25th of January to 19th of February, 2018.
I am tired. The heat in here is intense. Maybe not that much (yet) as sometimes we use to have in Brazil, but sometimes is difficult to breath. At night the temperature outside is really refreshing. Unfortunately inside of our bedroom is the opposite. 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 supposed. 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 come, he brings some food and helps working in the land. D., the Colombian guy, who parents work at UNICEF and Peace Force, already lived in a few countries, so as D. He joined K. just 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 something and help 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 which are growing up. They have two goats and ten Guinea pigs (two already died since I arrived) which, unfortunately, they are growing 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 financial source. There is a big production on the back of the property, where a lot of clay’s 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. At 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 hitting 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 up right now (I mean, nothing that we eat is from here) or if is because the guys are just beginning. We made two ovens of clay and they are planning to build another one and also some grills. The plans are a lot: planting sweet potato, tomato, onion, beet root, to produce yoghurt and honey (the production of honey in Uganda is far, far away of hitting the demand, so it does not matter how much honey you produced, you will sell of it), to make bread and also sell 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 before nine, ten or eleven. So after breakfast they start the tasks around eleven thirty, which is the beginning of the hardest and hottest sun on the day. We did that for a few days but then I talked with K. and explained to him how that it was wrong (of course he knew it) and if they could not changed I would. Now, I wake up at 7.30 a.m. and work since eight to eleven, coming back from four in the afternoon until after six. The deal is working just five hours by 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 that is how I hurt my back so hard) but I do not see the same effort from D. I understand that K. does not just have more experience but also was created in this circumstances, but that does not mean that D. can not 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 keep leaving this and that for tomorrow and 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. I think, since as I said they are really young, they do not want lost their chill time and the freedom to sleep a bit more and go out and have some beers and fun. This is also important, of course, but when you have a project as they have, a big project, you have to first focus in the development, does not matter how hard could be at the beginning and how much of your life you will have to let it go for a while, until you have some kind of stability and then you can say – OK, now let’s start to breath.
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 gave the dark brown color) or tea plus some seeds (like soy or peanuts) or Chapati. For the lunch and dinner we have the traditional Posho (also maize but in a hard consistence) and Matoke (a different type of banana but which is cut still green so it is kind of salty and you boiled as Irish potatoes) followed by rice or Irish potatoes or sweet potatoes plus some beans or cabbage sauce or this purple sauce which I still do not know what is about it. Some times we also 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 on the fire made outside. So I guess that is why also the taste is so incredible. I love the food in Uganda mainly because is so different. So different of anything else I had until now and in all the other African countries I was about to visit. For me, it is the country if the most exotic food.
P.S.: sometimes I fell like as D. it is interested in something with me. He always sing some romantic songs; the other day he just ask me, if I find somebody for whom I fall in love during my travels (I know a lot of people already ask me that but I am just saying…), what I would do; the other night at N’hamamba we were talking about the moon and how she had disappeared all of sudden, and he yell these words: “This is how the moon is: she comes, become very strong and then she disappear!”. Maybe is nothing but I just have this feeling about it, as the same as so many times in the past when I was right.