A hot cup of coffee

Coffee grows in the gardens round here, and up the hillsides to 6,000 ft, as in this photo. When the berries turn ripe they are hand –picked, and dried out in the sun in front of the house. The beans are then husked by hand, and sold to our village agent at £1 per kilo. At the factory they are roasted, blended, and packaged to sell at £4 per kilo – a great cup of coffee!

Water-supply-project handover ceremony

All day yesterday Helen and I stood in as co-representing the US, Dutch and British sponsors of two multi-thousand-$ 3-year projects, providing clean mountain water to 5,000 people in our region. Kagando hospital’s rural-development-wing made the pipelines 18 and 31km in length, with a tap provided every km.

There was tremendous appreciation shown at each of the 3 locations we stopped at, with speeches, dancing, drama, presentation of certificates, prizes, and gifts (3 goats changed hands), and finally a meal for 500 people. The excitement level was greatly enhanced by the presence of the Ugandan Minister of Defense (with almost no security, despite current disturbances in Kampala). A great day was had by all!

Lukonzo & moving in

Lukonzo language has lots of ‘mawanasueruhoro’ sort of sounds in it with a lot of rules on everything agreeing together (not as bad as Arabic), so we are thankful for our good language helper John, the electrician, and our dictaphone and notebook. With these and many hours spent this week with stallkeepers and villagers we have become conversant with 30 phrases of greetings and basic questions. We hope to continue intense study for another 5 weeks.

Prior to moving into our attractive but partly furnished semi-detached 2-bed bungalow we visited Kasese 40km away to buy a few basics to cook with (also bought a 4kg pawpaw for 60p). On entry yesterday we found that full furnishings had all been boxed away out of sight, and we didn’t need anything! Wonderful.