I got the opportunity to weigh myself a few days ago. I weigh 75 kilos which is 165 pounds, a loss of 10 pounds since arriving in Uganda and a total of 47 pounds since January. I feel great and eat plenty.
Two weekends ago (July 5), my host father Simon took us to his home village, Kawanga, about an hour north of Iganga, although it took longer due to mechanical difficulties which caused us to stop several times. Simon’s brother, Emma, his oldest daughter Sylvia, a teacher, and her child Immaculate went with us. At times we had 12 in the vehicle, including his truck bed, going over bumpy rutted roads. He is licensed to carry up to 13.
I met Simon’s mother Beatrice there. She is 84. When she was young, Beatrice was not allowed to get an education. Simon’s father died when he was very young. Simon’s mother was determined her children get opportunities, and she took on farming, chopping wood, and making the village hootch, whatever it took, to raise the fees needed for her children’s education. Simon reveres her for her efforts.
Simon’s village is the most remote in the district. He is determined to raise the standard of living. He helped raise funds for a four room school house in the village. It attracts about 400 students from all over. Classrooms with 100 student are common in Uganda.
As you will see, Simon built a shed with corn (milling?) and rice processing machinery that helped the local farmers add value to their crops. As I have learned in training, most farmers are sustenance only, meaning they only raise enough to support themselves. But that is often insufficient when you encounter a dry spell, or unexpected family illness, not to mention keeping up with the school fees. So we look at opportunities for value-added products. Unfortunately after a year of operation, a big storm blew off the roof and wrecked the equipment. It has not been repaired since. So many pieces of equipment do not stay maintained in Uganda.
Simon’s “target” is to introduce goat farming as a viable business for his community. He wants to start a demonstration project on his land. He produced a business plan and budget for my review. Looks like he needs about $4500 US.
Incidentally, my photos are sharper because now I email them to my brother with the text and he does the blog from Colorado. This uploading process consumes a great deal of data, which is expensive on my Peace Corps stipends. So I waited to transmit until we went to the “Sol Cafe” on Saturday (a foreigner hang-out) and took advantage of the free wi-fi. My brother is also more skilled on WordPress. I wish I could upload some video, but it times out and sucks up the data.
Our first stop on our tour was a house that Simon recently built that he wants to retire to when he starts up his demonstration goat farm. It is empty right now, his mother refuses to live in it. She lives in the house you see slightly to the left and behind it. We ate lunch on the floor of this house.
This is the building which housed the corn and rice machinery with the roof blown off.
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This is taken from the back of Simon’s house. The boy is his cousin’s child.
The young man from the neighborhood who Simon hires as caretaker in his absence. He is carrying sweet potatoes. Simon and his truck are behind him.
Simon’s mother, Beatrice, and daughter Sylvia, and Immaculate
We saw little compounds like this scattered about. Simon claims that up to ten people sleep in each hut. Takes up the whole floor as you might guess.
Various crops are drying on the ground. If they would just use a tarp, less would go to waste. Even better would be secure storage/drying bins. You don’t need to be trained by the Peace Corps or have an Ag background to know this! They need capital to have better storage and thus more income. PCVs would hope to introduce other income generating activities to raise such capital. Hey Peter, these are not ideal roofs for a Perma-Garden!
This is Simon’s cousin and two of his children. They sleep seven in his hut. He was showing me a snake bite on his leg. Simon is disappointed his cousin refuses to send his children to the school Simon helped fund. He won’t even take a tour of it.
We had the occasional animal delay besides mechanical delay.
We made a few stops within the village neighborhood, always attracting hordes of kids. They literally backed away upon seeing me come out of the car, then stampeded me when I showed them their pictures on my smart phone. These kids make the kids in my host family seem privileged by comparison. But they don’t know how poor they are, so they are happy as kids will be.
You can see Simon holding his phone on the lower right. He hardly knows how to use it without Hellen’s help. I’m not much better.