Waiting!

I’m sitting in Amsterdam airport waiting …and waiting for the flight to Boston. Unfortunately, there is a 6 hour layover here, which is the last thing you want on a long journey home!

Ted and I had a very enjoyable day in Kampala yesterday. We had three significant appointments and actually completed two of them, and the third was cancelled because of a bus breakdown some 230 Km’s away. As I said to Ted that’s like going 2 for 2 with a walk! Hall of Fame stuff.

Actually it was a lot more complex than that and might give a little insight into working here. It’s all about the complexity of life and the value of time, and waiting!

I stayed in a very modest hotel in the center of Kampala. In addition to being cheap (you know me!), it is right across the road from the luxurious Sheraton, so we set our appointments in the Sheraton Lounge. The tea and sodas are expensive, but it makes for a cheap office!!

Our first appointment was at 9AM in the same Sheraton Lounge. Ted and I were dutifully sitting there at 9 in ties no less! 9:15 - no guest. At 9:20 I texted him (preferred method of communication in Uganda) but no reply. At 9:30 I tried to call. No reply. We needed to leave for our next appointment at 11, so we decided just to stay there and do some of our own work together. Then at 10:30 I got a text message that he was still 230 km’s from Kampala and would not be able to make our meeting! We left it that he would call later in the day of he got in (he didn’t).

We set off at 11 for our next meeting at 12. We allowed an hour because we had to get across town and the journey either takes 20 minutes or 1 hour plus. Well today it took 20 minutes, so at a little after 11:25 I was talking to the receptionist from the guardhouse where we were being screened by security. The conversation went something like: “I’m here for my appointment. What time is you appointment? 12. Then why are you here so early? Because we were unsure about the traffic. But you are early. I know but we didn’t want to be late. But your appointment is not till 12. Could we wait till the meeting in the reception area. But you are too early. I know but we’ve come all the way from America (I was getting pathetic now!)” Eventually the lady relented and we were let in to the facility. As it turned out the meeting started early and finished on time, so it worked out well.

Then back to the Sheraton for our 3pm meeting, after stopping in some retail stores to look at prices, particularly food prices on products that we are developing in Arua.

The waitress at the Sheraton is amused that we are back. Then we wait … and wait. The same process of texting and calling. No result. At 4:30 Ted and I declare defeat and head into the lovely Sheraton grounds for some time of devotion surrounded by glorious trees and shrubs and the ugliest birds in the world – Marabou Storks! This from the National Zoo website : "To the casual observer the massive Marabou Stork with its balding, scabby head and pendulous pink air sac may appear to be one of the ugliest creatures in the world." Yes!

At 5:30 we get a call from our guest asking if we are still at the Sheraton and can we meet. Of course! The truth is that he also has a perfectly legitimate excuse for lateness and was in a place where he couldn’t use his phone. We have a perfectly wonderful meeting with him, and as we end, he asks us to pray for him, right there and then in the middle of the bar/lounge, even though he is a well known public figure! We were so happy to do so.

Hopefully this gives some idea of life in Kampala and other places within Uganda. There is a give and take necessary because there are so many variables that impact life. Don’t forget the day before I had been delayed for over 2 hours because of rain! But life hgere just involves waiting and patience.

Incidentally the meetings were excellent and very productive.

We had a little time to spare, so we went to see Ted’s friend, and an ex King’s College staff member, who was coaching the Uganda Christian University Lady Canons basketball team. They were in the finals of the university tournament. They were already up 2-0 in the best of 7 series, and won the this third game too, though they were down 2 points with 3 minutes left. The game was played with great spirit at an open-air cement court at the YMCA, with 500-600 fans, hot dog vendors and all the trimmings!

A fun experience!

Well back to reality here in Amsterdam - waiting!

The Deluge

This morning I said goodbye to Arua. It has been a busy but productive 7 days. Blasio and Samson accompanied me to the airport for an 11AM flight. We arrived a little before 10, only to find that the plane was waiting for us to take-off! We were going to fly to Yei in S. Sudan, drop off some folks and then return over Arua to Kampala. One has to be a little flexible in travel! I have been through yei before. It is a small airstrip well away from the town. It has a single grass airstrip. In fact in a single journey I experienced, grass, dirt and tarmac landing strips! Luckily, Eagle air was very efficient and had us turned around in 10 minutes and had us in Kampala almost on time.

Our regular driver, Charles , was there to meet me and take me to Mercy Junior School along the Entebbe/Kampala Road. Unfortunately when we got to the small side road that leads to the church it was closed for road repairs. We had to walk with my suitcase to the church, to the amusement of all the locals. There has been loads of rain in Kampala and the red mud was a sloppy clay mix. Anyway we made it to the church and spent time with Pastor Joseph, Dennis the new Head teacher and Prossy who has been running the school since its inception. They showed me the new construction and then we met in the small office to discuss future plans: More building, adding qualified teachers, enrollment and schoolroom materials and equipment.

I was noticing toward the end of the meeting that it was getting very dark fro 3:30 in the afternoon. (Kampala has power issues too and there were no lights). Then it happened – the rains came – and they came – for two hours straight. Now Mercy Junior School is built in a slum in a valley. When it rains everything flows downhill! We have spent a lot of time engineering the school to withstand water and rain. In some ways I had wondered why. Now I know. Within only a few minutes, there were raging torrents of muddy brown water running all around the school building. All of the ditches had become streams and the streams, rivers. In an Instant. And so it continued for over two hours. The good news was the school remained dry. The bad news was that I had no way out. There were puddles and mud everywhere, there were no cars anywhere and even if there were, they couldn’t get to us. I was experiencing that which had frustrated me so often – when it rains people don’t show up. I had a dinner meeting and I didn’t know how to get there.

Well the long and the short of the story was that Pastor Joseph was able to walk some way to a fellow Pastor who had a car and he was willing to take me to Kampala, if I could walk some way to where the car could get. It amused the locals no less to watch me pick my way out of the mud, following Dennis who was carrying my suitcase. Dr Livingstone I presume?! The two pastors took me to my hotel in the center of Kampala for which I was very grateful and so I made a contribution to his church!

This evening we had dinner with the folks from World Gospel Mission (WGM). Jonathan Mayo is an American, but was born in Burundi and has spent his life in Africa and wishes to spend the rest of it here too. I love hearing about all the things they are doing – church planting, pastor training, story telling, community health education and evangelism. The operation in Uganda is growing and they are making inroads into S Sudan and Congo as well. In addition they should take some credit for all the work we are doing, because the only reason I came to Uganda in the first place was to visit Victoria who was doing an internship with WGM in Kampala. As they say, the rest is history.

Blessings

Rush to Finish

A day that was left open turned out to be a little crazy.

One of the primary ways we are looking to help build the economy in Arua is to find ways to add a processing capability to the sector so that more value-add can be captured in the region. We continue to meet with folks with whom we might collaborate or in whom we might invest.

Today we started by meeting a UC Davis trained agricultural specialist who has spent the last 30 years working with Government and NGO’s but has realized that these efforts come to naught. Now she is working with village groups to try to improve agricultural practices. She has ten groups working with a portable water pump for irrigation (it looks like a Stairmaster with hoses attached!) and she has built a small cold storage facility at one village that is heavily involved in vegetables to try to reduce post harvest losses.

Next up was the Uganda Coffee Development Association officer for all West Nile. There is an abandoned coffee processing facility here in Arua (actually it didn’t process even one bean) and we are trying to work out whether we can make a commercial argument for its re-opening. He is a large scale coffee farmer himself and he was an absolute mine of information. It was a great briefing and I now know the process and the costs for taking the coffee cherry and turning it into “Parchment” and then the further processing necessary to produce the “green bean” which is ready for export. The margins appear thin on the part of the process that we have the machine for, so this might not go anywhere, but you never know!

In the afternoon I visited the Bishop of the Church of Uganda. The church has an ambitious plan to develop an office park in town. The projections are becoming more realistic all the time and the success of the project will depend on the stabilization of the Uganda Shilling and the opportunity to raise significant funds. I suspect money raising is going to be tough in this environment. We also talked about building the project in Phases, so that the activity can reflect the money that has been raised to date more exactly.

We then chased down our friend Ronald (Clinic) and provided him with a small loan to buy a generator to power the compressor for the dental chair; spent some time in Sylvia’s shop to see the new color printer and to talk about her progress – which is substantial and swung back to the hotel to meet with Bosco and Michael. They are in the honey business, are now old friends, and we talked about trying to form a regional cooperative of all the local honey producers and then creating a single brand with good volumes of honey. They are going to explore the idea with Mophat in Yumbe.

Finally dinner with Jake, a young American from the Boston area who is working at CAFECC as an intern. He will be here for 8 months, which is quite an adventure for an 18 year old!! After all the rice and beans and fatty meat he has been eating, I was able to provide Pizza – what a joy! He will also attend The King’s College in New York in the fall. Good Man!

Tonight is my last night here. I paid my bills and said my goodbyes. The staff here is so kind and they make me feel so at home!

Tomorrow the blog will be from the capital city – Kampala.

Goodbye Arua – till next time.

Sabbath in the Sun

What a privilege to preach God’s word! This morning I preached at the main service at the Cathedral in Arua. It has been Bible Week in the Church of Uganda and so I had been asked to preach on the Bible itself. I used two texts Mark 4:22-25 (“If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear”) and James 1:22-25 (But be doers of the word, and not hearers only). As I prepared for the sermon, God gave me the outline in a few minutes only and I was able to preach with confidence. I had many good comments afterwards and people said that I had challenged them. To God be the glory!
The church service is always pretty full – maybe 500-600 – and the whole experience is very special.

The day then comprised of meetings with two folks whose loans have fallen behind, but I think we managed to get on the right path with both. Unfortunately with a 30% inflation rate, late loans lose value quickly and leave less for others in the future.

I had a quiet afternoon reading in the garden at Slumberland. Although this is the beginning of the dry season it has been quite cool – 70 – 80 degrees and there have been a number of rain showers. We hope that this will mean that the dry season will not be as dry as normal. Because of the importance of agriculture here, everyone has an opinion about the weather and it is a regular topic of discussion.

In the late afternoon I taught a class at Makere University Continuing Education Program and gave my usual “grow Arua through business development” pitch. This was followed by a pretty long and good quality Q & A session.

Finally to dinner with Isaac and Sally Anguyo. Isaac has been one of the mainstays of our activities here and it was just good to have a quiet dinner together. Sally has Malaria so she was struggling a bit. It is amazing how the folks here deal with disease and just push on. Her medication is 9 pills from China for a cost of $4!! She will be feeling better within 24 hours.

Well I’m going to take a little Sabbath from the blog and finish here to get to bed for a very full day tomorrow. I hope that you all enjoyed your weekends.

Blessings

Outta My Way!!

George and Ted left for Kampala this morning, but not before an early morning meeting with Samson to talk through the terms of a new Mango Fund loan for him to buy significant quantities of rice and maize – over 40 tons. This for a man who had no working capital to buy rice three years ago! He has steadily increased his production each year, but this year represents a big increase in rice and a movement into maize for the first time. Input prices are edging up, which makes his business less profitable, but would you pray that he could acquire all his rice this month for less than 1000 shillings a kilo (about $0.40/kg)?

Blasio and I then left the airfield, having said goodbye with me driving a rented vehicle. It was a strange feeling having dropped someone off in a car and then getting back into town to go back to work. It seemed like I belonged here (don’t worry Gail – I am coming home as planned – you really wouldn’t like the insect life here!).

I promised to write about my driving. It’s quite an experience. Wrong side of the road, large potholes everywhere, or just dirt road, and congestion everywhere. There is a kind of pecking order from the curb to the center: pedestrians, then pedal cycles, then motorbikes, then cars, then lorries and finally buses that go wherever they want! This pecking order also reflects the relative speeds of the participants, so it is like a river with the fastest current in the middle. It’s also the pecking order for giving way. Its kind of like sail over power on the water, but more informal and is sometimes broken by a particularly aggressive person in any of the categories, which will cause a temporary disruption in the traffic and chaos and confusion will reign for a few seconds before order is restored. At first I was a problem because I was in the car “track”, but driving at bicycle speed. I was not popular! But soon I threw caution to the wind and went with the flow, after all I’ve driven in Paris, Rome and Boston. How hard could this be? At the end of two days driving we are still in one piece and you’d all be proud of my use of the horn sending motorbikes , bicycles and pedestrians all scurrying for safety, and equally proud of my avoidance maneuvers in the face of oncoming lorries and buses!

Later in the day I met with Mayor Charles Asiki. Charles is now in his second 5 year term and a great guy. Under his leadership, Arua has dramatically changed for the better. He has cleaned up the town, forced people to dig latrines rather than just relieving themselves everywhere, put road safety measures into effect and numerous other activities for the betterment of a quickly growing population. There are 60,000 inhabitants now, but estimates suggest that between 200 – 250,000 people come into town each week to bring wares for sale and make purchases! As a result of his leadership, there have been no cases of cholera for 4 years (there used to be upward of 500 and several deaths each year), and there have been no road deaths for over a year in town. Charles personally has seen 2 road deaths within 400 yards of his own office before he introduced “humps” to slow through traffic! We enjoy our conversations as we get each other up to speed on progress in our respective activities. Today we suggested a plan whereby he could substantially impact the economy of Arua by using his leadership position to encourage the citizens of Arua to buy Arua products. Most of the products sold in Arua come from Kampala. As they are bought here, cash from Arua goes to Kampala, leaving the local economy weakened. If we can begin to substitute local products we can staunch the flow of cash out of Arua and add to the size of the local economy. There are a whole series of very good local products, particularly food, but somehow the locals prefer to buy food from elsewhere. He was excited by the idea and wants to involve the C5 chairman (the governor of the district) in carrying the message to the citizens of Arua. A small change in buying habits could dramatically change the fortunes of the local economy and the local farmers in particular, who really struggle to survive!

This afternoon I had to myself, and I was excited that the Chelsea vs. Newcastle football match was on national television (I have been a Newcastle supporter all my life – its like being a Red Sox fan in the good old days before we won a World Series!). Unfortunately the hotel was repairing the generator – no TV. I drove the car around town and headed to the fancy new hotel – no TV as their generator was “resting”! And so the story went. If the match was on anywhere in town I couldn’t find it! Probably a good job as they lost 3 – 0 anyway!

I used the time instead to get measured for a “Shirtcoat” that one of our businesswomen insist that I should take back to the US as she is sure I will gather large numbers of orders when you all see me “styling”!

Well, I need to finish my sermon for tomorrow. I’m preaching at the early service at the Cathedral. I always find it a privilege to share God’s word and there is always a full house of people who are excited to worship God.

Blessings to all.

Sweet as Honey

I know we’re working hard when I have to look at my schedule to see what I did today!! As an aside (but an important one) it is really hard to do all the things we have to do in a day. As a result it is sometimes hard to get enough quiet time to pray for all the things that we are dealing with here. This is where we really appreciate your continued prayers on our behalf. We are lifted and protected by you and are only as productive as we are because of your prayer support. Thanks!!

So back to today – and my schedule!

I started the day with my friend Mophat Maffu. He is from Yumbe, some 40 miles north of Arua. He has been leading a revival of beekeeping in the region with the long time help of the CEO of Glory Bee foods in Oregon. The impact of honey on the region and Mophat’s story is told at http://www.beekeepersforchrist.com/BFC/MinistryLocations.html . Mophat’s own company Blessed Bee for Life has grown slowly but surely for the last 5 or more years. For some time now, I have been encouraging him to be more aggressive and to process significantly more honey and to be more active in marketing his product. I was delighted today when he let me know that his Board had agreed that this was the right approach and that they were looking to significantly increase production and sales in 2012. We might even get to make a loan to him to make this expansion possible. Exciting!

A couple of extra notes on honey. The Government has been trying to expand honey production for years by providing hives to the farmers. Unfortunately, as we so often see, when one get’s something for free it is often taken for granted and falls into ill-repair. Such has been the fate of many thousands of hives, retarding the potential production from the region. Mophat has devised a new approach – retrofitting the old traditional hives, that the farmers have used for years , with top bars that will make the old hives far more proficient. Less money – more production – a classic free market response (oops I guess I’m showing my economic bias here!). A second honey note: I will be shipping a box full of honey to Boston shortly to fulfill an order for “Follow the Honey” – a honey specialty store just outside Harvard square. I have met the owner Mary Canning, and she has an interest in selling honey from all over the world, particularly product that is from devastated areas or persecuted population groups. It’s a great place, I recommend a visit. Mary even has a live hive in the store!! http://followthehoney.com/

Other meetings were with Manasseh who is a major wholesaler of birds eye chili and is looking to create a chili processing facility in Arua; David Sharland, a missionary with the Anglican church who is an agricultural specialist and helps farmers find new and improved ways to plant and harvest; and CAFECC a Christian Micro-Finance company that is partnered with Peer Servants, based in Woburn MA (what a small world!).

Most of my evening has been spent working on my sermon for Sunday, when I will preach at the Cathedral. It is Bible week for the church and I have been asked to preach on the Bible. Fun!

Ted and George head back to Kampala tomorrow, but not before we have an 8AM meeting with Samson (our rice and maize miller) to finalize the new loan that will allow him to buy significantly increased amounts of both crops.

I’ll be sorry to see them go, but Blasio and I have plenty to do together in the coming days.

I had a first today – I drove in Africa, and survived, but more of that another day. Bed beckons!

Blessings and thanks to all.

A Reflective Time

Today has been a very reflective day in many ways. While we met a number of partners for ongoing discussions and looked at a couple of new opportunities, we also took the time to meet as a group and discuss some more strategic questions for the Mango Fund. Questions like: “What social impact are we trying to have and how can we measure it?” and “What is the role of faith in what we do?”. Mango Fund is still at an exploratory stage, but questions like these help us to frame our approach as we go forward.

I also look at Arua from a personal seed capital point of view, independent of Mango. God has clearly called me to build long-term relationships in this place and this is my fifth year of travelling here. I have come to see my role increasingly as a community development role, needing to look not only at business development, but also at the role of government, the church and education. For Arua to be successful it will need an adequate source of power, good roads and schools and a church that is promoting good stewardship among its flock. Along all of these dimensions, Arua has a long way to go. The community rarely has power, the road system is poor, the schools are poor driving more affluent Aruans to leave for Kampala and the church clings to old missionary doctrine that poverty is a preferred state.

There are times when I get discouraged. Am I really making a difference? We have tried to help a lot of want-to-be-entrepreneurs over the years, but most have fallen away. I have spent a day training 75 pastors on what the Bible really says about work, but are they teaching that or have they reverted to teaching that poverty is a blessed state and that business is evil? I have spent time with the politicians, but power is still scarce and the roads still atrocious.

But then God brings it all back into perspective as he did today in my last meeting of the day. Irene is a lively entrepreneur who has a custom dress shop with three tailors working full-time and an events planning business. She has been involved with my visits from the beginning. We always find time to meet and talk about her business. We are helping her with her cash flow management and helping to think through expansion plans. Her business has expanded substantially. We talked about further opportunities today. But it was at the end of the meeting that we started talking about what has happened over these 5 years. She brought great perspective to the conversation. She was very clear that the folks that had fallen away had only come with the hope of getting money. Not to build good sustainable businesses. We had been right not to work with them. Instead we have worked with about a dozen men and women that have clearly differentiable businesses that are growing and becoming more effective. This group of people have formed friendships among themselves and meet and help each other. She was clear that still more will come. Finally she said “Don’t give up, keep coming back and help us!” It was like a cup of water in the desert. The Holy Spirit knew I needed to hear affirmation like this, just at this time and he used Irene to deliver His message. That was all I needed to carry on.

Onward and upwards!

Thanks for all of your prayers.