Sales up... again!

Another week and another one of my little graphs. Sorry but I just can't help myself as they just seem to be heading in one direction at the moment...up!

The graph above shows the weekly cash sales for each of the 9 weeks since we started baking. As you can see the last 2 weeks where we started selling much more bread in Bela Vista have given the graph a nice spike :)

Expansion

I've been talking a bit of late about the increase in sales, but it warrants an explanation.

Alfonso, the chief baker has started to find me customers in the local town, starting with 5 here, 10 there etc. Then he came to me and said there's a fair sized demand for bread in the area he lives. "Cool" I said, take 20 breads home, sell them and bring me the cash tomorrow. Which he duly did - he's good like that. Then we went up to 50 breads a day and yesterday was 100! Now he doesn't sell these alone but has his wife in charge of it, and of course I can't let her do this out of the goodness of her heart, she must be paid.

As with all things involving money here, a sit down meeting was called, which also warrants the services of a translator. Luckily I have my friend and colleague Pedro who not only speaks Portuguese as a first language but also knows a thing or two about local labour etiquette so looked after my side of negotiations. I am of course exaggerating, and wasn't fighting for cheapest labour but needed a gauge on the going market rate. With that sorted I now have a third employee, albeit a casual and not on the books, but a daily rate.

Dropping off Alfonso one night with the consignment of breads I noticed he was carrying something else. In the car headlights I saw it said "Vende se Pao" ("Bread for Sale"). He had made his own sign with some left over paint and a piece of roof sheet off-cut I had at the bakery. Who said Africa can't do entrepreneurship! I'm really happy he has done this under his own steam, so much so that I went to Bela Vista - where he lives - to see where he had put the sign up. That's obviously what the photo above is of, although please note it isn't me standing there but my friend Mike.

Rain on me

Summer is here and the rains have arrived, great for our rice paddies but not so cool for everyday life on the farm. My flip flops (sandals) have worn down to racing slicks so walking on any flat surface has me doing an Olympic ice skating impersonation.

The rain has also been creating problems with our oven. If it gets wet, which it was, then it takes longer to come up to temperature and the clay outer insulation has shown an increase in cracking. Something had to be done so off we went into the bush to get some 'straight' poles to create a temporary roof. As you can see from the photo on the right they weren't exactly straight but hey if it works it works. Our motto here has long been "make a plan!" and thats what we try and do as materials aren't always readily available, if at all. 

The roof is now up and it actually works, now I just have to worry about a strong gust of wind blowing the whole thing away! If anything though I now have more determination to get the side insulating walls completed.

Rocky outcrop...

There I was innocently minding my own business, logged in to blogger about to post an entry on the roof we built over the bakery oven today when in comes one of the girls screaming. "Ugh Agh! there's a huge lizard in my bedroom!" there goes my peaceful lunch break. It was only quite a small (30cm) rock monitor in the end, I say small as they can grow up to 90cm.

I ended up just removing it from the girls sight, letting it go a few metres behind their house. Out of sight, out of mind, just as well as the lizard just hissed and ran back into the woodwork of their walls. Don't tell anyone!

blogs, bugs and mosquitoes

Mozambique is apparently the only country in the world to have an AK-47 on its national flag. A symbol of the civil and colonial wars that devastated the country but brought independence. The other symbol, crossed with the AK-47 is the humble 'Hoe' a sign of the people, work and agriculture. Quite an encompassing flag when you consider most nations' don't have any symbols on theirs, but there is something missing. The national emblem of Mozambique is nothing without the country's mascot - the mosquito. Never is a relaxing night to be had when there is always the sound of formula one engines being tested (buzzing...). Last night was especially bad, we've had some rains the last few days allowing the mosquitoes to breed and now you can only get about 3 hours sleep before waking to find yourself already scratching all over from bites.

The rains also bring with them all manner of other strange creatures, such as the one pictured to the right. Looks like a pretty big beetle but its not even the largest they get, its just one I happened to photograph the night before last (yes, I know my foot is dirty, I live on a farm!).

This week has also seen the arrival of five new horses so the boys are very busy maintaining everything and I'm busy trying to work out how much its all costing us and who's going to pay, an expensive business.

Who hasn't been arriving, on time, are the bakers which is getting a bit annoying, they cite transport problems and I have some sympathy but its throwing quite a spanner in the works.

A good week

The end of another week. Quite an interesting one it was too. For starters yesterday we sent our car (yes, the Nissan again) on a re-supply trip to the beach camp. It was due back yesterday afternoon but is still stuck there after a "clutch pipe" broke. Not being so mechanically minded, despite liking cars, I have decided the only course of action I can take to avoid this in future is to get rid of the Nissan down at the nearby quarry and hope it never comes back... A bit extreme perhaps but this car really has been giving us problems of late!

To add to my mechanical know how we have just received a MAN truck engine from South Africa this evening to be re-fitted to our broken down truck (another story). That may sound well and good until you realise the engine alone weighs around 1.5 tons and we have no mechanics here, let alone cranes to lift the engine off the bakkie. One theory involves setting up a winch system with poles and then towing the engine off the car with a land cruiser, I don't actually want to think about it right now!

All is not lost though, to the left is another of my little graphs and it illustrates what a jump we've seen in sales this week. Due mainly to some active marketing and beginning to sell more breads in the local town as word is spreading.

'Shocking' News

Excuse the pun but I did get a bit of a shock this morning, the local electricity department wants me to install a meter box for the Bakery. Now its not like I'm getting free electricity at the moment, currently I'm just getting from another meter box (on our farm) about 100 metres away. Despite this the local department reckon I need my own separate box at a price of 5,500 MT (200 USD / 1500 Rand). Money that I don't just keep lying around...

To be honest we did just receive an anonymous donation (thanks Dudley!) to complete the building works, but now it looks like I will have to use most of this to pay off the bill for the new meter box. I did have ideas of trying to stall them and stretch out the process but I think I better just get it over and done with. Mozambique, for such a poor country, has a lot of red tape to get anything done!