Kyakonda (or, as the sign says, Kyakkonda)

Implementation! On Wednesday, 24 September, we delivered the pigs to the VSLAs in Kyakonda. We arrived a little later than when they usually sit for their cluster meeting due to the rainwater harvesting training in Kyotera, but we finally brought the six pigs for the two VSLAs. The pigs had arrived ahead of us in the truck, and when we arrived, we found somewhat of a conflict among the VSLAs. Luckily, the Chairwoman of all of the Sub-county's clusters was there and mediated among them. Apparently, the issue had to do with other projects that had come to the cluster, including rainwater harvesting tanks and a goat payback project, both of which the oldest VSLAs had benefitted from since not everyone could benefit. So, the younger VSLAs triumphed, and two of them were chosen to be the first beneficiaries of the project. Not much additional training was conducted because of the disorganized nature of the cluster, since it was already past the time when they normally leave. Community members seemed to be very pleased, though, and many thank yous were expressed throughout our time there. We were pleased with things as well, and in the coming weeks, I will be working on bringing some monitoring and evaluation materials to them, just as we had brought to the VSLAs in Kasaali and Kyotera. Some unexpected costs were revealed on Wednesday, including extra costs for feed for the pigs since Godfrey was in Kampala and couldn't collect feeds for them, and also the costs of pigs have risen in the area to 55,000/= (an increase of 5,000/=, which added up to an additional 30,000/= in addition to the feed and the transport that was already accounted for in the budget. Lately, I've spent much of my time in Kyotera because of the rainwater harvesting project and have missed the Kasaali cluster meeting for a couple weeks now. I'll have to check in with them soon.

The following were photos taken from the implementation, so enjoy! Oh, and I've also added another slideshow to the sidebar in case you want to see more...