The Garuga Road: preparing to leave

As I prepare to return to the UK for my first ‘furlough’ and to be reunited with my wife (who had to leave a few weeks ago)and family, I am surprised at some of the thoughts I am having.

I am actually worrying about driving on UK roads! Me!!

I am concerned that people will be disinterested in what we have been doing and will find stories of Uganda boring. I will have little else to talk about.

I am worried about culture shock. I was away in Iran 4 months (this gap has been 5½ months) and found it hard upon my return, but I consider Uganda my home now and I think that trying to cope with the culture and conversation of the UK may be challenging.

I am worried about being able to afford living in the UK as our support will not go up to match the increased cost of living.

I am concerned that we may not find anyone else to help support us and the work that we are doing.

I am concerned that I am worrying too much …..!!

(Photos from top: Napier Grass (Elephant Grass) stems ready for planting; with poughed land ready in background; buying the calliandra at the National Forestry Centre, Mukono; Jusef planting the grass; shoebills)

As the photos show, the last few weeks have been so encouraging. Activity has been intense on site and it is transformed. Yesterday was an historic one; we planted our first crop, albeit just Napier (‘Elephant’) Grass. This is one of the three elements of our forage for pigs and cattle. The other two plants that will be intercropped will be calliandra and mucuna, which are rich leguminous forage plants which will help provide the most rich and healthy diet possible for our animals. The three grow together and can be cut and grow back again endlessly. I really can’t wait.

Today, Saturday 19th May, I watched as the land was being prepared for the first house to be built; unfortunately two small trees have to be taken out but we have replacements – orange and mango. We have had very heavy rain all week and the site is still drying out from intense flooding. This is exactly what Uganda needed but it has delayed work and made getting the estate road preparation impossible.

As usual today I woke up to the sound of the two ‘Sacred Ibises’ perched on the chimney behind me shrieking in harmony at 6.30am. It is the most raucous, noisy sound in the animal world. Why are they called Sacred?! (I think I have asked you this question before). This week working on the site has meant that I have seen loads of new birds and a tiny yellow tree frog with black spots. Today I went with my sister and her family to Entebbe Zoo and was enthralled by the three Shoebills there. They have to be the weirdest birds in the world! They look prehistoric and completely mad; they stand so seriously, often on one leg, like scientists or mad professors, and slowly lower their heads to the ground shaking them side to side as if to say, “These humans just don’t understand the depths of true knowledge; does ego posit itself?”. Then in unison they snap their beaks together like huge castanets in a laborious dance of the ages. It’s hard not to giggle.

We continue to meet others working in Uganda amongst orphans and children in need, or in the medical field. Each time we find our project ‘design’ and concept being welcomed and greeted with zest and enthusiasm; we realise increasingly that God truly has helped us to get it right thus far. Being groundbreakers, pioneers and innovators is tricky stuff, believe me! Generally we are the first to ever go down this road and of course we haven’t done anything very tangible yet! But we spend huge amounts of time ‘dry-running’ the plans together, and checking out with experts and local people the ‘fit’ of our ideas. I know I have said this before as well, but the last thing that is needed here is simple ideas. The reasons behind poverty, orphan living and lack of opportunity are many and varied (as my history teacher used to say). The solution has to be one that seeks to address a whole string of problems otherwise all that is happening is that the problem is being ‘shifted downstream’. Kids need education, and then vocational training, but they also need a disciplined life that fits with existing culture, and a change of mindset to one where they think in a new way. Ugandans, as with most people in the developing world, are taught ‘by wrote’ here and are not encouraged to solve problems, challenge data, think laterally, find successful strategies, plan for the more distant future, look at resources and how they match expectations, etc etc. The result in the leadership and management of the country is mind-blowingly awful. If we fail to address this within Cherish Uganda then we will have totally failed. Ugandans cannot continue to be spat out at the end of an education process full of knowledge but almost incapable of using it to make a difference.

I am disappointed that I seem unable to convince friends back home of the need out here and to trust me that they can invest in Uganda a way that will bring eternal rewards and huge change for fairly paltry sums. Then I remember how many times I probably walked away from similar appeals. I am seriously trying to raise the £10,000 needed to build the piggery, and a further £20,000 to build each further house for 8 children. I was able to get one (wonderful) person to contribute to Grace’s last year of education, but it still fell short of what was needed, and Sandy and I felt that we had to respond ourselves. But living here teaches me that it is better to give than receive and I was never really happy with the wealth that we had (comparatively speaking). The imbalances in the world are hideous and obscene. Pornographic. What is it that we in the West think that there is left to find in our search for ‘self–fulfilment and self-realisation’? Navel gazing is a good description. But there are signs that more and more people are fed up with the lifestyle of consumerism …..

I am sounding self-righteous. In my heart I know that I am still addicted to things and that I struggle to get over thoughts that are ungracious about Ugandans and so on. I hope that this summer as I return I might find a seam of grace to tap into so that what I share enlightens and releases and doesn’t bind-up and bore.

(Photos: the land just after ploughing: giving Kigo prison manurte freedom - inmates looking on; manure enjoying freedom - on the land; matooke holes ready for manure and planting)

The Garuga Road: arriving!

I know my friends are polite and sincere people, but you were waiting (albeit not holding your breath) for the day that a blog was posted saying that we had actually started something on site. Come on. Lets be honest! You saw the photos of the container arriving, but that doesn't really meet the full expectations of what we came out here to do.

So, ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to announce that this week was the one in which The Garuga Road story moves from prologue and introduction and begins chapter one. In short, we have arrived along the Garuga Road at Bulega, and have started to make history. For let me tell you that one day the name 'Cherish' will be known worldwide as a place where all that is best and truly sustainable in the care of orphans with HIV+ found its nascence.

Firstly: we now have planning consent for the whole village concept, including a guest-house, school, admin centre, training centre and farm.

Let me quickly run through what you can see on site right now:

Manure!

The right price for good chicken manure here is 50,000UGX/Tonne (£15). We need 140T, and it doesn't take much maths to know that this is a lot of money (no shit?!). Transport is on top of that and is about 70,000UGX for 5T, incl. diesel for the 60km round trip. From where? From Kigo Prison (pronounced chigo) - that's where! But we got it for 5,000UGX/T which is £1.50! Kigo used to keep about 10,000 chicken and there are 3 huge hen houses about a foot deep in beautifully decomposed poo that they were eager to get rid of. Fin Wood did a great job in lining this deal up with the lorry gang found by me but negotiated by him. They are doing 5 x 5T loads a day and the smell is awesome! The picture shows it after about three loads. The pile today is 120 tonnes.

Seriously - for a moment - chicken poo is the most concentrated manure available and it is the best we could ever expect! The guy delivering it is a 21-year-old called Jibla, but whom we call Giblet. He is a bit of a rogue, but working with us has seemed to bring about quite a change in him and the other day I was about to pay him 42,000UGX too much (about £12.50) and he pointed the fact out. I have worked with his team on quite a few of the loadings/deliveries, and on the first and second ones the lorry got stuck in our site mud for about 1.5 hours. To fill the lorry we have a few prisoners helping (Kigo is a high security prison near our house and in a remote location by the lake) and we fill sacks and then these are dumped into the lorry. It takes about 40 minutes to do 5T. An amazing possible joint venture with them is emerging but i will tell that story another time....... just pray!

Site clearing

We have had a team of about 6 men and three women working over the last week or so 'slashing' the undergrowth, pulling out bushes and shrubs and abandoned coffee, and then stacking it all in long rows parallel with the lanes for ploughing. In this heat and humidity it is hard work and it has been made more intense by the disturbance of many snakes. In three days they killed three Goldie's Tree Pythons; as far as we can work out from the book on snakes it is venomous but no-one knows quite how much! Anyway you can see the photos of one of them; about 1500mm long. Yesterday's was 1800mm. People here are terrified of snakes, the adults more even than the kids. The adults were horrified that I was playing around with the dead carcass, even the man who had killed it and was going to have it for supper that night!

The site looked so different when the clearing

was done! We could look right through to the lake and begin to appreciate the contours, structure and layout of the site. I marked out with stakes the stands for Napier grass ('Elephant Grass') mixed with Mucuna (a leguminous, bean-like, cut-and-come-again forage crop), and the acre for banana/mutooke, and for the bean/maize intercropped area.

Ploughing

After searching for ages for a tractor to hire, we 'accidentally' came across a local mission school to our site who had an old tractor which they rented out (with driver) including plough, tiller, and truck as a way of raising money for their orphanage and school. The price was very good. At the time of writing all the 6 acres in the initial phase have been ploughed and the brushwood and branches are about to be collected up as firewood for the brick-making we will do on site. It will also distribute the manure over the fields over the next two days. Lawrence, the driver, is a great guy and very handy with the kit!

Building the track

After several occasions of lorries getting bogged down on our site, the penny dropped. It's the wet season and we do need to put the track in first since lorries out here have bald tyres and are always overloaded. So for about £2,400 we are putting in the 400m long track or access road all the way from the Garuga Road up to the proposed piggery and farm building site, past both proposed house areas. The track route has already been scraped out (graded) through the top soil which is being retained for use on the farm areas, and all the bushes and just a few small tress removed. We have a policy of not removing any trees on site unless we have to, and then only those of very low value. All 755 trees and shrubs on site have been numbered and plotted on a topographical survey.

So now the site is really beginning to look like a village is about to appear and one can drive on the bare soil to the very farthest corner. Over the next few days the murram layer will be put in place and compacted to form the traditional orange-coloured, Ugandan country road. The photo shows the section adjacent to the planned first 12 houses, which will be just to the left. The brick-making area is slightly to the right.

In the lower photo this is the turning head before the farm area, at the far end of the site. Note the billowing exhaust, which is the 'signature tune' of all vehicles in Uganda!

Seedlings and compost experimentation

I have been keen to use the time available to get Paul and Mark, the two site security officers, to learn how to make compost, with help from Chris. They are also trying to grow trees from all the stones of the avocado's we eat, and of various trees that we spot and find seeds of. The latest is Delonix regia or 'Flamboyant', which is the most striking exotic tree (from Madagascar) in E Africa, and has bright red flowers with a cream upper petal and huge wooden pods. It is a leguminous tree and so 'fixes' nitrogen in the soil and the leaves are eaten by cattle.

We have also bought some specimen trees from the national crop research laboratories, such a oranges, guava, and mango, which we are growing-on. You can see the shaded area that the guys have created for all these plants, as well as an experimental area for various types of composting treatments. Fin is taking a closer look, having an expert eye for compost, while the rest of their team turn their backs on our (Chris's) masterpiece!

Staff

We have now interviewed for the two farm-worker posts and have appointed two women (most farmers in Africa (sorry, the world) are women! Their names are Segawa and Olivia. Segawa lives in the back end of nowhere near Iganga, east of Jinja. She is a tiny girl, about Hannah's size, and incredibly enthusiastic about organic farming and on a tiny farm has produced a wonderful exhibition of the 'art'. 7 of them (including 3 children) sleep and live in a tiny round 'banda' about 10' diameter, including a distant aunt who is in the last stages of AIDS and is totally deranged by the suffering. Unbelievable. Olivia in sharp contrast, is a strapping wench, and lives in one of the huge slums of Kampala in a tiny courtyard. In the centre she has produced an organic farm with loads of features and she breeds 200 chicken and two huge turkeys. She is hard to get talking - the strong, silent type!

For both of them they were in dead-end situations with little hope of ever achieving the dreams they have. Kulika's training had given them the opportunity to reach for a bit of the sky and I see that Cherish has become a lifeline to take that chance and make it a reality. It may be small but for these two girls God has shone a light of hope that has almost overwhelmed them. They smile in a daze at me as I offer them a job. In a week they will leave their homes and start a new life in their own home on land that they have never seen, and with 20 acres and a huge vision to embrace and make their own. Its quite an emotional thing. The photo shows Segawa standing by the chicken house she built herself on her land. The other is Olivia's courtyard farm.

A big thank you!

Without you supporters and friends none of this would be possible. It is still just the beginning of an amazing adventure, where Ugandans take hold of opportunity given to them by people like you. It's not about clever Westerners coming to save Uganda. They are well able to provide all the energy and enthusiasm, with grace and wit. What they need are investors and capital, enablers and supporters. You are making the difference!

What we need right now is someone willing to invest £10,000 with us to enable us to build the piggery breeding centre that I have designed and had priced through competitive tender. This will open up a massive opportunity for farmers in the area to see a new level of pig care and breeding demonstrated and enable a step change in husbandry and profitability.

It could be you that makes this change!