There is soo much to do!

All those good ideas are giving us a wonderful and exiting vision for the future. Imagine such a place, where people work (hard) to make a living in good harmony and sharing resources and income mutually.
A place where young people in need find a shelter and a home where to start a meaningful life from and all this with income generated from the organic farm and eco-lodge and with support of national and international volunteers, guests, visitors, tourists, well-wishers!
A community build on values of co-operation, harmony, sustainability and sharing instead of materialism, consumerism and greed!

What a challenge to get going!

As I have been working for many years in various development projects the most obvious way forward was to make proposals, and look for funding with some organisations. But soon I realised that taking about alternative ways of living is actually not part of the vocabulary of development organisations. Moreover, these days the North of Uganda is attracting a lot of attention making it difficult to find funding for Kabale area. An one has to realise that many families only eat once a day, and have problems to find even firewood to cook their food!

So friends in the Netherlands have started a foundation to support our activities and some small funding is coming in.
The first development is to construct a proper ecological sound ECOsan toilet. (sqatting on a locally made pit latrine is not everyone's favoured way of .........) We would like to construct with ISSB Blocs, as these don't need burning of bricks and need less cement than conventional building.
Now we are looking for a way to get an ISSB press, either on a loan basis or maybe as a grant from someone who is not using it any more.

Other plans for the near future are to get a camping site going, build a shower with a safari heater, renovate one house as a kitchen and build housing for chicken en goats.

An than we need visitors to enjoy the place, help building it, bringing in ideas, know-how, strong arms, making PR; training in cooking, catering, bricklaying, organic farming or permaculture ....................., and last but not least learn something from and about Africa and having a lots of fun.


After a good night sleep, a visitor comes out of our tent!

Visitors enjoying a canoe ride!

So lets put hands together and get this place going:

Even the kids from the neighbourhood enjoy some holiday work (collecting stones form surrounding fields) and to earn some pocket money for Christmas.

Amasiko in 2008

After buying our first piece of land many things happened. Neighbouring farmers offered us some more plots for sale and slowly we managed to buy 11 other pieces of land now totalling to one ha.

The initiators came together with some supportive friends (2 prominent business people from Kabale, one social worker, one Community Development Facilitator) and registered an Association. A lawyer is contracted for advice and help with all legal matters such as membership, landownership etc.

And work at the site has started:
A farm manager, a young woman trained in agriculture, is permanent at the site. She develops erosion control measures, vegetable gardens, plants (fruit) trees and takes care of some small livestock. She has a female helper who gets training in sustainable farming. Once a while youth from the surrounding communities come for some training.

Learning how to plant leguminous scrubs along contours to control erosion and as fodder

At the same time, ideas continue to evolve and we expect the whole project to grow organically. So far a few things are agreed upon:

Amasiko has to become an alternative community, living on an ecological farm where young people in need can get a shelter, training, healing and hope for a better future. Training gives them skills in sustainable agriculture and eco-tourism such that they can become self-reliant entrepreneurs who take their knowledge back to rural communities.
The centre has to be self-sufficient, producing organic agricultural foodstuffs for home consumption and sales. Also the eco-farm has some accommodation for visitors and opportunities for a relaxed vacation, as well as a chance to engage in some activities and to interact with the members and trainees.

But we want to be more:
In the last 10-15 Uganda has embraced a free market policy and capitalism as way to develop the country. On one site this has attracted foreign investments and created some industrial production. But it seems that only a relatively small part of the elite has benefited. People in rural areas are still poor while the availability of consumer goods has increased the felt needs tremendously. We have noted that most young people are only having one real value left in life “Making money”. Where are those traditional African values left?

Amasiko wants to become a place where:

• traditional values are respected, embraced and promoted.
• economic and social sustainability is ensured without damaging our environment and without wastage of resources.
  
• people life in harmony and respect for each other and for the nature as a whole.
• Surrounding communities have opportunities to see sustainable organic farming at work, exchange experiences and acquire relevant skills
  
• Visitors are welcome for exchange, learning, healing.......................
  

History of Amasiko continued

My girls had a clear picture of the situation of the girls we should help: Orphaned or only one parent, mainly from rural areas, and due to lack of funding, unable to finish any professional education. And this group is big! Uganda has universal primary education and many girls manage to go to a rural primary school and follow a few years of secondary school. Know more or less how to read and write, speak some English. But with this level of education, they are unable of getting a job. Choices are few, either staying alone (taking care of other siblings) or getting married at early age. And unfortunately some are also ending up in abuse and or prostitution.

So what could we do?

Uganda has orphanages where many orphans are supported and send to school, often up to 18 years and allowed to finish A-level. But once again there is often no gainful employment! So for us this was not the way to go.

Finally we agreed to focus on girls who stopped schooling end of primary school, or somewhere in secondary school. In rural areas these girls remain often in real poverty.

As women are doing the major work in agriculture, training in sustainable agriculture, hygiene, sanitation and some simple business skills should help these girls to improve on their lives and make them even self-reliant. Moreover it will spread those skills within the community and could have a positive impact on poverty reduction, making agriculture more sustainable and increase environmental awareness in the area.

Another important consideration is that Africa had a very strong social security net based on extended families. This net seems to break down which leaves many people in dire situations. How could we build our project on those African traditional values of living together and caring for each other? Can we build a place for communal living based on African traditions without falling into a communist system? And how to make it a self supporting place without being dependent on continuous outside funding?

And last but not least how to make such a community self-sufficient and independent from permanent outside funding?

After termination of my contract in 2004, I spent several months Europe, which gave me ample time to read and develop some of my interests.

Two topics became very exciting:

1. Reading, learning and experiencing how some communities are experimenting and developing social, economic and ecological sustainable forms of living. I had a chance to visit an interesting place in the Vosges in France called ECOlonie. Interestingly members of ECOlonie are exactly doing what we discussed in Kabale: Self reliance, sustainable self-sufficiency and a no nonsense business approach. An interesting place which is now part of our network.

2. Having a painful injury which doctors were not able to find a relief for, I started searching into healing. Finally I came in touch with The Journey. This became an interesting experience and after undergoing some inner journeys, the injury healed. I realised that these inner journeys are a way of working on past negative experiences and could therefore be useful for my girls and their companions.

Back in Uganda I discussed all with my girls and we started looking for a spot to start an organic farm and eco-lodge. And it is just unbelievable: From 1999 to 2004 I passed for my work on a small road along Lake Bunyonyi. Every time I a saw a beautiful peninsula. And at this time of seeking a land, the point was put up for sale!!! We went for it and bought one small plot with some trees and two local mud and wattle houses.

The project was taking off!


That's our first property! One acre of land, some 15 trees, two mud and wattle houses and a pit latrine.

History of Amasiko

It has been a long way for me to reach the point where the Amasiko idea developed.

Trained in tropical Agriculture and in Rural Development I came to Africa in 1980 and worked here for almost 25 years in various fields and organisations. All this was based on principles of solidarity and Christian values.

Since 1989 I am in Uganda. From 1999 till 2004 I worked for an indigenous NGO, an umbrella for a network of 17 women and farmer groups in Kabale, which gave me ample opportunity to learn about the local conditions, culture and way of life. I realised that although the environment of Kabale District looks very attractive to national and international visitors, for the local people (Bakiga) is poses great challenges and there is a lot of hidden poverty.

Besides this official work something unexpected happened, I got a young girl (Viona, 3 years) in my house which I finally adopted. She is now 1 very confident young lady and in secondary school (S5). And with these girls in the house, others followed. with help of some friends I managed to support 5 girls in need (orphaned, no place to stay, no school fees....) , paying school fees, giving some shelter at home, but most of all offering a place where they felt at home. Now all are doing well; three finished professional education and are working, others are still schooling.


Here we are celebrating Christmas 2007!

Those girls proposed to start a project together to give other girls in need similar opportunities. As they all explained, the most important help was to have a home, someone to call a parent and to get new HOPE in life = AMASIKO in Rukiga, the language of Bakiga! And there the idea started growing!

An introduction to Kabale

Hi Christina, this is really a new and exiting opportunity to stay in touch with the outside world. Staying on a peninsula at Lake Bunyonyi is beautiful, but it’s also very remote. Blogging is new to me so let me try learn and write some good info about our site, ideas, plans, developments so far...........

Lake Bunyonyi one of the deepest lakes in Africa at an altitude of (water level) 1980 meters above sea level, in Kabale District in the Southern part of Uganda. At this altitude the climate is rather cool (average of 20-25C), which was, together with the (previously) fertile soils favourable environment for agriculture. With continuous increase of the population, circumstances have become difficult, land is divided into small plots and soil fertility has decreased due to permanent utilisation and traditional farming methods based on shifting cultivation which are not suitable to cope with the new situation. Also the present system leaves land bare and prone to erosion.


A view on the peninsula with an impression of the divided and scattered plots of our neighbouring community

One of our objectives is to introduce sustainable/organic farming methods at our site and in the surrounding communities to improve sustainability, erosion control, agricultural production and thus all aiming at a reduction of poverty in rural communities.

Another result of changing from “slash and burn” agriculture to permanent systems in Kabale is that male farmers have last their cultural labour activities (bush clearing). Only few have been willing to get involved in so-called female activities of planting, weeding, harvesting etc and are looking for petty trade, or small jobs. Many are more or less idle and becoming alcoholics.

We believe that an improvement of agricultural methods, on-farm income generation and training of young male and female people to work together, can change this situation and give men pride in agriculture related work. And as Kabale is such a beautiful district, eco-tourism offers a real opportunity for rural communities to become self-reliant.

A gift with blessings

I've invited my friend Wilfried to join the ourwwworld team of people learning to blog sustainably from and for Africa. It is my hope that we can develop this space together in a way that serves the development of the Amasiko project that I've written about at my own blog.

To Wilfried: nobody is watching yet except you and me, so start writing! Between now and 1 November, I will work on customizing the look of your blog for you, while you work on creating at least 5 new posts. Once you have 5 posts (I will also do some minor editing for you, as requested), then we will start working on inviting an audience to see what you've created. There will be some stuff happening in November that might earn you some cash, so that's why the 1 Nov deadline for 5 posts. After that you can slow down to about 2/week.

Meanwhile, please subscribe by email to the ourwwworld team blog where I'll be posting some relevant tips and bigger picture knowledge that will help you build a sustainable blog.

Hugs and blessings to you. Have fun, and good luck!