Today was Kathryn’s and my wedding anniversary so we hiked it up to the lake, that is drove out to the lake, for a day of relaxing and enjoying a break. It also happens to mark the day that my working visa expired, we have applied for another, but it has not yet been processed so I may just have to get a tourist one at the border to get me by until we leave.
Anyway it was an overcast day, but here are a few photos of the lake none the less:
Today, amongst all the normal run of the mill things, was the first day for our new teacher, Marion. She is replacing Kathryn as we are returning home. So we were at Akanyijuka, me making a nuisance of myself and Kathryn organising for Marion to start etc.
Here is a photo of Marion I took, she is a bit shy, but then again maybe I am a bit scary!
The Chicken Express!!!
“Not quite the same as the National Park shots, but this is the only wildlife in Kabale”
Today we purchased our first laying chickens, 100 of the little ladies in the back of the van. We put them out at Babale, the place where Akanyijuka land is. Fred, our night guard, is now staying there with them. He will become our poultry/crop gardener/anything that needs doing at the land man.
Hopefully this is the first of many new chickens we get for there. Word is getting around that we are starting up with chickens and people from everywhere have been asking for chickens and eggs. There are a few big customers that have said that they will use us if we can get constant supplies for them, like 50 chickens a week or 60 trays of eggs a week. We are not anywhere near that at the moment but if we slowly build up we can get there fairly quickly.
This will all be good, but it does not help with my social life – I got home at the end of the day and Kathryn simply said ‘Peew, you stink!”
Today Pastor Edward was back in action, so we all got into getting some big things done, he had been away for two weeks and with us soon departing for Australia there is a lot to get sorted. We approached an international company working on the major road upgrade to see if we can use them to clear the land in preparation for building next year. We did not have much success due to people needing to be accountable, which is fair enough as we don’t want people losing jobs. The people we spoke to sounded like they wanted to help but could not. So we are putting in a letter to try and go through official channels.
Meanwhile Kathryn started to show Pamellah how to not only put her shopping records into excel, but also how to use a computer. It was her first time ever to use a computer, but she was doing ok.
I have also put up another two photo profiles on my photo page davesphotos. The two new profiles are of Kobusheshe and Patience.
This weekend was pretty relaxing with not too much going on. I did manage to get two new profiles up of Catherine and Bossa at my photo site: davesphotos
Things seem to be going well at Immanuel Drop-In Centre; today I delivered the money that was donated by someone back home for school fees for the boys now in school, and Pam and Eddie were over the moon. Recently also someone committed to sponsoring a house for some of the boys to live in with a matron to supervise. This is so that some of the boys can have somewhere to live. Some of them have been coming since the beginning and now they have somewhere to live and have a chance of getting to school, while not having to worry about what to eat etc.
While I was doing this and ordering 400 more broiler chickens, Kathryn was having performance reviews with two of the matrons. She was taking a while so I also got another chance to get more photos at Akanyijuka.
On Tuesday morning Pam Ward had spoken about getting together to email the sponsors for the boys at the drop-in centre, about a little bit more money as they needed a bit more to be able to make it through the year with all the boys that are now in school. This morning we received a transfer into our bank account for some money specifically for that reason!!!! God’s timing is perfect.
Kathryn had some business to sort out with Pamellah today, getting ready for performance reviews of the two newest matrons tomorrow, so I took the chance to take a few photos and relax with the children. Here is just a handful of photos I took:
Did I say a handful of photos, oops I meant a stack!!!
Today Charles and Fred our two guards/gardeners were away at Akanyijuka land building a new chicken koop so it was my turn to step up and help out with the chickens. I had never killed and dressed chickens before, but today that all changed. I had the pleasure of assisting Patrick, a volunteer for VCCS, in preparing the remaining chickens for sale. Not the nicest experience, but definitely not as bad as I was expecting. I was talking with Patrick about his brother who worked his way to getting to University in the UK and said that his brother will probably never touch a dead chicken again, just like the majority of us in the west.
In the afternoon I bumped into Maria, a friend of ours who is working in Kabale with the US Peace Core, and she invited us around for dinner. But before we went I took her down to Akanyijuka to show her what we were doing. She did not get to see much as she did not make it past two metres of the front gate – she was bombarded by children wanting to say hello and stuff. Even though she did not see anything she said it was the best of that sort of project she had seen, just how happy the children were; playing and having fun, and how the matrons did not seem like towering wardens. It was encouraging to hear her response. We will have more visits with her, she seems interested in helping the matrons with learning to speak English a little. At dinner we also met another Peace Core volunteer, Scott, who seems like he is wanting more to do than what he is doing where he is placed so we will meet up with him one day and show him the things we are involved in.
Today it was good to spend a bit of time at the drop-in centre in the morning and then in the afternoon we organised for the sale of the remaining chickens that we have.
Back on track….. Today we got back into the normal groove of Kabale life. Our chicken project was going slowly but today we had a sale of 40 chickens and 20 more going tomorrow, we have sold a large majority of the 200 we started with. It has not been too profitable of an exercise, but a very good learning experience and we are more full of confidence that we can make things work better as time goes by. We are looking at starting a more regular supply of chickens for various restaurants around town, with the possibility of getting a deep freezer to help meet demands. To slaughter and dress chickens takes time and can take a whole day when you are not expecting it. We are hoping to expand from just broilers to layers also – we have had some of the businesses we are selling to, enquire about eggs also. So, as time goes by we will build up a poultry business that will help subsidise costs for Akanyijuka. First it is chickens, then who knows where from there.
It was great to also get to Akanyijuka today - we had been away for a while tripping around the country with Gary, Judy and Liz. We took a lot of things down for the Matrons to hand out, that had been left by different teams and people coming. There is now enough that everyone will get something, instead of just a few getting something.
Not exactly sure what is happening here, but for some reason we miss this sort of thing when we are away:
