Nightly visitors

Last night I heard two shots of gunfire at around 9:30 p.m. when I was already in bed reading. I was told that the locals would shoot at times when elephants would come near their homes to eat some of the local fruits like banana or papaya. The main problem is that they would destroy other plants on their way to the food of their choice. A few minutes later, our dog Moritz would bark outside. Actually he does almost every night as there’s always some people walking around the house. So I just continued reading.

Next morning Claudia and I discussed last night’s shots and Moritz’s barking. She told me that she went outside to check if there was some animal in the garden but couldn’t see anything. She then went to work in the garden while I did so on my computer outside on the veranda. Later Claudia called me. She had found some footprints and other traces of our nightly visitor. It must have been an elephant wandering through our garden who was keen on eating some papayas. He must have been coming from the river, then followed the street until he passed our cottages then headed straight to the papaya tree on the opposite side of the terrain where he broke some branches off the tree. The elephant didn’t even eat the fruits as they were not ready anyway and never will as they all fell to the ground. From the tree the elephant seemed to have walked back to the river, directly through our garden where it stepped on some green pepper. Then Moritz had obviously disturbed him at some point as he turned around and followed the field outside the greenhouse where it disappeared in the woods of the Murchison Falls Park.

We will now try to stop them from coming into our terrain by hanging up some pieces of cloth that were soaked in chilli water. The locals say that this should keep elephants off ones property… We’ll see if it is going to work.

The elephant came from up there where the papaya tree is located…

stepped over some green pepper…

then was stopped by our dog Moritz, then turned around…

… and hit the road towards the woods of Murchison Falls Park passing the greenhouse…

Here’s the papayas that it shook off the tree…

Chicken vaccination

Today we offered a free chicken vaccination to the locals to prevent their animals from being infected with Newcastle, a fatal disease that spread around recently. Charles, our neighbour and employee recently lost all of his chicken to this disease. The treatment costs only 20’000 Shillings for one thousand chicken but the locals would not even spend that little money to protect their animals even though a chicken’s value is around 15’000 – 20’000 Shillings. People don’t even think about doing it even to protect other animals, they simply just take things somehow as is.

Well, we announced the free vaccination last Thursday when our shop was open. We also informed the local chairman and the committee so they would help spread the word.

Saturday, 09:30 a.m. we opened the shop and prepared it for the treatment of the chicken. Then we got a call from our veteritarian who told us that he had one of his tyres blew so he would come a little later than expected. We also received a call from Dennis who informed us that he got Malaria.

 

As always if there’s something going on somewhere some locals would come to satisfy their curiosity. Same things for the kids who watched us from a distance. Even though I’ve already stayed in town for two weeks, the locals would still be amazed wherever I showed up. As if they’d never seen any white guy in their lifes. Some would even run away from me!

 

Then our vet arrived with the vaccines and prepared himself for the procedure.

 

Soon the first chicken were brought to the shop. As it rained the day before the farmers would send their kids to bring the chicken so the farmers could work on their fields.

 

 

Then the vaccination started…

 

 

In the meantime more and more children came to our place curiously wanting to know what was going on. I would take pictures of them and show them the result which amused them very much.

 

One of the kids then brought a football made of rubber, rope and a plastic bag. He just finished it while the vaccination procedure was performed. Fancy a football game?

  

The football was surprisingly nice to play and almost perfectly round! I played a little with the kids and took lots of pictures. One of the kids (kid on the right) then offered to sing a song and dance. But not before he went home to put on some new clothes! :-) After 20 minutes or so he came back for his perfomance. He was doing great and so he earned a big round of applause.

At around 4 p.m. the vet had to leave. We had treated around 230 chicken during the day. Taken the weather into consideration that was not so bad for the first time. We plan to organize more vaccinations on a regular base in the future.

I was the last one who left so I closed the shop and walked back home. On my way I met some of the kids who were around all day…

   

I had a lot of fun playing with the kids and some locals. That was truly a very very good day.

Going to the Nile–Chobe Lodge

It’s Monday after a very hot weekend. Claudia decided to going on little sight-seeing trip to the north. There’s a pretty big lodge named Chobe Lodge with a nice view to the Nile. In order to go there you just have to follow another typical road to the north. On the way a  Police woman stopped us and asked for a ride to where the company is located that will build the big dam. As we had to go there as well we gave her a lift. That’s how things go here. :-) Right there we had to enter the Murchison Falls National Park. We let the police woman out and continued our journey. Soon we had to cross a barrier where we had to pay the entrance fee… Not this time, when Claudia explained that we would only drive to the lodge for a coffee the ranger would just let us through. Yes! Claudia told me that there’s Giraffes and Elephants in the park so I was hoping to get a glance at one of these animals. I only got to see a few Cobbs and a family of Warthogs. A few minutes later we entered the gates to the lodge. These gates somehow reminded me of the gates they had in Jurassic Park. :-) The lodge was really huge, built for – let’s say – 200 persons… But we were the only ones there. The architecture was not really great in my opinion and even though this was supposed to be a 5* lodge it didn’t look like that. The inside was nice though and when we got out on the balcony the view to the Nile really amazed me.

We would then walk around a bit, watching some animals and checking the location. There were also some cottages to rent which looked nice. Unfortunately the environment was not too much taken care of but you would see that very often here. We then had a coffee and had a small lunch before we left.

the cottages…

the Nile…

Some hippos…

a duck family

some baboons

delivering food to the orphanage and shopping in Masindi

On Fridays the Eco-Farm delivers some food to the orphanage/school in Kayera. As this is close to Masindi, the next bigger town, where I wanted to buy a SIM-card of a local phone company and a modem to be able to check e-mails from time to time I joined Dennis. With Claudia we drove to the store again and filled some sacks with the goods to deliver. Claudia then went back home while Dennis and I waited for the taxi that he had ordered to come and bring us to the orphanage and to Masindi after. When the taxi driver arrived, hi brought like 4 colleagues with him. They came, said hello and told me their names about 5-6 times. A ritual that I had experienced many times since I entered Africa.

Some of the guys then loaded the food into the taxi their leader only put my backpack into the car. They then got some money and the lesser of them had to stay there while their leader joined us when we drove off. On the way we stopped to buy some pineapples from Dennis. Later we stopped again to buy a sack of charcoal, I don’t know if that was for Dennis or for the farm…

The roads to Kayera are terribly bad, with lots of potholes, some very big and also pretty deep. So the driver had to slow down very often and circle around those potholes. There’s lots of accidents on those streets. We had seen two trucks that had XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX kipped to the side along the relatively short way. At some point we had to stop because of road work. As always lots of locals ran to the cars trying to sell water, meat on sticks, casava, bananas and omelets. Dennis and the driver did so. As Dennis said it’s here, the driver turned to the right and entered some street that I had not even seen before. We followed that way for a while and then arrived at school where I had been introduced to Jeanne who works for the foundation as well as Dennis. Then Dennis showed me around the ground. From some rooms you could hear children repeating words from the teachers. The houses were build pretty poorly, just with wood, mud and cow dung. The dormatories looked pretty cramped but at least every child has their own bed. The new outdoor bathrooms looked good but there was a problem with the drain.

Later I was introduced to the director of the school. He wasn’t speaking a lot but gave me a guest book where I had to enter name, address, phone number, reason of visit and my signature… I was already expecting him to ask for a small fee but this time I didn’t have to pay anything. As the taxi driver was wating we then left to go to Masindi where Dennis checked a place called New Courtview Hotel where I would stay for the night for a price of 65’000 Shilling (~23 CHF). After they showed me my room, Dennis left and promised to get back at 3 p.m. to go shopping. At about half past 3 he arrived and then we bought a SIM-card from a local provider and then we went to some supermarkets to buy some food and other stuff. In between it started to rain heavily! So we stopped at some bar. At about 6 we went back to my lodge where Dennis left. I went for supper at the lodge and then  went back to my room to write the latest blog… Tomorrow I’ll check for a solar fridge and some foot- and netballs for the kids and will visit another orphanage before I’ll most probably go back to the Eco-Farm.

visiting a local farmer and filling up the warehouse

It was a pretty hot night and I didn’t sleep to much because of the heat. Even the traditional round houses  with the roofs made of straw feel hot inside. So I got up and prepared myself for another day.
Dennis had organized two boda-boda-taxis (motorcycles with small engines) to drive us to some local farmer. I had seen many of those since my arrival in Uganda and was pretty keen on my first ride. It was fun, I tell you, and they’re pretty comfortable. We drove maybe for 20 minutes through the land, which was wonderful in the fresh morning air. We then reached Jikums property. He plants cabbage, onions and cassava (some root which serves as one of the main basic nutritients in that region). Most of his land is located on rather swampy land, so he usually doesn’t have to carry too much about watering his plants. But because it’s been unusually dry during the last couple of 2-3 months he has to water his plants daily. Watering his plants means that he has to carry a 20 kg jerry can of water from the waterhole to the plants where it takes around 5 litres per plant. As you can imagine this is very hard work, especially when it’s up to 40°C like lately. Even though he does water his plants, he already lost one cabbage field to the draught.

In comparison to the other fields, his tobacco fields look surprisingly tidy and clean. As I had been tought, the tobacco industry delivers a full service to them, financing crops, fertilisers, pesticides and they even get the reap from a near place, so the peasants don’t have to worry about transportation of the plants. The funny thing is, that once the goods are away, all the peasants have to travel to a distant city to get their pay. So they have to pay for their travel and - most of the time - for staying over night and thus lose two working days.

After deduction of their loans, travelling and accommodation costs there’s hardly anything left of their pay.

At lunch time I showed Dennis how to cook pasta al dente! For some unknown reason they tend to boil everything to death so potatoes or pasta would just fall to pieces. Maybe that stems from the facts that it’s pretty warm and they don’t have the electricity to run refrigerators. So it might be safer to cook everything a bit longer than really needed.

After lunch Dennis and I walked to the foundations food store which is being filled up on Thursdays. The farmers would bring cassava, carrots, onions, potatoes or egg plants that the Eco-Farm needs to feed their pigs and also to deliver to the orphanage that’s being supported by LFVK. Soon after we opened the door to the warehouse some of the locals came along to see who that white guy was. Then the first farmers came along and dropped some food sacks that we had to weigh. There’s always some guys around who help to lift up the up to 60 kg weighing sacks to hang them on a scale. They will later get a small reward for that… so that’s another way to earn a tiny bit of money. We had to buy approximately 250 kg of the mentioned plants and after one hour we already had about 2/3 of it. But then we sat there alone, as most of the farmers would only bring their stuff from 4 pm to 8 pm. It was again pretty hot and Dennis and I sat in front of the store on plastic chairs. Some guys lazed underneath a tree, some took off their shirts. As always there’s boda bodas driving up and down the road as well as women carrying bottles of water on their heads or children and men who rather use bicycles to be able to transport several jerry cans of water. Usually the kids don’t ride the bikes, they have to push them instead.

As no farmers showed up for over an hour, Dennis told be to accompany him to see the Local Counsel Chairman. Foreigners (like me but also locals from next town) have to go see him so they would know that one's around. The counsel was a board of about 5 men of which one was the chairman. They sat in the middle of some place in between some pretty rotten homes. They all said hello to me and then offered a seat and asked a few questions about me that Dennis had to answer. They also wanted to see my passport. Then the chairman grabbed a book and handed it over to me. I had to write my name, address, phone number, passport number, reason of stay, current date and my signature on a line in the book. I did and returned it to them. They then asked me to go see the chairman of the district in one of the next cities as he’d also need to know about me staying there… I just smiled, thanked the guys and then we were free to go… but not before we paid some small fee to some guy.

Back at the store we had to wait another hour or so before the next farmers arrived. When we had all the needed food, we closed the shop and walked back home. Again there were lots of people on the streets, seemed like the kids were getting back from school. The scholars would always gaze at me as I seemed to be the only white guy around. I then said Habari or gave them a wink and as soon as I did so they would start laughing and wink back.

At home I watered some plants and then went to the bathroom to wash myself before darkness for a change. After that Claudia and I prepared supper: scrambled eggs and a tomato salad… Have you ever tried to prepare a meal outside in the dark, on a micro charcoal grill? – Try it! :-)

 
 

 
 

my first whole day at eco-farm

I woke up around 6:30 as it got bright outside. I slept surprisingly well during the night.

I got up, washed myself, brushed my teeth, had some bread for breakfast and a Turkish coffee made in a pan on the small grill on the veranda. Then Claudia started the generator as she wanted to work a little on her computer. For some reason it didn’t work the way it should have. We also tried to charge some other stuff using the generator but it wouldn’t really work even though it said that there was enough power coming from the generator. Even though the generated power passes a power filter so that the output should be steady and at a level of either 220 or 110 Volts I could hear that the engin wasn’t running smoothly. We therefore tried to adjust the amount of gasoline going into the engin which helped a little. But only a little… which was a bit annoying… I told her that I’d try out my solar panels later on so that would probably help solve the energy problem a little.

Then some guy appeared who was introduced to me as Norman, the guy who could fix all the electrical gear. Actually Claudia just showed me her notebooks power supply that he repaired… it broke again and didn’t seem to have been repaired properly…

Later Dennis came along, had a few Minipics for breakfast and discussed some things with Claudia. Then he told me about the orphanage that the foundations supports. He told me about some things that are not going well and about what the foundation provided funds for. After that Dennis, Claudia and I did some planning for the week.

Then we started to prepare our lunch. We got some piece of pork and we tried to prepare some kind of Röschti, so we boiled and fried some Irish (potato). Dennis cut himself when he prepared the meat. As he tried to find something to desinfect the wound, he brought some tube to me. But it was just some cream to treat dry skin. So I told him I’d get my first-aid-kit in which I have all the needed stuff (thanks Bernie! :-)) After I had treated him we continued with the preparation of the food. I tried to explain him how to make Röschti. But even though I told him it was time we removed the Irish from the stove so they wouldn’t tear apart, Dennis gave ‘em another 10-15 minutes and later didn’t remove them from the water anyway, so we made fried mashed potatoes in the end. But they tasted nicely as well as the pork that was also fried with lots of garlic, salt and some of the mustard I brought from Switzerland.

After lunch I had another chat with Claudia, providing me some more information about the foundation’s ideas of a proper shelter for the orphans.

Then I needed to recharge my iPhone for which I got my battery pack that I bought with the solar panel. It worked pretty fine. As I also unfolded the solar panel, my battery pack didn’t even lose any capacity after the mobile was fully charged. I then tried to charge Claudias battery pack, which worked also. Perfect!

Then Claudia showed me how to water all the plants in case she’d be away some day. Some of the plants a pretty delicate and don’t like if the water is being poured on them directly.

Then we discussed again some of the plans and where I could go during the time I would travel Uganda. As she told me about it, it got dark. At around 21:30 I told her I said good night as I wanted to wash myself and get to bed.

There’s no light in the bathroom and no running water either, not even a shower is installed. There’s a barrell filled with rainwater and some plastic things to put some water in it. There’s also a bath tub in the room but – as I said – without running water… I stepped into the tub anyway and poured some water on me. I even tried to wash my hair which is difficult with only cold water. I managed it and went back to my room, set up the mosquito net and disappeared underneath it with my notebook to write a few lines for my blog…

my travel

I chose to fly Qatar for my trip as one of the flights offered a timetable that seemed to be ok for departure as well as arrival time.

I was asked to take some extra stuff with me like a well-built multi-plug, some converters (UK-CH) and some food like Gerberchäsli, le parfait, mustard, minipics. As I also had my solar panels, battery packs, load-balancer, power-booster, Wechselrichter, notebook, kindle, tons of cables, old mobile phones with chargers, food plus the other usual stuff like a few clothes, repellents and so on… this summed up quite some weight. After reading thoroughly through Qatars luggage regulations and packing/unpacking/repacking and weighing my stuff several times I seemed to be fine. But you know, as soon as you line-in for check-in it gives you the cramps… Even though the guy complained a little about my luggage his colleague convinced him that it was all in conformity, so he finally let me go, refusing to give me a sticker for my camera bag… which I didn’t need anyway.

First flight took me to Doha International Airport with a Boeing 787. I have to admit it was pretty cool, as the seats were pretty spacious and the entertainment system was top notch either.



some Sheiks Falcons at Doha Airport


My 6 hour-stay in Doha wasn’t that much of a fun time but as I finally got to make the free WLAN work I was able to chat a little which made the time go by a lot quicker. At 00:30 I boarded the flight to Entebbe. This time it was only an Airbus A320 but it was nearly as comfortable as the other flight. Then arrival, baggage claim, money change… US$ to UGX… customs service… nothing to declare and adios… then I saw some guy holding a sign with my name on it up in the air… that was Anthony, my taxi driver… let’s get ready to rumble… I was a bit tired as I never manage to sleep when I’m flying but the fresh and cool morning air helped a bit. Off we went. It was already warm outside but with opened windows I had to put my light jacket on. My driver asked me for some money soon as he needed to buy some gasoline for the long ride (that took around 6 hours). He then went to a small supermarket with me to get some water which was no bad idea at all! After that we continued our journey and as we got closer to the capitol of Uganda traffic increased more and more until it ended up in a traffic jam in Kampala… Man, I had never seen such a mess before in my life and I was so happy I didn’t have to drive myself. I would’ve never managed to get through this chaos…




But my driver managed to surf through this masses of cars, small bus-taxis, which are usually cramped with people, and hundreds of boda-bodas. Those are motorcycles with small engines, that serve as a cheap means for transport. You can also rent them as taxis. Often you see 3 people driving on them. The air is pretty polluted because of all the traffic and some of the cars exhaust black clouds permanently. At some point Anthony stopped to do some micro-job and to pick up his son Joram, who accompanied him on the journey so he needn’t drive the long way back home all alone. I guess he’s about 16. He told me he was a mechanic and a driver, too. He told me about the dangerous side of Kampala and insisted on giving me his number just in case I would ever want to come back to visit Kampala. He would show me around. Well, after the things he told me, I think I’d better stay away from that place… It took pretty long to get out of the centre of the city and even after we had passed it for a while, Anthony informed me again and again that we were still in Kampala. On the left and on the right you could see pretty poor buildings, usually painted in the CI of one of the telephone companies. Seems like this is their way to do advertising. Other than that there’s cabins made of wood or tin… I don’t know exactly. Wherever we drive there’s lots of people on the streets, either discussing with each other or walking somewhere. Most of them don’t have real jobs so they would do “micro”-jobs to earn a few Shillings. From some of the houses one can hear loud music. As we drove away from the city the roads got worse. There’s huge potholes in many roads and you have to be careful not to be hit by other vehicles passing by. You better brake and escape when buses pass by as they never seem to brake at all. Parts of the edges of the street are gone as they are being washed away in times of heavy rain. So one has to be alert when driving on the roads. Whenever Anthony saw a boda-boda in front of the car or people alongside the road he pushed the honk twice to make them notice him or go away. I assume that there’s lots of accidents with boda-bodas or pedestrians…





At a gas station, Anthony parked the car to take a short bathrom break. Another adventure… :-) I was glad when we returned and I saw that all my stuff was still in the car. We had to stop a couple of times because of road work and wherever cars have to stop there’s lots of people trying to sell bottled water, fried bananas or some kind of root and grilled meat on sticks. Anthony bought some bottles of water, a couple of fried bananas and some roots at some of the stops. I then got a text message from my host saying that we wouldn’t need to take a break as we’d eat something in a lodge where we met her later on. As we came closer to the meeting point the roads became pretty dusty. It was pretty hot and didn’t rain for 3 months, which is pretty unusual. So the plants alongside the roads were all dry but only a few meters further away it got greener and greener. It reminded me a little of Western Australia… ok, the pine trees looked a bit strange but they grow them to build furniture.

 

We then finally met Claudia at the lodge where we ate something and then drove to the eco farm, my new home for the next couple of months.


There I was first introduced to Moritz, who’s the farms watch dog.


… and our piglets…


Then I was shown around and got to see my cottage on which I have mounted my solar panels…



And here’s the toilet… and adventure of its own…


That much for now…