Today I had a meeting with Andrew Smith, vice president of SHIM, and Julius, agriculture director of SHIM) about this year’s plans and obviously more specifically, the next 3months.Julius and I have been spending a lot of time together scheming, as he calls it. In the meeting today we talked about some goals and what needs to be focused on. The ag section at SHIM is still an infant and there is much to be done. The challenge on the islands is the percent of educated people drops significantly. On the main land it would be easier to hold seminars and explain things. So things are being done like, instead of teaching people to take care of a better goat breed, research and work is being done to breed a goat to fit the education level of the people. They are trying to make a goat that will give a better amount of milk then the current goats on the same amount of feed, which is not much. I was surprised to see one of the top Ugandan breeds is the Saanen. They also use the British Tagonburg. I asked why they don’t use a Nubian as they would be better in the heat, and they said that Nubians don’t survive here. They just get sick and die or just live very poorly. Anyway, I will be helping Julius with 4 farming seminars on the island between now and March 20th. One seminar is about food security, one is about farming God’s way and the others are on Kerekete (sounds like car-ah-ket-ee), known to us as Hibiscus tea. Through the kerekete seminars SHIM hopes to recruit islanders to be outgrowers. So we would supply them with seed and the skills and we will by their product back from them to produce our tea. We don’t have enough land to support the demand for kerekete on the mainland. Some other things I will be doing: building SHIM’s first bee hive, doing an experiment with moringa seeds purifying water, another experiment with processing nutritional baby food, and another experiment with papaya leaves as a malaria prophylactic. Some farm jobs I will be doing this next week are: building nursery beds because the rainy season is coming soon so we need to start planting, digging kerekete holes and filling with manure, digging moringa holes, harvesting moringa seeds and pruning the trees. I was also asked to develop an annual plan for the farm so they have a guide and to start task lists for Julius so he can better plan and assign labor. It is fun to be a part of such a young farm. I think I will finally start to be busy around here! Oh and I almost forgot! I will be traveling somewhere in Uganda with Andrew and Julius to purchase a buck and a doe for SHIM. It will be a fun trip with those two and I’m excited to be a part of this move for the organization. They might become the breeding bank for all of the islands. That would be incredible!
Andrew also asked me if I would be willing to start a brand new Sunday school class with the really little kids. He said no one has done this and they just all run around and are disruptive to everyone. What they would like to do is have someone teach the high school kids how to do it then have them take the little ones. This feels overwhelming to me. I’m here for such a short time and I have no experience in this area. I said yes initially but then said I was unsure because I don’t have any experience. So I said let’s wait until I actually get to go to church. I will be helping Ruth on Saturdays with the high school girls bible study. By the way, Ruth is my roommate here. She is from Oregon and runs the child development part of the ministry. She does a lot of work at the school on the island and started a bible study! But there is still great need here for there is no one to do bible study for the boys and it wouldn’t be culturally appropriate for a girl to do it. They need men to step up from the island or missionary men to come here!
In other events, we have a cobra that has invaded our camp! He was spotted yesterday over by the bathing stalls. Auntie Jen, our cook, saw it with it’s had raised up and neck flattened out. How scary. The men have placed long sticks all over the compound so when it is seen again they can grab a stick and kill it. These poles they use are about 6 feet or so long. They say if you use a short stick you won’t win the fight. Hopefully, the men will get it. I will be sure to get a picture of it when they do! Of course it has made me extremely paranoid and especially when I will be working in the field and I have to wear this dumb skirt all the time. It is not conducive to farm work at all. I can’t put a leatherman on it and I have to wear shorts underneath because it’s not fun to have your legs rub together in this hot and humid weather, and I have to be concerned all the time with how I’m sitting or working. Julius took me to another camp on the island yesterday and we hiked on the side of a mountain with steep slopes and doing it in a skirt was not fun. I kept saying, I wish I had my carharts on and I could jump and move a lot better than this. The good news is, I will be going back to the mainland on Thursday and I can wear pants! WOO HOO!
So when Julius and I went to camp Linguira, it was like a couple mile hike that was rocky and steep and tiring, he wanted to show me want some of the farmers in that camp are doing. One man had 2 dairy cows, a bull and 2 pigs along with some crops. That is pretty good for the islands. He walked me around the camp and we went in one woman’s house who is a pastor. I can’t remember her name but all the names are blurred together right now anyway, being so new. She was telling us about what she is doing on her farm but she was currently sick. She had an ulcer and malaria. So I asked to pray for her and she eagerly accepted. We will see if I hear back any reports from her.
Some fun things:
I took my first Ugandan bath last night. Basically that means you get one basin of water and you go over to these concrete stalls, no door by the way, and you wash. So there I was buck naked in the middle of the jungle on an island…. I’m sure that’s how one of my stories will start after 3 months of living here. Haha.
I also saw my first monkeys today! 2 baboons where stealing fruit from our trees right in front of Andrew and Karina’s house. They were only a few feet from me and when they realized my presence they quickly took off towards the hill. Getting a picture of them proves difficult, because they are fast and they keep a far distance from people.
So tomorrow is Saturday and I will try to visit the market in the morning on the island and then bible study is at 2 with Ruth and her high school girls will give me a busy day. On Sunday there is church which will probably be 3 plus hours longs. Haha. I will have to get up and give my name and what I’m doing here and give a “speech”. In the culture here in Uganda in general speeches are a really big deal. It is a way of honoring someone. So my first night here I was introduced and was asked to say a little something. Some Ugandans can take a long time. So I will be doing that again on Sunday.
Ok, fun cultural fact time. It is not proper for a woman to whistle in Uganda. It is what cow herders do and that is also not proper for a woman. On the mainland the times are changing and of course women can wear pants and things are different but here on the islands they are at least 40 years behind the mainland so they really mean it when they say something is not proper for a woman to do and you better not do it!
Praise the Lord it just started raining as I'm typing this!!! We just prayed yesterday for the rain because we so badly needed it!!! It brought a cool breeze and the smell of rain is over powering. God is good. We were so worried about our water. We were almost all out in the rain tanks. This is very good indeed.
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