Global Support Mission Blog: July 2009

Hello from Kaihura. Life has been pretty busy around here. Katie has begun a project this week of updating all of Bringing Hope to The Family's children profile folders. It is going to be a long process of gathering information and documentation for birth certificates, death certificates of parents, existing relatives and health records.

This past Monday I was in need of a photo of all the students GSM/KTA provide tuition assistance for. I asked BHTF’s director what she thought would be the best way of going about it. She told me to go to the school, find a teacher, get the kids out of class and take a photo. In my mind this idea was ridiculous. But, I went to the school and found the principal. And, sure enough, he sent all the students we needed out by grades to have their photos taken. In what other part of the world would this work. I am positive that if I tried this back in Mississippi I would be escorted of the premises. I love my job.

Today didn’t go as smooth. I had scheduled a meeting with an engineer to go look at a couple new possible sites to build wells. I and a BHTF staff member waited from 9 Am till 12:30PM for the engineer. And he never arrived. We gave up and the man arrived at 1:30. We rescheduled for Monday morning since while we waited for him it rained for over an hour. The dirt roads would now be far too muddy for motorcycles. But, that’s just part of life here in Africa. It’s called “African time,” and it’s real. But, it was no big deal. It gave me more time to socialize with staff members. Uganda is a very social community. They live a slow pace here where stopping in the middle of your day to chat with someone is perfectly normal, and at times thought rude if you don’t.

I hope you have a blessed week.

Chris

Students currently supported by Global Support Mission through our Know.Think.Act. program.

I just want to fill you all in on what has been going on here. We have been busy gathering information for current Know.Think.Act needs, as well as, investigating other possible needs that can benefit the communities here in Uganda.

This past week we went to look at two established chicken coups and one piggery. Bringing Hope to The Family currently has a piggery that they constructed fairly recently. We wanted to see other ideas that could help BHTF’s piggery be as successful as possible. The one we visited was still being expanded. It had a much larger enclosed area for the pigs to roam in. We liked the idea and are considering how to do the same here.

The two chicken coups were very different from each other, but both presented good ideas. The first one was a two story coup. It was constructed out of “local materials,” which is basically rough cutsof timber and tree branches. It seemed to be effective and was a great setup for someone without outside assistance. They are currently using the top story only. It houses 400 chickens, and they hope to construct the bottom story soon and fill it with another 400 chickens.

The second coup consisted offour single story brick buildings. The family who run this coup bake their own bricks and do all the construction themselves. They are also run the piggery we looked at. This chicken coup houses 900 chickens. It is a very impressive setup, but it takes up a lot of land to have single story buildings. We are currently looking at our options here in Kaihura, as well as other income generating ideas to see what will be the best investment.

The owner of the second chicken coup and the piggery is a man named Stephen. He is an inspiring man. He lived on his parent’s land, which was about one acre back in 2003. He noticed that there appeared to be good money in matooke, which is a type of banana. So, he planted about half an acre of matooke. As it produced, he saw that it was profitable. He bought a couple more acres next to his land and planted more. Later he went to visit a few chicken coup owners. He decided to try his hand at it. It has expanded so much that the president of Uganda has visited his site twice. He now has five acres of land and has added a piggery.

Stephen impressed me so much, because he didn’t let his impoverished state stop him, and he has a teachable spirit. He sought advice and went for it. He is now a very successful man and his family are well taken care of. No matter what our situation is I think we can learn a lot from Stephen.

Be blessed,

Chris Sasser