Hi!

Welcome to my summer blog! This is where you can find any and all updates about my internship in Kamuli, Africa, for the summer of 2017.  Thank you for visiting, and I hope you will stop by frequently.

I am a junior at Iowa State University majoring in Global Resource Systems with two minors, Spanish and Sustainability. The GLOBE major requires an overseas internship to gain relative experience in our fields. I chose to serve in Kamuli, Uganda through the Iowa State - Uganda Program. There, I will be meeting with community officials to conduct independent research on the water resource systems that each community uses outside of the deep water wells that Iowa State has provided, as well as the quality and costs of those outside resources. I will also be surveying and observing the process of installing new boreholes, and I will have the opportunity to learn how to decide where to place boreholes in Kamuli. I am extremely blessed to be able to gain experience in water sustainability in rural Africa.

The second aspect of my internship is my service that I provide to the primary schools in Kamuli: my participation in a bi-national team with my peers from ISU and students from Makerere University in Uganda. I was placed on the irrigation team, and we will be implementing drip irrigation systems throughout the school gardens, and testing out which irrigation systems are more efficient while also cost-effective.

That's all I can really give for a summary of what I will be doing, because I have been told by my supervisors to be flexible, as everything that I am planning to do can change at the drop of a hat!

At this time, I am busy wrapping up the semester, raising my funds, and beginning my packing list.  I had a dream last night that I arrived in Africa and realized that I forgot to pack!  Packing immediately went closer to the top on my on-going to-do list.

Stay tuned for more posts about my preparation to leave and setting up my research project!

XOXO,
Kerri