Bountiful Butula

the green grams coming up.

Back to the world of internet from the most inspiring and rewarding part of my trip this far. For the last two and half weeks I've been working with Seven Ravens (who I worked with on Salt Spring) at schools in Butula (near the Ugandan border) developing a permaculture landscape and establishing tree nurseries.

The main project was at Buduma primary school where we worked with the students, teachers and parents to transform their school into a food producing, incoming generating piece of land for the future. And it wasn't taking long. By the time we left trees in the nursery were coming up, the green grams (similar to lentils) were 3 inches tall, the ponds were full and the community was inspired.

banana in a swale.

We worked at two of the schools that Seven Ravens Africa had worked at before doing similar projects to get them up to speed after facing challenges such as corruption and embezzlement. A board of directors was also elected during this time to ensure that they would not run in to the same problems they had in the past and to ensure that the children would this time benefit from the food grown on the school grounds.

I cannot explain how inspiring this project was. Everyday the permaculture team would come out and work with us all day. Community members would come out for the day to help, including a man of about 85 who joined us everyday and stood as a great role model to all of us. The project went faster than expected due to the involvement of these community members and gave us hope that this project would succeed above all expectations.

some of our permaculture team.

Close to the end of the visit, we met with five boys who had worked with Seven Ravens at the initial project site, Bukate Primary School. We went to two of these boys houses and saw what they had transformed their shamba (their land) into. They had tree nurseries, banana pits, intercropped vegetables (with no maize...yay!), fish ponds, swales and an abundant amount of food produced without chemicals. It was amazing at what these boys of 16 or so had accomplished based on Seven Raven's influence and work at their school. One of these boys had actually made 300,000 shillings (about $3,000) just last year in tree seedling sales from his nursery. In a part of the world that struggles to make 200 shillings a day, this was phenomenal news. We were all left speechless at the hard work and determination of these boys to make a better life for themselves and their families. It makes the challenges and work worth it to see these types of outcomes.

team tree nursery!

the beginnings of a food forest.