Volunteer

Would you like to volunteer at a Permaculture Food Security Project at a Primary School and Boarding House in rural Uganda?

To start ASAP, preferred length of stay 3-4 months.

This project has been going for close to a year (see
www.childrenofuganda-permaculture.blogspot.com) and is at an exciting stage of its evolution. Major infrastructure work has been done this year and the emphasis is moving to productive food growing and the establishment of a chicken system to feed the children.

You will be privileged to be part of a very special school community.

There are three permaculture volunteers and two other volunteers from
Australia and the US.

You must
• have experience in growing food in a tropical climate
• be resilient enough to cope with basic living conditions
• be strong and fit for work in the garden
• appreciate and enjoy the value of another culture
• be keen to have an adventure!
Clean, simple accommodation and all meals are provided at a cost of
US$25 per week.

Come and join us!

Responses to clivemullett@gmail.com

The Wet Season is Over

The Wet Season is over, the soil is rock hard again and the grasshopper-eating season is coming to an end. This Wet Season was generally regarded as unusual, intermittent, short, but it did at least fill all our water tanks, so we start the Dry Season with 90,000+ litres, of which the garden and fruit trees can claim about 70,000. It will be interesting to see how useful that volume proves to be, and just how systematic and careful we will need to be in our usage.

We ordered 70 day-old chickens a couple of days ago and hope to take delivery soon, by which time our chicken house and brooder will be ready to receive them…this is an exciting, nerve-wracking time and it will be great to have some little animals to look after. We have been planting vegetables and medicinal herbs around the Strawyards to aid in the chooks’ diet. They will lay 200+ eggs per week (we hope), enabling a valuable improvement in the kids diet. Thanks Permaculture North for your generous donation which has paid for the construction of the new shed!!

The almost-completed chicken house & strawyards

We (Kim and Clive) have also reached a milestone with the bandas (volunteer and visitor accommodation) and will be moving into the small Banda this weekend, after 6 months living in a room in the Presbytery next to the School. We hope to start a week-long housewarming party involving lots of pancakes, cups of tea and coffee, roasted G-nuts and cookies...

John Bosco & Bukenya in front of the almost-completed small Banda

The large banda, to accommodate up to 8 people at a time, is also underway, here is a shot of the roofing truss in progress.

The new Large Vegetable Garden is proving to be the major challenge at the moment with a shortage of labour being a real constraint. So, we have posted a volunteer opportunity for someone to join us who has experience in growing food in the tropics .. if you know anyone, please put them in touch with us. Currently the staff are fed vegetables everyday and the children twice a week (and we would obviously like to make this 7 days a week). We have been building a covered compost structure over the last month or so, and this is becoming a critical item to complete, as uncovered compost just doesn’t seem to work well – either it rains hard and soaks it, or the hot sun bakes it.

A welcome addition to the Sabina team recently has been Rico, assisting the school in a number of ways but also a keen member of our permaculture team when he is available. Here he is (in red) with John Bosco (in yellow), Andrew (kneeling) and Samuel assisting with watering of the fruit trees in the evening...Rico has agreed to help us out with that important task a few times each week.

We’ve enjoyed watching the children as they practice their singing and dancing for Education Week which began last Sunday. Usually Sabina does well in this competition and we will be cheering them along as they compete. Hope these pictures give you a sense of the colour and fun …

Wereba Mukwano

On May 30^th we farewelled Mike Cloutier after around 8 months volunteering at Sabina. Mike will be remembered for his tireless commitment to planting and nurturing 180 fruit trees (mango, avocado, mulberry, loquat, custard apple, tangerine, pomegranate, Indian water berry, jackfruit, guava…) and for the friendships he developed with many of the children, who will miss him.

Mike joined the project in late 2008 as Dan and Amanda prepared to depart, and held down the role of Project Manager until January, then continued as a volunteer, also helping another project part-time. Mike was a smiling face in the dining area and was known for long late-night reading stints, as well as being prepared to eat ‘anything’.

Mike is travelling home to Canada via England, then he plans an extensive trip into the Arctic Circle, before he settles down to a steady job and raises a family (just kidding Mike).

Best wishes for your future permaculture projects and thanks for volunteering with us.

Thanks for the tanks!

The tanks have completely filled during the recent rainy season and are providing water for the vegetable gardens that give our children the most nutritious meals they have ever eaten, as well as drinking and bathing water. We expect to have enough water in the tanks to get us through the dry months that precede the next rainy season in February. Thank you MIMN for helping us achieve water sovereignty!

May update from Kim & Clive

We’re back from a happy, refreshing two-week holiday with our daughter (Claire) who came over from Australia to visit us. We went to Nairobi, The Serengeti National Park, Ngorongoro Crater and Jinja in Eastern Uganda (for some white water rafting). East Africa is a fabulous part of the world for an adventure holiday! Claire also visited Sabina School to meet some of the school community (although many of the children are away during holiday time), and to see the project here.
Sharon – Nyero – Kim – Charles – Claire – Bukenya – Irene (with the volunteer accommodation ‘Bandas’ in the background).

Work didn’t stop at Sabina while we were away ... Bukenya did a sterling job overseeing all the construction work while we were away. Our good mates, Charles and Nyero, have almost completed the construction of the strawyards for the new chicken system. Sharon and Irene (also ex-Sabina School children, now at Mbuye Farm School) did a lot of good work in the Mandala garden. What a great holiday permaculture team we have!

Construction of the new Chicken House is almost completed except for a bit of carpentry work, the verandah, the separate small brooder strawyard and the final rendering of the walls. The main strawyards are just a few days away from being finished and Kim has already starting to prepare the ground to plant food and herbs for the chickens (when they arrive).


Charles and Nyero proving the strength of the strawyard frame they’ve constructed! (Clive and John, our Contractor, in the background).

Nyero attaching chicken wire to the strawyard frame.

The new ‘hero’ of the permaculture project is John, our Contractor! He had a nasty motorbike accident while we were away, spent a couple of days in hospital and then, in typical no-nonsense-Ugandan-style, came back to work with a badly swollen face and a lot of bruising. John, you’re amazing and we’re very glad you’re on the job.

The 1st Banda, to accommodate a couple (This year, Clive and Kim). The indispensable Bukenya standing in the doorway.

The 2nd Banda, divided into quarters to accommodate 4 people (or 8 in bunk-beds)

A holiday snap .. Clive, Kim, Claire standing on the edge of Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania

End-of-March update from Clive, Kim and Carl

We’re thoroughly enjoying life here – happy to respond to any/all of the following greetings - “Auntie Kim/Uncle Clive”; “Jaaja”(Gran); “Auntie Nakato”(Female Twin); Grandpa (or “Grand” as Charles calls us). We’re trying to improve our panga (machete) and hoe skills, two tools unknown to us before we arrived here. “Be patient” is Nyero’s advice to us. We now know who cooks the best pancakes in Ssanje village (made with bananas and cassava flour); what the usual price is for pineapples and bananas and how to charm our way through a Police roadblock - all essential life skills in rural Uganda. Kim has had her first boda-boda (motorcycle) ride and driven a local taxi with seven other adults in the car. Clive has bought an African-style shirt and had his first Ugandan beer in Kyotera (Mike congratulated him on finally acting like an Ozzie).
A few weeks ago we purchased a large quantity of tools for use by the Agricultural classes and by the Boarding School students after school and on the weekends. Bukenya is converting the unused Canteen into a new toolshed for secure housing of the tools.

Kim with Dembe (the man-who-knows-everything-we-need-to-know) & Jude (Agricultural Teacher) with the new tools, painted and numbered for easy identification.

The four water tanks are connected to the gutters and have started to collect rainwater! The contractor, John, is going to build some security fences around the three tanks at the school and the Agricultural Classes have dug the ditches for the pipes to connect the tanks to the Large Vegetable Garden.



We’re settling into a good programme of working with the children in the garden – each evening after school, for a few hours on Saturday morning, and for three sessions per week with the Agricultural Classes.

Carl doing the strenuous work of instruction as the Ag class prepares a ‘nursery’ bed for propagation.

Work has begun on the new Chicken House which will eventually be home for 60 layer hens, providing eggs for the children’s diet. Kim is looking forward to having some little animals to nurture but Clive has insisted that she stop short of naming each one. The “Chook House” will have two main rooms for the hens (with attached Straw Yards), a storage room, a Brooder area to raise young chicks and a Sick Bay to quickly isolate sick birds. Carl has volunteered to test out the accommodation before the poultry arrives by moving his bed into one of the rooms (he figures it will be quieter there than next to the boys dorm where he usually sleeps).




A few more photos ...
Is Nyero smiling or grimacing in pain after his thumb got in the way of a panga? (He’s wrapped it in banana leaf)

Charles cooling down with a passionfruit drink after a hot day in the garden

Three of our constant companions in the garden .. Anthony, Innocent and Rona

Report back: Uganda's First Permablitz!

Uganda Permablitz #1 was held on February 28th at the home of Mathias and Ted and their four children, in the village of Ssanje. Ssanje is less than one kilometre from Sabina School and Boarding Home, where Clive and Kim are spending a year on a permaculture project. The day was made possible initially by Luke, a local School Teacher who had attended Dick Copeman’s (Brisbane City Farm) workshop at Sabina in late 2008. Luke connected with Kim one day walking in the village, and the idea of a Permablitz to help maintain momentum after Dick’s departure was born. We hope to have another 5 or 6 during the course of the year.

Before the blitz, our host Mathias working through the plan for the day with Kim. Mathias is already a skilled gardener/farmer, with chickens, cows, goats, bananas, maize in place, but precious little in the way of vegetables. His interest and quick understanding were evident from the questions he asked and the close attention he paid to everything that was happening


One of Mathias’ children, on the Ugandan ‘one-size-fits-all’ bicycle that he is quite able to ride as shown here. A group of kids stayed with us for the whole day, fascinated by the muzungus (white people) and the work being done, and especially by the camera.

More people arrived, including our Sabina volunteer Carl, and some neighbours, including Mathias’ sister Josephine, a qualified lawyer, who lives next door. Some of the neighbours had limited English, so Luke acted as an interpreter whenever Kim spoke. We had the involvement of some current and past Sabina School students, who also assisted with communication.

Work started with some clearing of the site, and collecting of materials like that wheelbarrow full of cow dung that Mathias had been drying out over the last few weeks or so since we first planned this day.

And that banana tree had to go. The site chosen was a gently sloping part of the front garden, covered before we started with leaf litter and twigs and the odd banana leaf. We cleared it initially to get a better view of the dips and humps we were facing, and also to help us get rid of some major roots and other obstacles.

Beds and swale-paths starting to take shape, with the help of an A-frame, and all the volunteer labour and sharing of tools. The work was completed in about 3.5 hours.

Planting – carrots, eggplant, green pepper, silverbeet, beans, zucchini, tomato (and some comfrey around the corner near the chook shed)

Happy family at day’s end, with Luke our co-organiser on the right. As we mostly planted seeds direct, not much immediately to show for our work, but we shall take more pics in a few weeks, hopefully showing a productive vegetable garden.

PS. It rained during the night of the Permablitz (as we suspected it might) .. so we applied mulch material the next day.

Cheers,
Kim and Clive