled up, we were all behind in practically everything “our lives” required.

“Our lives”. “Work”. Odd terms. Jessie and Kelli don’t do construction for a living. I and my family certainly don’t. That’s not why we’re here in Uganda. Or is it?

I’m not considering dropping out of tech. Yet. There’s too much of a need here. Students to teach, machines to repair, internet to repair. There are far too many people in need of tech stuff, Ugandans and those here to help Ugandans alike. But projects like the Loko Fire Relief are just as close (if not closer) to the heart of why we’re all here than a lot of the day-to-day stuff we do. More importantly, the victims of the fire are exactly who we need to keep our eyes and hearts open to. In the spirit of that, I’m closing this chapter of the Loko Village “project” which I’ve called “Fire Relief” and opening the next phase, which I’ll call “Loko Village Fire Rebuild”.

Most of the residents are out of work, squatting on land they don’t own. Many of them have no viable job skills. I feel we’ve done a basic service by rebuilding their homes, but we’ll be doing an injustice if we don’t make an effort to reshape and rebuild their lives. They may be living in a new room, but in a year, will they be any better off? We hope so.

I’ll be partnering with local non-profits that specialize in job skill training and placement to do what we can to help those that are willing to be helped. I’ll keep you posted.

I want to thank each and every one of you that donated finances to the project, sent encouragement and those on the ground that gave of themselves to accomplish this project. I’m inspired by each and every one of you. You gave of yourselves to help those in dire need. Again, thank you.

I’m also excited that a blog headline like “Hackers Help Rebuild Ugandan Village” is real. Those of you that know me well know that I hate the bad rap “hackers” get because of the media. I’m always happy to see hackers involved in projects that promote positive social change, and I’m thrilled you’ve allowed me to play a part in this.

Please check out the PDF files attached to this post and pass them around. My two-page overview is above and Jen’s (well-done, much more detailed) newsletter is below. We’ve got more work to do but it’s important to let people know what we’ve done..together.

Loko Village Part 1

Loko Village Part 2

I have so little free time these days so I’m having trouble keeping up. So here is an update and some highlights from the last few days.

We had a team from Give International in Canada come and help us paint. They were also kind enough to donate nine sets of household supplies including mattresses, mosquito nets, pots and pans and more. I’m happy to have met and worked with these folks.

A .. nice man .. Came to us with a “problem”. Seems he was a landlord for four of the rooms (yes, making money off the poorest of the poor) and demanded we remove our buildings that were on “his” land or “help him with a little something”. He works for UNRA, the owners of the land who graciously allowed us to build. We refuses his offer and in front of witnesses, he responded, “There will be chaos and I will be behind it.” the day before he threatened the LC1 with a machete. We took him to his boss and his story changed to him “being affected by the fire” and him simply “looking out for the interest of the others affected by the fire,” himself included. Yes, he has a job, and yes he is greedy and pompous and yes I made a police report. I’ve included his picture as insurance, you know, just in case there is chaos.. Victims will know who is “behind it”.

Progress is coming rather quickly as the interior and exterior boards and the roofing all happens at once. Now with the painting, it’s quite staggering how quickly this project is moving along.

We are going to be in this for the long haul, though, because many of these people need more than a room. In a year, this village could be gone and we will need to help each family help themselves. Our goal is to ensure that each and every family is in a better spot a year from now. We’re looking at job placement, skills training, financial management and micro loans, all with the help and supervision of friends in the community that have more experience in this than we do.

Thanks again to everyone working in this project, especially our friends at Calvary and those who have supported this effort. I’m proud of the work we’re doing and excited for the future of this community.

I would like to say I spent the entire day working on site but that’s not true. I spent too many hours at the police station because my technician decided to take a bunch of our gear and leave our box of laptops unlocked. There are at least five missing. So now he’s in jail and I’ve closed down our repair business. This is the latest in a long string of employees that have stolen from us or have been criminally dishonest and frankly I’m done being nice about it. Everyone around me, especially those that have been here a while are telling me to press charges and let the legal system run its course.

Lovely.

As for the work at the site, we are doing the final framing. Those of you that have been with us from the beginning may recognize the shots of the big tree. Some of the video footage from the fire showed several people tearing away part of a building near this tree. We’ve come a long way since that shot.

Thanks everyone for you continue support!

Two weeks have passed since the fire that destroyed 28 homes at Works village in Jinja and we’re seeing real progress. The frames are nearly finished and we’re preparing the roofing. We’ve overcome many obstacles as a team and thanks to yourdonations and the hard work of everyone here on the ground we’re seeing real progress.

Today we measured the distances between the poles and found that one building was completely out of square which threw off all the distances. This is a problem because each room measures 8′x8′ and the lengths of our wood is 8′. With the gaps out of whack, we either have to patch things together or move poles, which is a problem because the poles are sunk and the rafters and frames are in place. Thanks to Bob (seen in the yellow cap) none of this was a problem. See, Bob has experience as a carpenter and he took one look at the building and saw that one corner pole was bent like crazy. After removing one rafter and replacing that pole things fell into place and .. like magic .. everything fell into place.

The moral of the story: one bad pole wrecks the whole house. This was the theme for more than building.

The buildings are really starting to take shape as we put the poles in place, level the floors and grade the slopes to help with drainage. It’s been great having our friends Kelli, Matt and Becca working on so many things with us as well as several HFC staff members (look for the HFC t-shirts).

But the big news is that we finally took delivery of the wood donated by Nile Ply. They donated approximately 120 4′x8′ sheets including ceiling board (think thin particle board), 3/16″ plywood and “block board” which is basically furring strips sandwiched between 1/4″ plywood sheets.

The ceiling and ply will be used for interior walls and the block board will be painted and sealed and used for exterior walls.

We still have more wood to buy and we are anxious to heard for Roofings about their donation. We should know something from them by tomorrow.

Another really long day. Lots of poles put in place and we leveled lots of ground.

Breaking rocks, moving dirt, hauling trees: hard work. Convincing an entire village that if they don’t accept a gift of a one year eviction extension, they will lose everything: nigh impossible. Convincing the local politicians to accept and quickly act on the decision of the people before they get a power trip out of being the last thing preventing a village of 400+ from being bulldozed: Requires Miracle.

When I got out of bed this morning, every muscle ached. My eyes burned, my throat was nearly closed. I was dehydrated and exhausted. The last thing I wanted to do was manual labor. After several meetings though, I was longing for some manual labor. I hate meetings. I hate politics. But had our ragtag group bailed on these meetings, I know without a doubt that an entire village, even those unaffected by the fire, would have been bulldozed.

The politicians were lazy and the people were clueless and lied to by the very people elected to protect them.

We had a mini town meeting and explained to the residents what was really going on. We told them that if they didn’t ask for a formal extension they were going to face eviction by bulldozer. They agreed even though some residents were wrongly convinced they could do nothing and they would be blissfully ignored for another five or ten years.

We passed the job of finalizing and delivering the letter to the LC1 and explained the hard deadline of 8am Thursday morning. He missed the deadline and jeopardized the homes of over 400 people. We hunted him down and delivered the letter ourselves two hours past the deadline. It was accepted by the landowner, no thanks to the politicians.

All the sweat, blisters and wasted muscles are nothing compared to the importance of that simple letter.

But by saving them from eviction, we’ve also committed ourselves to them for the next year. We can’t just build shelter and walk away because a year from now they will likely be evicted. We are setting ourselves up for a job much harder than building homes.. we must build futures.

This, I think, is why we are here. This is why I was so inexplicably drawn to the victims of this fire. I’m seeing with fresh eyes that charity is not a solution and it is not a “means to an end”. Rather, it is a stopgap measure. It is triage. Triage is necessary in a crisis situation. Stabilization is critical. But no one breathes a sigh of relief when someone they love advances from “critical” to “critical but stable”.

And I can’t rightly allow myself to, either.

This morning I was exhausted, secretly hoping for an end to the labor. By the end of the day, though, something in me had changed. I didn’t have a job. I wasn’t facing labor. My attitude had changed and I realized that I am not merely called to help or to simply work for these people, I am called to love them and even love the stupid self-serving, transparent politicians.

It’s a bit of an epiphany and I know it will sound strange to many who read this, but regardless of how it will make anyone feel, it happened today. This paradigm shift happened and in that shift from labor to love, I found strength to keep going.

Our tiny town meeting:

On Tuesday we started digging holes for poles, setting them in place and leveling them. A ridiculous amount of work went into this including grading, measuring, leveling, digging, cutting and in some cases undoing a wall or two because we screwed something up. This building stuff is so foreign. Jessie is teaching me so much.

But even understanding basic building techniques is not enough. For example, once we know exactly where a pole needs to go and we put in a market, someone has to dig. So they generally take out the stake and start to dig. A rock might knock them off course, or each person might decide to dig in the left or right of the stake. The result can be a mess. Ugandans are very smart about building in their own way, but most structures are relatively small, like a 16′ x 8′ building split into two homes or “rooms”. Most buildings are not bigger than that because wood is cut at 8′ lengths and larger projects require a small margin of error. In our case, we are saving money by building larger structures (each with 8′ x 8′rooms) with shared walls. But this means smaller margins for error and “western” techniques that are frankly hard to explain to the locals. We are trying to pass on the techniques but also trying to keep to a relatively good pace so this doesn’t turn into a longer project than it needs to be.

That’s the poles. Now the politics. Jessie, Kelli and I spent some time talking to the land owner representative. It turns out the land the entire village is using is owned by the Ministry of Works/UNRA. So all the hundreds of residents, including the fire victims are squatters. And to make matters worse, UNRA sent them a legit eviction notice effective Jan 9th, 2012. The people grumbled, and sought a reprise. The UNRA rep mentioned that the residents have never asked to stay on the property and if they worked together and asked to stay (say for a year) they would likely be granted a reprise. The LC1 is the people’s government representative so the task of organizing this falls to him.

The afternoon went like this:

UNRA: “The bulldozers are coming. But if you produce a letter asking to stay maybe we can stop this. If you can’t organize enough to produce a letter then we’re sorry.”

Us: “Thanks for the offer. We’ll get right on it.”

LC1: “I will schedule a meeting with the whole village, then draft a letter an meet with the LC3 (his boss’ boss) and get this signed by the Mayor.”

Us: “But the bulldozers are coming!”

The Mayor was beaten and stoned earlier this week. I’m sure he’s busy. And this has nothing to do with the LC3 or the mayor, but the local politicians want face time and community “vote for me” schmooze time. Sound familiar? So construction is on hold.

Here’s a fisheye of the progress today:

We began the day painting the poles with wood sealant. This is nasty sticky stuff.

Jessie began working on a prototype for a daytime interior light. This bottle of water (with a teaspoon of bleach) is recessed into the ceiling. When the light hits the bottle it diffuses into the room and can give off as much light as a 55watt bulb.

The hard work today was running the remaining site lines and clearing rubble from the worksite. This was really tough work. We all have more than our share I inhales dust, blisters and aching muscles.

Even the children were hard at work carrying the heavy poles from Calvary.

By the end of the day, the site was looking really good. Click this image for a fisheye view of the site:

And here’s a standard view of the site:

The day ended with the thunder of teargas canisters from riots in the market and thunder from the sky as rain and hail (hopefully) marked the end of the hot season and the start of the rainy season.

More of your donations in action:

Continuing with Saturday, I also met with an engineer from the US named Bryce who helped us with some details about building. We need to do some serious grading to prevent water erosion and our design needs cross braces.

I met with Grace, our carpenter and foreman, to figure out what tools we need for that work. We used HFC donated funds for that equipment which included rakes, hoes, pick axes, shovels, post hole diggers, rebar pieces and twine for marking the site.

Jen and Kelly were busy organizing the massive pile of donations from the community into separate groups for each family that lost their home. This was a lot of work as the donations were of all sizes and types. They spent several long hot hours working with all this in preparation for the distribution Saturday night which went really well. This photo shows the group that received donations. Each is acting as a head of household.

I met again with the chairman to sort out the list of fire victims to figure out who lived in each home. This helps with the distribution but also with an attendance list so we can learn who in the group might not be helping with the work. We learned that some perfecty healthy residents are sitting around “letting the Mzungus build them a house”. These people are in the minority and the chairman knows who they are. I have no idea what he’ll do about it but so far he’s been honest and fair.

We also had a nice lady come and distribute clothes on her own. We heard the ruckus over in the field and investigated. She told us she was only giving donations to victims but I didn’t recognize any of the crowd from meals at night and none of them had our bracelets on. I’ve been working for hours on the list of victims with the chairman and we don’t even have it completely sorted, but she was convinced she had it sorted. Also, the heads of practically every household and many of their children were at Calvary working on the poles so they all missed out. She did a good service for the community and has a good heart and it reminded me of myself three years ago when I would just jump in and recklessly do something good even if it wasnt well planned, coordinated or sustainable. Good is good. Anyway we were glad to see some benefit for the surrounding community.

We also started cutting rebar to act as stakes and did the initial layout of the individual buildings. It’s cool to see the buildings taking shape.

The night wrapped up with the meal
Service and Calvary showed the Jesus film to about three hundred people in the village. It ended up being a 16 hour day, but it was wonderful.

Saturday was a really long day. I arrived at Calvary around 8:30 and met with the local chairman and the fire victims to begin stripping the eucalyptus poles.

Having never stripped bark from a tree before, I watched the process for a while and decided it looked easy and fun.

They used machetes to separate the bark at the base and then peeled it away from the tree with their fingernails. Once they had a couple of inches to grab, they pulled the bark in long strips revealing the gorgeous white wood underneath. All in all it looked like they were peeling massive bananas. They chatted in Luganda as they worked. Beyond fun, it looked somehow therapeutic. I decided to jump right in.

The first thing I realized was that it was getting very hot in the sun. I also realize that the trees were extremely heavy. I already knew this from pulling the poles off the truck on Friday, but that was easier.. we only had to drag them off the truck bed. This was tougher because the trees had to be rolled around to get access to all the bark and the poles weren’t straight. My first tree smashed several toes and nailed me in the shins just to let me know who was in charge. That first tree took me an hour as I peeled tiny spindly pieces of bark one layer at a time. The chairman, working beside me, finished five in the first hour. By the time I got to the second tree I had figured out one of the secrets was to get every layer of bark in one shot. I dug deep for my first piece an before I knew it, I had completely stripped a third of the tree in one long strip. It took time because I had to stop every now and then to work around a branch or a knot, but the result was worth it. Eventually I completely stripped that tree in three long strips. (check out the picture of the tree and the three strips).

After two hours I had stripped four trees and I was soaked with sweat. No one else had even broken a sweat. These guys are tough. I’ve got chunks of bark jammed into my nail beds and I was told the will have to “grow out”. By eleven I was already pretty exhausted but it was time to meet with Nile Ply to see about their wood donation. Jessie and I headed over there.

As it turns out they are donating almost all the wood we will need except for about 50 sheets which thanks to your donations we can afford to buy if we need to. The wood will be available on Tuesday.

My best pole: three strips, about 45 minutes of work: