Dear Fellow Rotarians of District 7730,
Such a trip we have had already. Jock Brandis, the peanut sheller’s inventor and I started this long trip on Monday evening, September 18, bound for Kampala, via Atlanta, London, Dubai, and Nairobi. Bad weather in Atlanta kept us in Wilmington too long and resulted in our missing our connecting flight. We spent the night in Atlanta, and then caught an afternoon flight, this time rerouted to Brussels. There we changed planes and started straight away for Kenya, where we sat on the ground for 45 minutes as they gassed up the plane. A short hour’s flight got us to Kampala at 10:30 Wednesday night. As the airport is 40 minutes from town, we did not get in bed before midnight Wednesday.
First thing Thursday morning was a short meeting with Sam Tukei, our Rotarian Contact here in Kampala. He is the guy who has been organizing things for us here. Next we spent all day driving around buying materials for our training Friday morning. I forgot how dusty, crazy and loud Kampala was. (Makes Wilmington traffic and Wilmington drivers seem down right tame….) We bought sand and cement and a wheelbarrow and two shovels and drinking water, among other items. And we took time for lunch with Kathleen Graham, a representative from Compatible Technologies International in Minnesota, the non-profit we worked with on this project from which we purchased 100 grain grinders. The design of the project is that each participating Ugandan Rotary Club would send one or two members and a craftsman to learn how to make the shellers and how to assemble and maintain the grain grinders. They would then go back to their clubs and identify 5 villages where they would introduce these appropriate tech labor saving devices.
On Friday day we spent 4 hours teaching those gathered how to mix cement and pour it into the two molds to make the two pieces of concrete that comprise the body of the machine. In the afternoon the trainees worked with the CTI folks on how to assemble and adjust the grain grinders. Today, (Saturday) we spent the morning again working on assembling our shelling machines, and again in the afternoon we did work on the grain grinding machine technology. We spent a lot of time working with the Rotarians on how they can be effective in training the villagers how to use the machines to maximum advantage, specifically, on how to make money with them.
All in all I would say that the training has gone very well. We had thus far 12 Rotary Clubs who showed up along with representatives of 2-3 other orgaizations interested in the technology. In total we trained close to 30 people, most all of whom were enthusiastic. While the number of clubs who came to this training is fewer than what we had hoped, Rotarian Sam is extremely committed to enrolling the remaining 7 clubs in participating in the project. Sam is a newly retired Shell Oil executive and did an exceptional job of arranging the logistics for this training. In Africa, arranging materials, lunch and a get together for a small group is hard. Arranging it for 30 people over a two day time period is almost a miracle. Jock and I will be traveling tomorrow to the Eastern part of Uganda, to a place called Tororro, very close to the border with Kenya. We will be delivering a set of molds, 10 metal kits and 10 grain grinders to a church group there which has expressed interest in distributing the machines. It is a 4 hour drive over bad roads, so we will spend the night and return to Kampala on Monday. I will write more on my return.
Thanks again to all of you for your support of this important project.
Jay
Jay Tervo
International Service Chair
Wilmington West Rotary