Rice Project

Flooded water channel - Rice on both sides

Banana trees on banks of water channels                                     Flooded rice paddies

                                    

Water pump - view from river                                                         Maputo River

I often mention that I'm very pre-occupied with other activities, and don't always get the time to devote to the bakery, so I thought I'd show what some of the other things we do here are!

The pictures above are all from our rice project, located about 2km away from the main centre of the farm. This year we have 15 hectares (37 Acres) planted, and so far its looking pretty healthy. We have to pump water to flood the rice paddies from the Maputo river that forms the eastern border of our property. Fortunately it is a large river, but it is tidal so can only be pumped from at high tide times. These always seem to have a habit of being around 4/5am which means an early start for us, getting the equipment ready and down to begin pumping.

Recently we haven't had much rain so are having to pump more often than usual, not a train smash but it does hurt our bottom line. Once the rice is harvested in about 3 months time we sell it off a a discounted price to feed our surrounding community, and unfortuantely we usually take a financial loss each year. Making the project self sustainable is our goal but as an NGO we are committed to improving the lives of those in the surrounding areas. This includes employing more workers than is strictly necessary (providing extra employment) which drives up our costs.

xmas

 

A Truck full of toys 

Some Happy Kids - Mozambique's future tennis stars?

"Me next please Santa!"

Christmas meal for the local prisoners

A merry Xmas to all readers of this blog! I hope you got everything you wished for. My xmas was busy but rewarding. I was sad not to be at home with members of my family but was well rewarded with a day helping others and putting smiles on a few faces in our surrounding community.

Work started earlier than usual as we cooked a meal for 30 prisoners in the local jail. Here in Mozambique the state does not feed its prisoners so if you don't have family or friends to bring you food you have to go without. I made sure we had some extra breads baked so each person could get one bread and a bowl of chicken curry with rice - which was very well received.

Following the community Christmas party last week we still had toys which were yet to find a home. There seemed only one option for it, to play santa and drive around giving the toys out to kids we drove past. This went down well and as you can see from the above photos we made a few kids smile which was a nice way to round off the day.

Mango update

I just happened to be putting some photos on facebook when I saw one of my 'friends' had uploaded a picture of none other than... Mango! he's looking adorable as ever, but where have they got him? in a cage!? I'm going to phone them now and make sure he's being well looked after, otherwise i'll have to rescue him when I go through there on saturday!

Is it almost xmas?

Coming as I do from a cold and wet island in the northern hemisphere, I'm finding it pretty difficult to relate the weather here right now to Christmas... Its mid-day and easily about 38/40 degrees C (about 100 / 105 fahrenheit) the temperature alone isn't the killer but the humidity, I've given up on wearing a t-shirt today as it was soaking wet by 9am... surely its going to be too warm for Santa to visit tonight in his big red fur suit? Lets see... fortunately my folks very kindly posted up some goodies for me the other week, so I have some good reading to get stuck into and nice colombian coffee beans!

Yesterday I went for a quick blast around on the quad bike to sell some breads, as one does when you're a quad-baker. Sales didn't go too great but on the way home I saw a car stranded on the side of the road. Pulling over to see if they needed help I saw their brand new off road trailer had lost an axle, poor luck... anyway with 6 young children between 2 families I took them back with me and we helped them get the trailer off the road and it's now stored here. The funny thing was seeing the young children, I took them into our TV room to watch some TV and they immediately saw all of the left over toys from the xmas party, they thought they had died and gone to heaven! needless to say my early morning doze was pierced by the shrill cries of children running around playing, not such a bad thing though, we were happy to help.

Get on your bike

Having lacked the transport of late to go and make bread deliveries, I have just come into some luck. I've been lent a quad-bike (a 700cc Suzuki King-quad) to be precise. Its nice and powerful and even subtly camouflaged, handy should I come across any bread bandits... Not sure there's too many of them around, but you never know!

This afternoon will be the test run, I'll take 20 breads with me on my lap to the local 'shop' and see if I can make any sales. Wish me luck!

P A R T Y

Party time!

"This beats bingo at the old age home anyday!"

"I'll keep a safe distance, thank you!"

So the community Xmas party went off with a bang, not literally you'll be glad to know! I spent most of the morning trying to make sure a large rock stayed in place over the connection of a power cable, otherwise the music cut off!

Presents were given out, pandemonium ensued, smiles alround, visits from old friends, tearful farewells, we had it all! Too much in fact as I managed to salvage a collection of remote controlled cars that didn't find a home. Some we'll give out on xmas day the others I'm going to try and fix up to race around the office when I'm bored!

killing time...

Don't worry, there isn't a crazed killer on the loose, its just another hot day in the bush and there's an Cow to be killed for the community Christmas party. (that's not me in the above photo by the way!)

The community xmas party is tomorrow and mad preparations are under way. We received extra re-enforcements of 6 people to help us with the preparations, but now 5 of them are down sick for the last 2 days with a stomach bug! agghh! will we be ready in time!? watch this space...