The Garuga Road: the road back home

Looking back on the last entry it seems extraordinary that I should have had such fears about my return. As it turned out people were very happy to talk about - and listen to - stories of Uganda and 'Cherish'. Money stretched to meet the needs, people were very generous to us; some gave us free hospitality, others financial gifts. A HUGE thank you to all who shared their lives and homes with us, especially my mother - Jo, my brother and sister in law - Alastair and Stella (what food!!), Julian and Elspeth Phillips, Jane Mann (amazing woman!), Rick and Bev Murrill (barbecue kings and our special leaders), sister and brother in law Rachel and Andrew, Richard and Fliss 'the Dons', Derek and Jackie Wood, and Sue Mitchell (prophetic landlady extraordinaire).

Above all I was very encouraged at the responses to my presentations in churchs and other groups. On every occasion people came up overwhelmingly positive about the content and message, as well as endorsing the aims and 'design' of Cherish Uganda. Many offered to help in all sorts of ways; from marketing, to researching, to coming out and working on the project.

It was so good to see our wonderful children, and our first grandchild- Ephraim (pronouned Efram) Ulrik, Burnham Waldron, born to Simon and Kamilla on the day I landed in the UK - 25th May! I had predicted months before that my grandchild would not wish to be born until my feet touched down in the UK, and 1.5 hours after I landed Kamilla went into labour, 10 days late .....

Hannah graduated from Brighton University in Illustration, with a 1st class honours and won the Illustration Prize, which was not a 'goody bag' like the others, but a cheque for £1,000!

Mixed with the joys was the sadness of Luigia, Sandy's mother's death on 5th July after a long and gut-wrenching fight with Parkinson's Disease. The Italian side of our family has become one of the most precious dimensions of our life via Sandy's mother, who was born in San Gimignano, Tuscany (famous hilltop town of lavish towers) and grew up in Sorrento - surely two of the most romantic and lovely places on earth?! The thanksgiving service for her life was a celebration of all she represented to us.

Getting back to Uganda proved harder. We were refused travel at Heathrow due to rules that say airlines cannot allow single flights into countries where there is no visa in the passport, and we did not have the paperwork from our team in Uganda proving that visas had been granted. In the end we had to pay fines and fly two days later , with Business Class from Dubai due to there being no economy seats until the end of August. It was my first taste of luxury in the air, but the cost .........

We had a great welcome back. Wow! Overwhelming! I couldn't work out why because when I got to the land everyone seems to have done very well without me! As I write this (6th August) two houses for the orphans are up to eaves beam level and the third's foundation is about to be cast.

14,000 or so bricks have been made on our site with the huge resulting hole to become our main irrigation reservoir (served by the 'grey water' from the houses and the rainwater run-off from the site road and land.

6 acres of land are now under cultivation, with beans ready for harvest. Maize, cassava, and sweet potatoes are coming up along with areas of forage made up of Napier Grass, Mucuna (a climbing legume of the bean family) and Calliandra - a legumous shrub great for forming hedges and stabilising soil. Leucaena, another leguminous fodder/stabilising shrub, is growing away.

Thanks Fin, Chris - and Harriet (Kulika Trust's project manager). Thanks, too, to Yusuf and Olivia, along with Mark, Paul, Rose M, Rose B, Margaret and Oboth for all the work on the land.

Rachel Parsons, the childcare manager and her team had appointed our first three 'house mothers', working closely with Watoto Homes (http://www.watoto.com/) who did an amazingly generous thing in training them and letting us take the pick of the team. They also helped ius in an extraordinaty way in helping us select our first Social Worker - Margaret - who started work today.

So I feel blest. Its great to know that a team can manage without you and still want you back. OK there are problems - it's not all good news: we have serious problems with termites, local villagers chicken and pigs, monkeys and squirrels - all eating our crops, and the maize that we bought (from a very reputable supplier) had Maize Streak Virus. We are behind programme on the houses albeit the contractor, Buster, is catching up. We have yet to build and test our 'rocket' oven. But I am inspired by this place and the Ugandan people.

Within a month or so we are going to be housing and caring for children who would otherwise have no future. We will be travelling a path for the first time in Uganda - with many watching to see where it leads. It seems so precarious - we are so few and have such tiny resources. We are such novices in this arena. But we have an amazing Heavenly Father who somehow takes clay such as us and moulds something that contain precious gold. It's a privilege. There is so little that I have to offer and yet Uganda is being changed by this little, and others are being inspired to make a difference to this mad mad world.

Photos (from top): Ephraim; Hannah and I at graduation;San Gimignano; Sorrento; the first house a week ago; 12,000 bricks in the making; sweet potatoes on site; Harriet surveying the maize and beans; the first harvest - a bean pod is opened!; Fin in the hole where the bricks came from - soon to be an irrigation reservoir

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!

The Garuga Road - bends and blockages

As I write my wife is in the UK seeing her mother. The dreaded news, anticipated many times, that she might be dying came through this week and a whole set of actions with it. Trying to reschedule the existing Emirates return ticket, only to find that there wasn't a single empty seat for 10 days ... and then phoning every airline to find an alternative. Couldn't afford to lose the Emirates ticket and book a return with a new operator without knowing what day we would be coming back to Uganda, and thus maybe having to pay a further £75 fee for rescheduling. Several tickets were available but at such exorbitant prices .....

Finally BA came up trumps, and with it our teammates - who paid for the £350 ticket home. It is always those with the least who give the most. Thank you, dear friends!!

So .... I will be here alone until 25th May and then two months in the UK, and we will be back mid-July together. Sandy will be away 3 months! If Luigia does pass away I will have to find the wherewith all for an unexpected return ticket, as I cannot stay away at this time as so much needs to be done here, with construction just about to start.

In the midst of all this my sister Jojo, plus family, arrived for three months in Mukono Uganda and stayed with us for three great days. And Frida, the person about whom Sandy is currently writing her story of survival and forgiveness in the Rwandan genocide, arrived in an emergency with her husband Stephen to stay here as her pregnancy is in some sort of crisis. This was less than 5 days after Sandy returned from Rwanda and staying with them to do the final research into the book, including seeing her home and the spot where her entire family was murdered and buried ... ...

A packed house and to-ings and go-ings; three visits to Entebbe airport in 4 days. This is Africa!

I had hoped to see a start of work on site this week, but once again Africa throws the dice and it is a double 1. The track grader broke down and the setting out surveyor couldn't find a 'total station' to do the setting out from AutoCAD. Then another neighbour starts to dispute a boundary and threatens to pull up the fence, plus the old one still has opposed the fencing and it remains incomplete after two failed attempts. Our solicitors seem completely disinterested in helping us.

I am not discouraged; this is the way things go here, but the miracles and help that one looks for to overcome these glitches are not here this week, and I am wondering why? I am sure there are reasons and I know I continue to learn trust and patience. Maybe that's enough reason.

Lat week it was miracles all the way. Someone gave their entire City bonus of £21,000 to pay for another house for 8 orphans. We got Ugandan NGO registration. Planning and EIA went in. Life was wonderful. But life is still wonderful, even when things go wrong because the overall target still remains the same and the opportunity to change lives for the better. No-one can take that away.

The Garuga Road IV: animal magic

Aren't

animals

beautiful??!!
It's about time I said something about wildlife here. A Gerald Durrell in Uganda sort of thing, but instead of the ‘rose-coloured villa’ we will have to talk about the ‘Lwase compound’.

Starting with our compound then. The first amazing sight that I encountered was a giant snail. In fact now I know that there are quite a few living alongside us, all with quite distinct shells with differing patterns and whirls. From the photo you should get a feel as to just how big they are! It wasn’t exactly a delightful experience to have one crawling across my hand; I think that even I washed afterwards.

The next thing was the range of birds that we are exposed to here. Being Uganda there are always Black Kites flying to and fro, hovering with their tails twitching ominously looking for carrion and rubbish below. Then there are the Marabou Storks (ugh), the most ugly and disgusting creatures around. Their faces especially are covered with faeces and filth (they live off rubbish) and they have a huge red crop that swings pendulously below their long thin heads and enormous beaks. They never land here but soar high above. They are so huge and strangely shaped, that they appear like ancient pterodactyls, blotting out the sun for a split second as they pass over.

But the main feathered visitors each day are the Sacred Ibis’s. Their cry is so raucous and ear splitting that it is quite obscene. For such a ‘sacred’ bird one wonders how they got this title from the Egyptians. Maybe it was an in-joke? They land on our lawns and start picking away at worms and ants, their gloss green-black feathers glinting like car windscreens in the car parks.

Another screecher is the hornbill .. and yes …… and the toraco … oh and the fish eagle (worst of all although majestic sounding in some strange way). In fact for goodness sake nearly every large bird seems to make a din here! The Fish eagle is my favourite bird. Its white head and neck and its size make it immediately obvious and it sits haughtily on the highest perch possible, swinging its head around on elastic in its search for fish.

My second favourite has to be the Pied Kingfisher. Its is a small black and white kingfisher that chatters and chirps away at 13 to the dozen and speeds across water looking for minnows. It will suddenly change course like a Harrier Jump-jet in mid flight and rise to a perfect hover only to drop like a stone from about 30-50’. It exists in large numbers and it is great to have a kingfisher that isn’t rare and hard to find.

I will save writing about the Weaver Bird for another blog.

Truly amazing!

The most beautiful birds that are regularly seen here are the firefinches and sunbirds. Their feathers of the latter are iridescent and catch the sun; in addition they have patches of gloriously mixed colours from an artist’s palette and a long, thin and rapier-like curved beak that gives them the appearance of Dumas’ medieval musketeers. In fact many birds here, including common starlings and crows have amazingly iridescent plumage.

Finally, in this brief roundup, are the egrets that glide up from the Lake and perch in the trees in the early morning. Having picked ticks off the local animal population and waded in the waters, they seem to indulge in snooping outside bedroom windows from the taller trees. I think they are really rather dirty old men in pure white clothing!

Insects next. Ants are everywhere. Little, big, long, bulbous, but all aggressive, nasty and hard working: “Go to the ant, thou sluggard, and consider her ways”, says Solomon, and if you do you will be amazed at their activity (and their bite, but read on …). Between many of the pavers in our yard are 2” high pyramidal mounds of sand. Every single grain of these has been individually lifted out by an ant to crate an underground metropolis. I kick them down each day only to find them reappear the next day. What phenomenal energy and activity! On our walks we come across solid lines of aggressive soldier ants. Don’t let them for a minute got onto you! They are lethal! But even the very tiny, tiny little ants have a deadly bite. One of the team found a large number had crawled up his trousers and drastic measures failed to deal with them. I can see you cross your legs!

Not just ants. At night the walls become lined and black with them of all shapes and sizes. Because we are near the Lake there are masses of lakeflies – midges and gnat-like things - that are so thick in some places that you can’t help but breathe them into your lungs and need to breathe through a cloth filter. Mossies of course. In fact there aren’t many here but believe me they (the female ones only) are causing more grief in Africa than HIV/AIDS. Malaria seems to be a general feature of most Ugandans’ lives. Then there are huge cockroaches that crunch underfoot at night as you peer into the fridge looking for a binge …. Then caddis flies or something that looks a cross between them and mayflies. Large translucent wings and a curved body with a long abdomen ending in a twin set of spikes.

On our trees and walls are various weird-looking pupas of I don’t know but probably moths. They look like something from ‘Aliens’ – masses of cream threads woven into a tight shell with a strange protuberance at one end. “What is that?” you wonder. Which reminds me of the butterflies, which are spectacular. Ther are few boring looking ones here. This is Africa! Even the cabbage-whitey looking thing is huge with swallow tails.

Snakes. Need to mention those or people will think I am avoiding the truth. I was told that I was unlikely to see any, and in fact that is proving to be true. Everyone else is seeing them!! We have had one in the compound outside the door on the pavers, which was cut up into pieces so fast and thrown away that I never saw it, but probably was a Black Mamba – and deadly. Two on site, one with a bright yellow head (anyone know which that one is?!). But I feel that it is fair to say that they are scared of us generally and not that easy to find. Hallelujah!

Animals. Ugandans seem to take great joy in killing most living things: sorry, I am no racist, but my experience to date. We regularly see puppies and cats being burnt, kicked around like footballs, drowned, thrown in front of cars. There aren’t many really wild things left except a sort of squirrel and mongooses (or is it mongeese?). Microsoft spellcheck suggest the former! Of course in one or two strictly guarded places like Murchison Falls National Park there are wild animals and Sandy and I were privileged to be able to go there for a day or so. Crocodiles and hippos abound, along with some elephants and giraffes and loads of antelope and water buck. The baboons look comical but are in fact quite dangerous in groups. I liked a black turtle that was lying around in the midst of the savanna there, although I was assured by the ranger that it was a turtle and not a tortoise! My favourite is the crocodile. I don’t mean that I like them socially; I tend to leave a good distance between them and myself, but by golly they are huge and terrifying. They lie with their heads held aloft and their mouths open in a sort of crazy grin, draped across each other and pretending that they really can’t be bothered with food today, thank you. Then in a split second they are gone - shot off into the water like a bullet from a gun. A killer machine par excellence.

While talking about reptiles I have to croon over the lizards. Such charming and splendid fellows, all kitted out in the latest suit guaranteed to get the girls in a tizz. I seem to see them everywhere and spend considerable time feeling very jealous. They look you in the eye and give a lazy sort of blink, which seems to say, "Yeah? Wot you fink of this then, sah?!"

There’s much I have left out, but I will need more material later. Enjoy the pics!! Come to Uganda an discover it all for yourself!

The Garuga Road III

Time has raced on .... Life has been busy for me on the Cherish Uganda team. Here's an update on activity.

We now have a reasonable price for the typical house from our builder, Pearlmark Construction (Buster Simensen). My design is being very well received and is causing some interest here because of some ‘lateral-thinking’ solutions which potentially save time, maintenance and cost, and the innovative elements such as a spine wall to avoid the need for costly trusses, water-harvesting to provide all the water requirements of the house, sand filters to provide potable water, photovoltaic electricity, solar hot water, and of course the dear old composting (desiccating) toilets!

The planning application goes in within the next week, as well as the Environmental Impact Assessment for the development of the whole site. We have a detailed survey of 755 shrubs and trees on site, and the soil survey is completed. The ‘submitting architects’ tell us that we may get planning within 1-3 weeks! This seems absurd as even the UK takes about 12-16 weeks, but may be true, since planning meetings are fortnightly. So we may be starting on site within the next 3-4 weeks.

The soil on one section of our site right next to the first phase houses appears suitable to make bricks (see photo of their burnt and unburnt bricks) and so we are planning to construct our houses from our home-made bricks and use the hole formed in the ground as an irrigation tank for the farming.

I met the LC3 (local chairman at the highest level of the ‘Sub-District’) and he is very supportive and excited about our project, both because of the potentially significant number of local jobs created in the final full project (up to 100) as well as the proposed school. There are no schools serving our immediate area. It turns out to be a very deprived area, despite the vice-president and the president’s brother living down our road. HIV infection rates in the two villages at the end of the track may well be as high as 90%.

To make our scheme clear, the planning application envisages 200 HIV+ orphans living on site with 25 mothers, in 25 houses. Plus staff like us, and Ugandan nationals in key positions, in other accommodation. A school for our children plus, say, 100 local children. A guesthouse overlooking the Lake to take up to 75 guests if necessary (depending on funds) to cross-subsidize the project. This is likely to be built and run by a separate organisation in partnership with us. Plus farm buildings (piggeries etc) and a centre for vocational training and demonstration events/conferences into sustainable farming, HIV care etc. It is a challenging and dramatic blend of elements that will make it unique in Uganda. For you and others like you who will have been a part of making it happen I believe that you will one day be overwhelmed at the ripples that will spread out from this site across Uganda and Africa.

Agriculture
Kulika Trust, our agricultural NGO advisors, is now fully on board in the form of Harriet Ndagire, their most experienced project manager. She lives at the Entebbe Road end of our track and owns a small farm off our track. She ran the poultry and swine sections at the National Poultry and Swine Livestock research station in Entebbe, and is very experienced in training farmers all over Uganda in sustainable organic farming. We spend one day/week together, planning the farm and activities. We are currently finalising the layout of the farm, tidying up the recruitment pack for farm workers, and selecting the best variety of pig to breed on site. Pigs are relatively easy to keep, fetch a good price at market, and are efficient ‘manurers’. They live off slops and waste organic matter from the homes with small feed supplements. The breed I am interested in is ‘Cambrough – see photo of 2m long boar! - 'big boy' ho ho). We intend to plough and sow one section with a fodder crop (Napier Grass) and a leguminous ground-cover mix very soon and to start manuring the land to bring it up to full production, as it is seriously depleted of nutrients though poorly managed farming. Our intention is to make the land productive and earning money to pay for the project as soon as possible.

The fencing off of the site is almost complete but with one section in dispute. We are trying to resolve this argument about whether a farmer received payment for land that we were sold in good faith, as amicably as possible; please pray for us.

Children
Rachel Parsons, with help from others on the team, has done a superb job networking with all sorts of NGO’s and the main organisations involved in HIV/AIDS care, and working orphan and neglected children. We are already known about as far as Kenya and Tanzania in the HIV/AIDS world for our proposed project plan and our networking to date. Clearly we now need to ‘deliver’, but the in-country support for us and the anticipation of what we are doing is very encouraging. As we thought, targeted care of orphans with AIDS is almost unknown and we are breaking new ground in the integration of ART (ant-retro-viral therapy), medical support and the other elements of the project.

Ann White, our education manager, works one day/week at a poor central Kampala primary school getting a strong feel for the curriculum requirements etc and she is already training the teachers there as she is a specialist in remedial and ‘catch-up’ teaching.

The container from the UK arrived and cleared customs OK and is now sitting on a foundation on site for use as a secure store (see top photo). Its contents are in two shop/house units that we are renting opposite the site entrance, shared by our security guard and his family (Paul and Juliet Okoff and daughter Olivia) and our relief guard, Mark (see middle photo – Paul (eating sugarcane) is on extreme left; bottom photo is of local people watching container arrive – units are in background an Mark is in blue in the centre. Contents included 10 desktop computers, masses of educational materials and books, children’s clothing, toys and baby equipment, bicycles and so on. We are incredibly grateful for the generosity of many.

Cherish Uganda: organisational matters
You may recall that we received approval of our Ugandan NGO status 6 weeks after submission, which was across Christmas and New Year! This is almost unheard of in Uganda. We await the certificate of registration which then enables us to have work visas and all sorts of other things like bank accounts here.

The team spent two days brainstorming. We have been working hard on team life and communications as living and working virtually on top of each other in a compound needs special grace, especially when there are such a mixture of people thrown together and uneven areas of work intensity in the period before we take on children. Fin and Lucy Woods and their three young children joined us from Dulwich two weeks ago and the team in the compound now consists of 8 adults, two older teenage children, and three under 6’s, plus our security guard, Mark – 14 in all.

Our logo is now agreed and is shown here; our mission statement is:

“Cherishing children with HIV/AIDS. Embracing with them a future of promise”.

We are still struggling to get a website that does credit to the vision and impact for what we are trying to communicate. It was briefly on line but it has been removed until we are entirely happy, and please pray that we get this sorted very soon.

The Waldron family
Sandy and I are both well. We have had no illnesses since coming here, despite many warnings about water quality and mosquitoes etc. We sleep well. Climate is wonderful. Sandy’s asthma was fine until the dry season came in January and is now much more problematic, albeit only equal or possibly slightly worse than in the UK. Her birthday is on Thursday (15th).

Sandy is finding working on her books and texts quite manageable, now that we have her desk top computer and a spare sent out from the UK by Simon Kreitem (wonderful photographerman) all on a wireless dial up system. It is slow but racy compared to the ‘mobile phone dial up system’ which caused apoplexy! She is on the last edit of the amazing story of Rwandan Frida Gashumba who ‘came back to life’ 13 hours after being killed along with the16 others of her family in the genocide and who were all thrown in a mass grave. She went on to forgive the people who killed her family and is now married to a pastor of a large church in capital Kigali. She came to stay with us a few weeks ago and it was a privilege to spend time with her. Sandy has ‘ghost-written’ the book from interviews and tapes for Sovereign World Trust.

It has been hard to find ways of relaxing. We are struggling to make friends since we are so tied up on the compound and dependent on fitting in with the team. Also we chose not to go to an expatriate church, and Ugandans find it intimidating to befriend Mzungus (whites). Sandy is in need of finding a way to ‘get a life’. I finally decided to join the Victoria Nyanza Sailing Club (fees are ‘affordable’) an entered the Ugandan National Laser championships in a hired, battered boat against 38 other boats (see photo) from Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and the UK. I hadn’t sailed a Laser for 23 years! I came 24th on handicap, after 7 races in two days – over 7 hours of sailing in strong winds! I was totally exhausted but much happier with life.

We keep in touch with our friends and family through Skype (please do all get online; it is free PC to PC and 1.2p/minute to a UK land line). Simon is just back from Georgia (ex-Russia) where he has been making two more short films for BP. He and Kamilla are expecting the baby in May and all is well. Sandy and I are getting in practice in babysitting and reading stories in bed to the children now on site here. Becci and Mark buy their first ‘flat’ and move in within the next week or so. Becci now has her first commissioned book + cover (“Religious fundamentalism and social identity”). Hannah is just finishing at Uni. She directed and produced (and got paid for) the animation DVD that backs the new single by ‘Goodshoes’ (“I never meant to hurt you”) which was no1 with NME early March and also voted no1 song video by some poll, and so is a real star!! Sandy’s mother, Luigia, is perhaps just a fraction less unhappy in her nursing home; Stephen’s mother, Jo, has fallen and is again really struggling with mobility.

Life in Uganda, and a way you may be able to help …
Almost weekly we encounter a heart-rending story at first hand of the appalling brutality of life for women and children here. Then there are levels of sadness between. We may have told you that we have taken on a girl called C as our house-maid. She was raped and beaten up by her uncle (and friends) 5 months ago and is now pregnant by him. When his wife, her aunt, heard she walked into the middle of the road and committed suicide. Her mother threw C out of the home when she was born and she had been shuffled between relatives ever since. Her sister died of AIDS a few months ago and left a 6 year old daughter whom C wants to adopt. Now with C refusing to have an abortion, her relatives refuse to let her have the girl but they despise the child and treat her very badly. Recently the girl lost a pencil from school and as a result was locked in the pigsty and had to watch her meals being eaten by the pigs. C lives in a single-roomed hovel (only word for it) and has debts of 75,000UgSh (£32-ish) because she worked for Ugandans for 10 months without being paid and then when she made a fuss was sacked (this is not unusual amongst the nouveau-riche Ugandans). Some friends of ours who heard about her are paying for her accommodation, her work for us and the nieces school fees, but with the relatives current position we are somewhat thwarted. The story is more gross and complicated than this but space does not permit.

One story that we would like to present to you, in case one of you may feel this is something you may wish to help with, is that of 'G'. G is 17 years old and a member of our church cell-group, which meets in a tiny bungalow/house in a very poor district near us (we are the only mzungus). She is in the last year at school (grade 6). Her father went bankrupt and her brother stepped in to pay school fees. Last November he lost his job and couldn’t pay fees. She is a hard worker and quite bright. She thus had a debt at her local school of £15 from last term and her registration fee for this final year (starting February) was £18. These we have paid. Her term fees are £29 as a day girl, and we have paid for this term as a ‘holding position’. However, her brother’s wife has left him due to his loss of income (!) and she is left having to manage the home and two young children and thus is struggling to do her school work. The school is just 1 km across the road but she really needs to be a boarder to cope and recover her position, as she has fallen behind in her studies. The fees for this are about £100/term. There are 3 terms left, so to pay the extra-over this term and two more terms would be about £280. Finally she needs to buy or get the 8 set books for A level which are: The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck I think); King Lear (Shakespeare); Jane Eyre; A Man for All Seasons; I will Marry When I Want (?); In the Castle of My Skin (?); An Enemy of the People; The Outsider (L’Etranger, Camus); we imagine that many of these books are in your libraries and you may be willing to send them out via the next person, which is 27th March. We don’t normally respond to requests) to pay kids’ school fees (which we get weekly, but since we are so linked to G we feel this is a special case. If anyone wants to help on either of these items for G do call or email us (snbwaldron@gmail.com).

Uganda and out
We are getting a better feel for this country now. It is beautiful and has a great climate. (We get out in the car and walking as often as we can to meet people and be exposed to life. This photo from my mobilephone is of a vegetable like a tiny tomato which is dried in the sun. It is then crushed releasing thousands of seeds, which produce a sort of leafy veg.) But economically it is seriously under-performing, partly because the politics seem to be slowly going off the rails. President Museveni has been a good president for so long but he seems to feel his power slipping away and is resorting to worrying tactics. Firstly money and land is being used to bribe political leaders and wealth creators to gain support in the fight to control the north, trying to get the tribes loyal to Kone and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) on the government's side. It is a complex situation since the Sudanese and Congo (DRC) borders are extremely sensitive as you will know if you read the international news. In doing this he appears to have abandoned the Karamojan people who have been fiercely loyal to him, but are pretty universally hated and the poorest tribe in Uganda; there is an alleged but unreported ethnic cleansing going on by the troops amongst them; history teaches that you can only get away with this so long. Secondly, he is ignoring the rule of law to arrest and keep in detention his major political opponents; this is being done so blatantly that the common person is aware that the law and human rights are being ignored, leading to a general sense of ‘so, anything goes’. Thirdly, huge unchecked ‘skimming’ of contracts and budgets is going on by the governing levels and elite; again so blatantly that the papers report it quite factually but without it having any impact. So everyone feels that this is quite OK.

For all these reasons I see little hope for the country in the near future and that without a miracle there will be increasing unrest and tension. People are seeing the wealth gap increase and this leads to bad feeling. The Church is largely ineffectual because it focuses on tithingm music and preaching, and fights shy of political issues. The Church also has corruption within its ranks. Many are doing amazing work but in the face of regular stories of misappropriation of funds and so on. Westerner support of churches is generally naïve and insensitive to the political and social consequences of their actions and this coupled with a dependency attitude on the West among many churches leads to unsustainable projects and a stifling of initiative and taking ownership of an indigenous vision for the nation. Our church, KPC, is unusual in that it tackles political issues fairly head-on and also has a cutting-edge orphan care/education movement called Wototo (see their web-site) which is internationally known.

Well, end of this episode – with a picture of our site’s lake frontage. I hope the blog’s length doesn’t put you off (you can always skim read it) and that there is plenty for all? We are so grateful to all who are with us in spirit, letter, emails and finances!! Thank you all!