I worked on a project at the PC office for the first three days and was ferried to the training location on Friday morning. Remember that this was to be held at the SWAMP and I’d been dreading it for two weeks.  A much intentioned reprieve was delivered because the SWAMP wasn’t ready for habitation it seems.  So instead, training was held at Kulika, a perma-gardening demonstration project an hour’s ride from Kampala.  The universe was smiling on us all.  Without going into details, I was able to stay at the site, ensconced in a room with another volunteer.  

So this was a week of unexpected gifts, the first being a good seat mate for 5.5 hour ride into Kampala, the second being the Kulika-reprieve and the third being a night of utter silence – if you don’t count the pig grunting around outside my window…  (Mama pig out for a stroll without her piglets?) Really – no noise, no blasting radios-calls-to-prayer-marching bands.  I slept without ear-plugs.  I gave my first session the next day and it went well-enough.  One learns to be grateful for things like there being a projector and computer for the three Power Point presentations loaded onto a flash drive and the fact that there was power to actually use the projector.  Good so far.

The new group of trainees seems solid and their training experience appears to be far superior to the one we survived.  We raised so much hell about ours, they redesigned the model and it seems to be paying off.  Whereas we had 10 weeks of home-stay and trekking 45 minutes to an hour through manure strewn fields, past belligerent cows and marauding attacks of local children, deep mud, insects, barbed wire and other assorted obstacles to get to training and then back again at night, they trained and lodged at the same location which was – in itself – beautiful. That one change leaves lots of time for study, guitar playing, conversation and rest against a farm backdrop of cows and pigs and goats.  They appear to be in MUCH better emotional and physical condition that we were by this time in the process.    

Saturday I conducted a session that I’ve presented at home many times and was delighted and surprised to be able to offer here.  It’s the one on neural-networks, motivation, boundary setting and staying positive.  It was very well received and opened the door for a lot of interesting conversations and a meditation session the next day.  Radically different from any training PC has offered in the past, it felt good to share that part of my life and expertise here.  Sunday was a totally free and unstructured day and the weather was perfect: cool and breezy accented with bird song and the occasional pig snort and turkey gobble.

Now – I have kind of a soft spot for pigs (not turkeys), as my grandmother had an enormous hog that I adored as a toddler in north Louisiana.  I named this beast Dear-Sweet-Pig and docile creature that she was she allowed me to commune with her through the fence and wiggle my fingers in her piggy-nostrils (how utterly disgusting!).  Why I didn’t lose a hand, I’ll never know because the pigs I have met since, have been a bit more – well – beastly. Though I’ve yet to try the finger maneuver on any other porcine subjects – it just  might be a secret hypnotic Mudra for a pig   I was inconsolable when my parents wouldn’t let me bring Dear-Sweet-Pig home to live in our living room in Baton Rouge.   So the next morning of training, when a very business like pig trotted up the driveway looking like he ran the place, it seemed fitting tribute to Pig.  The next day he was joined by some disreputable looking friends, running through the compound causing general havoc and scattering trainees,  but that seemed perfectly in keeping with the cow who doubled as the snooze alarm in the morning.   I like this place. 

Now to Jonathan:  a fine specimen of a feline living on the property. He  does love his Muzungus, though as a respectable cat, he could never admit to such weakness.  In fact, Jonathan became know as a fearless-stalker-of-pigs, until said pig called his bluff and chased him around the yard.  Not to be outdone, Jonathan completely upstaged me in today’s presentation on Monitoring and Evaluation (not hard to be upstaged there however…).  About half way through he strutted straight to the front of the room with a sizable mouse dangling from his mouth. He threw it about and tormented it to death and when he’d exhausted his fun, he retired to lounge around with his sleek brown trophy displayed under the flip chart.  Clearly time for me to call it a day.

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Uganda is still a largely agrarian culture and here in the north, much farming has been destroyed due to the fact that people have been living in IDP (Internally Displace People) camps for 20 years of war.   When they were moved (or were convinced to move) into the camps for their safety during the war, they had to abandon their crops and could not leave the camps to go and dig.  While most are back on the land now, their farming practices can’t keep up with the need for food and a vast number of people are suffering from HIV/AIDS and simply don’t have the strength to manage a large garden.

Enter Perma-gardening, a child of Perma-Culture.  In short, it’s a method of gardening using small plots of land and natural, local resources very efficiently to increase yield.  A small garden, done this way, can feed a family or a village year round and  for years without the need for crop rotation, etc.  It’s a very different way of digging and planting, so that’s what we learned today.  And this day, we cleared, dug, weeded and planted  nine individual gardens and one “kitchen garden.”

We discovered black ants over a half an inch long that hiss and smell funny.  Nasty creatures – when they bite, they bite like a crab and don’t let go.   (More visions of Poisonwood Bible and the river of ants…)  We did double digging (digging down two feet in stages and bringing the deep soil up), water trapping, water channeling, composting, more digging, more weeding and learning how to make a central compost well in the center of a round garden, to continuously feed the garden.

There were about PCV’s and their Ugandan Counterparts there and we will all go out and use these methods and teach them in community.  In the villages, these concepts put into play will offer better nutrition, more efficient farming practices that will increase yield and reduce costs associated with some other forms of high yield farming, offer HIV patients a way to manage their disease through improved nutrition and hopefully feed some school kids and have some produce left over to sell.  

So I returned at 7:00 to – once again – no power and no running water, had a ripe papaya for dinner, a cold bucket bath (which I have learned to like…)  and a visit from some PCVs close to what’s called COS (Close of Service).  They all say time really flies after training when you’re at site.  I’m waiting to see how this works – because I haven’t seen any wings-of-time  flapping thus far, but the time is early “somehow.”    Still busy trying to keep up with hauling water, lighting candles praying for power or water – or both.

Keep those e-mails and letters coming folks!  It’s amazing what a difference in mood is generated when we get an e-mail from home.  It’s like Christmas morning al over again

Eyes are closing at 9:30 PM – absolutely disgraceful – but true.  Nighty night ya’ll.

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Today we learned to castrate piglets.  Well, to be honest I can’t say we really LEARNED it – that would imply that we had opportunity to practice it and that we did not do.  But we did witness the training and I will tell you that little piggy squealed all the way home.  Yes, it’s a far cry from my former life…  And who knows just how all this will be put into play.  But you will be the first to know Well – maybe the second.

It was part of a visit to a very impressive permaculture farm where trainings were in progress for an international group learning new farming practices to take back to Kenya and Tanzania.    The hope is we’ll learn a variety of techniques that we can take to our sites and contribute to improved farming practices and that supports just about everything from health to earning school fees to educate kids.     While I don’t plan to do in piglets, the perma-culture practices I’m sure we’ll put into play.

Tomorrow we’ll learn to cook on a charcoal stove called a sigiri.  The plan is to order propane stoves for living at site, but we’ll still probably bake using charcoal.  I brought a ton of  mexican spices (thanks to Bonnie, a returned PCV who knew what was coming !) and some will be put into good use as we cook a Mexican meal as part of a Cross Cultural exercise meant to teach us how to survive when they cut the umbilical.  Out language trainer has agreed to sacrifice the chicken.  If you want meat here, ya gotta kill it.  This is probably the last meat I will have here in a meal I cook.

On that happy note, the orphanage behind my house (home stay) is tuning up.  Every night at 8:00 they sing with clapping and drumming for about 30 minutes.  It’s a wonderful sound.  This group supports itself with tours to the UK.  Sorry if I’ve already mentioned that, but it is a fine way to end the day.

Thanks to those of you who are reading and those who have commented.  It’s a wonderful link to home.

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Tomorrow we will learn the REAL short cut through the hills to school.  Rubber rain boots that come to the knee are now a requirement.  Mine are white – aren’t you just a little bit jealous???

This week we visited a farm and wore thes boots, and were allowed to wear trousers (women DON”T wear trousers here) and work gloves and learn about perma-culture farming.  No doubt I’ll have some kind of garden at site, but everyone in country depends on their farms for food, so we’ll at some point be talking and training in farming methods.  I know – you can’t see me farming????

The bins at left are manure, pic urine, etc. to use as fertilizer.

Light is fading and the solar lamp is on its last leg.  Nighty night….

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