paperwork done – proposal sent in

The main reason for me to spending a couple of months of my life in Uganda was to developing a new charity project for Licht für Vergessene Kinder with Dennis. So we spent the last few weeks visiting many places, meeting numerous people, leading endless discussions, racking our brains, collecting data, sketching & rejecting, budgeting, compiling, writing.

I have so met people like managers of charities, board members, project managers, the local bishop, UN camp commanders, secretary to the Prime Minister of Uganda, nurses, priests, volunteers, secretaries, teachers, matrons, cooks, caretakers, officials, craftsmen, engineers, foster parents, young adults, kids, orphans. Amongst them I’ve found plenty of good people who are trying hard to help, hopeful people, people in despair, struggling people, angry people, average Joes, probably also a few less good people, self-righteous guys and even a few nutcases. I have seen a refugee camp taking and supplying an incredible count of 17’000 people, good and free private schools struggling to get approved by the government and others that have the approval but provide a bad service and don’t care for the kids, exemplary orphanages, a couple of child development centres and other places.

It has not always been easy and so – at times - I found myself being impatient, bored, fed up, hopeless, sad and tired of trying to force “Western standards” in vain or hearing some people’s prattle but then again I was again and again impressed, amazed, delighted, encouraged and felt relaxed, powerful, backed up, confident and grateful.

Well, I’ve worked hard translating and completing the proposal during the last couple of days, actually weeks, and thus spent long days and even a few nights in front of my computer. I feel relieved, happy and am also a bit proud to having finished everything. I realised that this proposal became a very important thing to me as I found myself reworking it over and over again to make it’s content being transparent and eventually convincing and I really hope that – especially the main project – will be realised very soon, even though I will not be around then.

So, keep your fingers crossed!

 

the finished proposal, finally sent in

package betrayal

I have bought a few things around here and got annoyed when I unpacked it. So I thought it was time I made a statement towards all the food producers who try to cheat their customers by getting them to believe that the content is much larger than it is in reality. Shame on you, guys, not only are you wasting unnecessarily lots of resources for package material and transport which is bad enough but also will your products – depending on the country where it’s being used and also the customer who consumes your products – after consumption pollute the environment again. Of course, this is not only your fault, it’s also your customers fault, so shame on me, too!

But anyway, Simsek and all you other food producers out there:
Stop cheating on your customers and wasting our resources. You might even find yourselves making more money than you already do by now!

 

isn’t it pathetic? Guess what, there’s another plastic container on the inside…

it’s raining, it’s pouring

Another busy day at the farm. First task after getting up in the morning is feeding the ducks who seem to eat more and more each day. The older ones seem to be very rude with the ducklings; I had watched them snapping the young guys and literally trying to strangle them. Maybe that’s how one died recently.

Anyway, after that I had to hold some kind of appraisal meeting in the early morning with one of the employees, actually I even pronounced caution.

Later on I continued doing some paper work for Licht für Vergessene Kinder as I need to finish a proposal with some attachments and job descriptions. So I disappeared in the office after the meeting, plugged my notebook in (as we now have power) and started typing. In between times I checked on the animals, eventually providing some water, and on the employees.

Time flies quickly when doing computer work, so I’ve found myself working through up to the middle of the afternoon when Dennis called me for he, in the meantime, had prepared a lot of food for a late lunch in the afternoon. That was a perfect reason to interrupt work. So I enjoyed the large and palatable food.

Soon after the employees came back from lunch break (they go for lunch at around 1 p.m. and return at 5 p.m. to continue work up to 7 p.m. some heavy rain fell for the next couple of hours. Dennis took a chance and started cleaning the veranda while Charles and Alfred disappeared in the Greenhouse looking for shelter. As we lacked water anyway I used the filled up some jerry cans with the water that came from the roof channel. A while ago I managed to remove some kind of funnel from a spray pump that didn’t work. Luckily there was a thread on this funnel that exactly matches the one of the jerry cans. So I managed to fill up 5 cans like that and thus gained 100 litres of rain water that we could use in the bathroom. As the rain was pretty heavy at times it took only 5 minutes to fill up one of the cans, the others took a bit longer as it was also pretty windy and thus the jet missed the funnel on top of the can at times.

let the feast begin…

Dennis cleaning the kitchen during a rain storm…

one can’t afford to waste things, not even rain, so I collected it and thus filled 5 jerry cans

my first tortilla

After a hard day alone at the farm I was a bit hungry. My work mate Dennis, who was supposed to return to the farm on Sunday for cooking, shopping and finishing some paper work for the other foundation, did not show up once again and it was already getting dark. I still had some dough to prepare unleavened bread that I had prepared in the morning but I wanted to try out something new. So I checked the cupboard for the remaining items of food. I had a few eggs, potatoes and onions… Uhm, that smells like Tortilla! I’ve never tried to prepare it but who cares! So I peeled a few potatoes or – how they call them here – Irish, cut a big onion and then cracked a few eggs and just in the moment when I cracked the last egg a thought flashed through my mind: What if this egg went bad, that’d spoil all the eggs? But in the same moment of time I added the egg to the others and immediately smelled a funny odour. The egg was bad and thus I had to throw them all away. Luckily I still had 3 left which was not really enough as these eggs around here contain only small quantities of egg yolk and white because chicken are usually not fed and thus have to find food on their own. Anyways, I then fried the onions, added the potatoes and the remaining eggs. After a while I had some kind of tortilla… actually it looked and tasted more like a Rösti but it tasted nice anyway.

Who would have thought that I’d prepare my first tortilla in the heart of Africa?

 

potatoes or Irish as they call them here

Tortilla olé! Ok, it looked and tasted more like a Rösti but what to do?

alone at the farm

Today Claudia has left the farm for she will spend the next three weeks in Switzerland. Thus I will have to run the farm during her absence. The day before she wrote some instructions about the things that needed to be checked and done and which employee should finish off which tasks. She also gave me some money for I will have to pay some salaries and buy food and feed and other stuff. Claudia had sent the cleaner on leave during her absence so I’ll also have to do the washing myself. Additionally she had also degraded one of the workers recently which will make things a bit more complicated. Then I will also have to do some paper work for the foundation Licht für Vergessene Kinder so I will be pretty busy. Anyway, I’ll manage it.

But first things first, I’ll make bread now and have breakfast! I guess Claudia had left some Nutella! Thanks a lot, Claudia, I’m sure you’ll eat plenty in Switzerland!

 

dough and unleavened bread

which tastes perfectly with a bit of Nutella

of painting, escaping, slashing and planting

After breakfast I applied a second coating of varnish on our new bathroom table that the carpenter had brought yesterday. It was a bit tricky as I also coated the underside of the table which he had left uncoated.

Then I thought that the road alongside the Eco-farm needed some slashing as the bushes rose almost to the middle of the street. Things grow very fast here during the rain season. I picked the slashing tool from the shed and sharpened it and off I went. It felt a bit like playing tennis. Serve, volley, forehand, forehand, backhand. After about two hours it was game, set and match for me. I I was totally soaked and had some bladders on my hand as the handle was not formed ergonomically at all. After that I needed to wash myself, change my clothes and cool down a bit.

In the evening I needed to secure the fence around the ducks house as the 20 ducklings that were born a few days ago escaped the fence a couple of times for the mesh is simply so big that they can easily walk through. Claudia had already laid out pieces of old tarpaulin around the fence to prevent them from escaping but there were just too many gaps and thus we found them every couple of hours on the wrong side of the fence. Lucky them, if Moritz, our dog, would have found them on the path he would have killed them all… Anyway, I wanted to secure the tarpaulin so I filled the wheelbarrow with some stones and distributed them around the fence. Later I went into the fence to place the tarpaulin and the stones to the right position. At some places I additionally I pushed sticks through the tarpaulin and the fence to fixate it properly. I know it’s not perfect, we should put a proper, close-meshed fence but we currently just don’t have the money for that. Anyways, this workaround might be sufficient for a while and the ducklings will grow fast  which will resolve the problem for a while. I was again soaked after that and thus went to the bathroom where I washed myself at the new bathroom table which was now ready to be used.

After supper Claudia had me plant a tree in the middle of the Eco-farm. So I had to pick the hoe again to dig a hole. The ground was hard as concrete as this spot had been used as a way for decades but I managed. Then Charles put the tree in the hole, covered and watered it. That was it for that day.

 

Ladies and gentleman, Mr. Slash!

blood, sweat and tears…

our newborn ducklings lately escaped several times a day

so we had to secure the fence with old pieces of tarpaulin and stones…

at some spots I had to push sticks through the tarpaulin to really make it secure

the new bathroom table after a second coating of varnish

the last task for that day: planting a tree on solid ground…

let there be power III – installation of the door

Last week we had a joiner measure the door frame to build a fitting door and also the bathroom for we needed some kind of washing table in there. As he had promised to build and mount it before Claudia would travel to Switzerland for a couple of weeks, he worked day and night to bring the furniture Thursday morning with a Boda Boda. It’s always amazing to see how many things one can transport with these motorcycles.

As it rained in Bweyale, the town in which he lives, he couldn’t even varnish the washing table so he had to do it at the Eco-farm. After that he mounted the door at the battery house. Unfortunately he forgot to mount a door lock which we needed to lock that house. Fortunately we had one bolt lock left that we usually used to lock our self-made doors for the stables. After searching the whole Eco-farm for fitting screws he could finally mount it.

He even had a receipt book with him so we were handed out a receipt as evidence of our payment which is pretty unusual around here!

Both the door and the washing table were built nicely and seem to be solid. Excellent! So if you ever need a joiner, Simon’s the man to build great quality for a good price!

Anyways, a few days later Charles painted the power house in Eco-farm green.

 

Simon the joiner varnishing our brand new washing table

the door for the batteries’ house

Simon attaching the bolt lock

the house is now almost perfect… it only lacks painting and a padlock…

after a few days we bought a padlock and painted it in Eco-farm green