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Katakwi locals use water in bottles to tap phone network

Charles Onsingei, a resident of Angisa Parish, Magoro Sub-county in Katakwi District, makes a call, with a bottle of water in the other hand to stabilise the network, last week. PHOTO/SIMON PETER EMWAM
What you need to know:
- Experts say the use of water in plastic transparent bottles is a proven innovation that works, although it is not perfect.
In the heat of the baking sunshine, locals in Angisa Parish, Magoro Sub-county in Katakwi District can be seen going about their daily work after a morning headcount of livestock in their community kraals.
Livestock headcount here is a mandatory routine in this remote end of the district bordering Nabilatuk and Nakapiripirit districts. Its proximity to Karamoja Sub-region has always placed it in the alleyways where cattle raids by Karimojong warriors are carried out and only through the morning headcounts are locals able to detect possible theft.
As I formalised my visit last Friday, I was ushered to their new LC1 chairperson, one Charles Aupal, 58, a father of two families with a total of 10 children. In the middle of his busy schedule, as he fixed the roof of his hut, Aupal reached out for his phone, which he handed over to his son, Alex Omongin, a Primary Five dropout intending to marry in the next five months, to make a call to his in-laws to be.

As I looked on in awe under the shade of a mango tree, Omongin filled a plastic bottle with water, which he placed above his chest line, an art that the locals here attest to attract radio waves from the furthest telecommunication masts, thereby enabling them to make calls when need arises. Until 2020, after resettling here in 2007, following years of mass displacement by the Karimojong warriors, Aupal confirmed they did not know water in transparent bottles would turn out to be the magical answer to their long woes of living in this community with unreliable network.
Aupal said before 2020, they only used their phones for playing their Ateso music saved on their memory cards. “That has now changed, we can also make calls, although with a little difficulty compared to urban areas where people can make calls in the confines of their bedrooms,”he said. He added:
“To make a call then, especially when we lost our dear ones, we would walk to Magoro Sub-county, 12kms from here, where we made calls, then walk back to Angisa.”
Charles Osingei, another resident, said the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) soldiers, who taught them how to use the bottles both inside their houses and around trees.

“When we learnt about this magical innovation, we sent our children to collect water bottles from Magoro Sub-county. Since then, our network challenges have reduced,” Onsingei said. He added that in some homes, the network remains problematic and this has caused long queues at one of the Cape Fig trees where water bottles have tapped the much-desired strong network. Vincent Erongu, 38, said their worry is that there is no privacy at the Cape Fig tree since all residents who want to make clear telephone calls flock to it. “It is at the same tree where a young couple almost fought to death after the husband found his wife making a love call to her former boyfriend at around 9pm.
In anger, the husband destroyed all the water bottles that tap network. We had to replace them the next day after settling the couple’s dispute,” Erongu recalled. Francis Aruo, the Magoro Sub-county chairperson, said the challenges of Angisa are not just limited to issues of mobile phone network. The community has not had a health facility and school for the last 18 years since people resettled there. Aruo said as they continue to ask telecommunication service providers to extend masts to Angisa, the issues of education and health should be expeditiously resolved.
EXPERT’S TAKE
Stephen Ojok, a telecommunication engineer, said the use of water in plastic transparent bottles is a proven innovation that works, although it is not perfect. He explained that when radio waves enter into water, they induce electric current in the water molecules, which dissipate some of the energy waves, and in the process, when one makes a phone call, the waves generated by the water in the bottle are routed back to the nearest mast, and one can be able to have a relatively stable network.