25th of January to 19th of February, 2018.
I am tired. The heat here is intense. Maybe not that much (yet) as sometimes we use to have in Brazil, but sometimes it is difficult to breath. At night, the temperature outside is really refreshing. Unfortunately inside of our bedroom is the opposite. It is really hard to sleep some nights. And now with my back hurting so much is even worse.
Let me tell you about the guys and the EcoHub Uganda…
They are so much younger than I thought. They are just two young boys, with nineteen and twenty one years old! K. is the owner of the land. Actually, it belongs to his family. His mother and two sisters live in the back, in a clay house. The other eight brothers and sisters are split around. The father, who has another wives around, come and go often. When he comes, he brings some food and helps working on the land. D., the Colombian guy, who parents work at UNICEF and Peace Force, already lived in a few countries, and he joined K., almost two months ago, to start the Eco Project.
They met each other around five years ago in some kind of school. K. spent two years in Ecuador working and learning about eco projects. He also extended his travel going around some countries in Latin America. They were talking about doing something like that since then. D. has his graduation in Business and helps K. doing the administrative part.
The place is nice, huge and beautiful as any piece of land. There are a lot of trees and grass. There are large areas with corn, they are the biggest one. About fruits, we have lemons and oranges and a mango tree with tiny small mangos. They have two goats and ten Guinea pigs (two already died since I arrived) which, unfortunately, they are raising to eat. There is electricity from some solar panels. The bathroom is as natural as possible: a hole on the floor surrounded buy some bricks. Bricks are actually the first source of income. There is a big production on the back of the property, where a lot of clay bricks are made every day and sold to the community. Also in there, there are two brothers who work for the guys doing Chapatis every day and selling to the workers. The good thing related is that we have Chapatis regularly. In the evening, we go to take our shower and wash our clothes on the river, Nhamamba. It is not that deep (most of the times not only reaching the knees) but is kind of big.
About what we have been doing: we are just planting watermelons and passion fruits. We are in the dry season but I do not know for sure if this is the reason for why we do not have anything growing right now (I mean, nothing that we eat is from here), or if it is because the guys are just beginning. We made two clay ovens and they are planning to build another one and also some grills. There are many plans: planting sweet potato, tomato, onion, beetroot; producing yoghurt and honey (the production of honey in Uganda is far, far away of reaching its demand, so it does not matter how much honey you produce, you will sell all of it); making bread and also selling it.
What I can tell until now about the guys is that they are trying and they have good intentions but they are still too young. They are going step by step but the problem is sometimes they are irresponsibly lazy. They do not wake up real early and star to work on the land pretty hard. K. can wake up at eight but D., usually, never wakes up before nine, ten or eleven. So after breakfast they start the tasks around eleven thirty, which is the beginning of hottest time of the day. We did that for a few days but then I talked with K. and explained to him how that was wrong (of course he knew it), and if they could not change it I would. Now, I wake up at 7.30 a.m. and work from eight to eleven, coming back from four to six. The deal is working just five hours per day, so I can enjoy that break to chill, write and read. I see K. working hard on the harvest sometimes (the same as I, and that is how I hurt my back) but I do not see the same effort from D. I understand that K. does not just have more experience but also was raised in this circumstances, but that does not mean that D. cannot learn and become as strong as K.
What I see is something like, if they had given all that they cold since the beginning, not postponing this and that for tomorrow or next week (as they mostly do), the place could already be at seventy percent when still is in something around thirty. They plan a lot and dream a lot, now they just need to work some more. Perhaps, due to their young age, they are lacking a bit of maturity to face the obstacles and take a serious, determined step towards bring the project to its maximum. And, of course, they want to enjoy life and have fun.
Just to finished about my staying here, let’s talk about the food. Mum and one of K.’s sister, P., prepare the whole thing. For breakfast we usually have maze porridge (a maze meal mixture with water, in which we put honey and cinnamon); or black porridge (basically the same thing but made it with a fruit which gives the dark brown color); or tea plus some seeds (like soy or peanuts) or Chapati. For the lunch and dinner we can have the traditional Posho (also maize but in a harder consistence); Matoke (mature green bananas, which must be boiled just as potatoes); rice; potatoes or sweet potatoes; all normally plus some beans or cabbage sauce. Rarely, we have pasta. We can get some fruit juice often as mango’s, orange’s, lemon’s, it depends of what we have. They always prepare all this food outside, where mum cooks on the floor, by the fire. I guess that is why also the taste is so incredible. I love the food in Uganda mainly because is so different. Different of anything else I had tried until now and in all the other African countries I was about to visit. For me, it is the country with the most exotic food.
10 Years Around the World 