Safe Harbor Midigo

I spent the last week way up in the northwestern corner of Uganda.  We were only a couple miles away from the Sudanese border (but unfortunately, didn’t have the chance to go find the border and step across it).  Last time I went to this project site, it was a “quick” 10 hour trip.  This time it took us 14 hours, PLUS we left pretty late and took an hour lunch break, so needless to say, it was a very long day.  (We started packing up the van at 6am, and reached our destination at 9:45pm!)  But we made it safely and had an excellent and productive week.

This was a pretty exciting project to work on.  Safe Harbor Midigo has a great ministry to the scattered villages in the area.  We stayed on a 1-acre compound with the rest of the local staff, about 20 minutes outside of the small town of Midigo.  The ministry is run by a couple who are both doctors, and the husband is also the pastor of the church they have planted in Midigo.  The area is predominantly Muslim and also has a high index of poverty.  Safe Harbor runs the only hospital in the area (the pastor and his wife are the only doctors), providing a much-needed service to the community.  (The next-nearest hospital is about an hour away by car, and a car ride is hard to come by or afford for most people who live and farm in the area.)  Safe Harbor has also started a Christian primary school.  Many Muslims have also sent their kids to this school, recognizing that it offers better education than the public schools in the area.  Right now they only have Kindergarten and 1st grade, but they are expanding one year at a time and hope to eventually have a secondary (high school) boarding school, since there are none in the immediate area.

Our project was to design a farm and farm processing buildings for the 110-acres they have.  Their vision is to use this farm to teach better farming practices to the local community, to provide more jobs for the community, to provide a local corn processing plant for local farmers, and particularly to provide an income so that their hospital, church, and school can become more self-sustaining and less dependent on outside aid.  In addition to our team of 10 architects and engineers, Safe Harbor sent their Director of International Development and a business consultant, and they found a Ugandan agricultural engineer to join us, all of which helped provide better insight on what crops and services would make the farm most profitable and helpful to the community.  Usually farms like this are designed based on space and traditional crops without much strategic planning involved, so it was pretty amazing to have a professional business consultant working with Safe Harbor to conduct market research in the area and analyze various business plans to make the farm as efficient and productive as possible.

A little insight into what I do: My role was to assist the two civil engineers on our team.  We investigated water sources for the farm (which will include new housing, chicken coops that will house 5000 chickens, and ponds for a fish farm), figured out how much water everything would need, and tested the various water sources.  Safe Harbor has 2 properties: 40 acres surrounding the compound where we stayed and 70 acres a couple miles away.  I really enjoyed tromping around on the 70-acre property, out in the middle of the “African bush.”  We got a bunch of local men to slash through the 5-10-foot tall grass and clear us pathways around the border and along a stream that ran through the middle of the property.  We tromped our way along the stream and found several ponds, which gave us a good indication that fish ponds would work well in the area.  The chicken coops will have really large roofs, so we decided that we could provide enough water for the chickens during all but the short dry season, by collecting rainwater off the roofs.  The compound currently has a borehole well that they pump with a generator.  We are recommending that they install a solar pump so that the water can be pumped all day long just through the use of solar power.  Most of the compound and many buildings in Midigo town are currently running just on solar power, which is pretty cool.  It saves them a lot of money in diesel costs.

We also had two structural engineers who spent the whole week surveying the two properties, which is critical to our being able to design the site properly.  It was also fun to see what the architects and mechanical engineer came up with for all the crop processing and storage buildings and worker housing.  Basically, I do the “boring” but important part of figuring out where the water is coming from, how big water tanks should be, and how to dispose of the wastewater, while the architects to the “glamorous” part of making the site functional and attractive.  =)

Another really neat aspect to this trip was that we lived in a compound with a lot of the local staff, so we had many opportunities to interact with the Ugandans who serve in the ministry.  We also had excellent food prepared by their full-time cook.  It seemed like every day they were slaughtering a new animal for us: chickens, a goat, a pig, and for our last night, a turkey.  A couple of our teammates had the chance to kill the turkey and a rooster.  I think we had at least two different meats at each lunch and dinner!  And pancakes every morning for breakfast, served with their local honey!

The EMI team with the Safe Harbor Midigo staff:

 

We brought a bunch of balloons to play with the kids after church on Sunday:

On the way back from the project trip, we split the 14-hour drive in two and spent one night at a game reserve (i.e., we went on a short safari).  We had a game drive in the evening and saw elephants, giraffe, buffalo, hartebeest, etc.  Then in the morning, we took a boat ride along the Nile (and saw lots of hippos and some crocodiles) up to a large waterfall, where we disembarked.  We then hiked up to the top of the falls, surrounded by breath-taking views of the falls, the river, and nature exploding with God’s beauty.

 

 

 The pictures above are of Murchison Falls and of the Victoria Nile as it flows into Lake Albert. 


Also, I thought I'd finally post a photo of my awesome new fellow interns: Dan, Jonathan, & Daniel

Leaving for Midigo

I'm leaving at 6am this morning for a 10 hour car ride to Midigo, way in the NW corner of Uganda.  I will be there for a week and a half with a team of 10 people working to design their a farm and agricultural processing facilities for Safe Harbor Midigo.

Loaves & Fishes

Saturday, I tried my hand at another homemade bread project.  This one turned out much better than the last (actually edible!), although still not as good as I had imagined.  I made those dinner rolls that you bake next to each other in a large pan so that they end up square on the sides (you know what I mean?), and it took 5 hours! But this project was much easier and less discouraging than the last.  =)

Yesterday, we went on a field trip as research for our upcoming project trip.  We visited a government research fish pond facility.  They were under renovations, as the Chinese government is funding the expansion of their facility.  I didn't really understand what the point of fish ponds were before, but it's basically like having a wheat farm or something, but "growing" fish.  Since people like to eat fish, fish farms can be quite profitable, especially in areas of Uganda that aren't near a large lake.  You buy the fish as "fingerlings," then feed them, and grow them until they're big enough to sell in the markets.  Since it can be done on a relatively small scale, this can be an important source of income for Ugandan families in rural areas.  The research facility is trying to learn new techniques and to be an example to help improve the profitability of small fish farms.  They are also starting to manufacture their own fish feed.  They are hoping that producing more feed will eventually reduce its price, making it cheaper for Ugandans to raise and to buy fish.  It was pretty neat to walk around their facility and see the low-tech, but high-quality, example fish ponds that they have.  The ministry we'll be working with on our project trip is thinking about installing fish ponds on their farm, so we'll get to help design them.

Last night we had EMI girls night, which means me, Janet, and the wives of the 3 male staff.  We had chocolate fondue and had a good time of sharing and hanging out.  I'm glad that I'm starting to get to know the EMI families a little better, so that I feel like I have a little more of a family here than just my fellow interns and roommates (which feels a little like college - but I do love them!)

Tonight we're making fish tacos!  (I just paid $3 for a little brick of cheddar cheese that I know won't be as good as the cheese back home.  Oh well, I'll still enjoy the luxury!)

Utilities

Doh!  The power just went out.  Fortunately, the internet still works.  It's a pretty funny scene in our apartment, I have to say.  Six of us are sitting around the dark living room, each on our own laptops, using the internet...all while the power is off.  Ah, roughing it in Africa!

Hail!

Today we had a HUGE rainstorm that actually included HAIL!  Who would have thought it could hail in Uganda!?!?  Then I spent a while helping mop up all the puddles in our apartment and take sheets off of wet mattresses....oh well.  =)  I love how the rain instantly cools off the weather here, and I'm glad we're already getting back into rainy season!  (Says the Seattle-ite.)