Did you get anything wrong?
Answer
We got a few things wrong. One example — arguably at least — is the kitchens and cooking arrangements.
Cooking Calamity
The kitchen below was being built to Dorothy & Milly's specification. Dorothy has been looking after babies and children for donkeys years: so who better to say what NOTDEC needs? But when house-mothers tried it, they wouldn't use it — preferring something smokier out of doors!
White Elephant in the Making?
Many house-mothers are raising their own families on site, and cooking matoke for 3 hours with bottled gas costs a fortune. Some accounts make this the key issue.
Others have a cultural slant, with house-mothers wanting a "normal life" for their families. In rural Uganda, "normal" is not indoor cooking in an institutional kitchen but cooking outdoors in a well-ventilated shed. Climatically, outdoors is more comfortable & sociable; smoke deters mosquitos; and the house is less attractive to vermin without food smells & waste. NOTDEC Uganda exists to provide a "normal" family upbringing for destitute kids. So a normal family cooking set-up can hardly be the wrong choice — especially as the alternative is prohibitively expensive anyway.
Clean and Light — the "brochure" image?
Is "family cooking" the best use of the house-mothers' time? A central kitchen could free them up to spend more time with the children. Will outdoor cooking still be the cultural norm when the youngest NOTDEC children are raising their families?
Of course cooking in the future may be more "European", with greener and healthier bottled gas. But that is then — not now. And even then, normal families won't cook in a central kitchen!
The house-mothers' choice is undoubtedly "family cooking". Today, that means outdoors. And the cost of slow cooking by gas may well be a factor.
Smoke at Dusk - nearer the truth?
It is easy to romaticize Ugandan cooking arrangements. The truth may not be "arson attack meets barbecue", as horrified Europeans may think, but it is certainly smokier and less convenient than romanticists claim. That gerry-can means back ache where running water should be! As for the long-term effect of the smoke on house-mothers' health, no-one knows.
For now, the decision is made. Longer term, the question may be revisited as the focus moves more onto house-mothers' health and the best use of staff time. If, by then, Ugandans generally have moved to more "European" cooking, the indoor kitchens may not be white elephants after all.
Time will tell.
As a footnote, it is worth mentioning that NOTDEC laundry is a currently done by hand, not in a washing machine. This too limits the amount of staff-time that can be focused on the individual bavies and children themselves.