Trip to see the OYAG group - 26th November

At 9am Okal Lucas arrived at the Guesthouse for our meeting.

Okal was the chairman of the OYAG group. This is based at a village, Moroi, about 22km north of Mbale. The group has 52 members and was set up 4 years ago to try and improve the lives of the young people in the community by using agriculture to give them an income. The group is made up of young men in there early 20s and young women who are mainly unmarried mothers, the fathers of their children having run off.

Akol and I had a long chat over African Tea, he told me about the history of the group, what they had achieved, what some of their challenges were and what their plans were. In the past years they have managed to get 300 orange trees donated and planted and now these are bearing fruit. Fruit they can use as food and to sell the surplus. This source of vitamins will help the diet of the group immensely. Recently they have received some mango trees and these saplings had been planted and would, in a couple of years time be bearing fruit. The group have applied for help to Trees for Life and they are waiting to receive trees which will be very good forage for bees and also provide an ongoing source of fuel for their cooking fires.

Four members of the group, including Akol, have beehives, but their knowledge of beekeeping, processing honey or using the beeswax for added value is very slight.

After a couple of hours we set off for the village.

The journey took a long time with the road leading out of Mbale very pot holed and very busy as today, saturday is market day. After 17km we turned off onto a dirt track. This was much better than the main road and this last 5km to the village was heaven compared to the main road.

At the village most of the group were waiting for me. We sat in the centre of the village, under a large tree. There were the formal introductions, then a little talk from me. The group was very quiet and down at heart, I suspect their morale was low as they have such hopes for beekeeping and so far have little resources to help them get going. I suspect it is the energy and encouragement of Akol, and the group secretary, Richard, that keeps them going.

We then toured the village so that they could show me what they had achieved and what their plans were. There are 3,600 people living within the whole parish of the village, and that is spread over a large area. It is not concentrated housing like we would have in the UK.

I was impressed with what they had done with planting trees. The group showed me the area of land that they planned to plant Sunflowers on, again to get a crop and encourage bees. They are trying to plant trees and plants which will provide the bees with food all year round.

We visited 4 apiaries and the hives were traditional ones, in fact they were anything that they thought bees would colonise. One was an old plastic barrel with the front sealed by a plastic container which then had a small hole cut in it for the entrance. Others were clay pots or log hives. A few KTBs.

At Akol's house he showed me more tree planting and also 7 x KTBs that he was building from wood he had salvaged. The difficulty he now had was the Top Bars. Also the KTBs they had had roofs covered in black polythene which was now splitting and needed replacing.

At the end of the tour, we met again as a group. I gave them two of the Basic Beekeeping Training manuals and said goodbye.

Charles drove me back to Mbale and as usual for this time of day, torrential rain came down as we got near the town. The roads were flooded and the pot holes filled with water. At times a bone shaker of a ride, but we got back safely.

I had lots to think about, I felt odd not having done more for this group. How could I come all this way and not do something more positive than two manuals and a few words?

That evening a long phone call with Cath back home and we had a plan. Tomorrow, Sunday, I would go shopping and get the stuff so that I could go back to this group next Tuesday and show them how to make Protective suits out of maize flour sacks and mosquito netting.

This would do several things, it would give the group more tangible encouragement as today they have no protective gear at all, it would let me see if it raised their enthusiasm and moral, finally it would make me feel a lot better.

One minor problem is that I have never made one of these suits like this before......gulp

Mary - HELP!!!!!!!