By Anthony:
The last 4-5 months have included a lot of fun watching and holding chameleons. Most Ugandans think chameleons are poisonous and kill them. Or they dislike them because of the funny way that they move and their ability to change color. We told friends and neighbors that we would love it if they would take the chameleons to our garden rather than killing them. People started bringing them over. One week we had someone bring us a chameleon every day. Thankfully it has stopped, because it was getting to be a bit much after 20-30 chameleons! I'm encouraged to know that they are not endangered in our area even with people killing them.
Our yard is about 1/2 acre, and we have a brick wall, so it's possible most of them are still here, but we think some of them have probably moved off, which is fine. They are really hard to find even though there are many. They blend into the garden plants and trees so well. But so far for almost every visitor we have had, we have been able to go around looking for them and find at least one chameleon for the visitor to hold.
My fish pond has been a big project and has nothing at all to do with ministry here. It is just something fun I wanted to do. Since my childhood, I always wished to have a fish pond. Now, I will be able to fish for some of our suppers, and I also look forward to giving fish to a lot of friends, visitors, and neighbors. Some people rarely buy meat or fish because of the expense, so I expect it will be a great gift to people.
The last time I shared photos of the pond it was only of the beginning stages of digging. Here are photos from the digging being completed. I wanted it to be 2 meters deep, but we could not do so. It was far too rocky in the ground to go that deep. After a few inches of soil, it was all just rock, clay, and stone. It was incredibly difficult to dig. Therefore, we stopped at 1.5 meters deep. Then we heaped a hill around the sides for the last 1/2 meter. So overall it will be two meters deep, but you climb a slight rise to get to the edge of the pond.
The installation was included with the price of the plastic lining. They had to lay down strips of the heavy plastic and use a special melting tool to merge the sheets of plastic together. It's very thick and sturdy plastic. We are in such a hot and dry area that plastic is required or the water would not stay.
We are filling it so far with just rain water. During dry seasons I may top it off with tap water. There is a tap near the pond and we have a hose. Hopefully I will never have to do that, though. Rain water is working well so far.
The number of snails concerned me, especially since snails here can carry schistosomiasis (bilharzia), which is a nasty parasite that can come out into the water from snails, and then enter your skin, and cause you massive health problems. I did some tests that a doctor in Kampala told me to try, and it seems my snails do not carry this parasite, for which I am very thankful. And because no humans will be pooping in the water who are already infected (nor pooping in it at all!), my pond will never get infected. I may do some more tests later again just to be sure we didn't transport bad snails with the water plants.
We also connected some lights to the solar panel so that insects will come at night and hopefully the fish can eat them. This is more or less what it looks like now, but we have gotten a lot of rain lately, so it's now higher than this.
- Adding more plants to keep the algae in the water down
- Building a duck dock, so that the ducks can be invited to the pond. They need an easier way to get in and out so they don't get stuck.