Our day started off with a lot of train which continued up to about 10a.m. Thus we were not able to do any reasonable work in the gardens. In fact the children who started off with digging were only spoiling the soil and instead made it hard so we stopped them from working in the gardens until we get some good sunshine. So one wonders whether it should be too much rain or too much sunshine for the farmers to enjoy their work! Of course we are experiencing the facts in the game as compared to our usual classroom work that is too theoretical and making out the change in the game plan depending on the available weather conditions. So we have not been able to plant anything since yesterday and we hope for a brighter tomorrow because we are eagerly waiting to have the seeds into the soil.
At 11:00a.m we had Dr. Okiror John James from Makerere University visit us on invitation from Dr.Robinah Sonko our consultant and we briefed him about our work and the future plans. From his experience he was quick to point us to some important issues such as the sustainability of the project. He was quick to indicate that the need to develop interest in our young farmers is paramount and must be our focus point for their career guidance. Indeed it is the wish of the project designers to produce great agriculturalists from all of our learners. One of the project objectives is to enable the learners to replicate whatever we do at the education garden in their homes and to be supported to get an income at the end of the day.We visited the students’ gardens at Gayaza High School to have our guests and consultants evaluate the work done by the senior one class-2013 and to them the start was good. They challenged us to keep the senior two students busy as well by probably introducing animal husbandry and rearing of some birds. We agreed to focus on building a strong agricultural society with several activities including competitions and awards. We were told about the World Food Day-16th October and we agreed to create an agricultural week with the climax on this day.
We later on had our agri-campers visit the gardens too to have an experience of what the other youth were able to do. They picked a number of vegetables for their lunch and many quickly made up their mind about what to plant in their personal gardens. The most exciting future at the Gayaza High School farm was the green house they had never heard about but wondered why it was white and yet termed green. May be in future some of them will get chance to work with a green house so that they can grow throughout the year. We intend to set up one to produce good seedlings and distribute these to the farmers within our community and later on market their produce and retain a percentage of the sales for the sustainability of the project.
Later on in the day the children went back to the camp to wash the clothes received as donations for use as garden clothes so that we save the good clothes from home. We hope at a later time we will get a donation of gumboots so that they not only enjoy comfortable gardening but also look at it as a respectable activity with a proper way of dressing.
Lunch was very late because of the rain and also our fire wood is all wet. So our support personnel in the kitchen are facing it rough and we have to accept the lateness of the meals.After lunch the children started brainstorming about reproducing the work they do and what they will gain in future up to what they expect to harvest at the end in terms of music,dance and drama.We hope to create teaching materials that will motivate other children in engaging in similar activities.
Day 5 Programme:
Planting and MDD.