Vegetable Growing with KIDO

Praise God for rain!  Now that it has started raining relatively frequently, the KIDO staff have started programs involving planting in the communities.  I have had the opportunity to go with KIDO staff to several communities for some practical trainings.  The theoretical, classroom trainings are now being put into practice.

One of the trainings was on vegetable nursery bed production.  Nursery beds were something new to me.  I am used to starting seeds inside in the winter and then transplanting them outside once it gets warmer.  It turns out that nursery beds are kind of the same idea.  You start seeds in a safe, well-tended location, then transplant them into the garden once they get to a decent size.  

First, we cleared the space for the nursery beds.  These little girls really wanted to help out with this tiny hoe.  It was intended for adults, but it really was their size.

 

After clearing the area, it is important to measure out the bed with nice, straight lines.  It needs to be a width that isn't so wide that you would step on the bed to water or weed.

I learned some useful techniques for making measurements without a ruler.

After smoothing out the soil, they burned leaves and grass to help sterilize the soil from some insect pests.

  
Next, we marked out careful lines and planted the seeds at the proper spacing.  
 

Then, you use bricks around the edge of the bed to keep the soil from washing away in the rain.  
 

Or, if you don't have bricks, you can use whatever you have, like banana stalks.

 

At another training, we used conservation agriculture methods to plant beans and maize.  One of the important aspects of conservation agriculture is planting in rows.  This makes it easier to weed and gives the plants the right amount of space to grow strong and healthy.

We did some different things for the maize and the beans.  With the maize, the farmers are planting mucuna, a green manure, in between the rows of maize, after the maize germinates.  Mucuna grows very quickly and will cover the soil, helping prevent erosion and keeping the soil moist.  It also adds nutrients to the soil and will provide mulch and organic matter when the plants are cut at the end of the season.

With the beans, the farmers are going to put mulch in between the rows of beans after the beans germinate.  This is for pretty much the same reasons as the mucuna.

 

After one of the trainings, the farmers fed all of us from KIDO a lunch.  They wanted to take a picture of us in which I was eating.  This is what they got:

June Prayer Letter

Enjoy reading our Uganda June 2014 Prayer Letter.  Thank you for your prayers.

Sara's Garden

While I waited for KIDO planting projects to begin, I got my gardening fix in our own yard.

Here are the humble beginnings of the garden beds:

This being a hot, tropical place, things got growing very quickly:

And now, Anthony and I don't have to buy any greens at all.  We can eat all we want from my garden!

Here you can see some local greens (malakwang - related to okra), sweet potatoes, and sunflowers.

There is also grain amaranth, egusi melon, okra, tomatoes, onions, jackbeans, cowpeas, pigeon peas, lima beans, cucumbers, roselle, collard greens, and carrots.

And don't forget the luffa, lablab, tepary beans, winged beans, malabar spinach, peppers, and liana beans.  I think that is everything for now.

The fence became necessary after the chickens decided that everything in the garden was worth eating...

Also, a blog post just wouldn't be complete without a few animal pictures.

Like Lokey the goat trying to eat a mango whole (goats only have front teeth on their bottom jaw, so you can imagine how tricky this would be - hence the crazed goat eyes).

Partner's Forum

Last week we were a bit out of our routine in that we were in Kampala the whole week for World Renew Team planning meetings, and a Partner's Forum.  The meetings were a good chance for us to get to know the staff better and learn more about how World Renew works.

The Partner's Forum is a gathering that World Renew puts on for all of its partner organizations.  The bulk of the time was spent on training the partner staff.  The theme this time was accountability, governance, and accounting, and the teaching was very well done.  It was educational, but Sara and I are both glad we are not accountants!  God gives us each different gifts. 

There was also time for each organization to give a presentation about the development work they are doing in their communities.  All of World Renew's partners right now are church organizations connected with PAG (Pentecostal Assemblies of God) or Church of Uganda (Anglican).  Here is a photo of KIDO's presentation.  Remember that KIDO is the partner organization of World Renew that we work with the most. 

Here is Simon Opolot, the manager of KIDO.  He is a good friend and we have the opportunity to work with him regularly.

After the partner presentations, Sara had the impromptu idea to give a presentation about how to make presentations.  She showed the good and bad ways to use PowerPoint (such as don't fill a slide with 400 words, the exact words you are going to say).  It was short and fun and we heard from many people that they learned a lot from it.  It's funny how it can be so helpful to teach about things that we take for granted that people know.  We grew up using PowerPoint all the time for school, but that is not the case for most people in Uganda.

At the end of the forum, we were able to play our Bible trivia game with some of the World Renew staff and members from other organizations.  I was the host asking the questions, and it was the women versus the men.  The women handily won both games we played even though there were more people on the men's team.  Come on men, we need to get into our Bibles!