Oink was my first word

I never feel as though I'm in the right mindset to blog.  I'm always too tired.  I always don't feel like my writing will be good enough.  I never know what to say or how to say it.  This leads to long stretches with no updates.  I apologize for this.  Even tonight I don't feel like I am going to put together anything great.  Either way here goes...

The housing for both my pigs and goats

I've been meaning to give an update on my animals for a long time and figure now is a good time to do so. 

Floyd

Gypsy

Inez and Shakes

If you have been following my blog you know that I started with goats.  I had a rough start because of wild dogs, but am on the rebound.  Right now I have 1 big male named Floyd, 3 females named Gypsy, Inez, and Maizie.  I also have two young males, Shakes and Mowgli, that I plan on selling once they are full grown.  All of my goats are just local goats except Maizie who is a milking goat.  The local goats don't produce enough milk to make it viable, but Maize is a cross between local and milking (obviously she probably has an official breed, but I'm not certain what it is).  She can produce around 1.5-2 liters of milk a day.  If she was pure she would produce 3 or more.  Many people in Uganda raise goats for meat and almost all of them just raise the local breed.  The exotic milking breeds cost at least 4 times as much so they are much more rare.

Maizie

More recently I have purchased a few pigs.  I grew up raising pigs and showing them at the county fair.  We never did it on a large scale, but from birth I think I have liked pigs.  Pigs cost 2 to 3 times more than goats so I just started with 1 boar and 2 gilts.  About 2 weeks ago I had my first litter.  It was a bit disappointing with only 4, but I'm still please to have a few piglets.  My male is named Mr. Darcy and the females are Flowers and The Baroness.  I'm guessing for future litters I'm not gonna put the effort into naming them all, but this litter was 4 females and they will be called The Supremes.

Mr. Darcy

The Baroness

Flowers and The Supremes

Flowers

The Supremes

I am also trying to figure out chickens.  I have never raised any chickens so I have a bit to learn.  I built a chicken coop behind my house and I'm hoping to have 10-15 layers. 

I have a young man named Dominic who lives in the boys quarters behind my house (boys quarters are common here.  basically they are small buildings with a couple bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom.  people often allow either ground keepers, security guards, or house workers to stay in them as a benefit of their job).  Anyway, I don't need a whole lot of assistance at my house, but it is nice to have somebody at the house during the day when I am at work.  Dominic cuts the grass, takes out the garbage, washes my truck, and feeds the dogs.  I honestly don't have a whole lot of work for him so I figured this chicken venture could be a good educational opportunity for him and myself.  I am planning on making the initial investment and let Dom learn how to take care of chickens and in exchange he will be able to sell the eggs they produce.

Young layers produce much better than old ones so I decided to just buy 2 hens and rooster and let them hatch 10-15 that will become my longer term layers.  First two hens were a failure.  They laid around 20 eggs, but wouldn't sit on them to hatch em.  These first two were what they call Mzungu (white person) chickens.  I changed them out for a couple local hens.  Hoping these two want to be moms.  I also learned that chickens will eat their own eggs.  Had no idea.  On my to-do list this week is clip their beaks so they stop, people tell me it will.

Last on my animal list are my dogs.  I can't say I have ever really been a dog person, but since being in Uganda it has grown on me.  I think my issue in the states was that they had no purpose.  In Uganda dogs are the best security you can have.  They don't fall asleep on duty, they always know when somebody is near the house, and they only demand food and love as payment.  A large majority of Ugandan's are scared of dogs.  The reason for this is that almost 100% of dog owners own them as guard dogs.  There are no yippy dogs that ride in purses here.

Max

I started with a hand-me-down dog named Max.  I say that and it sounds like he might not be that great of a dog.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  He comes from a long line of pure bred Ugandan street muts.  Max can be a bit obnoxious at times, but he is big, his bark is loud, and he can easily intimidate anybody he doesn't know.  He is great!  I then found him a companion named Evelyn.  I raised her from a pup and she did well enough, but she chewed the electrical wires on my truck 4 times which diminished my affection for her.  Lucky for me I found a new job for her.

Recently we have purchased 4 more acres of land in the village where our sponsorship program is located.  Because of the increase in land we needed to add a security guard to patrol the new big area.  We don't have electricity out there and this makes the guards job difficult.  I realized how beneficial it would be for him to have a dog to patrol with him.  Evelyn, the job is yours!

Because she was going out to the land I needed a replacement.  I found a family in town that breeds German Shepards and was able to purchase a pup.  I have decided to name the little guy Shadow and am excited about his addition to my household.

Shadow

Ok, so this is way longer than I imagined it would be and I apologized if i dragged on.  Maybe it is my subconscious trying to make up for my lack of updates.














Thanks for checking in.

Maize for my dad

 Well my dad mentioned that he wanted to see how our maize was doing.  I don't currently have time to type much up about it, but figured I'd post the pictures regardless.  These were taken probably on the 15th of June or so.  I don't remember exactly.  You probably can see that we had to replant some of our field because of very poor germination, but we learned our lesson. 

Kids are back in school

Term 2 of the Ugandan school year started recently.  I suppose I will take this time to explain a bit about the Ugandan school system.  Be sure to take everything I say with a grain of salt cause I am still learning the intricacies of it (Blasted British influences).

They don't have spring mattresses here, instead it is just a big piece of foam

I'm a list guy.  I think because it helps me organize, but also it lets me avoid one of my badest suits...English and grammar.  No transitions needed in a list.  No real sentence structure or punctuation is required.  Gotta love lists.

1.  You are able to start school around age 3 in nursery, but many children don't due to cost and wait till age six and just go straight into Primary 1
2.  There are 3 levels of nursery: baby class, middle class, and top class
3.  You then move onto primary which there are 7 classes.  P1 up to P7
4.  P7 is a very important year cause you take your first permanent record exams and the results determine which secondary school accepts you
5.  These exams are called PLE (primary leaving examination).  This past holiday we for the first time implemented holiday tutoring.  We paid some school teachers to come out to our land and work with the kids that were approaching the important exam years.  It allows them some extra study time and more attention from the teachers due to the reduction in kids present.
6.  Because of their importance many kids in P6 and P7 go to school longer hours and even attend on Saturdays.
7.  Then you go on to secondary.  Secondary is the equivalent of high school
8.  There is technically S1 through S6, but many don't continue on after S4.  From what I have gathered S5 and S6 are preparatory years for University.  So, if you plan to pursue vocational or can't afford University then you often stop after S4
9.  At the end of S4 you take another set of exams that allows you to pick a future track of study.  These exams are called your "O" level exams and basically there are different subject combinations that you can choose to focus on based on your scores which theoretically will prepare you for a University education in that field
10.  High school, secondary, college are all terms that describe these S1-S6 schools.  University is the only term that refers to what we know as college.  Pretty sure that is the Brits again.
11.  There are 3 terms of school, which are all about 3 months long with about 1 month in between each
12.  School year starts at the end of January or the beginning of February and ends beginning of December
13.  Ugandans seem to define real success as finishing through University despite the fact that the majority of work available is vocational.  Also, they seem to believe that boarding school is always better.  Most decent secondary schools are boarding and most families will send their kids to boarding even in primary if they can afford it.  This means that kids as young as 6 are shipped off for 9 months out of the year.  I don't like primary boarding and see it to be nearly the same as orphanages.  I don't want to say luckily, but I am kinda glad most families can't afford to send their kids to primary boarding.  *This is my take on it
14.  If you have read this far into these details I am impressed and want to thank you for your interest in all that I do.  Also, you obviously care about me more than those who skipped over and I therefore think you are much sweeter.  I will add one more fact at the end as to hide this from the lazy readers who don't deserve my gratitude.
15.  School fees and school supplied significantly increase as you continue on in your education.  I making rough guesses here without looking at any of our numbers so these could be off.  Nursery around $25-$50 a term (day school).  Primary $35-80 per term (day school).  Secondary $250-$500 per term (boarding).  University $500-800 per term.

Alright on to the interesting stuff.  There are many things than need to occur to get all 581 of our kids back in school.  First, we have to pay school fees at over 35 schools.  This is becoming easier because we are pushing for the schools to allow us to do bank transfers so we no longer have to run the actual cash to the school.

These are the trunks (or as they are called here suitcases) that the boarding students load all there stuff in and take to school to use as footlockers

Then we have to buy all the supplies.  For the nursery and primary kids it is mostly crayons, notebooks, pencils, pens, and toilet paper.  Yep toilet paper.  Part of the list of supplies required is bringing your own portion of the TP for the school.  Secondary and university kids are much more difficult.  It grows to a much longer list because they are boarding and also need daily living items like; soap, razors, basins, towels, sheets, mattresses, torches (flashlight), brooms, mops etc...

Here is Sam (our bus driver holding the mops), Siraji (a mentor on staff in the tan shirt), and Oliver (head of sponsorship in red) buying several hundred mops and hard bristled brushes in central market.

Our current system operates like this.  Oliver, the mentors and myself go and buy about 4 pickup loads of supplies and bring them to my house.  They are then stored in my living room until the day before the secondary kids go back to school.  We then hire a flatbed truck to come and load all the stuff up to take it to the Amazima land where it will be sorted, bagged, and distributed (side note:  we are hoping to build a bigger storage building at the land to accommodate this as well as some of future farming plans).

My living room leading up to 1st term

My living room leading up to 2nd term

Loading the big truck at my house to take the supplies out to the Amazima land for distribution

Oliver hard at work.  I love this woman and would be lost without her.

Once supplies are distributed then I thank the Lord for the opportunity that Amazima supporters are giving these kids and pass out from exhaustion.  Again, thank you all for taking interest in how God is working all the way on the other side of the world.   Most of all thank you for your prayers. 

I love my parents!

My parents came to visit a bit back and it was really nice to show them what life is like for me over here.  They came for about 10 days and we stayed busy the whole time.  I wasn't able to take off the whole time they were here, but they were more than willing to accompany me while I did my work and were so patient.

It was a whirlwind of a tour.  It was my goal to show them as much of Uganda and my life/work here as possible.  We were also able to go on Safari the last couple days of their time here which was a first for us all.

Here is a list of some of the things I was able to show them
-Masese Women's Group
-Masese Co. Primary lunch program
-Jinja Central Market
-Sponsorship Saturday Program
-Lumber yards, welder's shop, craft shops, and posho mills
-My house
-Amazima Office
-Several of my favorite places to eat (including Ethiopian in Kampala)
-Katie's house and family
-My church
-Amazima Playground and Farming project
-Rhino Sanctuary
-Murchison National Park

They brought me tons of goodies as well.  You know your parents love ya when they come with 4 suitcases of stuff for you and pack all their clothes in their carry-on bags.  They brought tons of food as well as some random things like guard dog warning signs and animal ear tags.

God blessed me with incredible parents and I am so thankful for how supportive they have been, not only with my move to Africa, but in everything I have done.  I love you mom and dad and thank you for helping shape me into who I am today  It was their faith and love for our Savior that stirred my heart in the same direction.  I can't be more grateful! 

 I didn't get many pictures of the random day to day stuff that we did, but here are a few of our trip up to Murchison.

 Can't wait for them to come again (my parents not the hippos)

Can ya dig it? (amazingly dorky title, but couldn't resist)

I have a bunch to tell ya'll about what has been going on this side and it will take many posts to make up for lost time, but I suppose the only way to get it done is one step at a time.

Dry season is at an end and we are ready for the daily rains that the coming season promises. Amazima is taking its first steps in a farming project. During dry season we held a seminar to teach locals a different farming technique. We partnered with an organization called Farming God's Way. They teach a no till farming technique that has proven to drastically increase yields.


We invited 10 local farmers to join us and learn the methods. The seminar combines farming lessons and evangelism. They incorporate lots of Bible. We also start a demo farm to demonstrate the techniques as well as show them the potential in these techniques.


Last week we were able to get a larger plot of our land planted with the new methods. My friend Chris Kramlich (a friend from ND who is here in Uganda for the year http://www.working-love.blogspot.com/) helped oversee much of this project and worked with several of Amazima's full time staff to get everything going.


I am excited to see how God will use this new side of Amazima to spread the Glory of his name. Also, I personally just dig farming so it is fun and interesting for me in general (pun intended).

The Ugandan school year makes sense. Just another aspect of American society that we buck the natural and obvious way of doing things. School in Uganda goes from the end of January till the end of November. This means that we are between years currently which in turn means that we are at the time we can add kids to the program.

Absolute chaos ensues. For the past few weeks we have had extra busy days at the Saturday program due to Christmas Gift Baskets and the Christmas Program. We have also been getting tons of people coming wanting to sign up for our sponsorship program. Just to make it through the day I have been telling them that they should come back on the first Saturday of the new year to apply to be in the program.

Yikes, did I not expect the outcome. I guess telling them this and giving them a few weeks for the word to spread everyone in all of Africa heard the news and came on the first Saturday of the new year.



I put together this nice application form to be filled out by each of the families applying for sponsorship just to have it turn into scrap paper. All our Ugandan staff was like "Um No! As soon as they fill out a form they will assume they are registered and they will send their kids every week assuming they are now part of the sponsorship program."



Well, I guess scratch that. I showed up on the 7th to a sea of people. There had to have been 700 people above and beyond the 500 kids already registered for our program. I gave notebooks and pens to anybody over the age of 16 to start taking down names so we could clear everyone out and sort through the possible additions.

Most of the people that came on the 7th were not in the category of people who we would accept into the program, but with other connections and a little research we were able to find around 160 new kids that did qualify for our program.



Everyone in Uganda wants their kids sponsored. Not every Ugandan NEEDS their kid sponsored. Here is an example of a family that fits the need we are looking for.

There is a family of 6 children all under the age of 16 that stay with their Jaja (grandmother). We do an initial interview and 2 home visits by our social workers to research the need. The first time they come to our program one of the boys in the family shows up with a swollen cheek. I honestly probably wouldn't have noticed, but Katie did. She asked him to open his mouth. You could see the pain in his eyes as he did so. She saw that he had a tooth that was abscessed almost bursting through his cheek. We immediately took him to the dentist. It boggles my mind how some of these kids continue on day to day. He musta only been 10.



After our research we discover that the only source of income their family had was their Jaja's job of "throwing rocks at other rocks." Basically she made aggregate for the use in concrete. She worked all day throwing stones at each other to break them down into small enough pieces to be sold as gravel. Unfortunately she had recently lost her job because a stone bounced back and hit her in the face and she had lost most of her vision.

If makes me think of the elderly in the United States. I would never say they have the best life ever, but in comparison... This old broken woman... I can't even put into words my thoughts about her situation. God bless her heart.



Praise Jesus He put us here to ease the struggle. They are now in our program along with the other 150 or so.

It is your prayers and support that open these doors for us to show God's love. Thank you so much for making what we do possible.



The photos in this post are a random sampling of some of the angels in our program not specifically anybody I talked about.